Most authentic emulator retro gaming setup? (lemy.lol)

submitted 8 months ago by flork@lemy.lol to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't have a lot of space for consoles and cartridges, or money for consoles and cartridges but I do have a decent computer hooked up to a TV. What's the best way to get an authentic experience via emulation? Here's what I have so far:

Retroarch Settings

HDR enabled (cant tell if it actually helps)
Run-ahead enabled
Mega Bezel shaders
Retrobit saturn controller (having trouble getting configured but has an excellent dpad)

Emulators/cores:

NES - Mesen
SNES - bsnes
Jaguar - Bigpemu (need to configure shaders)
Megadrive/CD/32X - Picodrive
PSX - ??? Swanstation?
Saturn - Beetle Saturn
N64 - Mupen64plus

Thing I need to work on:

Tweaking shader settings as the defaults are very dark
Configuring retrobit controller to work with Steam big Picture (how I launch Retroarch) and retroarch seamlessly
Possibly finding a Big Box theme that is focused on original artwork and not garbage

Any advice/pointers? My goal is to eventually have a "pick up and play" setup possibly with different 8bitdo/retrobit controllers for each system.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Get some decent CRT shaders and spend some time calibrating your display and setting them up correctly - it makes a massive difference IMO. Personally, I'm a big fan of the "Megatron Death To Pixels" shaders, check out this video on how to set it up properly.

My goal is to eventually have a “pick up and play” setup

For that, I'd highly recommend switching to a gaming/emulation-oriented Linux distro, such as Bazzite with Emudeck, ChimeraOS, Batocera, Lakka etc. I personally prefer Bazzite due to it's Steam-first approach and excellent compatibility with various controllers and proprietary drivers (nVidia), but Lakka might be better if you've got an Intel iGPU or an AMD card, and want to stick purely to retro gaming - it's the official distro for RetroArch afterall, so it's very polished in that regard, and very lightweight.

[-] flork@lemy.lol 3 points 8 months ago

Megatron Death To Pixels

Thanks I'll check that out!

Also I'm currently running Big Box as my windows "shell" because I wanted to be able to do Steam Games as well. I've been curious about all the Linux distors, is there one you'd recommend?

[-] d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz 1 points 8 months ago

Ah, if you're interested in Steam games as well then look no further than Bazzite - it's got all the optimisations that Valve put into SteamOS + more (like more recent kernel and drivers). But before you switch though, you might want to check whether your Steam games are compatible using this website: https://www.protondb.com/