Meanwhile...
The state of play for the post-Dreamcast set
Given the age of the PS2, Xbox and GameCube, it’s a little surprising that robust emulators for each aren’t doing the rounds as yet. There are several reasons why: their use of much more bespoke hardware, and the fact that traditionally any emulation requires processing power far in advance of what’s being emulated.
But headway’s being made nevertheless. Leading the pack is the PCSX2 emulator, which is able to run several PS2 games acceptably thanks to a massive framerate boost with the advent of dual-core PC CPUs. Though it feels on the cusp of greatness, at this stage it remains more a pleasing proof of concept than a viable way to play.
The Xbox has Cxbx (www.caustik.com/cxbx), which can only currently run Turok: Evolution (shudder) without sound, and Xeon (forums.ngemu.com/xeon-official-forum), which can muster a playable version of Halo on some hardware. On GameCube, there’s the recently revived Dolphin project (www.dolphin-emu.com), which can handle a few games at glacial speed and without sound. Big things are promised for the next version.
It’s not worth holding your breath for an Xbox 360 or PS3 emulator, but the Wii remote is now supported on PC. A bunch of apps exist for that, of which GlovePIE (carl.kenner.googlepages.com) is perhaps the leading light.
Meanwhile...
The state of play for the post-Dreamcast set
Given the age of the PS2, Xbox and GameCube, it’s a little surprising that robust emulators for each aren’t doing the rounds as yet. There are several reasons why: their use of much more bespoke hardware, and the fact that traditionally any emulation requires processing power far in advance of what’s being emulated.
But headway’s being made nevertheless. Leading the pack is the PCSX2 emulator, which is able to run several PS2 games acceptably thanks to a massive framerate boost with the advent of dual-core PC CPUs. Though it feels on the cusp of greatness, at this stage it remains more a pleasing proof of concept than a viable way to play.
The Xbox has Cxbx (www.caustik.com/cxbx), which can only currently run Turok: Evolution (shudder) without sound, and Xeon (forums.ngemu.com/xeon-official-forum), which can muster a playable version of Halo on some hardware. On GameCube, there’s the recently revived Dolphin project (www.dolphin-emu.com), which can handle a few games at glacial speed and without sound. Big things are promised for the next version.
It’s not worth holding your breath for an Xbox 360 or PS3 emulator, but the Wii remote is now supported on PC. A bunch of apps exist for that, of which GlovePIE (carl.kenner.googlepages.com) is perhaps the leading light.
