Do any decent Jaguar,3DO or Saturn emulators exist?

[Anthony1]

Last time I looked into this subject the answer was pretty much no, but I was curious if anything has changed.

I'm going to be upgrading my PC pretty soon, so I'm wondering if maybe when I finally have this new super powered PC, that maybe I could use a Jaguar or 3DO emualtor that would actually work.


I will always keep my real Jag, simply because it outputs RGB, and nothing can accurately simulate a RGB display, so I will always keep my real Jag. As for the 3DO, the best it can do is S-Video, and it's controllers are crap anyways, so if there was a perfect emulator for it, then I might just roll with the emulator and ditch my 3DO hardware.


Also, since we are talking about emulators for systems that don't have any really solid, or well working emulators available, what about the Saturn?

Will that machine ever be emulated decently?

It sucks that there are alot of PSX emulators that run pretty good, but not one that really works right with the Saturn.

[Jehuty]

The 3DO and Jag have emulators that somewhat work but require a beast of a pc to work and the Saturn has one emulator that is leaps and bounds ahead of the pack with near perfect emulation of I'd say over 80% of all games but Sega owns it so it is illegal to have it unless you purchased it in japan when it was selling it.

[ddockery]

Last I saw FreeDO was the best 3DO emulator and it still couldn't handle any commercial games yet.

[Iron Draggon]

The Goldstar 3DO controllers are actually pretty good, it's the Panasonic 3DO controllers that suck. I have a Panasonic FZ-10 & Goldstar conrollers, it looks like they were made for each other, even more so than Goldstar & Goldstar.

[whoisKeel]

that saturn emu works pretty darn good, i get probably 70-80% speed if i had to guess. there's like 10 different processors in that machine, 2 cpus, a video, a sound, etc. so it's hard to emulate.

[zektor]

Project Tempest works very well and plays many commercial games (including Tempest 2000 of course) at full speed with sound...providing you have a decent CPU. On my P4 3ghz I can play the games perfectly:

http://pt.emuunlim.com/

[Anthony1]

Project Tempest works very well and plays many commercial games (including Tempest 2000 of course) at full speed with sound...providing you have a decent CPU. On my P4 3ghz I can play the games perfectly:

http://pt.emuunlim.com/

Hmmm, I checked out the site, it looks very interesting. But it does appear that it's still going to be quite some time before there is a Jag emulator that works as good as Genesis or SNES or even PSX emulation.

I looked around the website and I couldn't find any list of games that do run perfectly.


Would you say that any of the games actually run perfectly? Any of them that run about 90 percent perfect? I would assume that Tempest 2000 would run the best, when you play that game, how good is that one emulated? Besides the controller issue, can you almost forget that you aren't playing a "real" Jaguar?

[Anthony1]

the Saturn has one emulator that is leaps and bounds ahead of the pack with near perfect emulation of I'd say over 80% of all games

Are you telling me that there is a Saturn emulator that will actually run a Saturn game 100 percent perfectly?


No freaking way. I personally don't believe this. If this is true, then that would be a dream come true, but I'm not sure I really believe it. I've heard that there is a Saturn emulator that will actually run a few games without crashing, but the games run like crap and barely work. Are you telling me that there is actually a new freaking emulator for the Saturn that really works?


Please, explain more about this in great detail!!!!!!!!!!!

[zektor]

Project Tempest works very well and plays many commercial games (including Tempest 2000 of course) at full speed with sound...providing you have a decent CPU. On my P4 3ghz I can play the games perfectly:

http://pt.emuunlim.com/

Hmmm, I checked out the site, it looks very interesting. But it does appear that it's still going to be quite some time before there is a Jag emulator that works as good as Genesis or SNES or even PSX emulation.

I looked around the website and I couldn't find any list of games that do run perfectly.


Would you say that any of the games actually run perfectly? Any of them that run about 90 percent perfect? I would assume that Tempest 2000 would run the best, when you play that game, how good is that one emulated? Besides the controller issue, can you almost forget that you aren't playing a "real" Jaguar?

Well, it's been awhile since I've played it, since I've been working mostly and whenever I have off I am spending that time with my daughter or getting my Mame sets to date, but last I tested it I played Tempest 2k and Alien vs. Predator (with the latest release) and they seem to play right on the mark. I didn't notice any problems with the emulation on my end. I still don't have gamepads installed (I was having some problems with certain emulators with the USB pads I had), so I cannot vouch for gamepad support. I just used the keyboard. Once I get the X-Arcade playing some of these emulators is going to be great...especially Mame.

All I can say is try it. It's free and you have nothing to lose!

[Anthony1]

Oh absolutely, I will definitely try it. I'm going to be building a new PC in the very near future. As soon I have the new rig, I'm going to give that a try. Right now I only have a PIII 866mhz, so I'm not going to mess with it till I upgrade.


By the way, do you think a AMD machine will run this stuff properly?


I was thinking along the lines of this:


Athlon XP 3200
1 GB PC3200 Dual Channel
GeForce 6600GT
nForce2 Dual Chanel motherboard

etc, etc

[zektor]

Not knocking AMD, as they do make great processors, but I am strictly an Intel man myself. I have just had too many problems/compatibility issues with AMD in the past, and even tho they may be great now (I have a few friends with them, and they do perform) I personally will never go with one.

I have a P4 3.0e I purchased from newegg.com about 6 months ago for $250 I believe. It was not OEM, but retail boxed. That CPU teamed with a nice Soyo board really performs for me. This P4 is the processor with the HT (Hyper-Threading) technology you always hear about. It's nice, but runs HOT. The case needs more than sufficient cooling...

[zektor]

Ohh...here's the thread about the PC I built and currently run everything on...back from April:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/view...highlight=soyo

$195 now for that CPU...can't go wrong there!

[Anthony1]

I just wanted to revisit this topic, because I'm still curious about Jaguar, 3DO and Saturn emulation.

Now, when it comes to emulators for the NES, Genesis, TG-16, SNES, Playstation and Nintendo 64, (to just mention a few), I know that these systems have very solid, very up to par emulators for them.

If somebody wanted to simply just play the roms on the emulators for those systems, they could, because the emulation is up to par, the speed is good, and other than some minor issues here and there, you could get by if you wanted to by just playing emulators for those systems.

But with the Jaguar, 3DO and Saturn, as far as I'm aware, there still isn't any "rock solid" emulators for any of those systems.

When I'm talking rock solid, I'm talking about something like Gens or snes9x ro stuff like that. Rock solid emulators that work pretty much 100 percent, with full speed and no major issues or problems and it can run about 98 percent of the games for the system it's emulating.

But with the Jag, Saturn and 3DO, I don't believe a "rock solid" emulator exists.

Now, if I'm wrong about that, then please enlighten me.

If I'm not wrong about then, then when do you think we will get a absolutely top of the line rock solid emulator for any of those systems, if ever?

[mgriff]

I heard Cassini is a good saturn emulator,

you can find it here at zophar.net

the only thing is you need to find a saturn bios file

[sharp]

The best way to play 3DO on x86-system is still the 3DO Blaster from Creative, I owned one years back as they gave it away with my computer back then and it worked perfect. Ok it was not emulation, but it was a great solution. I liked those pre-emulation days, you also had a Diamand videocard with Saturn-controllerports, which made playing Panzer Dragoon and Virtua Fighter on a pc much better.

Although I'm happy I now have the USB Saturn-style Sega controller for my Mac. Still I don't use emulation often, in fact I only use it to make screenshots.

[Jagasian]

The 3DO can play games burned to CDR, and the 3DO system itself is really inexpensive, so why not just get a 3DO and burn CDs? Also, if you don't like the controllers, then use one of the many SNES to 3DO controller adapters.

[Anthony1]

The 3DO can play games burned to CDR, and the 3DO system itself is really inexpensive, so why not just get a 3DO and burn CDs? Also, if you don't like the controllers, then use one of the many SNES to 3DO controller adapters.

Sure you can play backups for the 3DO, you can do the same thing with the Saturn if you get a mod chip, But eventually all of the CD based systems will stop working at some point in the future. That's why we need emulators to preserve the history.