There's a ton of links for SNES emulators, but which one should I really use? Does it matter? I checked out several of them and they hadn't been updated in years.
There's a ton of links for SNES emulators, but which one should I really use? Does it matter? I checked out several of them and they hadn't been updated in years.
SNES9X ans ZSNES was once very dominant, but that was ages ago, they run on older pc's but isn't accurate at all.
Today there is a few to choose from. For accurate emu's there is BSNES part of Higan, and there is MESS.
BSNES is useful if you have a PC that is al tricked out, meaning a very fast and with a very new GPU. Also you need it's bios files to use the add-on chips found on the snes. And don't mind it taking over your snes rom collection, and willing to "learn" how to use an emu from scratch, as it isn't really user friendly without reading the manual at least four times.
MESS is a bit tricky to set-up, but once set-up it's easy to use, with current WIP code it runs games BSNES can't.
Then there is Pasofami & RetroArch, my experience in them is rather a bit weak, so won't comment on them.
ZSNes is great for speed. Snes9x is pretty good too. If you want accuracy, then BSnes is the way to go. It can be a bit tricky to use, but it is amazing. Also, BSnes can run all licensed SNES games.
ZSNES has kind of terrible sound emulation. It's even worse in the netplay versions. That said, ZSNES is the only emulator with viable netplay. Note that the word there is viable, not reliable, not good.
SNES9x is more accurate than ZSNES, but the netplay doesn't really work. I've even tried it on lan and it's still terribly desynced when it works at all. It eats a little bit more resources than ZSNES, but on a modern computer that shouldn't be an issue at all.
As mentioned above, BSNES is the best in terms of accuracy, but the UI is cryptic, and it takes a powerful computer. I'm running a 3 GHz dual core, with a decent video card, and I get major slowdown when I try to play it.