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I’ve lost track if I’d posted about this before, but when we bought our new desktop to replace the increasingly-dragging six-year-old one, I became enamored with the idea of replacing my “emulator box” that’s hooked up to the TV with something more worthy of the name. And I discovered Lakka, a bare-bones Linux OS made for running RetroArch and that’s all.
So after making sure the new desktop functioned as intended, Ben and I wiped the old machine—which was terrifying, just let me say—and installed Lakka on it. It was actually pretty quick and easy, as we did the whole thing while ARR was napping, and still had time to play Contra 3 until we managed to use up our infinite lives.*
Later, I pulled out Wario’s Woods, certainly the contender for “SNES game I’ve spent the most time playing,” as a true test of the emulation quality, with the short answer being: The emulation is excellent, but the controller is imperfect. (Which makes sense—it’s based on a PS3 controller, so it’s not going to respond like a true SNES controller.) I now have two controllers; whether I buy more for 4-player games is still up for debate. Fortunately, the existence of USB ports means I don’t really need to commit.
So far, I’m very happy with this solution. It does exactly the “all-in-one” sort of thing I wanted, without being bogged down by Windows and all the other unnecessary stuff clogging the system resources. I needed Ben’s help again to get a wi-fi adaptor running so I can easily add roms and update software, but this is the new toy I wanted it to be. I think it might soon be time to introduce ARR to the Mario Brothers—we tried a little TMNT (which he wasn’t quite ready for) and Mario Kart (which went as well as any other racing game).
I tested the DS emulator, which works well for any game that doesn’t need touchscreen input. I still need to test the PS1 and PSP emulators.
My only real compliant is that Lakka won’t list roms in the main directory unless they match some predetermined list of checksums, and apparently a lot of the roms that I’ve had in my collection since 2000 don’t. They still run fine, but you need to manually go into the directory to open them, which is irritating.
The automatic cheat lists also aren’t perfect, but those I’m pretty sure I can figure out how to edit myself. Or, because Lakka/Retroarch reads the save formats from most other emulators, I can hack the savegames and just import them.
* Okay, that’s shorter than you’d think. You die a LOT in Contra games.
Overall: It’s not 100% mind-reader perfect, but this has nicely transformed my old computer into a new toy.
So after making sure the new desktop functioned as intended, Ben and I wiped the old machine—which was terrifying, just let me say—and installed Lakka on it. It was actually pretty quick and easy, as we did the whole thing while ARR was napping, and still had time to play Contra 3 until we managed to use up our infinite lives.*
Later, I pulled out Wario’s Woods, certainly the contender for “SNES game I’ve spent the most time playing,” as a true test of the emulation quality, with the short answer being: The emulation is excellent, but the controller is imperfect. (Which makes sense—it’s based on a PS3 controller, so it’s not going to respond like a true SNES controller.) I now have two controllers; whether I buy more for 4-player games is still up for debate. Fortunately, the existence of USB ports means I don’t really need to commit.
So far, I’m very happy with this solution. It does exactly the “all-in-one” sort of thing I wanted, without being bogged down by Windows and all the other unnecessary stuff clogging the system resources. I needed Ben’s help again to get a wi-fi adaptor running so I can easily add roms and update software, but this is the new toy I wanted it to be. I think it might soon be time to introduce ARR to the Mario Brothers—we tried a little TMNT (which he wasn’t quite ready for) and Mario Kart (which went as well as any other racing game).
I tested the DS emulator, which works well for any game that doesn’t need touchscreen input. I still need to test the PS1 and PSP emulators.
My only real compliant is that Lakka won’t list roms in the main directory unless they match some predetermined list of checksums, and apparently a lot of the roms that I’ve had in my collection since 2000 don’t. They still run fine, but you need to manually go into the directory to open them, which is irritating.
The automatic cheat lists also aren’t perfect, but those I’m pretty sure I can figure out how to edit myself. Or, because Lakka/Retroarch reads the save formats from most other emulators, I can hack the savegames and just import them.
* Okay, that’s shorter than you’d think. You die a LOT in Contra games.
Overall: It’s not 100% mind-reader perfect, but this has nicely transformed my old computer into a new toy.
