ZSNES, NeoGeoX, and Frontend MAME on Vista

[Sonokamome]

My friend just received a new laptop recently and I have been wondering whether or not the ZSNES emulator and NeoRageX 5.0, and, in general, any front-end MAME works on Vista. Now my friend tried ZSNES on his laptop recently who tried to install and try to work ZSNES only to have the blue-screen of death twice displayed to him (funny thing he mentioned was that he had never had such experiences with any Windows based machine before, not even in XP!). This had me wondering and then I started looking around in the ZSNES forums. Supposedly, from what I saw, was that the recent release of ZSNES works just fine with Vista and that there should be no issues with it: just unzip, rom, and play. But my friend had experienced otherwise.

This also had me thinking on the other two emulators that are quite popular (NeoRageX 5.0 & MAME).

Now, I am not necessarily partial to emulators but, in order to help my friend out before he gives up and just opts for installing XP on his laptop, I would like to see if there is a solution out there for this issue. There should be a way around it for all three emulators because, knowing the windows OS from an "average joe" user's standpoint, there's always a loophole that even a poodle can jump hopes in and out from (heh).

Anyway I would like to present this question to the rest of you. Thoughts, comments, suggestions, are all welcome. Thank you very much

 

[Continuity28]

I use the newest ZSNES all the time, without problems, on Windows Vista x64.

I can't comment on the others though, as I never used them.

 

[Sonokamome]

Hmm....that's strange...Continuity28, what version is your ZSNES? My friend's is version 1.51. Is it possible that he did something wrong. He did tell me that he simply took the whole ZSNES folder that had everything, put it in a flash drive, and then uploaded the thing in his laptop. It should have worked right?

 

[SunnyD]

I have a question - if you're using MAME already, why are you bothering with NeoRageX? MAME plays most all NeoGeo games without issue.

 

[Sonokamome]

According to my friend, supposedly, there were titles back then only released in the console and not the arcades. Therefore, he concluded, he would also use NeoRageX in order to play them (though he did not mention to me which games were they, I think I might go and ask him). Good point.

 

[Sonokamome]

I turns out that he told me that when you go to some ROM sites (because he forgot what games were the ones he could not find for MAME) there are more Roms for neogeo titles for neogeo roms than roms of neogeo arcade games for MAME. Which answers your question regarding why he uses NeoGeoX.

 

[SunnyD]

Hmm, that's odd... since as far as I know the console and the arcade machine are essentially one-in-the-same as far as hardware goes. I may be wrong though. He may be referring to the NeoGeo CD games.

 

[Sonokamome]

Maybe, Question for Continuity28, my friend told me that he finally has ZSNES working but when trying to set up the dimensions for the display for his laptop (1280x800) Vista just goes on giving him the blue screen of death. Know anything about that? I think it's just the new security features on Vista that but I need a second opinion (or anyones opinion really).

 

[Continuity28]

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Sonokamome
Maybe, Question for Continuity28, my friend told me that he finally has ZSNES working but when trying to set up the dimensions for the display for his laptop (1280x800) Vista just goes on giving him the blue screen of death. Know anything about that? I think it's just the new security features on Vista that but I need a second opinion (or anyones opinion really).
</end quote></div>

Doesn't sound good. I've never had a blue screen in Vista. I suppose it probably depends most on driver support, which is still fairly lacking for a lot of hardware on Vista. Everything I use happens to have good enough drivers, but lots of other people would probably run into problems.

If you think it's security related, it might have something to do with UAC somehow (though I doubt it). I personally don't use UAC at all.

EDIT: Also, pointing back to my "good enough" statement, I'm back on XP for now, simply because a few select games I love just weren't as fast as I was comfortable with. I'll go back when drivers are more mature. For me, I have not had any stability issues in Vista with the current drivers for my hardware, it's just the speed that needs improvement in my case.

 

[NeoV]

NeoRageX is garbage - WinKawaks is all you need - better than MAME for the NEOGEO games due the customizable video options as well as the Uni-Bios

 

[Sonokamome]

To NeoV: Thank you for your suggestion and I will tell my friend to consider checking out that emulator.

Now a response to Continuity28, sorry to bother you so much, but it seems you are right. My friend also thinks so as well. I thought that it was a hardware issue and....it kind of is (because, as you mentioned, it probably has to do with the video drivers for the OS). My friend seems pretty comfortable in just using the windowed options in the meantime since he can't do full-screen mode on his laptop (again it will do the BSOD thing again if he selects it). He says that he will probably give the full-screen options for ZSNES another shot after he's gotten the SP1 upgrades for Vista on his laptop.

Casual comment: You know these little OSS programs really kind of "test the waters", if you will, of what and how Vista is going to end up being used in the near future don't you think? (I could imagine that people will be told to "turn that damn UAC feature off!"). Heh.

Oh my friend will soon try out NeoRageX out sometime this weekend (sorry NeoV but, again, he will try it out that emulator you suggested) and I will report back to see if I need any help or not or for your entertainment.

 

[Sonokamome]

Well my friend has tried NeoGeoX on his laptop (which by default goes on fullscreen) and it, again, goes on giving the BSOD reaction. Clearly this has to be a driver issue for Vista and whatever else involved with graphic support. I get the senese that this is attributed to the fact that, as Continuity28 has stated, is a matter that there should be better driver support for Vista. I told this to my friend who just gave me this really disappointed look and said "Meh.....I guess XP a Go-GO it is then...". Oh well. Besides the downgrade should do my friend better than running Vista on his laptop (it's specs are more suited for XP anyway. An example? the laptop only has 512MB of RAM, not enough to smoothly operate Vista as I saw clearly. Also the CPU is a single core Intel Celeron M, the HDD is not that huge and the graphics card is just a run of the mill intel vid card-forget the name). So I guess that's it then. I think that such emulators can run on Vista but it's just a matter of time that they can be able to run as well as they do in XP until driver support increases and gets better. *Shrugs*