Emulators - Speed and Stability

[Guest XGEOX]

I've recently tried out some of the old console emulators from Midnight's site - in particular, SmartNes and Pocket Snes.

I've found that they typically are quite jerky and unstable - although one or two games run acceptably without sound (Micro Machines on the Nes for example).

Has anyone managed to get them to run faster? Or is it only my phone which is giving poor performance? :)

I have a feeling they arent running as well as they could be - any tips?

Would running them off the SD card reduce performance compared to directly off the phone?

Also, on SmartNes, it seems to return to the homescreen after a short while - how do i stop that?

thx,

XGEOX

[Guest goinnuts]

i use pocket nes and all my roms rum smooth near proper speed. i also have it on my mmc.

as for pocket snes that ran a bit to slow for me.

sorry mate dont know how to sped them up.

[Guest Crispy]

Well, I haven't seen any instability when using either of them... But they do run damn slow, yes! ... Clearing up space on the phone by running them of the SD-card might speed them up a bit ... dunno ...

[Guest spacemonkey]

Yep, all the emulators run pretty slow. SmartNes and Gnuboy are the 2 quickest in general.

PocketSnes is really too slow and isn't as polished as gnuboy. I didn't invest the extra time in it because of the low performance.

The other one that seems to run at an OK speed is PocketClive, but again I haven't tested it that thoroughly for performance/compatability and it's still missing some necessary features. It works well for some games tho.

The main constraint at the moment is the processor power of the SPV/Tanager/E100. Basically the HTC phones are just too slow. It will be interesting to hear from someone running the emulators on a Mitac MIO with it's faster processor, but I believe they are currently all app locked so until that is resolved we won't know.

[Guest XGEOX]

a shame really :) - oh well - thx guys

I'll give gnuboy a go.

[Guest MoRFLeZ]

Also, on SmartNes, it seems to return to the homescreen after a short while - how do i stop that?

XGEOX

Sounds like homescreen timeout to me!

Mess with the settings (turn off) here: Programs // Settings // Homescreen (timeout)

[Guest unclelimey]

i use both gnuboy and smartnes...

gnuboy runs a bit slow , but smartnes runs almost full speed, occasionally when i load up smartnes.... it runs slow and jerky, but i find if i goto taskmanager and close all other programs... smartnes then runs full speed again....

as gnuboy plays a bit slow... its probably best to play "non-action" games on it.... games like r-type for instance... doesnt work at all well ...

i recommend playing mario golf on your gnuboy, excellent game, much more fun than the "links" golf game (which is still a great game)

as for smartnes... the best games for it are:

1942

boulderdash

bubble bobble

donkey kong

donkey kong jr

dr mario

mario bros 1,2 and 3

mighty final fight

ghosts n goblins

gradius

lemmings

metroid

micro machines

rainbow islands

paperboy

parasol stars

puyo puyo

rc pro am

rc pro am 2

spy vs spy

star wars

zelda 1

these games all rock, and play very well on the spv... enjoy

[Guest kallep]

---->unclelimey

I can't play lemmings or I don't know which buttons to use... how do you play it.? all the other games runs great.!

[Guest rahduke]

on my mitac smart new and gnu boy run everything great except in smartnes if you turn off the sound it runs to fast and crashes as for pocket snes it runs some games well others not so good

[Guest ricky888]

i use both gnuboy and smartnes...

gnuboy runs a bit slow , but smartnes runs almost full speed, occasionally when i load up smartnes.... it runs slow and jerky, but i find if i goto taskmanager and close all other programs... smartnes then runs full speed again....

as gnuboy plays a bit slow... its probably best to play "non-action" games on it.... games like r-type for instance... doesnt work at all well ...

i recommend playing mario golf on your gnuboy, excellent game, much more fun than the "links" golf game (which is still a great game)

as for smartnes... the best games for it are:  

1942

boulderdash

bubble bobble

donkey kong

donkey kong jr

dr mario

mario bros 1,2 and 3

mighty final fight

ghosts n goblins

gradius

lemmings

metroid

micro machines

rainbow islands

paperboy

parasol stars

puyo puyo

rc pro am

rc pro am 2

spy vs spy

star wars

zelda 1

these games all rock, and play very well on the spv...   enjoy

hi..........

[Guest ricky888]

hi..... good~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

[Guest doyve]

the nes and gameboy emulators seem fine to me.

i wouldn't have thought it's possible to make the snes emulator any better speedwise - the phone (spv, e200 or whichever) just isn't powerful enough! and besides, there's too many buttons on the snes joypad anyway.

[Guest phonesmarts]

yeah...too bad it also can run any games over 4MBits....(no ChronoTrigger...)

love SmartNES though...

[Guest agentsykes]

how do you get the emus to work on the mitac? i have smartnes, gnuboy, and poketsnes installed on my app unlocked 8390 sd. all three apps open, but when you open a rom it either goes blank or goes to home screen. Smartnes gives me an edu frame error. Is there a difference between the 2002 and 2003 platform causing issues. anything i can change to fix. Please help, i am desperate for some of these games.

[Guest spacemonkey]

does the mitac 8390 run windows 2003?

Which shouldn't be an issue, I know for a fact that gnuboy, pocketsnes and pocketclive all run on the e200 which is 2003.

There must be some other quirk of the 8390 which is killing them and unfortunately I doubt I'd be able to fix it unless I had an 8390 to try it out on.