Original Hardware for the win. The Mega Man experiment

[Triaxis]

This is what my gaming setup looks like.



Sony BVM20E1U
Playstation 2/ Component out
N64/ S-Video out
Snes 1-Chip03/ RGB Out
NES/ Composite out

When I was a kid my friend Ben let me borrow his copy of Mega Man 3 and shortly there after moved away. Then it was mine all mine. My parents would not buy me games so this was a windfall of epic proportions. I played the hell out of that game, and still love it to this day. I have original copies of Mega Man 1-6 for the NES, and was thinking about selling them last week because i found my old copy of Mega Man 15th anniversary collection for PS2. So i fired it up and wow, this looks great. Improved graphics with the Playstation 2 hooked up using component cable's vs the NES Composite. Before i said goodbye to my NES Mega Man games i thought i would do a quick comparison of the games on NES and Playstation 2. This is what i discovered.

Mega Man 1-6 are totally playable on the Playstation and the controller feels great. However there is a very small about of input lag. At first i almost could not tell the difference but it is there. When you load up Mega Man 7 originally for the Super Nintendo it becomes far more noticeable.

Also the audio sounds dull and muddled compared to the nes and snes with crisp analog audio. The songs on Mega Man also do not loop correctly on the PS2 version. They replay the into each time they loop through. On the original version they loop seamlessly without the intro or silence.


Conclusion

Can you play Mega Man on the Playstation 2? Yes. Is it just as good as on the NES or SNES? No. It does not feel the same. When you put put them head to head with a nice CRT display and a decent sound system the differences become very obvious. And vitural console/Emulation? Please.

[BuckoA51]

And vitural console/Emulation? Please.

I bet the more accurate NES/SNES emulators on a fast PC would have a good chance of outperforming the PS2 version. Virtual Console though, no chance.

[ZellSF]

I got into real hardware because Super Mario World was unplayable to me on PC emulators (and how the hell do *anyone* manage to deal with the Virtual Console emulators?).

Not too much into CRTs, I have one in case I need one, but beyond that I'm fine with the 1.5 frame lag of the XRGB-mini.

As for Mega Man, I want to eventually play that lag free too, but I'm waiting for cheaper NES RGB mods or that NES HDMI thing.

Anyone know how the PSX versions are? Ports or emulated?


Edit: and yes, PC emulation > console emulation. I have no idea why the emulation *quality* of the Wii gets so much praise.

[BuckoA51]

I think the better PC emulators have about a frame of lag if configured correctly, so that's comparable to what the mini does.

[ZellSF]

> On top of that, all emulators have a lot more input lag than the native hardware itself.

Yes, they all do. In the best case (CRT + serial gamepad, running in DOS), you can push it down to 60ms or so. Worst case (LCD + compositor like Aero + USB gamepad), you will end up with 150ms or so of latency.

Emulation lag is more than 1.5 frames. Assuming you can even reach a best case scenario, which is pretty unlikely in itself.

[kamiboy]

What is wrong with Wii virtual console emulation?

Personally it is the only form of emulation that I recognize as a viable means of playing older generation games outside of the original hardware. Unlike PC Emulators which are the product pf hobbyist programmers the emulation on wii is professional, tested and hassle free. Also you get to play the games on an actual gaming system with 240p output to boot.

Anyway, I've only really used Wii virtual a handful of times and it seemed to do the job just the way that I like it.

[nasty_wolverine]

on most emulators, lag is negligible, with vsync off its almost not there. its mostly to do with odd timings of the consoles then anything else. as i said before PCB > Consoles > Emulation. emulate it only if there is no choice.

[ZellSF]

What is wrong with Wii virtual console emulation?

Personally it is the only form of emulation that I recognize as a viable means of playing older generation games outside of the original hardware. Unlike PC Emulators which are the product pf hobbyist programmers the emulation on wii is professional, tested and hassle free. Also you get to play the games on an actual gaming system with 240p output to boot.

Anyway, I've only really used Wii virtual a handful of times and it seemed to do the job just the way that I like it.

Outside of 240p, you're not describing any actual advantages to Wii VC emulation. Which I suppose is nice if you like CRTs, but don't like 240p scaled 2x. Professional, tested and hassle free are pretty meaningless labels. I would call PC emulators the same (outside of N64/PSX and later).

As for what's actually wrong with it, Wii video output and sound output isn't the best and you'll end up with more input lag than PC emulators. You'll get none of the extra features emulation offers.

on most emulators, lag is negligible, with vsync off its almost not there. its mostly to do with odd timings of the consoles then anything else. as i said before PCB > Consoles > Emulation. emulate it only if there is no choice.

vsync doesn't make a huge difference in all emulators. In some it's a huge source of lag, in others it isn't.

[kamiboy]

I wouldn't call anything on the PC professional, tested and hassle free. There are just certain things that by tradition are not part of the development vocabulary of PC developers whether they are working on games or just plain old software.

Then again I've always had a distaste for PC's. There is something about them that just sucks all the joy out of seemingly simple activities like gaming.

The only time critical game I've ever played on Virtual console was Mega Man 3 one day when I was in the mood for it and had no access to my cart copy.

Didnt notice any input lag, so it passed that test for me, and in addition, and much in traditional console manner, the experience of playing it was pretty much plug and play. The game looked and sounded like it should, it didnt crash, I saw no glitches amd there were no options for me to play around for an hour to getbthings working to my taste, it just worked.

Overall it was a very pleasant console like experience which is far more than I could ever say about anything on the PC, theoretical amounts of lag or not. I've since used the service whenever I saw the need.

[ZellSF]

Didnt notice any input lag, so it passed that test for me, and in addition, and much in traditional console manner, the experience of playing it was pretty much plug and play. The game looked and sounded like it should, it didnt crash, I saw no glitches amd there were no options for me to play around for an hour to getbthings working to my taste, it just worked.

If those are problems you associate with PC emulators, your impressions are outdated by like, 10 years.

PC emulators only have problems like that with newer stuff, you know, the kind of stuff the Wii VC does not emulate at all.

I wouldn't call anything on the PC professional, tested and hassle free. There are just certain things that by tradition are not part of the development vocabulary of PC developers whether they are working on games or just plain old software.

Again, they're meaningless labels that do not mean anything concrete. I would say those things are not part of the development vocabulary of Nintendo.

[kamiboy]

Just so happens that those labels mean a lot to me as they define the user experience of a product.

Nintendo was the only console maker who still had those concepts in their vocabulary as of the generation that is now ending. The others went in full PC mode with games that launched half finished with day one patches, and several more afterwards, games that freezed or crashed and games that needed to "install" before you could play them. And last but not least constant pointless firmware updates that took forever to install and barred you from playing games until they finished.

Incidentally I stopped buying new games for those systems halfway through this genetation. The games were rubbish anyway.

Of course now Nintendo has started following suit with the Wii U, so the plug and play console tradition is now dead.

My impressions of the user experience of PC software being horrendous is never going to be outdated. Just a few weeks ago I fired up some emulator for a 16 bit system to quickly test something and what do you know it crashed.

I'll stick to the Wii, it just works.

[trap15]

which are the product pf hobbyist programmers the emulation on wii is professional, tested and hassle free

Obviously you've never experienced professional quality software. I'd trust a hobbyist with my software far more than a "professional".

[ZellSF]

Crashing console games and PC emulators? Outside of a Wii game, I've never experienced any of that crashing ever. Hassle free Nintendo's approach to bugged games is of course... product recall or just leave it bugged. Damn those horrible PC mode approaches of just instantly fixing the problem.

And you keep not getting why I'm saying you're using meaningless labels to explain why you like the Wii VC. You said the labels means something to you. That's more or less my point, they mean something to only you, you need to share WHAT they mean.

[BuckoA51]

PC emulation is a much higher quality than Virtual Console. Things are always going to be more technical to set up initially on the PC due to it being a much more versatile, general purpose platform, but once you are up and running the results leave the Virtual Consoles dire emulation in the dust, at least in every instance I've ever seen. Sorry to hear that "some emulator" you tried crashed on you. I used the Playstation 2 emulator last week to play Cookie and Cream with the girlfriend and it never crashed once, and looked far better than the game did when we played it on the original hardware.

I'd maybe argue for the sake of it that it's actually better to emulate in some instances, but only if you are using an LCD or flat panel display. Running hardware like the Neo Geo or various arcade PCB's on an LCD can cause problems due to refresh rates being slightly off. A good example is the Game Boy, with the Gameboy player, which uses original hardware but does a framerate conversion, results are not as pleasing as the PC emulator, despite the GBA player essentially being the Gameboy hardware. As a general rule though, nothing beats the original of course, things like the PS2 emulator upscaling the games is different, since technically you're 'remastering/remaking' the game rather than playing it the way it was originally intended.

As for emulator lag, it's certainly there, but hard to measure. Some USB controllers have more lag than others, Aero doesn't cause problems if you run full screen or turn off desktop composition. I'd imagine original hardware + Framemeister + an LCD would be a tiny bit less laggy, but not exactly in the same ballpark as using a CRT and the original hardware. Without some concrete way of measuring it though it's mostly speculation.

[Lord of Pirates]

which are the product pf hobbyist programmers the emulation on wii is professional, tested and hassle free

Obviously you've never experienced professional quality software. I'd trust a hobbyist with my software far more than a "professional".

Agreed in regards to emulators.

PC emulation has improved a lot in recent years, I see no reason to hate it if you use a PC for other things, Kami . I have problems finishing games when I'm not playing on original hardware; I'd definitely emulate 3D consoles if I didn't because rendering at a higher resolution is much nicer looking than native resolution.