So far I have played Super Mario 64 DS, Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown wars. Some of the top rated games on the system. They have all been almost unplayable on Mac, Super Mario ran too slowly, Bowser's Inside Story had glitches as pictured below and GTA wouldn't even run. So I gave up and focused on Windows, everything ran and for the most part it ran smoothly. I did have a few issues with Bowser's Inside Story such as sound glitches and an error that almost caused it to crash, yet somehow clicking around fixed it.
To play these games I was using a Logitech Dual Action Controller as well as a mouse to control the touch screen. It worked well enough but there are probably going to be some games that won't work very well on PC; Metroid Prime: Hunters springs to mind. Though that game was basically unplayable on the DS anyway. The unique combination of touch screen and gamepad that makes up the DS is always going to be tricky to replicate but I found these games to be playable enough.
It's hard not to recommend DeSmuME even if it has a stupid name. As long as you are using it in Windows it runs quite well and there are a tonne of games out there for you to play. Yes there are some issues with the emulator but they are pretty minor and the team is still working on them, the latest update was released in the middle of this year. As long as you're willing to run DeSmuME under Windows I say go and get it and pick some ROMs up here 9/10.
If anyone wants to test out the Linux version and report back it would be much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteSomething is wrong with your Mac, as DeSmuME on OS X should not be doing any of the things you described in your review.
ReplyDeleteThe missing graphics in Bowser's Inside Story are probably due to the 3D rendering being disabled. You can check this by choosing View > Show 3D Rendering Settings, and then making sure that the 3D Rendering Engine is set to anything other than None. By default, the 3D renderer should be SoftRasterizer, but your DeSmuME may have defaulted to None for some unknown reason.
As for performance, the OS X and Windows ports should be on par with each other. If you are getting a huge performance difference between the two OSes while on the same Mac, then it could be a problem with your OS X installation, or it could be that you are using different settings on Windows. Both DeSmuME ports do have the same configurations settings to tweak performance to your needs.
On OS X, you can get better performance by doing the following:
1. Choose View > Emulation Settings.
2. In the Emulation Settings panel, set the following:
- Disable Advanced Bus-Level Timing (but may cause glitches in some games; if you are playing Bowser's Inside Story, you will need to leave this enabled)
- Enable Rigorous 3D Rendering Timing (but may cause graphical glitches in some games)
- Choose Dynamic Recompiler for the CPU Emulation Engine (but may cause glitches in some games)
3. In the Emulation Settings panel, click "Save Settings as Default" to save your new settings.
4. If you currently have a ROM running, you will need to reset the emulator for the CPU Emulation Engine setting to take effect.