How far has Saturn emulation come along?

[Alex Nguyen | 15]

Now I'm asking this question because before, the Saturn was notorious for being really difficult to emulate. However, in recent years, emulation for the system has improved. I heard of an emulator called Mednafen, which can actually run Saturn games. Now my main question is that is the emulation good enough to the point where I would not need a Saturn anymore to play these games or is it still better to get the physical copies for a much smoother experience?

P.S. I have an HP Computer with an intel Core i5 10th gen processor.

[cj_robot | 546]

I've been super impressed with mednafen. From what I understand it's got an incredibly high compatibility rate. I've only tested 30-40 Saturn games myself, but they all seem to run perfectly without any kinds of weird glitches you would get with the older emulators. It does demand a bit of CPU power, however. When I had was using an AMD 4300 quad-core some games ran really well, some like Sega Rally would get some frame rate dips, and then some like Virtua Fighter 2 would run way too slow to be playable. Once I upgraded to an AMD Ryzen 7, every game runs silky smooth.

So yeah, I'd say it's at a point where the emulation is actually a great way to play. Now I keep my Saturn in a box, my discs in their cases, and just play the games on mednafen.

[CodysGameRoom | 2,008]

56 minutes ago, cj_robot said:

Once I upgraded to an AMD Ryzen 7, every game runs silky smooth.

I love that you need a powerful computer to run video games from 1996.

[BortLicensePlate | 652]

Fun fact: mednafen stands for My Emulator Doesn't Need A Frickin' Excellent Name

 

I hear the Saturn core for Mister is coming along nicely. Seems like Saturn is going to have some nice options aside from original hardware these days

[Tanooki | 4,952]

If mednafen and it's horrid lack of a GUI and tweak happy setup is what's required to use Saturn properly, Saturn is in a pretty sad state.  Can't stand that emulator, epitome of laziness leaving it like some old DOS program after all these years.

Are there any functional good emulators that use a GUI or some modern OS/interface?

[erac | 78]

^ that certainly divides opinions. That's exactly what's good about mednafen to me, no GUI crap getting in the way or slowing me down. Or worse, tying it to one OS.

[Tanooki | 4,952]

15 hours ago, erac said:

^ that certainly divides opinions. That's exactly what's good about mednafen to me, no GUI crap getting in the way or slowing me down. Or worse, tying it to one OS.

I know it does.  I just find trying to use it grating and a bit infuriating, and this is coming from someone who still tinkers with DOS stuff lightly through dosbox so it's not like it's foreign to me.  Just too many hoops, things to remember, and just sketchy stuff a simple non-bloating GUI could resolve.  And what's worse, it seems few care to make let alone keep up to date a functional GUI that works and isn't a testy hot mess of conflicts (last I checked, 2019 I think as I was curious how it handled Virtual Boy.)

[cj_robot | 546]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

I know it does.  I just find trying to use it grating and a bit infuriating, and this is coming from someone who still tinkers with DOS stuff lightly through dosbox so it's not like it's foreign to me.  Just too many hoops, things to remember, and just sketchy stuff a simple non-bloating GUI could resolve.  And what's worse, it seems few care to make let alone keep up to date a functional GUI that works and isn't a testy hot mess of conflicts (last I checked, 2019 I think as I was curious how it handled Virtual Boy.)

There's always RetroArch. From what I understand, the Beetle Saturn core is based off of mednafen, so just as good with the accuracy but with all the options and silly stuff that comes with the RetroArch GUI.