So I don’t really play many newer games, but I still want to play with friends online. Ive thought how awesome itd be to play some ps2 or n64 with a friend who’s 500 miles away. But I cannot find anything that actually works (especially because I’m on Linux and theyre on windows)
Kind of surprised it doesn’t exist because I’d pay decent money for that. Either one program that tunnels it for your specific emator, or specific emulators that have online built in…
And yes, I know its really hard to Implement this without lag. But people (nerds) are smart!
Edit: Clarification, I don’t want to play games that had online or lan originally. I meant more games that are 2 or 4 player splitscreen play ,but online.
I think retroarch is what I’ll try, since I mainly wanted to do this with ps1/2 games. Thanks all!!
The PS3 emulator has multiplayer, you can even play Warhawk.
I don’t know if it’s still active, but Kaillera was dope. I remember 1v1ing people in Mario Kart 64 like a decade ago.
Looks like it is!
Dolphin does online multiplayer for game cube, and I think also wii
There’s also a neat back way to use steam for it too. You need a game that supports steam’s remote play together, and you can replace the install files with an emulator, rename the emulator .exe to match the game you replaced and launch it with steam. I might be missing part of the method, so googling might be necessary, but I’ve done this with a few friends before with xbox emulation and it worked great.
Edit: found the forum post I used at the time!
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/3/1643178512758489324/
I was playing online multiplayer on zsnes over 20 years ago. I would be really surprised if most emulators didn’t support it these days.
https://parsec.app works great for that usecase, one person runs the emu, the other just streams the screen. supports controllers and inputs are pretty fast in my experience.
if the host is windows or mac it just works, getting a linux host to work is more fiddly, but any os works great as a client
so I looked at Parsec and everything said you cannot host on linux. not true?
i tried this with a friend once for a modern game that he didn’t own and it worked surprisingly well. First thing that came to mind.
I had a friend trick Steam into streaming the Dolphin emulator through remote play and me and a few people played Mario Kart Wii splitscreen. The lag wasn’t too bad even tho I was connecting from the UK and my friend lives in NJ, USA.
They were hosting on Windows, but I was able to connect fine through Steam on Linux.
They did it by downloading a free game called Crashphalt then going into the directory and replacing the exe with Dolphin.exe renamed to match the original games exe. Then Dolphin should launch when you try to play Crashphalt through Steam along with remote play settings in the Steam overlay.
No clue how you’d do this on Linux yet sadly.
That is a nice way of doing it, have to remember this one. Thanks for sharing!
Not to sound like a douche, but it seems like you didn’ even try looking for them.
No it’s alright, I have looked, and tried a couple (don’t recall the name) and they didn’t work. And a lot of them don’t work on Linux it seems. So I wanted to see what smarter people were using!
also these 3 you sent look like copies of each other, and don’t say they run on linux. not sure.
Retroarch, which means pretty much almost every emulator.
As I recall it’s pretty hi-tech, too.
Hardware permitting it’ll emulate every path your friend might take, and correct itself to the correct timeline when it gets friend’s input. Lag-free for everyone.
I thought this didnt work anymore ? Someone had also mentioned using steam play and making the emulator a game in your library but that no longer works.
I know Snes9x and Zsnes have had online multiplayer for years. It’s a direct connection, though. No server browser or lobbies. So it is entirely possible.
Well, there’s fightcade. It’s an excellent platform that emulates arcade and console games from the '70s up through the Dreamcast era.
Dunno if it’s on Linux though. :/
EDIT: worth noting that its online MP has never had any connection issues, but it does have ranked matches, so you’ll see a lot of folks trying to be the best of the best, and that’s putting it nicely.
Most of the old consoles it can be done. I’ve played a bunch of games this way. The most fun I had was probably Kirby Super Star on the snes.
But it’s possible with the newer consoles too. The buzz word is typically “netplay”. Works by syncing the game state and emulating their controller being connected with the host session and vice versa.
Depending on the specific game or emulator you’re trying there can be some pitfalls. Some emulators won’t let you play unless the application is identical and identically configured (such as the various plugins in 1964). You would need to run the same windows version of the emulator to play with your buddy likely.
Network quality is extremely important. No one should be using WiFi. All players ideally should be using low jitter connections like fibre, cable or dsl. Ideally your ping to each other is under 60ms. Once you get into the 80-120+ range PvP games become unfair and games in general could become glitchy.
Have everyone playing run this tool. You’re looking for low jitter, medium to low ping, 0% packet loss. (It just isn’t going to be reliable and fun if anyone is experiencing any packet loss)
Depending on the emulator you might need to understand port forwarding and resolving a double NAT.
If you want to discuss what specifically isn’t working I could be more helpful instead of sharing generalised information.
If we consider the ineffably marvelous titles of prior ~2010…
The following are third-party alternatives that emulate aspects of GameSpy services and might be used to enable online functionality in some games.
You need some sort of streaming if you want to play Split-Screen over the Internet. I guess you could use Steam’s Remote Play Together feature with an emulator (I believe there are ways to enable that for non-steam games).
I remember playing Rock’n’Roll Racing with my friend over 56K modem back in like 2002… It’s existed for a while lol
