[Psyklax]

I don't quite get the hate that Retroarch receives due to the UI. Regular emulators are okay provided you have a mouse to click on everything, but when I want to just sit back on the sofa with my PS2 pad and flick back and forth between different systems using only the pad, and auto loading and saving of save states when I'm finished with a game, then Retroarch does it very comfortably. And often I use it with a $25 Android TV box, which runs the 8- and 16-bit systems perfectly.

I just turn it on, open Retroarch, look at the recently played games, pick one, and I'm in. When I'm finished, I go back to the menu and pick something else, all with my pad. I guess not everyone is happy with this, but it works for me. It's also my preferred method of playing PS1 on my PC.

[NERV Agent]

I'm fond of RetroArch now, but when I started using it is was a throbbing headache.

[Sliver X]

I don't quite get the hate that Retroarch receives due to the UI. Regular emulators are okay provided you have a mouse to click on everything, but when I want to just sit back on the sofa with my PS2 pad and flick back and forth between different systems using only the pad, and auto loading and saving of save states when I'm finished with a game, then Retroarch does it very comfortably. And often I use it with a $25 Android TV box, which runs the 8- and 16-bit systems perfectly.

I just turn it on, open Retroarch, look at the recently played games, pick one, and I'm in. When I'm finished, I go back to the menu and pick something else, all with my pad. I guess not everyone is happy with this, but it works for me. It's also my preferred method of playing PS1 on my PC.

Oh, don't get me wrong. While Retroarch's UI is really, really bad my problems with it are at a core technical level (As I use universal frontend solutions to manage games on my machines, including the one that's controlled entirely by gamepads).

It just doesn't seem to be, um, coded very well. It doesn't really matter how good a core is (And they usually are considering the emulators they use), but LibRetro itself, in my experience, is a crash prone buggy mess that while amazing in theory is severely lacking in actual execution.

Configuration is also a nightmare for the thing. And this is coming from somebody who doesn't mind hand editing config files such as Mednafen uses or setting up general frontends for dozens of systems at a time.

[NERV Agent]

On the topic of RetroArch, if you are in the middle of playing a game, do not accidentally hit Esc with the intention of going to the menu, this closes the program. There's nothing like getting really far in the game only to lose all your progress because you wanted to get to the menu, but you hit Esc instead.

The menu key is F1.

Why they didn't make the shut down command "Alt F4" is beyond me.

[mziab]

On the topic of RetroArch, if you are in the middle of playing a game, do not accidentally hit Esc with the intention of going to the menu, this closes the program. There's nothing like getting really far in the game only to lose all your progress because you wanted to get to the menu, but you hit Esc instead.

The menu key is F1.

Why they didn't make the shut down command "Alt F4" is beyond me.

Actually, Alt+F4 works too. But I agree that Esc might not be the most sensible default. Well, at least it can be remapped.

[EvilJagaGenius]

(yo, first post)

I'm surprised no one has mentioned any Sega emulators.  I use Gens Plus and it works fairly well, I've only gotten two problems with it so far.  One was it refusing to boot up Lunar 1 and the other was a Spanish-patched ROM of Phantasy Star II.  And I'm not convinced the PSII ROM was any good to begin with.  Good sound, decent speed, some nice graphics filters, runs Game Gear and Master System games too.  There's only a Windows version but the source code is lying around places on the Internet.

On my phone I use Genesis Plus GX, but that's RetroArch only I believe.