BigPEmu (Atari Jaguar Emulation)

Raph4

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BigPEmu is the first Atari Jaguar emulator to feature compatibility with the entire retail cartridge library, along with excellent performance and a wide variety of unique features.

howtoretro.com said:
BigPEmu is the latest Atari Jaguar emulator and is already widely considered as being the best Atari Jaguar emulator available. It is from the same developer who wrote the emulation for the Atari 50 collection, released on the Switch, PS5 & Xbox Series consoles.


Best Features
  • Full compatibility.
    BigPEmu can run every game in the Jaguar's retail cartridge library.
  • Fast.
    The emulator runs the entire retail library (with default settings) at full speed on almost any x64-capable processor. Every Jaguar processor runs on a single native core (maintaining deterministic emulation) and doesn't rely on any dynamic recompilation (maintaining console compatibility), all the while maintaining extremely low system requirements.
  • Accurate.
    It's the most accurate Jaguar emulator to-date, although there is still lots of room for improvement. I'm continually working toward achieving system-wide cycle-accurate timing.
  • Better than hardware.
    Although the emulator defaults to settings which are catered toward compatibility and accuracy, it's capable of far more. Settings are exposed to overclock/underclock each of the Jaguar cores, as well as to adjust the speed and accuracy of other system components. BigPEmu enables you to play lots of Jaguar games at a full 60 frames per second for the first time ever!
  • Saved states and movies.
    Everything is completely deterministic, just like real life. That's right, I went there. This means that all "randomness" is also controlled by a preserved seed. BigPEmu can record movies from nothing but controller inputs, and play them back with perfect accuracy. You can even interrupt a movie's playback and start playing yourself at any point.

BigPEmu

*for Windows (64-bit) only.
 

pixeljunkie

Whilst Drunk., I Found God., Booze = Bad.,
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So, I've been playing this on and off the last few days. Excellent emulator.

It's really made me realize something though...allow me to go off on a story here:

Back when the Jag came out, they had kiosks with it playing either Tempest 2000 (still holds up, great game) or AvP (holds up if you are old enough to remember this era, if you are coming in fresh, it's unplayable). I immediately bought one at release for AvP alone. I was obsessed with that game and for a hot minute, it was heads and shoulders above anything else at the time. (again, "hot minute")

Shoot forward to the mid to late 90's. I had amassed a sizeable collection of Jag games plus the CDRom attachment. I recall playing Highlander a ton. I was an evangelist for that damn system. I held onto it through the PSX era, rejecting anything new and popular. I would disappear into my room while my roommate was enjoying Final Fantasy 7, to play....Towers 2. You get the picture...

Years ago, I sold the entire collection. Would've made a shit ton more money if I had sold it now, but who cares. Point is, every now and again I think, "I kinda' miss my Jag stuff".

Shoot forward to now. This badass emulator lets me relive the entire Jag cart library. I was excited. Having spent a few days with it I've come to the conclusion that:

HOLY FUCKING DOGSHIT THE ATARI JAGUAR WAS SUCH A STEAMING PILE OF GARBAGE AND I SHOULD'VE JUST BOUGHT A GODAMN PLAYSTATION!

Seriously, it's really REALLY bad. AvP is neat, Doom was fun for the time. I dig the Wolfenstein port, but it's really bad. Just so awful. What was I thinking?! This emulator makes Fight for Life run full speed...onOG hardware it was god awful. I had it, I had an almost complete cart library.
 

pixeljunkie

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lol I looked into it, and you know it's bad when King's Field seems graphically superior to it.
in hindsight, that game was so unplayable in the purest sense of the word. Telegames was probably some fat guy in a basement jerking off to soccer games.

I clearly accumulated trauma from that system I need to get some help with.
 

roker

DOOM
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HOLY FUCKING DOGSHIT THE ATARI JAGUAR WAS SUCH A STEAMING PILE OF GARBAGE AND I SHOULD'VE JUST BOUGHT A GODAMN PLAYSTATION!

Not gonna lie, I didn't think it was going to come to this conclusion at first.

What's the point of creating "better than original hardware" emulator if there's nothing to play?

Atari Lynx was actually a good system, if only it had a 1/10th of those games I'd think more highly of the Jaguar.
 

terry.330

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Hahaha I also remember seeing those Jaguar kiosks and being really wowed by AvP. It was really tempting. However I had recently been burned by the 3DO and couldn't quite shake a feeling that the Jaguar was cut from the same failure cloth. I ended up getting one and some games in a lot from a local store several years later for like $50. I think I had it for maybe a week before I traded it in to another store for a some DC games.
 

pixeljunkie

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Not gonna lie, I didn't think it was going to come to this conclusion at first.

What's the point of creating "better than original hardware" emulator if there's nothing to play?

Atari Lynx was actually a good system, if only it had a 1/10th of those games I'd think more highly of the Jaguar.
Lynx I'll stand by as well. I also had a massive Lynx collection.
 

Black IcE

Earl's Long Lost Brother,
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My jaguar story is pretty similar to everyone. I had a jag with tempest 2000 and a few other random games. While tempest was awesome, everything's looked crappy in comparison. Sold it all after owning it for a bit.

I have always been interested in checking out the music visualizer for the jag cd as I am interested in Jeff Minter's work. I recently repurchased a 360 just for the visualizer.
 

sirlynxalot

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I visited the dischord run by the developer of this emu and he is currently working on implementing Jaguar CD support to the emulator. This is great bc a Jaguar CD drive currently costs about a thousand bucks, and the majority of the library has never been supported by a previous emulator before.
 

pixeljunkie

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I visited the dischord run by the developer of this emu and he is currently working on implementing Jaguar CD support to the emulator. This is great bc a Jaguar CD drive currently costs about a thousand bucks, and the majority of the library has never been supported by a previous emulator before.

This is so insane. I had one. It was so awful. I get it though because of the rarity, etc. But still wild. I sold basically a complete US cart set with system and CD-ROM with all available games for $700 years ago 😂
 

Dr Shroom

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glad I got rid of it. no idea why i even bought one in the first place, 98% of its software is just trash and avp isn't that great either because it runs like shit, but I guess its excellent for the platform, lol.
felt like someone cut a tumor out of me when I shipped it to the unlucky future owner.

tempest probably is the best game on it.
 

Raph4

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CD support now!

Release Notes
-------------
Version 1.052
- Added a "Sample Scale" option for the System Audio Disc.
- I heard you like minor timing fixes, so I made some minor timing fixes to the minor timing fixes.

Version 1.051
- Minor timing fixes.

Version 1.05
- Jaguar CD support! This encompasses a whole bunch of new functionality. Thank you to Mycah Mattox for donating the Jaguar CD hardware, this hardware was essential for my research.
- Added -nodevicechange and -fulldevrefresh as command line options.
- Added -forceloadaddr and -forcerunaddr as command line options.
- Added -setcfgprop and -setcfgpropcat as command line options.
- Added -audiocapindex as a command line option, can be used when launching *VirtualDisc_SystemAudio as the ROM image via command line.
- Added -physdevindex as a command line option, can be used when launching *VirtualDisc_SystemPath as the ROM image via command line.
- Added another DirectInput workaround which may help prevent stuck analog controls on some machines. Thanks to neurocrash for spending a lot of time running tests for me on a machine where this was an issue!
- Fixed a problem with depth writes in 32-bit mode, thanks to 42Bastian for providing a test case.
- Fixed an issue with word strobes not being correctly scheduled until a write to SMODE/SCLK. (only relevant when running with no boot ROM set)
- Fixed a timing problem with EEPROM reads.
- Fixed scaling on monitors with a non-standard DPI.
- When adding a new individual input trigger in the binds menu, the prompt mode now defaults to "specify hold and button" instead of just "specify button". (in line with binding all inputs via "Set All")
- Lots of additional core emulation fixes which came along with CD support.
- Implemented some intentional redundancy in the OpenGL video plugin's state management, to guard against things like Discord's video capture poking around in the context without cleaning up after itself.
- With CD support wrapped up, I'm taking a short hiatus! I need to recouperate, generate some income, and prepare for the next phase of my cancer treatment. Please don't inundate me with fix/feature requests via e-mail/Discord/etc. during this time. Instead, I ask that you use the less invasive Bug Report form on the web site. Thank you for your consideration!


 

awbacon

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I am glad this exists so when I get the itch to play AvP I can remember why I sold my Jaguar in the first place and not think about buying another one for one single game
 
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