Demanding games to test emulators with?

[fastbilly1]

Any game released late in a lifecycle would be the obvious choice. My benchmarks may not be the heaviest titles but they are as follows:
NES - Mario 2 - mostly because I know the timing in it so well and come on its an NES emulator.
SNES - Fzero and Mario RPG
Genesis - Sonic 3
N64 - Perfect Dark or Bangai-O
PSX - Chrono Cross
Saturn - Burning Rangers
NeoGeo - Last Blade 2
MAME - Beastroizer/Bloody Roar and Progear

As soon as I get a 64 bit OS Ill move into the next level of emulators.

[AmishSamurai]

For the DS, Castlevania- Dawn of Sorrow, and The World Ends With You. Considering that the final boss of TWEWY on hard shoots so many fireballs that it lags even the physical system, that may not be fair.

[Anapan]

I found Donkey Kong Country to be a good test subject for handheld SNES emus.

[weasels]

For the DS, Castlevania- Dawn of Sorrow, and The World Ends With You. Considering that the final boss of TWEWY on hard shoots so many fireballs that it lags even the physical system, that may not be fair.

i can't even get TWEWY to work past the introduction of the game. it gets to the music opening after the first fight and it freezes.

also another demanding game that i have been having problems with (using no$gba with no$zoomer) is bowser's inside story. i get it running for the most part but when i fight for some reason, when enemies attack, the sound effects from them stay...and the sound builds up if in a battle for long...leading to a crash. i have not found anyone with this problem, but others had other difficulties that are easily fixed.

[17daysolderthannes2]

Any game released late in a lifecycle would be the obvious choice. My benchmarks may not be the heaviest titles but they are as follows:
NES - Mario 2 - mostly because I know the timing in it so well and come on its an NES emulator.
SNES - Fzero and Mario RPG
Genesis - Sonic 3
N64 - Perfect Dark or Bangai-O
PSX - Chrono Cross
Saturn - Burning Rangers
NeoGeo - Last Blade 2
MAME - Beastroizer/Bloody Roar and Progear

As soon as I get a 64 bit OS Ill move into the next level of emulators.

here's a better list, trust me on this as I am an emulation fiend and also a whore for games that use gimmicky special processors:

NES - Ultimate Stuntman, Klax, Castlevania III, Kirby's Adventure (lags on real hardware to an extent, but tends to lag more on emulators) and anything crazy from RARE (Battletoads would work, esp the more intense levels)

SNES - Pilotwings, Doom, Dirt Trax FX, SMW 2, DKC, Hyperzone, Star Fox

Genesis - Sonic 3 (tends to glitch on many emulators, actually), The Red Zone, Virtua Racing, NBA JAM (floor tends to glitch in-game), any racing game with scrolling, Contra Hard Corps (tends to glitch like crazy on most emulators)

32X - Metal Head, Knuckles Chaotix (tends to mess up on real hardware more than emulators, ironically)

Sega CD - Novastorm, Mega Race, Tomcat Alley, AH-3 Thunderstrike

N64 - Perfect Dark is good, as is Goldeneye, don't know about Bangai-O (probably good), Sin and Punishment, Battletanx, most RARE (company) games, anything that uses the RAM expansion

PSX - honestly, most PSX emulators seem to be all or nothing. Either they play only a small set of heavily mod-driven games or they play just about everything. I had Connectix Virtual GameStation back in the day and I don't think I ever had a game glitch beyond minor things like fog and background. Probably the lower produced semi-indie games would produce the most problems, just my guess. I think this has alot to do with the fact that the PSX was very computer-like and most emulators require an authentic BIOS. ePSXe is sooooo win.

Saturn - christ, everything. I would guess RAM expansion games would be the prissiest though.

Neo Geo - all the same for the most part, only large games like the Metal Slugs tend to have issues, and then it's usually a device RAM limitation (solvable by using Neo CD games instead)

MAME - anything 3D and/or uses a CHD. Very few 3D games have perfect emulation at this point. Street Fighter EX and Rival Schools work great though

[fastbilly1]

here's a better list, trust me on this as I am an emulation fiend and also a whore for games that use gimmicky special processors:

Ill stick with my list since it has served me well. Like I said they may not be the heaviest but I know them well enough to tell if they are not playing right.

And using a NeoGeo CD image of Last Blade 2 is a bad idea.

[17DaysOlderThanNES]

here's a better list, trust me on this as I am an emulation fiend and also a whore for games that use gimmicky special processors:

Ill stick with my list since it has served me well. Like I said they may not be the heaviest but I know them well enough to tell if they are not playing right.

And using a NeoGeo CD image of Last Blade 2 is a bad idea.

my list is a list of games that tend to have problems with less-than-stellar emulators. If you're just looking for things like controller lag, timing, frame rate, colors, etc., then of course you should use what's familiar.

And I've never played Last Blade, so I wouldn't know what the Neo CD version is like. However, since the Neo CD is designed to load completely into RAM at set intervals instead of constantly loading from the ROM, it tends to do better on systems that can't load a 70MB Neo Geo game all at once.

[the7k]

I think the most taxing games to test the SNES with are all those late-in-life RPGs - especially the ones that never made it out of Japan. Games like Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean. Most non-PC emulators can't even start up Star Ocean.

For Neo Geo, I'd say King of Fighters 2003 and SVC Chaos are good choices.

For Sega Saturn, I'd say Guardian Heroes. My inability to run Guardian Heroes on an emulator in a playable fashion was one of the bigger reasons I ended up just buying a Saturn and Guardian Heroes.

For the PS2, Odin Sphere. The PS2 itself can't even run Odin Sphere properly.

[17DaysOlderThanNES]

I think the most taxing games to test the SNES with are all those late-in-life RPGs - especially the ones that never made it out of Japan. Games like Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean. Most non-PC emulators can't even start up Star Ocean.

um...no.

Star Ocean has problems because of the S-DD1 lockout chip/co-processor, which was only used by that and Street Fighter Alpha 2. The reason most emulators don't work with that is because it's alot of work to reverse-engineer a complicated chip for just two games. Either way, it's a compatibility thing, not a speed thing (which is what he was looking for). RPGs are usually the one genre that CAN be played on slow emulators. The games I listed above are much more demanding.

For the PS2, Odin Sphere. The PS2 itself can't even run Odin Sphere properly.

well, then that's not a very good choice, is it? If it has slowdown on real hardware, it should also have that slowdown on an accurate emulator. People often mistake slowdown on Metal Slug 2 as an emulator flaw when in fact it's there because of high emulator accuracy since the real Metal Slug 2 has lots of slowdown (fixed when it was remade as Metal Slug X).

[fastbilly1]

Last Blade 2 on the NeoGeo CD took upwards of a minute to load between fights. The file structure on the image was simply poor.