I've had an itch for old-skool RPGing.. and I realized that I had a PILE of great Playstation games I never actually got all the way through including Lunar Silver Star, Lunar Eternal Blue, and Tales of Destiny 1 & 2.. then I realized that my roommate took the Playstation we had (which was on it's last legs anyway) to Houston.

I was probably going to borrow one from somebody, but I figured I look into the emulator thing first. Can anybody suggest the good emulators and what are the good points of each?

Mods, this is for discussion of playing legally bought games on an emulator.. if there is a problem with that (I'm not sure why there would be), let me know.

i have bleem! but they died. emulation was so so for most games although when it worked, it worked pretty well w/ better graphics. but still, most ps1 games had problems.

imo, it's better to just buy a $50 playstation to play these games or better yet, get a ps2. don't forget the memory cards.

Put them in your PS2.

ePSXe is the best PSX emulator out there.

Old-school RPG = Playstation? That console is like six years old. You want old-school RPGs, try Ultima IV (which is still a fantastic game.) Or pick up a Commodore 64 emulator and play Questron, which rocked.

Anyway, scoffing aside ... forget bleem, get ePSXe. It's a pretty rough project - you'll spend some time tweaking options (and you'll have to download a few plug-ins), which is highly annoying - but once you get it running, most of your games will run well. I've played Soul Blade, Tenchu, and N2O on ePSXe without significant problems.

- David Stein

Yeah I know.. I laughed too.. but even still Lunar and Tales of Destiny are old-school in style and spirit.

I loved Ultima.. the ones on the NES at least. Ultima IV was Quest of the Avatar and was one of my favorites. I even bought graph paper to map out all the dungeons! Exodus was a little too diffucult for me back then, I forget, but once you leveled up to about 5 and the monsters changed in the main map I got slaughtered.. I do remember the "white" word and getting the flowers and all.. Never played Ultima V that was released as well on NES.

I'll check out ePSXe when I get home then.

Man.. I don't know what happened but my Lunar 1 box looks like somebody sat on it. Lunar 2 in mint condition though.

I agree with the epsxe recommendation as well. I use it for running all my PSOne games even though I have PS2 mostly for the graphical upgrade and the ability to use save states.

Good enough.

Good advice. No?

I just thought of something.. I don't know if I'd like the idea of my save file with lots of hard work on it being on my PC and not a memory card. Argh.

Lest we forget 17" LCD monitor vs. 32" Wega TV.. sound setup, playing on a keyboard vs a real controller.

Blar!

Just by a PS2 or a PSone (they're like $50).

It'll work perfectly, where as an emulator might have glitches. You'll have your save on a memory card, have the 32" wega, controller, stereo, etc.

Yeah, but gadget glut is a serious problem. You can own a Nintendo NES, an SNES, a Commodore 64, an Atari, a Playstation, and a computer. And you can wrestle with getting all of this hardware (plus like 12 joypads) into your home theatre cabinet, and with switching video inputs between all of them.

Or, you can own one computer that runs all of the latest computer games, as well as emulators and ROMs for all of these old machines.

- David Stein

Well, since you do not have a system to play those games on, how much are you willing to let Lunar 1&2 go for.

Nice try. I let these go once (Sega CD), won't let it happen again.

Yeah, it's a clear trade off. I just hate gaming on the PC as I spend 8 hours a day on my laptop at work and I just can't have fun sitting in my desk at home. Just some aversion to it I guess.

Plus I much prefer playing on my Wega with stereo sound, sitting on the couch.

I have a SNES, GC, XBOX and PS2 currently hooked up. Some others I have in the closet. In reality you don't really have to have them all hooked up, just the ones your currently playing the most.

Is there anyway someone could walk me through the set up of ePSXe? I tried to set it up a couple of weeks ago, but I got so frustrated with it. Any help would be appreciated. I wanna play Spyro!

I just borrowed a PS1 from somebody.. a billions times easier..

And I thought something would finally make you buy a PS2...Lunar 1 and 2 are certainly reason enough for me.

Well Lunar 1 and 2 would be enough for me if they were for PS2, but they're not.

First you need a PSX Bios file... search for one with google or something. Second, you need plugins for the graphics and sound. I'd recommend you check out www.ngemu.com as they have a great listing of the different plugins, as well as which when is the best. If you have any problems, they also have some decent forums to help you.

Sure.

1) Download ePSXE. Also download the BIOS ROM from somewhere - basically, the operating system for the Playstation. It can't legally be built into ePSXe or included in the install package. Fortunately, a few Google searches for the name of the BIOS ROM (scph1001.bin) will pull up a bunch of links to it. And it's like a 100k file, so easy to download.

2) Download some of Pete Bernert's plugins for ePSXe.

3) Once you've downloaded all of this stuff, unzip ePSXe (and install it if necessary - I don't remember if that was required.) Then copy the BIOS ROM into the BIOS directory and unzip Pete's plugins into the plugins directory.

4) Run ePSXe and go through the setup wizard. For the video, I think I used the D3DX6 option. The audio plugins are a mixed bag - CD audio may or may not be a little scratchy, depending on which plugin you choose - try each of them. The CD-ROM plugin shouldn't be much of an issue; choose the one recommended for your OS. You may need to kill ePSXe and start up a new instance after you're done configuring it. As for controls, an external controller might be a lot better, but the keyboard is definitely usable.

That should do it - you should be ready to run it. A few comments:

1) ePSXe, as an emulator, works very well. ePSXE, as a Windows application, is not completely stable. For instance, after you close the ePSXe window, the window goes away but the app may very well continue to run - to the point where you can still hear the game running! So you'll have to kill it from the task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del.)

2) You may need to load a ROM, see how well it plays, change one or two plug-ins, kill ePSXe, and try again. You may need to do this a few times, in fact, before it runs very well.

3) You can run ePSXe on a CD-ROM image from your hard drive. However, generating an image that will work well is tricky. I've tried about a half-dozen programs, and the only one that worked was CDRWin. The good news is that the images run really well, and they compress decently, too. I've copied all of my old Playstation games to my hard drive, and I just run ePSXe on them.

- David Stein

What about N64 roms? My copy of Banjo-Kazooie doesnt save the games anymore

As far as the N64 is concerned, let's just say that you're better off replacing the battery in your Banjo-Kazooie and getting that working.

Is that true? The N64 emulators were quite good the last time I tried them, and that was three or four years ago. Surely they've just gotten better in the meantime.

- David Stein

The N64 emulators i've tried have been decent, but nowhere close to being as solid as those for other systems like ePSXe or Zsnes. But as far as N64 roms... there's a bit more legal issues concerning those