Zsnes capabilties?

clarjon · Post by **clarjon** » Thu May 04, 2006 5:31 pm

Hello

I have been using Zsnes for a while now, and one question has come up. I'm sure it has come up before, tho.

Can Zsnes play NES roms as well as SNES roms? Or would i have to go to a different emulator.

Or, is there a plugin / bios / doohickey that i can get zsnes to play nes games with?

Thanks!

kieran_ · Post by **kieran_** » Thu May 04, 2006 5:41 pm

No. It can only play SNES games. You will need to get a NES emulator to play NES games.

Go to this page to see a list of emulators: http://www.emulation64.com/files/category/19/10/

Below are two popular emus that spring to mind. There are many more out there, so you should try a few until you find one that works best for you.
Nestopia - http://sourceforge.net/projects/nestopia/
Fakenes - http://fakenes.silohware.com/

Ichinisan · Post by **Ichinisan** » Thu May 04, 2006 6:57 pm

ZSNES only supports SNES games for a good reason. If the authors decided to add functions to emulate NES hardware, then neither platform would get the required attention to make it as good as it can be. If ZSNES supported NES games, it would be inferior to several other NES emulators out there. It would be a waste of time to work on fixing problems with NES functions when there are many excellent NES emulators already. ZSNES still has a long way to go to accurately simulate the SNES platform!

darkbenny · Post by **darkbenny** » Thu May 04, 2006 7:04 pm

Ichinisan wrote:ZSNES still has a long way to go to accurately simulate the SNES platform!

It's pretty close if you ask me.

Jipcy · Post by **Jipcy** » Thu May 04, 2006 7:08 pm

Simulate or emulate? There's a difference, but I don't remember exactly what.

xamenus · Post by **xamenus** » Thu May 04, 2006 8:32 pm

It would be interesting if one of the NES emulators was skinable and could be made to look like the ZSNES GUI.

ShadowFX · Post by **ShadowFX** » Thu May 04, 2006 9:34 pm

xamenus wrote:It would be interesting if one of the NES emulators was skinable and could be made to look like the ZSNES GUI.

Isn't FakeNES able to do this? Last time I checked it did

xamenus · Post by **xamenus** » Thu May 04, 2006 10:06 pm

EMu-LoRd wrote:
xamenus wrote:It would be interesting if one of the NES emulators was skinable and could be made to look like the ZSNES GUI.
Isn't FakeNES able to do this? Last time I checked it did :)

Then please tell me how to utilize said feature.

ShadowFX · Post by **ShadowFX** » Fri May 05, 2006 12:07 am

Download it over at ipher's and have a look yourself, it's under Options > GUI Theme.

xamenus · Post by **xamenus** » Fri May 05, 2006 1:38 am

EMu-LoRd wrote:Download it over at ipher's and have a look yourself, it's under Options > GUI Theme.

I know about those options, but none of them make the GUI look like the ZSNES GUI. ;)

byuu · Post by **byuu** » Fri May 05, 2006 2:56 am

Jipcy wrote:Simulate or emulate? There's a difference, but I don't remember exactly what.

A simulator mimics the output of said device. The best example are the old Pong (and similar) games in MAME. The machines used special logic chips that lacked "opcodes" because it was cheaper at the time. Rather than try and emulate their logic (much harder than a CPU emulator), the MAME developers ripped the graphics/audio from the game (I believe they recreated these, not sure), and then made their own program to play the games using these data sets.

Another example is ZSNES' FEoEZ graphics packs. These simulate the SPC7110's decompression abilities. But if you throw in your own SPC7110 compressed data, ZSNES will choke because the processor isn't really emulated.

A simulator's main goal is to run the platform's software. Behaving like the hardware itself is a side effect of getting the games to work. Often times though, simulation makes it impossible to run games not specifically designed for it. See UltraHLE, which is probably at least 40+% simulation.

An emulator tries to mimic the original hardware. Running games is a side effect of having accurate emulation, not the main goal. Andreas Naive's S-DD1 decompression code is emulation. One can make up their own compressed data and ZSNES will happily decode it.

However, those are extremes. The fact is, most people don't bother to make any distinction whatsoever (re: hackers vs crackers), and even more don't care, so long as Mario appears to be hopping around like they remember from the real original game. And even when the distinction is made, the lines are often blurred. It all depends on what the author cares more about, compatibility or accuracy.

These distinctions also really only apply to the concept of console/arcade emulation. The textbook definitions are pretty plain.

ShadowFX · Post by **ShadowFX** » Fri May 05, 2006 10:25 am

xamenus wrote:
EMu-LoRd wrote:Download it over at ipher's and have a look yourself, it's under Options > GUI Theme.
I know about those options, but none of them make the GUI look like the ZSNES GUI.

I believe we're going a bit off-topic here, but in any case, to me FakeNES' GUI is one big skin... and it looks awesome

If you take the Classic skin, the arrowpointer is about the same as the one in ZSNES.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Sat May 06, 2006 3:27 am

Yeah Zsnes can't play nes roms. I always wished there was an emulator with all the features of zsnes on a nes emulator. Basically an nes emulator that came close to zsnes but for nes roms.

kieran_ · Post by **kieran_** » Sat May 06, 2006 11:03 am

Mike wrote:Yeah Zsnes can't play nes roms. I always wished there was an emulator with all the features of zsnes on a nes emulator. Basically an nes emulator that came close to zsnes but for nes roms.

What kind of features does ZSNES have that other NES emus don't?

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Sat May 06, 2006 4:47 pm

herzog wrote:
Mike wrote:Yeah Zsnes can't play nes roms. I always wished there was an emulator with all the features of zsnes on a nes emulator. Basically an nes emulator that came close to zsnes but for nes roms.
What kind of features does ZSNES have that other NES emus don't?

Well I don't think nes emus have as much as zsnes. Zsnes has alot of video modes, more filters, lots of misc options, and a very nice customizable GUI. I always runs snes games nicely.

-_pentium5.1_- · Post by **-_pentium5.1_-** » Sat May 06, 2006 7:40 pm

Mike wrote:Well I don't think nes emus have as much as zsnes. Zsnes has alot of video modes, more filters, lots of misc options, and a very nice customizable GUI. I always runs snes games nicely.

herzog wrote:Nestopia - http://sourceforge.net/projects/nestopia/

Gentlegamer · Post by **Gentlegamer** » Sun May 07, 2006 9:44 am

There is a Japanese emulator called Yame that works for .nes, .smc, and .pce games (NES, SNES, PC Engine), though none of the systems are emulated as well as the best single system emulators, like FCE Ultra, ZSNES, and Magic Engine.

Ichinisan · Post by **Ichinisan** » Mon May 08, 2006 4:14 am

Ever heard of M.E.S.S.?

eyebrowsoffire · Post by **eyebrowsoffire** » Mon May 08, 2006 8:21 am

But it would be awfully nice to get the cool features of ZSNES that don't have to do with the SNES (like Video Filters, AVI export support, rewinding, and of course, the pretty gui...) and have those somehow work with a NES emulator. But then that starts getting into splitting ZSNES into a frontend and the actual emulator...so probably not going to happen.

corronchilejano · Post by **corronchilejano** » Tue May 09, 2006 4:37 am

I know that probaly this isn't the place to ask this question... and PROBABLY I'll get censored and even possibly get my comment blown from here to Kingdom come but...

Why hasn't been another version of Zsnes been released?

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Wait for it....

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Easy know...

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...

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HERE THEY COME!!!

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Tue May 09, 2006 4:43 am

Censored? No. Flamed... most definately.

Seriously.. it will be done when its done. If you haven't used any of the WIPs yet, then stop complaining/wondering.

adventure_of_link · Post by **adventure_of_link** » Tue May 09, 2006 7:08 am

Thanks a lot idiot, now you just got the next version of ZSNES delayed by a day or so.

Seriously, you don't see this king of thing everyday. Hell ROM requests don't happen as often as they used to anything.

Post by **Agozer** » Tue May 09, 2006 2:51 pm

adventure_of_link wrote:Thanks a lot idiot, now you just got the next version of ZSNES delayed by a day or so.

Seriously, you don't see this king of thing everyday. Hell ROM requests don't happen as often as they used to anything.

More like 6 months.

God damn, people need to grow a brain and stop asking when.

kieran_ · Post by **kieran_** » Tue May 09, 2006 3:14 pm

adventure_of_link wrote:Thanks a lot idiot, now you just got the next version of ZSNES delayed by a day or so.

corronchilejano · Post by **corronchilejano** » Wed May 10, 2006 1:36 am

Wow, people can't take a joke...