Topic: SNES VC for older 3ds

ZSNES (and comparable older versions of SNES9x, not so sure about newer versions) were supposedly filled with game-specific workarounds to make popular games work, when they couldn't figure out the real reason stuff broke.
They were fast enough to get many games working.

Now, byuu has some examples of games that needed more accurate emulation (with the 3ghz requirement) but perhaps unsurprisingly they were very obscure games. Air Strike Patrol (aka Desert Fighter), an isometric flight combat game, requires a far more accurate but much slower emulation of the video chip drawing the screen, due to the programmers going through some meticulous procedure of darkening certain pixels on the screen as the video chip draws them, in order to create a shadow, rather than just using a sprite like probably any other game would've done.
He probably could've otherwise gotten away with using faster rendering methods, as other emulators did, if not for this game (and another unpopular game, a fighter called Battle Blaze), but his goal was supporting ALL games, even the one bizarrely-programmed game nobody has heard of.

ZSNES was written in low-level (machine-language) code that gave it a big speedup on like Pentium 1 but that only amounted to hard-to-read and unmaintainable code once CPUs got faster for the speed difference from using high-level (like C) to be negligible.

SNES sound emulation prior to byuu's research also contained a certain error that was so catastrophic it actually ruined a part of the Super Mario World modding scene.

Ok @JaxonH and @skywake, you are both contradictory. You both claim "accurate " emulation requires 4ghz of processing power yet the new 3ds does not have that power either. All emulation requires is power you've made that abundantly clear, but games that run natively like ocarina 3D and smash bros for 3ds require more power than the SNES could even handle and 3D rendering is much more intensive than what the SNES was capable of. I bought wolfenstein 3D on steam and it uses an emulator to simulate dos and my computer ain't exactly top of the line but it has no difficulty. I myself use snesx9, and have read it's faq readme and says only about 25% of the library in unplayable. But the biggest majority of games people want to play have been sped up or tweaked in someway to run. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V-a1IaNX2Ls
That runs accurately I myself have s SNES and Mario world and aside from a brief flash of light that unless you are a major stickler for details (or it could be the ROM itself) it's fine.

I'd really love to hear y'alls explanation for how the new 3ds does the impossible task of SNES emu since obviously it can't cut it!

I never claimed that. I said that comparing Hz was meaningless but that in general emulation requires a significantly greater level of power than the original system. I then went on to say that SNES emulation in particular is a bit complicated because of the various enhancement chips. It's why the Wii never got Yoshi's Island, it wasn't capable enough to emulate the Super FX chip.

It's also not a simple linear thing either. You can't say something as simple as "a system needs to be Nx as powerful to emulate another system". Some systems are easier to emulate than others. Some games are easier to get working decently than others. And in general what you need for emulation is CPU horsepower. So it shouldn't be at all surprising that the 3DS, which was less capable than the Gamecube, could suddenly do SNES games decently when they significantly increased the level of CPU horsepower.

It's not rocket science.

@GameOtaku
This is why I say go do your homework. It's extremely complex and nothing is a simple answer, and as @skywake said nothing is easy as saying "system needs to be X powerful". There's rule of thumbs like the 10x power, but that's just a general estimate for the power needed to BEGIN to emulate, often many times more than that for older hardware. Newer hardware doesn't usually require nearly as much to emulate. And some are CPU intensive, others rely more on GPU. Some need 2 cores at a high clock speed, others need 4 cores at a lower clock speed.

But it takes a LOT of power to achieve perfect emulation. Power systems don't usually have. So they resort to using tricks and speed hacks to get around glitches, but the problem is all those hacks and fixes will cause other issues. Stuff like running the game at a faster speed, which will have a domino effect and cause other bugs.

One of the first things I said to you was that "it's not that they can't run them, it's that they can't run them at acceptable professional level of quality". And you may not understand that because you just see the game in motion and say aha! It works! But in reality there are a 100 little bugs and slowdown and freezing in menus and audio glitches, things you will never know about unless you have actually played emulated games before. We have had actual developers of the main OG 3DS emulator on this site and explain in great detail why it can only run so few games and in subpar quality. It has been settled numerous times on the record, and all the speed hacks and fixes and workarounds required to even get those few games to run well.

But the fact is, you can take those same SNES games sold on the New 3DS eshop, put them on a hacked old 3DS, and they simply do not run. We're talking exact 1:1 dumps of the official SNES VC from Nintendo running in their official emulator shell... And they flat out cannot run at all. Anyone who has a modded 3DS knows this. Taking the actual VC releases Nintendo is selling, plopping them on an old 3DS... don't run.

@JaxonH @skywake
I've read that the ds with an r4 card could emu SNES games. Someone then countered that saying it's because the ds had 2d rendering allowing it to emu SNES. The 3ds has ds hardware so that doesn't pose a problem. The problem is what is accurate. That is a major problem. A hacked 3ds or new 3ds still glitches when using unofficial emu but an unhacked official emu performs way better than anything basement hobbyists can even come close to.

As I've said numerous times, if the 3ds can handle ocarina 3D there's no reason it can't run LttP. It has significantly more power than it originally did so it should run even better without slow downs. It plays dawn of sorrow so Dracula X should not pose a significant challenge.

Oh yeah they could emu yoshis island or star fix but due to licensing issues with the chip it's been a no go. Not a matter of being less powerful.

Segas 3D Classics run through emulation (improved souped up emu)

@GameOtaku
It does pose a problem because 3DS can only access DS mode separately in a closed environment. It's why GBA ambassador games (which ran natively via DS backward compatibility which ran natively via 3DS backward compatibility) couldn't do virtual save stages, because the rest of the system is walled off when using the DS mode.

As I've said numerous times, if the 3ds can handle ocarina 3D there's no reason it can't run LttP

That statement right there demonstrates your complete lack of understanding. No, it does NOT mean it can handle LttP. Ocarina 3D was developed FOR 3DS using 3DS architecture. Games developed FOR 3DS will do amazing things. LttP is NOT developed for 3DS. It's developed for SNES, and the 3DS has to mimic every single command the SNES hardware executed.

It's the difference between reading out loud in real timr a 500 page novel in English, which is easy because you read English, and reading a 10 page essay in Latin in real time. You don't understand Latin so you must translate each word on the spot. It's going to be infinitely more difficult to read 10 pages of Latin than 500 pages of English.

You simply don't understand the concept of emulation. Clearly.

@GameOtaku
And also, no, once again you are 100% dead wrong. R4 card can't even run SNES well on 3DS! I know because I have one... It can't be done! The DStwo was specifically developed with extra CPU built in to the cart to run SNES and even it has trouble running SNES on 3DS.

Seriously man, it's time to let it go. Your pride won't let you admit you're dead wrong and haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about, but no one here is fooled. Making statements like "It can run Ocarina of Time 3D so it should handle LttP" is about as outlandish as claiming that since a boat can float on water, so can a car. They're 2 totally different things.

@JaxonH
The SNES was not a powerhouse! The Genesis was more powerful by comparison, yet m2 was able to produce an enhanced emulator for segas 3D Classics. The 3ds has significantly more power than the SNES, the 3ds can emu NES, Gameboy, Gameboy color, Gamegear, Genesis and tg16. People have built the SNES so much thinking it's the greatest console of all time and nothing can come close to the greatness of it unless you spend a crap ton of money for a terra hertz processor with 1.22 giga watts of power. Honestly what was so bad about the ambassador gba titles? So what if they didn't have save states! They were able to be fully playable. But then people complain it was too dark on the screen and they couldn't access the home screen! Who cares?! That's not a deal breaker. As long as the game runs to an acceptable level it's fine.

The SNES 3ds VC was so obviously a cash grab. That was the only VC released on 3ds since that announcement. Would it not have made better sense to either release other VC titles in tandem with the SNES or if it was too much work for their overworked VC staff (I'm being sarcastic) that can only manage 2 games a month to outsource to m2 or Arika for VC projects?

@GameOtaku
You're not.... listening.... at all

Before, you were ignorant. Now you're just being willfully ignorant.

This thread...

That's one brilliant way of putting it!

@JaxonH
Neither are you. All you've been saying is it takes POWER for perfect emulation. Correct me if I'm wrong but even blargsnes on a new 3ds still sputters on games even though it is on more powerful hardware. Segas 3D classics are enhanced emu and they play just like the originals. An emulator is just a program. Programs can be improved.

@GameOtaku
I've expounded in great detail exactly why, beyond just power, in multiple posts. But at the end of the day it does come down to power. O3DS doesn't quite have the power to emulate SNES in professional quality. It just doesn't. Ask @DiscoStew who actually developed the dang emulator. He'll tell you.

Genesis is not Super Nintendo. And M2 was commended for those games because it was such an accomplishment. However, Genesis games can be emulated just fine on a modded old 3DS. SNES can't. Neither can GBA.

Well, I got mentioned, so here I am.

Can the o3DS run SNES games? To an extent.
Can the o3DS run SNES games at a professional/sellable level? No.

For as much as people play the "Genesis has a stronger CPU, and that's emulated" card, they only speak about the CPU. The rest of the SNES's hardware is much more complex, not to mention running multiple chips, like dealing with 2 PPUs, the SPC700, etc. Heck, it's not as simple as emulating the CPU, but you also have to deal with hardware timings, and all these chips are meant to be synced together. Hence why it takes roughly a 3Ghz CPU to "properly" emulate the SNES so that just about every game can run. Taking shortcuts, such as utilizing the GPU, helps to relieve a system's CPU from having to handle all the emulation, but then you start losing accuracy.

As it is, the currently popular homebrew SNES emulator for o3DS lacks per-scanline palette changes, because every tile cel that makes up backgrounds, sprites, etc has to be converted from the SNES's bitplane format (bitmap) to a direct-color texture (in Z-order format to boot), and every time the palette changes, any tile cel meant to display have to be re-converted, but can't until after the previous scanline(s) have rendered using the existing converted textures. That's a lot of work, and actually a good amount of waiting while trying to use "shortcuts",and this is just one example of the inaccuracies.

Sure, as folks who just want to play the games, such accuracy is not important, but if you are selling your emulated games (like with VC), then you want to be much more accurate. So, Nintendo opted for the games to be n3DS-only, because that has enough power to accurately emulate the games to their specific needs (remember, the emulator Nintendo uses is tailored for the games, so not all injects work with the same emulator base).

That is really the point. The VC is tailored specifically for each game so it would make sense to optimize it for the original 3ds. @Discostew for all the techno babble that's been thrown about that pesky 3ghz is mentioned again and again I must address the elephant in the room that the new 3ds does not have the necessary power either!

It makes sense. A more powerful system should be able to play older games. 3D games such as ocarina 3D require more resources than a SNES game did 25 years ago. Do you honestly expect the everyman to believe something that sounds so ridiculous?! With all the resources at Nintendos disposal it should not be a major undertaking to bring 30+ year old games to modern consoles. Even you must admit a homebrewed emu can achieve nothing like an official emu like the VC since no hacks are involved.

As far as accuracy is concerned it's kinda open to interpretation. If you don't know how a game originally ran you would never honestly know the difference. More than likely you'd chock it up to being an old game and slowdown and glitches were just a part of it.

@GameOtaku I'll let you in on a little secret regarding 3D games like OoT 3D on the 3DS...

I admittedly know nothing about emulation. Do people think the Switch will have any issues running SNES games?
Or N64 or GameCube for that matter?

@Tsurii I can but.. I have no issue with keeping it open either. Just know that you're probably not going to change the OP's mind when replying to him.

@JoeDiddley Wii U ran SNES and N64 without any problems, so the Switch can probably do that too. Emulating Wii U games is probably out of the question. No idea on GameCube and Wii though. If the Wii U could've ran GameCube, don't you think that would've happened already? The Switch isn't that much powerful, so it could go either way. But yeah, anything up to N64 should be no problem.

@JoeDiddley Issue with SNES/N64 emulation on Switch? Certainly not (considering even in portable mode, Switch is stronger than even Wii U). Gamecube is yet to be seen, though if the Dolphin emulator on Nvidia Shield TV is anything to go by, it's certainly possible.

@Octane & @Discostew thanks! 😊

@GameOtaku "Do you honestly expect the everyman to believe something that sounds so ridiculous?!"
Yup, and it's not believing, it's understanding.

Seriously, even if you dont want to see the facts that many, many "everyman" have presented you, there's a reason no one is debating the theme: Because it's not a thing that is up to debate at this point since pretty much the rest of humanity already understands (just exaggerating, I'm sure there's a couple who just can't seem to get it).

Even if everyone's wrong and you are right somehow, what's the point dude? The 3DS is at the final stage of it's life and Nintendo, the most terrible villain in existence that wanted to sell the New 3DS with this big lie (according to you), already accomplished it's goal. They somehow bribed every expert on the matter and got them on their side to support the theory that everyone has been telling you. If you really want to believe that, your fight keeps being as pointless as it is if everything everyone's telling you here is the truth.