MAMEWorld Forums - News - Re: Ars article on 'unemulated games'

There is a difference between the quality of an application and the quality of emulation.

BSNES might be a more accurate SNES emulator than MESS, but MESS runs far better than BSNES, and the reality is that many SNES games that don't use the weird add-on chips actually run fine in MESS. I'd rather play Super Mario World in MESS than BSNES, for example.

It is impossible to run BSNES and Demul without stuttering. And no, I'm not talking about stuttering from running below 100% speed. They still stutter even if you get 100% speed.

I can run Super Metroid in MESS with absolutely no stuttering on either a CRT with GroovyMAME or with a G-Sync monitor. This is not achievable in BSNES. When I say no stuttering, I really mean it. Not a single hiccup or stutter. I have never seen any other emulator that's as rock solid as MAME in this regard.

I can see why BSNES is fucked, given that it always runs in windowed mode so is subject to desktop composition rape and other problems. No windowed program truly has control over the frames it's outputting in Windows 7 onward. Not sure what the deal is with Demul.

Show me Nebula M2, Super Model, and Demul running in an arcade cabinet on a CRT at the games' native refresh rate and resolution with absolutely no stuttering or tearing. Prove it's possible. I can prove that such a setup is possible with MAME/MESS.

I'll put it this way: with a GroovyMAME setup in an arcade cabinet, I can actually fool people who own PCBs into thinking that the original game is running through MAME. I could not pull it off in any other emulator, because they'd notice the random hiccups.

"emulation will never reach the real thing"

What a naive statement. Video game emulation has only really been focused on since around 1997. It's just begnning. Think about how good it's going to be 50 years from now.

There are already scenarios in which it can fool people who own the original boards. There are already drivers in MAME that are so close that they're beyond the point of the average human's ability to discern the difference. A friend of a friend is a collector who owns almost every NeoGeo cart. I showed him my GroovyMAME setup. He honestly couldn't tell the difference. MAME's NeoGeo driver is that good. Of course, there aren't a ton of drivers in MAME that are as good as the NeoGeo driver yet, but the point is that all this "will never reach the real thing" talk is a load of dogshit.