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This is cool but of course it's only going to be a small handful of titles that ever receive this kind of attention. But I have been blown away that now sub-$3

This is cool but of course it's only going to be a small handful of titles that ever receive this kind of attention. But I have been blown away that now sub-$300 Android handhelds are more than capable of emulating the entire PS2 library, often with upscaling if you prefer.

flykespice 9mo ago
What the dev of AertherSx2 did to run games smooth, even on my midrange 2019 android phone, is wonders. Too bad the dev is a very emotionally unstable person that abandoned his port, despite his big talent.
- dottjt 9mo ago
  On the flip side, maybe those traits are what lead to the existence of the emulator in the first place. Better something than nothing.
- Sarkie 9mo ago
  Wasn't he hounded by users as usual?
  - siev 9mo ago
    Yeah and he didn't want to deal with receiving death threats for working on a passion project. Which I guess is considered being "emotionally unstable".
    - efreak 9mo ago
      I have no knowledge of this instance, but death threats and being attacked and stalked online tends to cause emotional instability.
jkingsman 9mo ago
It really is incredible. I've been playing through my childhood games on retro handhelds, and recently jumped from <$100 handhelds to a Retroid Pocket Flip, and it's incredible. Been playing WiiU and PS2 games flawlessly at 2x res, and even tackling some lighter Switch games on it.
- reactordev 9mo ago
  It truly is. My issue though, like in 2010 when I built an arcade cabinet capable of playing everything is you eventually just run out of interest. In it all. Not even the nostalgia of it keeps my attention. With the exception of just a small handful of titles. - Excite Bike (it’s in its own league) NES - Punchout (good arcade fun) NES - TMNT 4-P Coop Mame Version - NBA Jam Mame Version - Secret of Mana SNES - Chronotrigger SNES - Breath of Fire 2 SNES - Mortal Kombat Series SEGA32X - FF Tactics PS1 I know these can all be basically run in a browser at this point but even Switch or Dreamcast games were meh. N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters.
  - wahnfrieden 9mo ago
    The Demons Souls lineage titles are another valuable innovation (I understand the earlier inspirations it had but those aren't playable like these modern ones) For MAME I recommend trying Pang and Super Buster Bros
  - irishcoffee 9mo ago
    > N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters. I was a kid when ps1/n64 came out so I also have a lot of nostalgia about that era of gaming. However… There are a ton of great games out there from this era. Hell, the Uncharted series and Expedition 33 will get you 100-200 hours of excellent gameplay, Elden ring is another 200. Lies of P is a fantastic game, 50-100 more. The star wars Legos and star wars Harry Potter games are a lot of fun to play with kids, and Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are the Zelda games we wanted on n64 as a kid, I love those games. And they’re not a rehash, at all. There’s a lot of fun things out there to play if you poke around. Your local library might surprise you with the collection for completely free games you can borrow. Modern games even.
    - reactordev 9mo ago
grimgrin 9mo ago
I'll take a longbet with you that this or successors tackle more than a small handful of titles We live in interesting times
Onavo 9mo ago
I suspect we will see a proliferation of emulator development in the next few years. In a lot of ways, emulators are the perfect problem for vision/LLMs. It's like all those web browser projects popping up on HN. You have a very well define problem with existing reference test cases. It's not going to be fun for Nintendo's lawyers in future when everybody can crowdfund an emulator by simply running a VLM against a screen recording of gameplay (barring non deterministic éléments). They can't oppress the software engineering masses any longer through lawfare.
observationist 9mo ago
Moore's law never ceases to amaze (the vulgar version where we're talking compute/dollar, not the transistor count doubling rate.) It won't be too long before phones are running AI models with performance equal to or better than current frontier models running on $100 million dollar clusters. It's hard to even imagine the things that will be running on billion dollar clusters in 10 years.
- freedomben 9mo ago
  I do hope you're right, but I'm quite skeptical. As mobile devices get more and more locked down, All that memory capacity gets less and less usable. I'm sure it will be accessible to Apple and Google models, but models that obey the user? Not likely
  - timschmidt 9mo ago
    As state of the art machines continue to chase the latest node, capacity for older nodes has become much less expensive, more openly documented, and actually accessible to individuals. Open source FPGA and ASIC synthesis tools have also immensely improved in quality and capability. The Raspberry Pi Pico RP2350 contains an open source Risc-V core designed by an individual. And 4G cell phones like the https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-pro https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-pro are available on the market built around the very similar ESP32. The latest greatest will always be behind a paywall, but the rising tide floats all boats, and hobbyist projects are growing more sophisticated. Even a $1 ESP32 has dual 240mhz 32bit cores, 8Mb ram, and fast network interfaces which blow away the 8bit micros I grew up with. The state of the open-source art may be a bit behind the state of the proprietary arts, but is advancing as well. It's really fun to have useful hardware that's easy to program at the bare metal.
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      Even when technically accessible to individuals it still costs at least 10k$ to get a batch of chips made on a multi project wafer.
pjmlp 9mo ago
And then folks waste whole that power away, with embedded widgets applications. My Android phone is more powerful than the four PCs I owned during the 1990 - 2002, 386SX - P75 - P166 - Athlon XP, all CPU, GPU, RAM and disk space added together.
- PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
  I sit here with a laggy windows 11 computer with an Nvidia GPU and wonder: WTF Its fine with Fedora, but Windows 11 is terrible.
  - pjmlp 9mo ago
    Another one full of Webview2 instances because new hires cannot code anything else, apparently. They aren't to blame, management is.
    - josephg 9mo ago
      They all bear some of the blame. Software engineers are hired to be the expert in their field. If you don't learn your craft, managers aren't going to do it for you. Ideally new hires would be mentored by senior engineers who understand performance, and who can teach new hires how to write (and ship) good, performant software. But unfortunately that doesn't happen anywhere near as often as it should.
      - PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
        Maybe. I had a director that fired anyone who wouldn't use Microsoft Power Automate. Previous to that director, I built stuff in python for 5 years under a different director.
PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
I gave up video games, but I remember that being a huge reason why I picked Android a decade + ago. Emulators :D Apparently now iphone allows it. Eventually Apple gives features that are standard elsewhere. Veblen goods...
lysace 9mo ago
There is so much work hunting down the proper upscaled/improved texture packs though. Supposedly.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
BrtByte 9mo ago
Emulation is amazing for access right now. Recompilation is about making sure MGS2 or GT4 still runs in 2045 on whatever weird hardware we're using then
mrguyorama 9mo ago
I find PS2 emulation to be lacking. Of course I am spoiled by Dolphin and their meticulous work, and the leap in N64 emulation, and PS3 emulation is way farther than I thought it could ever be. But PCSX2 is mediocre. It reports the vast majority of the library in "green" emulation state, but that usually means there are glaring issues that someone is choosing to overlook, like shadows that are broken. The Ace Combat games for example are all broken with the hardware accelerated renderer. Things run like garbage in the software renderer for a lot of games. Multiplayer functionality is spotty and hard to set up and poorly documented. The state of emulation of that console generation is not up to snuff, save for Dolphin. It's still very much in the "Shut up, it works fine for Super Mario 64 so it works" mindset it seems. This is true even of official emulators! The Xbox emulator that ran on the Xbox 360 has many games that are "officially supported" with serious issues. Forza Motorsport 1 has weird slowdowns on key tracks. I understand the serious hardware difficulties but I still wish emulation accuracy was an option.

flykespice 9mo ago

What the dev of AertherSx2 did to run games smooth, even on my midrange 2019 android phone, is wonders. Too bad the dev is a very emotionally unstable person that abandoned his port, despite his big talent.

dottjt 9mo ago
On the flip side, maybe those traits are what lead to the existence of the emulator in the first place. Better something than nothing.
Sarkie 9mo ago
Wasn't he hounded by users as usual?
- siev 9mo ago
  Yeah and he didn't want to deal with receiving death threats for working on a passion project. Which I guess is considered being "emotionally unstable".
  - efreak 9mo ago
    I have no knowledge of this instance, but death threats and being attacked and stalked online tends to cause emotional instability.

jkingsman 9mo ago

It really is incredible. I've been playing through my childhood games on retro handhelds, and recently jumped from <$100 handhelds to a Retroid Pocket Flip, and it's incredible. Been playing WiiU and PS2 games flawlessly at 2x res, and even tackling some lighter Switch games on it.

reactordev 9mo ago
It truly is. My issue though, like in 2010 when I built an arcade cabinet capable of playing everything is you eventually just run out of interest. In it all. Not even the nostalgia of it keeps my attention. With the exception of just a small handful of titles. - Excite Bike (it’s in its own league) NES - Punchout (good arcade fun) NES - TMNT 4-P Coop Mame Version - NBA Jam Mame Version - Secret of Mana SNES - Chronotrigger SNES - Breath of Fire 2 SNES - Mortal Kombat Series SEGA32X - FF Tactics PS1 I know these can all be basically run in a browser at this point but even Switch or Dreamcast games were meh. N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters.
- wahnfrieden 9mo ago
  The Demons Souls lineage titles are another valuable innovation (I understand the earlier inspirations it had but those aren't playable like these modern ones) For MAME I recommend trying Pang and Super Buster Bros
- irishcoffee 9mo ago
  > N64/PS1/PS2/Xbox was peak and it’s been rehashed franchises ever since. Shame. The only innovative thing that has happened since storytelling died has been Battle Royale Looter Shooters. I was a kid when ps1/n64 came out so I also have a lot of nostalgia about that era of gaming. However… There are a ton of great games out there from this era. Hell, the Uncharted series and Expedition 33 will get you 100-200 hours of excellent gameplay, Elden ring is another 200. Lies of P is a fantastic game, 50-100 more. The star wars Legos and star wars Harry Potter games are a lot of fun to play with kids, and Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are the Zelda games we wanted on n64 as a kid, I love those games. And they’re not a rehash, at all. There’s a lot of fun things out there to play if you poke around. Your local library might surprise you with the collection for completely free games you can borrow. Modern games even.
  - reactordev 9mo ago

grimgrin 9mo ago

I'll take a longbet with you that this or successors tackle more than a small handful of titles We live in interesting times

Onavo 9mo ago

I suspect we will see a proliferation of emulator development in the next few years. In a lot of ways, emulators are the perfect problem for vision/LLMs. It's like all those web browser projects popping up on HN. You have a very well define problem with existing reference test cases. It's not going to be fun for Nintendo's lawyers in future when everybody can crowdfund an emulator by simply running a VLM against a screen recording of gameplay (barring non deterministic éléments). They can't oppress the software engineering masses any longer through lawfare.

observationist 9mo ago

Moore's law never ceases to amaze (the vulgar version where we're talking compute/dollar, not the transistor count doubling rate.) It won't be too long before phones are running AI models with performance equal to or better than current frontier models running on $100 million dollar clusters. It's hard to even imagine the things that will be running on billion dollar clusters in 10 years.

freedomben 9mo ago
I do hope you're right, but I'm quite skeptical. As mobile devices get more and more locked down, All that memory capacity gets less and less usable. I'm sure it will be accessible to Apple and Google models, but models that obey the user? Not likely
- timschmidt 9mo ago
  As state of the art machines continue to chase the latest node, capacity for older nodes has become much less expensive, more openly documented, and actually accessible to individuals. Open source FPGA and ASIC synthesis tools have also immensely improved in quality and capability. The Raspberry Pi Pico RP2350 contains an open source Risc-V core designed by an individual. And 4G cell phones like the https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-pro https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-pro are available on the market built around the very similar ESP32. The latest greatest will always be behind a paywall, but the rising tide floats all boats, and hobbyist projects are growing more sophisticated. Even a $1 ESP32 has dual 240mhz 32bit cores, 8Mb ram, and fast network interfaces which blow away the 8bit micros I grew up with. The state of the open-source art may be a bit behind the state of the proprietary arts, but is advancing as well. It's really fun to have useful hardware that's easy to program at the bare metal.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    Even when technically accessible to individuals it still costs at least 10k$ to get a batch of chips made on a multi project wafer.

pjmlp 9mo ago

And then folks waste whole that power away, with embedded widgets applications. My Android phone is more powerful than the four PCs I owned during the 1990 - 2002, 386SX - P75 - P166 - Athlon XP, all CPU, GPU, RAM and disk space added together.

PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
I sit here with a laggy windows 11 computer with an Nvidia GPU and wonder: WTF Its fine with Fedora, but Windows 11 is terrible.
- pjmlp 9mo ago
  Another one full of Webview2 instances because new hires cannot code anything else, apparently. They aren't to blame, management is.
  - josephg 9mo ago
    They all bear some of the blame. Software engineers are hired to be the expert in their field. If you don't learn your craft, managers aren't going to do it for you. Ideally new hires would be mentored by senior engineers who understand performance, and who can teach new hires how to write (and ship) good, performant software. But unfortunately that doesn't happen anywhere near as often as it should.
    - PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
      Maybe. I had a director that fired anyone who wouldn't use Microsoft Power Automate. Previous to that director, I built stuff in python for 5 years under a different director.

PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago

I gave up video games, but I remember that being a huge reason why I picked Android a decade + ago. Emulators :D Apparently now iphone allows it. Eventually Apple gives features that are standard elsewhere. Veblen goods...

lysace 9mo ago

There is so much work hunting down the proper upscaled/improved texture packs though. Supposedly.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

BrtByte 9mo ago

Emulation is amazing for access right now. Recompilation is about making sure MGS2 or GT4 still runs in 2045 on whatever weird hardware we're using then

mrguyorama 9mo ago

I find PS2 emulation to be lacking. Of course I am spoiled by Dolphin and their meticulous work, and the leap in N64 emulation, and PS3 emulation is way farther than I thought it could ever be. But PCSX2 is mediocre. It reports the vast majority of the library in "green" emulation state, but that usually means there are glaring issues that someone is choosing to overlook, like shadows that are broken. The Ace Combat games for example are all broken with the hardware accelerated renderer. Things run like garbage in the software renderer for a lot of games. Multiplayer functionality is spotty and hard to set up and poorly documented. The state of emulation of that console generation is not up to snuff, save for Dolphin. It's still very much in the "Shut up, it works fine for Super Mario 64 so it works" mindset it seems. This is true even of official emulators! The Xbox emulator that ran on the Xbox 360 has many games that are "officially supported" with serious issues. Forza Motorsport 1 has weird slowdowns on key tracks. I understand the serious hardware difficulties but I still wish emulation accuracy was an option.