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Best ColecoVision emulator? BlueMSX?


Beatlemaniac19

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Simply was wondering what you guys recommend in terms of best Colecovision emulator. To be honest, I highly prefer using RetroArch or MESS when it comes to all consoles. I'd rather learn two software programs than 100 seperate emulators. That's just me, so if a standalone emulator is the best or only option, then I'd appreciate your recommendation, but these two emulators are my preference FYI.

I've seen that the BlueMSX core in RetroArch has ColecoVision compatibility. I know that BlueMSX is a cycle accurate emulator for the MSX, but can't find any compatibility reports on ColecoVision games. Is this the core you guys recommend for ColecoVision? Also, I saw Bizhawk (I think that's what is called) is similar to RA and has a Colecovision core.

What do you guys think?

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I use MAME now as I had issues with ColEm and how it handled full screen and the fact there was no way to call up the number interface which was a hassle on my tablets. I've been hearing good things about BizHawk but have never used it personally. I have never been able to get Coleco to run in RA under the BlueMSX core myself don't know what the deal is with that.

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I'd go with MAME/MESS too, but you can also use blueMSXv282full (the standalone emulator, not the RA core one) to emulate the ColecoVision if you want to experiment with something else.
As well as being able to emulate a variety of MSX, MSX2, MSX2+ and MSXturboR machines, blueMSX can also emulate some non-MSX machines.

Coleco machines:
ColecoVision console.
ColecoVision with Opcode Memory Extension.
Bit Corporation Dina.
Spectravideo SV1-603 Coleco game adapter.

Sega machines:
SG-1000 console.
SC-3000 computer.
SF-7000 computer.

Spectravideo machines:
SV1-318.
SV1-328.
SV1-328 80.
SV1-328 80 Swedish.
SV1-328 MK2.

All these can be selected (and reconfigured if you don't like the defaults) using the Machine Editor.

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If you want blueMSX to automatically launch games for more than one system then, once you've assigned blueMSX to be the emulator to use with those Platforms, just add the Platforms and their required parameters to the Associated Platforms section of the blueMSX Edit Emulator window in LaunchBox.
If some of your games are zipped then enable the "Extract ROM archives before running" tick-box.
When you launch a game blueMSX will then automatically select the machine to emulate and launch the game.

The image below shows some example settings that allow  blueMSX to launch games in Microsoft MSX2, ColecoVision and Sega SG-1000 Platforms through LaunchBox.

While all of this is nice to play around with, I'd still go with MAME/MESS.

 

EditEmulator-2.PNG

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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 year later...
On 11/12/2016 at 3:28 AM, SentaiBrad said:

I would go with either MESS or ColEm, and probably MESS. You can follow one of our MESS tutorials, follow the links to find the info for the ColecoVision like I did in the videos, and plug the ColecoVision info in instead and be up and running.

Not sure if its ok to revive an old topic, but didnt want to start a new thread on an old topic.  I saw you mentioned you had a mess tutorial.  Where can i find that so i can figure out mess also. (because im trying to get colecovision to work as well but no luck with retroarch or bluemsx).

thanks

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56 minutes ago, dannyshane said:

Not sure if its ok to revive an old topic, but didnt want to start a new thread on an old topic.  I saw you mentioned you had a mess tutorial.  Where can i find that so i can figure out mess also. (because im trying to get colecovision to work as well but no luck with retroarch or bluemsx).

thanks

Get correct bios. Look on Retroarch for bios name and crc/sh2

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thanks everyone. I finally got it working with MAME.  whew that was stressful. lol i was missing a key step.  thanks for the help you guys


BTW Some consoles look better on mame (im using mame 0.204).   Like Atari Jaguar has a jaguar intro that was not shown when launching with retroarch…  some games were zoomed in on retroarch and part of the game was off screen - pretty weird). but mame plays them real nice. 

 

 

 

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  • 4 months later...

Just be careful because some CV emus have terrible sound emulation.  ColEm was supposed to be good but the sound is way off, it is too high pitched and just doesn't sound right.  Space Panic is a good test game.  Look at a video on youtube of it on a real system then compare emulators.  I think Blue MSX had the most accurate sound from what i remember (still not perfect but close).  I haven't tried the multy emus like MAME or RA.

Edited by DaveC1964
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1 hour ago, DaveC1964 said:

I haven't tried the multy emus like MAME or RA.

RA uses other open source emulators for its cores so yeah while it can be considered a "multi emulator" it's not really one, not like Mednafen or Mame where each emulated system is built by the same devs and uses its own code.

RA uses BlueMSX for its core.

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