The Turbo Duo on PC

[takashirose]

I have a Turbo Duo, but I want my cousin to try Lords of Thunder for himself.  Therefore I thought about burning him a copy.  I was wondering whether there is a way to play Duo games on a pc?  Any perfect free emulators?

[Joe Redifer]

Not free ones.  I think the Turbo has the only emulator that actually charges.  Not sure, though.

[Keranu]

Yame is a decent free one, probably the best in my opinion. Some other free ones are Hu-Go!, some other Hu-one, and Mednafen. Magic Engine is the only one that costs money ($20 I think), but it's by far the best. Don't be too turned off though because the demo mode allows you to play for five minutes, but there is a trick where you can quick save and reload your save to restart the timer .

[takashirose]

Do any of them have super cd-rom functionality?

[Keranu]

Yes I believe all of them do.

[NecroPhile]

I agree that Magic Engine is the best, but make sure that you download the system cards (google is your friend).  I've heard good things about Ootake, but haven't tried it out myself.

[TurboXray]

 ME is nice for people who are not technical or don't know how to use the command prompt, but it's not the best IMO. ME still uses hacks to get emulation working correctly, were as mednafen does not. Mednafen has the most accurate system emulation for PCE/TG/SGX and CD/SCD/ACD systems. If you want to run any future SGX or ACD or SGX+ACD () homebrew games, you won't be doing it on ME. ME uses hacks to run current ACD and SGX games, and only enables the hacks if it can identify the game. David M. doesn't have any future plans to change this either.

 Ootake is looking good ( it's based on PC2E), but still uses hacks to get emulation working correctly. Yame... I guess use it if you can get the others to work. Some people report the sound on Yame was nice.

[Seldane]

Magic Engine isn't particularly good. It requires twelve quad core CPUs at 5,7 GHz each and a quad-SLI Geforce 8800 Ultra setup as well as 32 GB RAM (rated at AT LEAST 1266 MHz) to run as it should (and that's just for the GUI itself - don't get me started on the actual emulation part). The PC Engine still needs a great emulator.

[NecroPhile]

Ha-ha-ha-ha, Seldane.  You must be running a giant piece of crap for a computer if it can't handle Magic Engine.  My five year old system runs it just fine, and it was only a rung or two up from the cheapest new computer available at the time. 

[nat]

Back in like 1999, the computer I had at the time which was already a few years old, could run the DOS version of MagicEngine at almost full speed.

Nowadays I use a Macintosh and an emulator called TGEmu. There are a few games where the sound doesn't work, but the emulator is very fast even on my aging G4. It will do full screen video in the proper aspect ratio and can simulate scanlines. Even in this mode, it has no problem running at full speed. It is very configurable. Best of all, it is free.

But the only thing emulators are good for anyway are trying games before you decide whether or not to buy them. Anyone who uses an emulator as their gaming "console" is clearly a loser.

[Seldane]

Naw, it runs fine on my computer, but it didn't until I got that setup I posted earlier (32 gigs of RAM and stuff). ME needs a complete rewrite, it is the slowest piece of software I have encountered.

[TurboXray]

But the only thing emulators are good for anyway are trying games before you decide whether or not to buy them. Anyone who uses an emulator as their gaming "console" is clearly a loser.

And anyone who's using a MAC, let alone an older MAC, for their emulation needs is a loser  Actually, I think that's cool someone is using Charles MacDonald's emu - even if the source was ported to the MAC by someone else.

 Anyway, I can think of a bunch of (obvious) reasons why people would use an emulator over the real system other than trying out a game.

[nat]

Anyway, I can think of a bunch of (obvious) reasons why people would use an emulator over the real system other than trying out a game.

Dev & testing purposes of course, but I'm talking about "normal" people here. Losers losers losers!

[OldRover]

Mednafen ftw. But it's not an emulator for the faint of heart or the casual user, it requires command line knowledge to use (something missing from 95% of computer users) and a brain (something missing from 99% of all computer users).

Magic Engine isn't the best emulator for emulation purposes but there's no doubting that it is the easiest and most user-friendly. I use both Magic Engine and Mednafen for testing...Magic Engine for general testing and Mednafen when accuracy is important. But neither is 100% correct to a true machine, though Mednafen is leagues closer.

[Keranu]

Magic Engine isn't particularly good. It requires twelve quad core CPUs at 5,7 GHz each and a quad-SLI Geforce 8800 Ultra setup as well as 32 GB RAM (rated at AT LEAST 1266 MHz) to run as it should (and that's just for the GUI itself - don't get me started on the actual emulation part). The PC Engine still needs a great emulator.

Haha. The slowest part is booting it up and from what I understand, it's because it's checking the CD drives in your computer. I remember there was some beta release or something where it didn't have to do that and it felt so nice to boot!

[Joe Redifer]

There are no Turbo emulators for the Mac that will run CDs.  Is teh suk.  Final Cut Pro runs awesome as fukXorZ on a Mac, though.  And I luv me sum Final Cut Pro.

[Golgo13]

What I have discovered is running an emulator like magic engine looks great when you get a PC with S video out, (I use a laptop) run it into a normal CRT TV that has a S-Video Port.  It really takes the edgy pixelated look away and adds to the realism.

[2X4]

Selly's right.  Part of it probably is the DirectX drive check, but come on.  It still shouldn't take as long as it does, and yeah, it doesn't freeze up my computer, it's just the idea that emulating a +15 year old system should not skip a fucking beat even on a Pentium III system.  I just think it needs a little housecleaning on the code.  But here I go again, I don't really know shit.

More directly on topic, yeah try ME demo or any of the aforementioned emus if you just want to try the game.  But for god's sake, take Necro's advice and get real system card roms.

[SNKNostalgia]

My pentium 2 at 400mhz windows 98 had no problems running any emulators unless it was N64 or some badly emulated Mame arcade games. Now it is a 1 ghz pentium 3 running windows and flawless. Of course for the past 3 years I have been using a Windows XP 2.4 ghz laptop so no problems here. Yeah, Windows ME is pretty messed up from what I have seen from my friends computer. It is a compaq so maybe that is more of the problem.

Seldane did you ever try backing everything up on your computer and then wiping the HD drive clean then re-install everything. It fixed like shit ton of problems with my Dell Laptop so it runs 3-4 time better. Sometimes the drivers can be conflicting with op system or there could be hidden background programs slowing it down. You be suprised, I have try reg edit and everything to fix the problems and wiping out the drive was the only thing that worked.

[Seldane]

Seldane did you ever try backing everything up on your computer and then wiping the HD drive clean then re-install everything.

I do it like once a month. Trust me, my computer's not even remotely slow, but ME (1.0) is nasty. It takes longer to exit that program than what it takes to exit Oblivion!

[CrackTiger]

Anyone know how to get Yame to make usable screenshots of PC Engine games? All it ever spits out for me are garbage bitmaps. 

[Keranu]

I didn't even know that Yame had a screenshot feature. Your best bet would probably be to use the PrintScrn button and paste if that's the case.

[OldRover]

Seldane: change the display type. If you're using OpenGL, switch to DirectX, and vice versa. If that doesn't fix it, stop using video drivers that dinosaurs used.

[Seldane]

Seldane: change the display type. If you're using OpenGL, switch to DirectX, and vice versa. If that doesn't fix it, stop using video drivers that dinosaurs used.

I'm using the latest forceware drivers from Nvidia.

[JoshTurboTrollX]

32 gigs of RAM and stuff

.....wait.......
 

I think you have the fastest PC on the planet!!

isn't 1 or 2 gb pretty much the norm for ram nowadays.....................?

[NecroPhile]

Don't Vista and OSX both use 32 bit addressing, limiting ram to less than 4GB anyway?  Either Seldane's exaggerating a bit, has one hellish beast of a workstation, or is drunk.

[Seldane]

I use Vista X64, which uses 64 bit addressing. :p

[Kitsunexus]

Magic Engine isn't particularly good. It requires twelve quad core CPUs at 5,7 GHz each and a quad-SLI Geforce 8800 Ultra setup as well as 32 GB RAM (rated at AT LEAST 1266 MHz) to run as it should (and that's just for the GUI itself - don't get me started on the actual emulation part). The PC Engine still needs a great emulator.

What the hell are you talking about? My first computer was an HP Pavillion 6330 with 96MB of ram, a Voodoo 2 graphics card, a 3GB HD and an AMD K6-2 "3DNow!" capable processor running at 300MHZ, this ran the original buggy crash-prone Windows 98..

This configuration ran MagicEngine flawlessly for a long time. Even today it can run MagicEngine, the only major change to the system being that it runs on the superior Windows 98 SE, with the unofficial Service pack. This configuration will not crash unless I go out of my way to crash it. Runs ME fast and like a dream.

[Seldane]

Are you talking about ME 1.0 or 0.99? Because the earlier version was fine, but then they replaced the GUI with the world's biggest abomination, that will bring ANY computer to its knees. The fact that it takes longer to start up (and exit) ME 1.0 than Oblivion (or Quake 4, or any new game) should tell you something.

[NecroPhile]

I use Vista X64, which uses 64 bit addressing. :p

Touché

Your experience with ME is not normal.  My super powerful 1.47Ghz Athlon with 768MB and XP can run the latest version without slowing to a crawl.  ME's start ups and shut downs take no more than a few seconds for me.  Just how long are yours taking?  I'll bet that nod's correct and the video drivers are the culprit.

Edit: Duh!  It dawned on me that 64 bits is likely the problem.  32 bit software is emulated in 64 bit Vista, and it shouldn't be too surprising that ME isn't well emulated.  Also, I doubt that Nvidia's drivers for 64 bit Vista are optimized yet.

[Kitsunexus]

Are you talking about ME 1.0 or 0.99? Because the earlier version was fine, but then they replaced the GUI with the world's biggest abomination, that will bring ANY computer to its knees. The fact that it takes longer to start up (and exit) ME 1.0 than Oblivion (or Quake 4, or any new game) should tell you something.

Fuck ME. I have NEVER touched that shit, only 3.1, 98 and XP for me.

[Seldane]

Fuck ME. I have NEVER touched that shit, only 3.1, 98 and XP for me.

ME = Magic Engine

[Kitsunexus]

Oh I couldn't tell you for sure, but I don't remember the GUI being fancy.

[jimid2]

Your experience with ME is not normal.  My super powerful 1.47Ghz Athlon with 768MB and XP can run the latest version without slowing to a crawl.  ME's start ups and shut downs take no more than a few seconds for me.  Just how long are yours taking?  I'll bet that nod's correct and the video drivers are the culprit.

Ditto... I use ME on a couple systems around the house, but my beater old Athalon 2500+ with half a gig of RAM runs it fine on XPPROsp2 - no abnormal delays loading or closing (we're talking 2-3 seconds for either here) and all the ROMs I run in it have been fine, no slow down...

[Seldane]

2-3 seconds is waaay too much time. I may be impatient, but that's just simply unacceptable. Other emulators like ZSNES, Project 64, KEGA, etc etc (ANY emulator, in fact) takes a couple of nanoseconds to start up, but ME....

Edit: Just checked. It takes exactly 8 seconds to start up ME, whereas it takes far less than a second to start up ANY other emulator I have (which is about every other system available).

[OldRover]

Seldane: your system sucks. Plain and simple. Magic Engine takes less than a second to start up the first time here, and then it starts up almost instantly afterwards. And my system's old by today's standards.

[Seldane]

So I'm cursed then? It took just as long on my "old" computer, and a friend's computer as well. None of these three computers are weak by any means either.

[2X4]

Apparently I picked up your swedish curse; I too have this problem.  We're not saying the system chugs when you run ME, it's just slower than it should be.  It should take approximately 0 seconds to fire this thing up.  And it did when it was in it's pre-1.0 flavors.  The only emu that runs slower than this thing is FCE Ultra in full screen, which is choppy as hell for no good reason.  It's nothing I can't live with, it just sucks.

[Kitsunexus]

The only emu that runs slower than this thing is FCE Ultra in full screen, which is choppy as hell for no good reason.  It's nothing I can't live with, it just sucks.

FCEUDX doesn't do that to me...

[Gentlegamer]

Magic Engine works great for me. It will be perfect when you can select the CD drive from the command line (for compatibility with frontends and multiple CD images mounted on virtual drives).