There are a lot of great games on the older systems, but one common issue I often have with these games, is the spacing between the save points. It is possible, that I may have gotten used to the autosave features of never games, but a lot of times when I play through a game, it just annoys med when I have to play over the same parts of a game over and over again, because I didn't have the option to save my progress.
With the mini consoles - which are also emulation based - I could enjoy older games, and save my progress whenever I wanted. These mini consoles often do a great job emulating a specific console, or with some modding a specific time period of games. This could for instance be the Evercade VS, NES / SNES mini, Mega Drive mini, or similar products.
When it comes to emulating consoles newer and more demanding than the consoles from the PlayStation era, it often resulted in some issues, where the hardware wasn't powerful enough to run the games well.
This is where the Xbox Series S i a great option! The console has the power to run games quite well, and besides that, there are some great emulators with a ton of options to improve the handling of the games for a somewhat smooth HD experience.
I chose to buy an extra Series S console, with the sole purpose of making a dedicated Series S emulation build. In theory, I could achieve the same result running the emulators from my PC, but I'm a console guy, and I love the small form factor of the Series S, which makes it perfect for the job!
There are some things that you have to take in account, emulating on a Series S though. Early 2023 Microsoft banned the use of emulators in retail mode, meaning you have to purchase the Microsoft Dev Mode option on your console, in order to have access to install emulators. This was one of the reasons why I chose to set up a dedicated console for the task, simply because I also enjoy playing Xbox One / Series games in retail mode (on my Series X), and I didn't want to run the risk of getting my account / console banned.
There are some great guides on YouTube, explaining the whole process of acquiring the Dev Mode, which cost a onetime payment of around ~20 USD, and getting this mode up and running.
One important thing to understand about the Dev Mode is, that if you chose to run it on your Xbox Series / Xbox One console, there is a default setting that deletes all sideloaded data (all the data you transfer to the console), when switching back to retail mode. It is possible to switch back and forth, but you need to be careful doing it the right way. There is software that can help you with that called Safe Exit, but since my setup on this console is dedicated to running emulators, I don't plan on switching back to retail mode, and therefor I haven't installed it.
Regarding losing your data, it is also worth noting, that this will also happen, if you chose to change the size of the allocated storage for the Dev Mode. This process will also result in a clean slate, where your data is gone.
As with the Dev Mode tutorials, there also exists good videos on YouTube, guiding you through the setup of the different emulators. Up until this point, it is somewhat simple to set up, but there are some issues along the way, that can be somewhat annoying to deal with.
One of the biggest issues that I had, was when configuring the path, in which the emulators were looking for ROMs (the game images) and BIOS files. Since I was aiming for a dedicated emulation machine, I wanted to make use of the internal SSD to store my games. It is not a problem to gain access to the console itself, and to copy the files to the unit, but the real issue appears when I had to define the path to the folder containing the ROM files, in each of the emulators.
In Dev Mode, it is very simple to get the FTP option up and running. This enables the possibility to access the Series S console from your PC, installing emulators, and handling the files. It is also somewhat easy to set up the network drive, which again opens up the option to handling files on the console.
For me, the challenge is that it seems that the console runs a different internal path-system than I can see through FTP on my Windows PC. While looking at the directory on the Series S through the emulators, I was presented with a ton of drive letters and empty folders / drives. When I connected to the console through the FTP in my browser, I could see the installed emulators and some of the folders. When using the network drive to gain access, I could see folders in another structure, and other files / folders.
It seems like there are different directory structures depending on from where, and how, you access the Series S. This, combined with different read- and editing rights, makes it a hassle to get each of the emulators set up with the right path for the needed folders.
The easy way here is simply to run the games from an external USB drive. It seems like the different emulators have no trouble finding an external drive.
After some fiddling around, I managed to get most of the emulators set up.
RetroArch, Flycast and XBSX2.0 were somewhat compliant. In these emulators, I could create a shared gamesfolder via FTP, and afterward define the path to the folder in the emulator settings menu. In my case this was located on my Series S D:\ drive.
Dolphin was more of a struggle, since it showed different empty folders, that I couldn't even find via FTP (see picture below). In this case, I had to start by connecting my external USB drive, and setting up the path to the USB drive, which seemed to create some autogenerated files in the Dolphin directory. After that, I could via FTP locate the file "Dolphin.ini", and edit this file on my PC, and write the correct path for the games' folder (in my case: D:\DevelopmentFiles\WindowsApps\Games\Nintendo - Gamecube), and then upload the edited version of "Dolphin.ini" again, overwriting the autogenerated one. This worked, and I can now play ROMs in Dolphin, even though I can't define the path for the ROMs in the emulator itself.
As with the Dolphin emulator, it seems like the same thing is the case with the PPSSPP emulator. This emulator shows the same nonsense when trying to define the path internally, but work fine with an external USB drive. I have not yet found a solution with this emulator, regarding setting up the path to the internal games' folder, but I would assume that it is possible to edit a similar file as a workaround.
The status at this point is, that I have installed the following emulators on my Series S:
- XBSX2.0 - Dedicated PlayStation 2 emulator, that works great. I only had to download a PS2 BIOS file (SCPH-70012.bin), which was easy to do with the help of Google.
- RetroArch - Emulators for a ton of systems in one package. Here, I also had to download BIOS files for the systems I want to emulate.
- Flycast - Emulator for SEGA Dreamcast and a couple of arcade systems like the Naomi, Naomi 2 and Atomiswave. This emulator includes a Dreamcast BIOS.
- Dolphin - GameCube and Wii emulator. Works great, but somewhat annoying to set up with internal games.
- PPSSPP - Seems to work fine, but I haven't figured out how to define the games' path to the internal storage.
Now it's time to finish some of the older From Software titles!
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