72 replies to this topic

[Murph74]

Hi, people. Just playing with Emulators on the wii via Homebrew Channel. I'm curious, has anyone created or seen a pre-fab'ed SD card image solution for Emulator setup? I'm slowly getting a set of emulators installed and running, but it's a slow process getting it all together.

If no one else has done this, once I get all the systems available up and running, I'd be happy to share the Card Image (sans Roms most likely per most usage agreements) if anyone else is interested. And of course, this is once I get them all working. Like right now, I can't get JzIntv going using hte Wiimote and Nunchuck-- the software starts, but can't get the controls to work.

[phaxda]

I'm going through the exact same process--would love to share card images.

[Murph74]

Well, so far I've got NES (FCEUltra), ColecoVision (WiiColEm), and Atari 2600 (Wii2600) all up and running full speed. Not sure what my problem with JZIntv is (can't get joysticks working on it). Working on more this week...

[donssword]

Love emulation on the Wii. Its totally killed my collector's urge to fill in gaps in my 2600 collection with overpriced titles like Tapper.

If you use Homebrew channel, its super easy to DL and install all the emulators, and HBC is compatible with the latest Wii system update--just check out homebrew.org. They are very anti-pirate there, so tread lightly, but they have all the resources you need to get started.

Be sure to check the HomeBrew.org thread on compatible media--I just upgraded to the A-Data 16GB Class 4 SDHC card and love it, with plenty of room to spare for WiiWare demos and to back up any of the WiiWare games I buy. Mwave.com usually has the best price, and sometimes it goes on sale for $19.99 with free shipping: http://www.mwave.com...riteria=BA47465

Once you get the apps, there is a quick edit you may need to make to the meta.xml file with a text editor (any will do)--I noted this edit here on Atari Age a month or 2 back--u need the app to not make a network check at launch otherwise you will get a core dump and a lot of instability.

Then you just need the ROMS. Check the Harmony Cart thread for some decent ROM compilations for the 2600 all ZIP'd up nice and pretty. There are not a lot of 7800 games, so DLing them from here at AtariAge is not a big deal either.

ROMNation.net is a good place to get individual ROMs, or you could try and hook up with someone from the Lazarus Project.

I can't seem to get my Intellivision emulator running, and WiiEngine/Turbo Graphx 16 doesn't work worth a damn, so go with Hugo for TG16 and you'll be happy--there are only a couple of TG16 ROMs that done't seem to run on Hugo, and if you have never played a TG16, you'll be really surprised at the quality. I have not pursued any of the Coleco Vision emulators. They also have some older computer operating systems, along wiht SCUMM and DOS Box.

I run emulators for NES, SNES, GBA/GBC/GB, Sega Genesis, Turbo Graphx 16, 2600, and 7800. There are two 2600 emulators--I'm partial to Wii2600, but feel free to use what feels good. Most recent console emulators tend to struggle a little more--they do have apps for PS1, N64, Saturn, GC, and even the DS, but as I mentioned, more recent hardware is a little sketchy to run.

There is some good home brew to play too--a good 2-D Portal game that was ported from the DS, Quake, Doom, Heretic, a great blackjack game called Wii Double Down, a good Yahtzee, Mahjong, a sometimes unstable Super Mario Wars port, a Picross clone, and some other things to play with. You can use WiiExplorer to set up an FTP server if you prefer to FTP files to your SD card rather than using an SD card reader, and even some hacks to play DVDs.

[Murph74]

Thanks for the info Donssword... But I'm hoping to create a zip file, much like the Rom collections you speak of, that is a ready to go multi-emulator solution to unzip to a SD Card, copy ROMs to the right folders, and play.

Not even sure what all emus are worth getting or playing-- like I said so far, loving WiiColEm (thanks, Raz0red!), FCEUltra and wii2600.

JzINTV still doesn't like me. Haven't tried many others-- there's a Genesis and Mame emu on my Ext HD, but don't play those much at this point.

[Austin]

If someone could get together an all-in-one file that I can just drag and drop to a SD card to have all the emulators installed in one swoop, that would be awesome. It would tempt me to hack my Wii. Part of what's been holding me off is that I did this with the original XBOX two years ago and that was a long and drawn out process. I really don't feel like doing it again if it's that much work.

[Lord Helmet]

The only thing that's a pain in the ass is downloading all of the roms if you don't already have them.

[Murph74]

Well, I continue to make progress on getting an emulator drag-n-drop SD card solution running. Hopefully will have something to post this weekend!

And Lord Helmet-- if it's so easy then why hasn't anyone else shared their unrommed card image? lol (It's not rocket science, but it's been tedious for me on some emus!)

[Lord Helmet]

Murph74, on Fri Feb 11, 2011 1:51 PM, said:

Well, I continue to make progress on getting an emulator drag-n-drop SD card solution running. Hopefully will have something to post this weekend!

And Lord Helmet-- if it's so easy then why hasn't anyone else shared their unrommed card image? lol (It's not rocket science, but it's been tedious for me on some emus!)

Because I'd have to remove all of the roms...

[Murph74]

Hmmm... That would take all of about 2 minutes once the emus are up and working-- Just copy the card image to a folder on your PC hard drive, go into each ROM folder, hit control+A then the Delete key. Then Zip the main folder, and you'd be done.

I didn't have time to even turn on teh TV, much less my Wii this weekend, but I'll get to it soon, I promise!

[Rex Dart]

Shit, just get the Homebrew Browser and select the emulators you want. No need to bother with all this card imaging nonsense.

[Rex Dart]

And for the roms, you should be running them off a USB hard drive or your local network. 2GB isn't enough for my collections.

[Lord Helmet]

Rex Dart, on Tue Feb 22, 2011 12:27 PM, said:

And for the roms, you should be running them off a USB hard drive or your local network. 2GB isn't enough for my collections.

I agree. I'm out of space and using a 4gb card.

[mimo]

Rex Dart, on Tue Feb 22, 2011 12:27 PM, said:

And for the roms, you should be running them off a USB hard drive or your local network. 2GB isn't enough for my collections.

as long as the emulator supports USB loading, WiiXL, Wii7800 and the colecovision ones don't currently support that

[radiohead]

Murph74, on Sun Feb 6, 2011 12:52 PM, said:

Not sure what my problem with JZIntv is (can't get joysticks working on it). Working on more this week...

I got JzINTV working with a GC controller... the C stick is more convenient to use to access the numeric pad for game selections (but not as good as how the Colecovision EMU utilizes it.)

You have to use the wiimote when it first starts up, navigate through the menu to "controllers" and click (+) to take you to a 2nd menu where you select which controller config you will use. JzINTV isn't very slick or user friendly and not all roms work, but an "A" on the effort.

Classic game console emulators are really the only reason why I installed HBC, or even play the Wii nowadays. Atari 2600, 7800, Coleco, MAME, Sega, NES, SNES, Gameboy & Intellivision emulators are the only homebrew I have. Over 200 roms on a 2GB SD card with plenty of room left (I also have Rockband DLC on the same SD so I can't upgrade to SDHC.)

Edited by radiohead, Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:18 PM.

[donssword]

A-DATA 16GB SDHC Class 4 Flash Memory Card
I love this card--all my emulators are here, as well as WiiWare demos. Tons of room.

http://www.mwave.com...ash Memory Card


As far as Rockband, keep in mind you can swap SD/SDHC cards if need be, even while in HBC. Just don't forget to check the compatibility list before buying any card:
http://www.wiibrew.o...atibility_Tests

[phaxda]

I just picked up a 2TB USB drive at Office Depot for 89.99, so that should keep me set for awhile. It took me all morning because I am stupid, but now I have that thing loaded up nice with the ROMs and Loader GX. Only did this because my optical drive died, but man... I should have done this a LONG time ago. Used the Lego Indy hack, works great even with the latest 4.3 menu.

Finally, I can play Mario Kart again!

[phaxda]

So I can play Mario Kart and load NES and Genesis ROMs off of my USB drive but either I am really stupid or there is no way to do it--for Wii2600, why can't I load 2600 ROMs from the hard drive? There seems to be no easy way to browse to that directory. I guess the thinking is that those ROMs are so small, why would you need to put them anywhere else? But I would like to have them on the drive, if for no other reason than to have a centralized ROM repository. Same with the 8-but emu, anyone know a way to do this?

(Yes, I feel dumb and should have read mimo's post above. I am weary.)

[raz0red]

phaxda, on Fri Mar 4, 2011 10:02 AM, said:

So I can play Mario Kart and load NES and Genesis ROMs off of my USB drive but either I am really stupid or there is no way to do it--for Wii2600, why can't I load 2600 ROMs from the hard drive? There seems to be no easy way to browse to that directory. I guess the thinking is that those ROMs are so small, why would you need to put them anywhere else? But I would like to have them on the drive, if for no other reason than to have a centralized ROM repository. Same with the 8-but emu, anyone know a way to do this?

No, you are not doing anything incorrectly. The emulator has to specifically add USB support, and the currently released versions of my ports do not. I am currently going through the ports and enhancing them, with one of the additions being USB support. I don't have a specific date for Wii2600 as it will be released after WiiColEm and Wii7800, which should both be released in the next couple of weeks.

--Raz.

[phaxda]

Whoo, awesome! Thanks for all your great work--I did not mean to sound whiny. The emulator is really cool and there's plenty of room on my SD card for 2600 roms!

On a more negatory note, something broke my USB Loader GX. It shows all my games and stuff, sees the USB drive, but won't load anything but a black screen (and then back to the Homebrew Channel). I have no idea what I've done to it. I tried the WiiFlow program instead, but that did not work either. Ugh. I was so excited because I played the Mario Kart once yesterday and now... nothing. Blah. THis is after installing all those IOS things, etc... I have no idea what I am doing. I might be too old for this stuff.

Oh well, I will just load up some Dragster instead.

raz0red, on Fri Mar 4, 2011 11:16 AM, said:

phaxda, on Fri Mar 4, 2011 10:02 AM, said:

So I can play Mario Kart and load NES and Genesis ROMs off of my USB drive but either I am really stupid or there is no way to do it--for Wii2600, why can't I load 2600 ROMs from the hard drive? There seems to be no easy way to browse to that directory. I guess the thinking is that those ROMs are so small, why would you need to put them anywhere else? But I would like to have them on the drive, if for no other reason than to have a centralized ROM repository. Same with the 8-but emu, anyone know a way to do this?

No, you are not doing anything incorrectly. The emulator has to specifically add USB support, and the currently released versions of my ports do not. I am currently going through the ports and enhancing them, with one of the additions being USB support. I don't have a specific date for Wii2600 as it will be released after WiiColEm and Wii7800, which should both be released in the next couple of weeks.

--Raz.

[phaxda]

Ah, famous last words. Anyway, I went back to the drawing board and found a guide for dummies for downgrading the system software and went from there. Got Mario Kart back in action:

http://www.wiihacks....od-any-wii.html

This is by far the best guide for people who want to back up their disks to play after their DVD drive starts giving errors. Thanks, Nintendo.

I don't want to hack anything or have the latest and greatest. I just want to play Mario Kart. (And maybe some Atari!)

[donssword]

Resurrecting an old thread...

Mednafen ( http://mednafen.sourceforge.net/ ) just got a nice Wii port http://www.wiibrew.o...iki/WiiMednafen

It emulates the following consoles and handhelds in one stable app:

• Atari Lynx
  
• GameBoy and GameBoy Color
  
• GameBoy Advance
  
• NES
  
• PC Engine (TurboGrafx 16)
  
• SuperGrafx
  
• Neo Geo Pocket (Color)
  
• PC-FX
  
• WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color

So far I have only tested with NES and GBA games, and can confirm it is more stable than the other NES and GBA emulators on the Wii. Of note to Mac users, WiiMednafen can see the Resource Forks (your .DS files) of your ROMs so you will likely want to figure out how to delete them from your media. I use an SDHC and delete the .DS files via Ubuntu.

[donssword]

I've tested all the other emulators except PC-FX and I find WiiMednafen to be more stable on all counts. Its user interface isn't as pretty, but it doesn't crash every time I scroll my list of ROMs either (like the other ones), so that alone is cause to switch.

Make sure you have the lynxboot.img in the right place of the Lynx ROMs won't work.

[Nerf Herder73]

Murph74, on Sun Feb 6, 2011 11:00 AM, said:

I can't get JzIntv going using hte Wiimote and Nunchuck-- the software starts, but can't get the controls to work.

It works. Have you tried the Classic Controller?

[Nerf Herder73]

donssword, on Sat Oct 22, 2011 8:23 AM, said:

I've tested all the other emulators except PC-FX and I find WiiMednafen to be more stable on all counts.

I tested "Chip Chan Kick!" for PC-FX and it ran slow during the FMV bits. The game levels seem to play fine. The speed issue was acknowledged by Raz0red.

Mednafen is worth your while if you're emulating on the Wii. I feel that it features the best emulation of the Virtual Boy, Lynx, PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 (& CD) and Neo Geo Pocket. Plus there's WonderSwan, PC-FX and SuperGrafx along for the ride.

Pretty sweet for a 0.0 release.

Do yourself a favor, stop by Radio Shack and buy the 16GB Sandisk SDHC card that they have for $26 and load that puppy up.

Edited by Nerf Herder73, Sun Oct 23, 2011 9:25 PM.