[carrja99]

ZSNES was a core part of my childhood. I downloaded it back when it was still fresh back in the late nineties / early aughts and used to emulate all matter of favorite games and homebrew translation projects for Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia.

[pdntspa]

I beat Chrono Trigger on a 486 with sound and transparencies disabled. There were parts where I had to manually switch off the top layer because transparent stuff (such as clouds) would completely block my view

When my parents weren't home I'd move to their pentium 166mhz with my savestates copied to a floppy and sneak some time playing the game with sound and transparencies.

I think I also got through most of super mario world and some of the final fantasy games as well

Fun times!

[isk517]

I gave up on my first play through of Chrono Trigger because I couldn't figure out how to progress in the future world. Didn't realize that the clouds in the dome were supposed to be transparent and not something that I need to trigger a different event to clear up.

[_jackdk_]

My first playthrough of Chrono Trigger was stopped cold because my PC couldn't send enough simultaneous keypresses to unlock a door.

[pcthrowaway]

The workaround for this was to assign all the buttons to the same key before chasing the rat (I had this exact problem with zsnes, though my first few playthroughs were on the original cartridge)

[_jackdk_]

That's what I did, and you're right that it was catching the rat on ZSNES.

[skhr0680]

L R A

[pdntspa]

Yeah I'm not sure how I figured that trick out, probably just monkey mashing buttons at some point, then I figured out SNES graphics were layers and it was a lot of fun switching the various layers on+off. And hey that turned out to be useful!

[zerocrates]

Yeah, I want to say you could press the number keys or F keys or something like that to toggle layers on and off, and it was absolutely necessary in some misty forest/jungle/waterfall type areas.

[nextaccountic]

> I beat Chrono Trigger on a 486 with sound and transparencies disabled. There were parts where I had to manually switch off the top layer because transparent stuff (such as clouds) would completely block my view

Also, you could get better performance running on DOS rather than on Windows

The same was true for gameboy emulators too

[shifto]

Wow, I remember specifically buying a sound card and CD-rom drive for my 486 so I could run the GB emulator. It wouldn't boot without a sound card and I really wanted to play the non-translated version of Pokemon Gold. People wouldn't believe me when I told them I had a newer Pokemon game than Red/Blue/Yellow.

[cholantesh]

>There were parts where I had to manually switch off the top layer because transparent stuff (such as clouds) would completely block my view

Yeah, that was my experience too; Dome 16 was a total annoyance. I did also use it to 'cheat' in sections of games where you had limited FOV, the alternative of having eyestrain and headaches wasn't really desirable.

I don't think I'd have gotten through a lot of my favourite RPGs without savestates, save points were always so ridiculously spread out while the random encounters were interminable. Still some of the best experiences I've had in the medium though.

[butz]

Thanks for reminding about missing transparency. I think seeing those games in emulator with transparency support had almost same impression as running Need for Speed III with 3dfx card for the first time :)

[aidenn0]

Similar, but IIRC I used esnes, not zsnes.

[LarsDu88]

Emulating the SNES on contemporary PC hardware. For shame!

[pdntspa]

Dude we were broke and my 486 was a hand-me-down from church. The first console I ever got was a Nintendo 64, and that was very late into its lifecycle. I can assure you that 486 was not contemporary, it was very much behind the times when I had it.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

I’d be curious if you could squeeze out better performance with a newer emulator. Either way, SNES games on a 468 is not shameful, it’s the pinnacle of hacker ethos!

[jamiejquinn]

Newer emulator or even a recompilation of an old one. I'd bet there are a few modern compiler tricks that would help even on decades old CPUs.

[BiteCode_dev]

Also discovered the amazing Tales of Phantasia thanks to zsnes. The translation community did a bonker job bringing that from Japan, patching the game without even having the source code, like mad men. Without them, I would have never known such gems existed that were never sold on our market.

The translation does take some liberties, but honestly, just for the boat scene, I feel like it's worth it.

And being able to slow down or speed up the game at will, or quick save/reload at any second, thanks to zsnes, is just chef kiss.

[bitwize]

Favorite ZSNES moment: I took a math class in a lecture hall equipped with laptops in a year when my university was experimenting with laptops as a pedagogical tool, but hadn't yet pulled the trigger on requiring them or offering them for sale (as compared to the standard dorm room desktop). While the lecture was being given, we were supposed to have our laptops open with the lecture material up. But of course this one kid had installed ZSNES on his and was playing Killer Instinct...

[carrja99]

haha, I was playing Final Fantasy V during computer class in HS.