I need some help from the local tech gurus here. I have an Asus Eee PC 1215N laptop I use for everything. I use this for playing the ancient console games from the early to mid '90s era. I currently run Kega Fusion 3.64 for a Sega emulator and it works flawlessly. I currently don't have any Nintendo or Sony system emulators. I'm looking for the best possible emulator that will emulate all the old systems like NES, SNES, N64, the complete Genesis with all system add on components, and Sony PS1 as well as a few other systems maybe. Anyone have a recommendation on the best one in a single package for all these? If it can use the Nvidia ION GPU in my machine for better video performance, that would be a bonus. My specs if they matter are this: 2.3 GHz 2 core CPU, 8 GB of RAM, 625 MHz GPU speed with 512 MB of dedicated RAM, 500 GB hard drive.
Yep, I agree with MESS ( http://www.mess.org/ ) being the closest thing you'll find. To be honest, though, the emulation on MESS is not to the same standard as individual emulators, and you may be better off just keeping them separate or building a frontend that gives you the 'one-stop shop' style of emulation you appear to be looking for. Is this an alternative tack for your extreme (but, if you can pull it off, interesting) Sega Fusion Rising project? ( http://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=556740 )
I've been looking for something like that tons of times, and I always found out that if you want decent emulation at decent speeds you can't go with a single emulator. MESS can handle lots of consoles, but as its purpose is to be perfectly accurate, speed is a big issue (specially on netbooks). Also you can try GameEx. It's a frontend designed to handle multiple emulators and roms, with a lot of features like a MAME-like database with information for each game, and the capability to go through menues and select games using a USB gamepad. Setting it up takes some time, but once it's working it's really good.
First off, thanks to all the replies. This will help a lot. As for your question mooseblaster, no. This is another system I want to have as a backup for if I have console failure as well as to be a portable setup. Get 4 USB controllers, a video cable and plug into a friend's TV for every game I can find for Sega, Sony, and Nintendo systems. Sega Fusion Rising is still in the plans. Need to wait on some more stuff as my 32X is malfunctioning. Fusion Rising for those wondering is a combination model 2 Genesis (Megadrive), 32X, and CD system all slapped together in a Saturn case for the console Sega should have made. I will be using a Mega Everdrive to have every Sega game I can get. There may be the chance of it being able to load CD images from the cart so if it can, then I will have every Sega game both retail and otherwise in one device inside this system. Stay tuned for more info once I can get going on this.