PS1 Emulator issues - Symphony of the Night

[Collider]

Greetings!

Forgive me if this is an easily solvable issue, but I can't for the life of me run Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on Menadfen/Retroarch. I am familiar with the emulation scene in general, but these little boys are stumping me right now.

I first tried running the game on Menadfen - snagged the 64 bit version, got the ISO from Emuparadise, converted the ape and ecm files to .bin and produced a cue sheet. Game wouldn't run. Tried with two other different isos, including one from Redump - same result.

Upon checking the stdout logs, I realized that Menadfen, for some reason, was saying the game's region was japanese, regardless of which ISO I was using. That didn't make any sense but, in any case, I added a japanese BIOS and attempted to run the game again. I was immediately greeted by that delicious Sony Entertainment logo, but afterwards, the emulator froze on this weird screen:

http://imgur.com/q7eh4a6

Needless to say, I have no idea what that means.

I decided to try my hand at Retroarch; didn't work, either. Downloaded the core, put the necessary BIOS in the system directory, and used the Redump ISO - the one that comes with a pre-made cue file that, supposedly, would work on Retroarch with no issues. "Failed to load content". Goddamn it.

Am I forgetting some essential step here? Doesn't seem to be the case, given what I've read from various sources - especially the gametech wiki. The most baffling thing is that weird screen Menadfen gives me. Does anyone have any idea what the issue could be?

My specs are as follows:

Intel Core i7-4790k, 4.00 GHZ
GTX 970
16,0 GB RAM
Windows 10

[Warrior]

I am the resident RetroArch Guru here, feel free to ask me anything regarding it.

Download Links:
Links are hidden from guests. Please register to be able to view these links. Go there and grab the pre assembled RetroArch Bios/Support files set, that makes it much easier.

Are you using the Stable or Nightly build of RetroArch?

Please use the Redump image as they are perfect 1:1 rips of the original disc data.

That screen you see is the Playstation bios screen if it detects there is no disc, you can toggle that by hitting F1 or your Menu toggle hotkey and going to disc control>disk cycle tray status and that will make it think the lid is open or closed then just go back to the game.

[Collider]

I am the resident RetroArch Guru here, feel free to ask me anything regarding it.

Download Links:
Links are hidden from guests. Please register to be able to view these links. Go there and grab the pre assembled RetroArch Bios/Support files set, that makes it much easier.

Are you using the Stable or Nightly build of RetroArch?

Please use the Redump image as they are perfect 1:1 rips of the original disc data.

That screen you see is the Playstation bios screen if it detects there is no disc, you can toggle that by hitting F1 or your Menu toggle hotkey and going to disc control>disk cycle tray status and that will make it think the lid is open or closed then just go back to the game.

Thanks a lot, Warrior!

I grabbed the pre-assembled files set and put it all on the "system" folder, as instructed.

I am using the most recent stable build of Retroarch - more specifically, the one available on this page

The image I'm currently trying to use came from Redump, actually - nevertheless, I can't seem to get Retroarch to read it. I select load content and point it to the location where the cue file is located (the .bin files are located on the same folder), but the result is always the same - "failed to load content".

Is there a specific location where the image must be placed? That might explain why I can't get it to run, but I haven't seem any mention of that being needed in any of the guides I've read.

EDIT: It worked! Not exactly sure why the effect wasn't immediate, but Symphony of the Night is up and running. Thanks a lot, Warrior - those BIOS files you pointed me to did the trick!

[Warrior]

Here is a little trick, load the core then go to information>core information then scroll down, it will show what files are required/optional and give the CRC32 and say if they are present or missing.

Seems your renamed bios were incorrect.

There is some great features to that BTW, if a game has very heavy dilthering or just hate PSX dithering like I do load the game and go to core options and go to dithering pattern, switch it on and off and check the gameplay and see if you can spot the difference.

One more thing is set the memory card to Mednafen instead of libretro, they are easier to manage, you can also unplug memory card 2 now, its in the core options as well.

[Ryu]

The guy knows his RA

[Crash-Headroom]

P.S: Use the hylian scanlines with glow shader: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=823367734
Makes EVERYTHING look gorgeous and really helps with the ol pixels