Emulation: The Yesterday of Tomorrow

[Seeleschnieder]

So you guys more than likely use several emulators. So lets just get the riff raff out of the way, What are the best emulators for each respective system, What are the best ways to organize the settings so that it will run smoothly on any junk pc such as my own?
As far as GB/GBA goes, there isn't an emulator that will frustrate you, your computer will make it work.
I have had some experimenting and i find that in the realm of Nintendo DS Emulation, there are two that stand out to me, Desume, and No$GBA 2.6a, As I said before, my computer is nothing to sneeze at, unless your intention is to make it dirty and ugly in an effort to make it look more like it runs, Desume, is the DS emulator one should come to when he is in complete understanding of what he is using and how to edit the settings accordingly, while attaching a controller to my computer is easily said and done, playing on Desume becomes difficult as it lags, and the settings are in some Computer language. No$GBA 2.6a the newest free version of the Ds emulator is aimed more toward the general population, the settings you'll find have little hints next to them, Ex. In the sound quality menu at the end of each selection it will have a parentheses and the word (Fast) or (bad/Fast) (Good/Slow) Stuff like that.
although I understand the sound quality and how to manipulate it to better fit my computers running speed (slow) It makes it simpler to run in other aspects I dont fully understand. The only problem that keeps coming back to me in comparing these here emulators, is that Desume can be resized, whereas No$GBA Is this size. No arguments. Thats how big it is. Deal. Although one can go into the settings and properties and set it in compatibility mode to run in 600x400 resolution to make it "Look" Bigger, it is satisfactory in that sense.

So if anyone is interested in sharing their own experiences with emulators, im sure anyone who visits this thread could benefit from any information you could share with them, I know I will.

[Slacker Magician]

No$Zoomer extends the functionality of No$GBA drastically.

[feinosekai]

Advantages no$gba, it can run most game smoothly, better FPS than another NDS emulator,
but it can't run several game such as KH re-code, Kamen Rider All Rider Generations, dll
when playing FF4 it'll be several glitch.

i recommended using DeSmuME, but slower FPS than no$gba,
but if u have good PC (at least game support) there's nothing to worry about.
DeSmuME advantages:
- Run almost all NDS game
- Almost no error Savestate, so u can save ur game anytime
- Record movie, so that u can record ur gameplay or FMV u love so much
- Can play p2p (pair to pair) with another PC
- & many advantages...

u can get all emulator in "emucr.com"
they update all emulator everyday
nowaday they often update PCSX2, JPCSP, DeSmuME, Dolphin

[deathneko11]

i have had bad experiences with nozoomer. it kept infinately multiplying on my pc when i tried to run it via no$gba and overloaded both my pcu cores. i have read similar posts as well what's up with that?

[feinosekai]

try DeSmuME, u'll get better

[Zorlon]

Plenty of threads like this in the past and all die off

Personly I own most of the systems or emulate them on other consoles

VBA-M for your GB to GBA needs (can also be linked to Dolphin aswell as supporting link up play via 2 to 4 GBA's emulated)
No$Zoomer and DeSmuME for your DS/GBA+DS needs
FCEUltra for your NES needs.. (been a while since I bothered with NES on PC so that info may be out of date)
SNES9x and ZSNES for your Super Nintendo needs
PJ64 for your N64 needs (can also use some link features to e.g. transfure pokemon from GB and GBC pokemon games if thats your thing)
Dolphin for your GameCube and Wii needs (also supports VBA-M for GBA link up needs)
Fusion/Kega Fusion for your 8bit to 32bit Sega needs (also the only emulator to support Sega/Mega CD-32 games)
SSF for your Saturn needs (junkier machines can run GiriGiri to run some games okish)
nullDC for you Dreamcast needs
ePSXe for PSX emulation but if you can't handle seting up plugin PSx/PSxfin is an ok alt (PSx is missing too many features for me to consider this myself)
MAME for general arcade needs
FBAUltra for more arcade titbits
thats all I will recomend for now but there are tons more I use personly from time to time I didn't even get into some of the 8bit to 64bit computer emulators and plenty of retro consoles and handhelds, also missing a ton more arcade emulators, even simulators of Pinball machines and digital pocket games (like the dual screen games by nintendo (no not DS games the olde LCD screen games)) I don't bother with PS2 or PSP myself owning both consoles...

(simulators are a lil different but not that much realy from emulators, emulators fake hardware but run rom dumps and bios dumps from rom chips, simulators fake everything, the pinball I metioned is actually a mix of emulating the digital displays rom chip/score system and a simulated table mixed together)

PS1 = backport mod (PSone has a mod chip) (believe it or not but even this has a couple of emulators for it)
PS2 = softmod (a couple of emulators on this system)
PSP = softmod (plenty of emulators for the PSP)
NDS = flashkit+gba support (plenty of emulators to get on this lil system)
3DS = flashkit (same as above)
Dreamcast = no mod needed it plays selfboot (Mil-CD) perfectly fine (CD-R games work just fine) (a few emulators out for this great lil system)
GameCube = softmod (not the best softmod but it works, a small number of emulators on this lil cube)
Wii = softmod (Much beter than the GameCubes softmod, a few emulators on here but not realy got into those myself just yet)
Xbox = softmod (I have tons of emulators on that, one of the best consoles for emulating older consoles on, including PSX)

I find emulators handy for systems I own anyway for testing mostly, though emulators like ePSXe can make the PSX games look very nice as you can run them at a much higher res than they are orginally made to (well atleast the 3D game look good at a high res)

emulators of older systems have nice filters making even 2D graphics look nice but they can be done both on PC and Xbox (PC can also include Mac's though my list is of Windows OS emulators)

Too many emulators too many variations of setting per system and or per game ect.. but we do have some guidelines for some emulators

PSX for example I know we do have some basic setups

just look at the stickies in each section and look at the read me first sticky threads the guides stickies and links stickies

alot of these I put up myself and other members that are full of handy hints and tips

You are asking for far too much in one thread that would just become a mass of posts some helpfull other asking for help in a single thread, the only time we have ever done this was only because there was a bug in the forum years ago that prevented some users from creating a new thread so I made an all in one help thread and done alot of the help myself, but in the end this was just a mess