Gam3B0x - Home Emulation Console

[SkyHighGam3r]

Hey everyone.

Today I want to show you the latest iteration of Gam3B0x. My home emulation console that is setup to play everything from Pong to X1/PS4 level games. (Before you bark at me, not EVERYTHING requires emulation. HyperSpin is INCREDIBLY versatile.)

For those of you who aren't aware of my project(s) I focus on consoles, not arcade cabinets. Being born in '88 I missed the arcade boom by just a hair, and was raised on NES & Genesis.

My project here is a love-letter to the gaming setups of the 90's. I played on a 13" CRT/VCR combo from the NES in 1990, through the X360 in 2007. I intend to inject as much TV Static, Scanlines, CRT Curve, VCR Blue Screen, and Channel 3 as I can.

Now, for the good stuff! Below you will find a video that showcases the overall functionality of Gam3B0x. I made this video for audiences that aren't familiar with our scene, so forgive me if I 'over-explain' some aspects.

I also show myself playing XBOX, Xbox 360, PS3, & Xbox One games (PS4's Shadow of Mordor didn't play nice with OBS ).

If you're wondering how that all works, I explain the process while playing Forza Horizon 3 near the end of the video.

Please let me know what you think, any/all feedback is more than welcome.

Most people I know in real life don't even understand why I would spend so much time working on this lol but I know you guys do.
 

[thatman84]

Congrats on a great job......I can see why and how much time has gone in.

It would be cool to see some "how to" vids out of you, you def have some tricky stuff in there.

Did you make the transition to overrides or find another way to keep the per cores?

[SkyHighGam3r]

1 hour ago, thatman84 said:

Congrats on a great job......I can see why and how much time has gone in.

It would be cool to see some "how to" vids out of you, you def have some tricky stuff in there.

Did you make the transition to overrides or find another way to keep the per cores?

Thanks haha, it actually means a lot to have someone 'get it'.

What sort of stuff would you like to see? I'm more than happy to make some more videos. Especially on anything out of the norm. They are easily what I'm most proud about with the system.

I was really stubborn about switching to overrides, but now that I've done it I actually think it's much better than the per core options ever were. lol

[thatman84]

Cool I have been meaning to setup overrides but going to wait till 1.4 stable comes out now as to close to Xmas for messing about.

maybe a bit retroarch, detail on the boot screen stuff (TG-16 etc), what shader combos and how you do inputs. 

Be cool to see techy video on the stuff that you found real hard or time consuming.

 

 

[guitarman84]

Awesome setup.  I have a buddy who hacked his original xbox and used a video input card into his PC and then uses network commands to launch and close games as well as a crazy control setup that allows him to switch his cabinet controls over the the xbox.  He spent months figuring it out and it is one of the coolest setups I have ever seen.  When i watched your video I thought wow this guy has figured out how to do that with more modern consoles.  Only to find out it was all PC games the whole time.  TOTALLY MY STYLE waaay less work lol.  That is so awesome man nice setup!!

[SkyHighGam3r]

On 12/14/2016 at 10:32 AM, guitarman84 said:

Awesome setup.  I have a buddy who hacked his original xbox and used a video input card into his PC and then uses network commands to launch and close games as well as a crazy control setup that allows him to switch his cabinet controls over the the xbox.  He spent months figuring it out and it is one of the coolest setups I have ever seen.  When i watched your video I thought wow this guy has figured out how to do that with more modern consoles.  Only to find out it was all PC games the whole time.  TOTALLY MY STYLE waaay less work lol.  That is so awesome man nice setup!!

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it lol. Yeah it was a lot less work, once I looked at hyperspin and saw that you could make it show whatever art you wanted, and then RocketLauncher would launch any .exe  I looked at my PC wheel's games and said... there's no reason these can't 'look' like Xbox games.

I'm very intrigued by your friend's setup though. Do you know if he has a youtube video of this setup by any chance? I'd love to set something like that up as well. Particularly if I could integrate it into Hyperspin somehow.

[ABeezy13]

Hey SkyHighGam3r... all I can say for starts is WOW!

This is my first post here after doing some google searching and stumbling across not only this site but this thread. As I type this I am watching your video posted above and super intrigued with tons of questions, hopefully which you don't mind responding to... I am like a kind in a candy store right now so please excuse me for jumping around.

 

For my first question I am curious, do you have pictures of your actual console? Would love to see what it looks like.

 

The way I found out about this is I own a Raspberry Pi II which is no longer good enough for my taste and needs. The past few days I've been wanting to build my own "retro console". Using Windows 10 as a base and having it directly boot into whatever front end software I use. I have come across several good ones such as Launch Box's big box mode, Emulation Station (what I used on the Pi), now Hyperspin, the Mac only program OpenEmu amongst others. I want to basically be mouse and keyboard free (after initial setup and customizing of course). I want to be able to kick back on the couch turn the "console" on and pick whichever system I want to play and just go to town... watching your video it looks as if thats what you've accomplished. Essentially its a PC under the hood but set up and configured to run as a console. Like you I was born in '88 and raised on the classic systems such as SNES and Genesis.

 

That leads me to how difficult is it for someone to get hyperspin up and running with emulators and rom files and controller configuration? I heard you mention using any controller... I'd like to use the accurate controllers for each emulator/system. For example I have bluetooth NES and N64 controllers I'd like to use for those respective systems. I have a PS4 controller I'd like to use on PS1/2 emulation, etc. 

 

That leads me to the physical pc parts/build. Care to share the specs of your console you made and what requirements are needed for decent emulation? I am not looking to break the bank if possible... I have a $1300 gaming rig but I LOVE the thought of a small console sized PC case that fits in the living room home entertainment system. (After watching your video again I thought I would mention I don't plan to play any brand new stuff or pc games. I'll do that on my gaming rig. The highest era I'd be playing is PS2 and GameCube... in case that changes the specs of the build.)

 

I appreciate anytime you take to possibly answer my questions. I am super excited to hopefully get started at some point with a DIY project like this!

[guyverjay]

if you are going for authenticity, why aren't you using the correct aspect ratio?

[SkyHighGam3r]

16 hours ago, guyverjay said:

if you are going for authenticity, why aren't you using the correct aspect ratio?

Honestly, when I look at 4:3 it looks wrong to me.

I know it's the proper size and all, but the fact that it leaves like 2/5 of my screen with GIANT BLACK BARS on the side looks atrocious.

It's kind of like when I would watch a widescreen VHS on my CRT back in the day. It just looked WRONG.

I don't notice this 'horrendous art distortion' that a lot of people talk about, I don't notice anything because my screen is full and I can enjoy my game at fullsize lol.
 

On 1/5/2017 at 5:42 PM, ABeezy13 said:

Hey SkyHighGam3r... all I can say for starts is WOW!

This is my first post here after doing some google searching and stumbling across not only this site but this thread. As I type this I am watching your video posted above and super intrigued with tons of questions, hopefully which you don't mind responding to... I am like a kind in a candy store right now so please excuse me for jumping around.

 

For my first question I am curious, do you have pictures of your actual console? Would love to see what it looks like.

 

The way I found out about this is I own a Raspberry Pi II which is no longer good enough for my taste and needs. The past few days I've been wanting to build my own "retro console". Using Windows 10 as a base and having it directly boot into whatever front end software I use. I have come across several good ones such as Launch Box's big box mode, Emulation Station (what I used on the Pi), now Hyperspin, the Mac only program OpenEmu amongst others. I want to basically be mouse and keyboard free (after initial setup and customizing of course). I want to be able to kick back on the couch turn the "console" on and pick whichever system I want to play and just go to town... watching your video it looks as if thats what you've accomplished. Essentially its a PC under the hood but set up and configured to run as a console. Like you I was born in '88 and raised on the classic systems such as SNES and Genesis.

 

That leads me to how difficult is it for someone to get hyperspin up and running with emulators and rom files and controller configuration? I heard you mention using any controller... I'd like to use the accurate controllers for each emulator/system. For example I have bluetooth NES and N64 controllers I'd like to use for those respective systems. I have a PS4 controller I'd like to use on PS1/2 emulation, etc. 

 

That leads me to the physical pc parts/build. Care to share the specs of your console you made and what requirements are needed for decent emulation? I am not looking to break the bank if possible... I have a $1300 gaming rig but I LOVE the thought of a small console sized PC case that fits in the living room home entertainment system. (After watching your video again I thought I would mention I don't plan to play any brand new stuff or pc games. I'll do that on my gaming rig. The highest era I'd be playing is PS2 and GameCube... in case that changes the specs of the build.)

 

I appreciate anytime you take to possibly answer my questions. I am super excited to hopefully get started at some point with a DIY project like this!

Well thank you! I'm glad you like what I've done here. I'll be happy to try and answer whatever I can!

I don't have any pictures of the system online right now. You can look up "Syber Vapor" in google to see the case I used. I have the white one. I may be altering the case in the future, it depends on what I do with the current video card. The precise model I have has some notorious heating issues unfortunately.

"I want to be able to kick back on the couch turn the "console" on and pick whichever system I want to play and just go to town."  - - Absolutely, that was the entire inspiration that started this project for me. I have pretty bad ADHD and I bounce between games a lot. It's one reason I liked emulators on my PC but it was so clunky. I found hyperspin on accident and when I read about how customizable it was I knew I found my home lol.

Regarding how difficult it is, it's very very dependent on your specific goals. HyperSpin/RocketLauncher does have a little bit of a learning curve, but once you get the swing of it it's easy to use. One of the reasons mine has taken so long is I am so incredibly Nit-Picky.

For instance, I refuse to have my games labeled "Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) (!) (RevB)" etc etc. I have to have it say "Super Mario Bros. 2" and, in all honesty I rename a lot of things so they make more sense to me. So in SMB2's case it's now "Super Mario Bros. USA" because Super Mario Bros. 2 was a completely different game than what we really got in the US. Tinkering like this can take ages when you span it out over an entire collection lol. MOST people however can just flick some switches and not see tags and stuff, but as I said I am very nitpicky. I created a lot of the databases by typing them out. (People think I'm insane for this, and I don't blame them)

The other time-consuming aspect is the visual themes. Again, a small learning curve, but I have redesigned that aspect maybe 7 times now? You'll notice it looks very different from any other hyperspin videos you pull up. Most people are content with the default themes, or some of the high quality stuff shared on the site though. I have to be difficult and make my own though lol.

Controllers are another story. What I did is unorthodox.

Most people will pick a controller, usually an xbox one or something, and map it in each emulator. This works great if that's all you want.

What I did, was I mapped every emulator to the same keyboard configuration. Then, using xpadder, I mapped each of my controllers to that same key configuration. That way, I can unplug one, plug in another, and it operates in the exact same fashion (There are some exceptions to this thanks to analogue controls... still hammering that out, lower priority ATM.) If I could find an Xbox One controller with ADDED z/c buttons, I wouldn't even worry about it, but those don't exist sadly.

My specs are as follows:
CPU: Intel i7 4790-K 4.0Ghz
RAM: 16GB DDR3
GPU: AMD R9 390X 8GB 1.5Ghz

I have a 1TB internal Slim 7200RPM HDD but the amount of games I have is so much bigger than that I ended up getting some External Storage. If I only used cartridge systems I'd never hit 1TB, but discs are SO much bigger, even when compressed.

As for what you'd need... well that's the million dollar question.
No matter what you do, get a CPU with strong single-thread performance. That will handle emulation for up to about N64/PSX. They barely use GPU unless you are adding effects like shaders.
Ram, I just personally wouldn't go any lower than 16GB in this age. You may be able to do PS2 with 8 but I'm not sure.

GPU is the big question... it's hard to tell exactly where the line would be for a given system. Each game has different requirements really. You will have to do some research here, but I will say I recommend you go with Nvidia if you are doing a console build.

I learned the hard way that AMD has more problems with heat generation (Mine makes this worse because it's a super long card too) . In a deskop, it's negligible, but a cramped case? Nvidia is the way to go. I'm looking at a GTX 1060 MINI... supposed to be good but I need to read more. Also they tend to lay nicer with shaders.

My original intention was to go up to N64... and then I wanted Saturn and Dreamcast... and somewhere along the line I got frustrated trying to find the 'right' parts and went all out. It's nice because now with things like Cemu coming around I am able to play those too.

I hope that answers your questions

[guyverjay]

you can use bezels though

[demonseed]

This project is very cool…. keep up the good work.

[SkyHighGam3r]

5 hours ago, demonseed said:

This project is very cool…. keep up the good work.

Thanks I've done a lot of work on it since even this video in December. I need to find a way to better document things as I go along I think.

[demonseed]

Do you have a xml list or database or just a list of the games that were ported to xbox/xbox 360?

[SkyHighGam3r]

On 1/31/2017 at 3:45 AM, demonseed said:

Do you have a xml list or database or just a list of the games that were ported to xbox/xbox 360?

It's an XML I created and add onto as I find more Xbox/PC games.
There's a few I threw in there that weren't real as well. Like I have Half-Life: Black Mesa sitting in X360 next to Half-Life 2. Things like that.

Usually my process is that when I get a new game, I check wikipedia to see if it was on another console, then I add it to the list.

One thing I've thought about doing, is because it uses PCLauncher's Module, is you can have a game in numerous wheels.

So like, Assassin's Creed could be in PS3, X360, and PC games all at the same time. With different box-art and stuff, but it would launch the same game.

[thewerepuppygrr]

Hey,

Just wanted to say, great build! Another '88er here, I'm looking at building myself something that can play all the old arcade/80s stuff up to PS2/Wii era so I'm researching as much as possible, especially since I've never built a PC before. 

Do you have any pics of your system and maybe a list of the components you went with? It would be an honour to see more of your build hardware.

[SkyHighGam3r]

On 4/5/2017 at 2:18 PM, thewerepuppygrr said:

Hey,

Just wanted to say, great build! Another '88er here, I'm looking at building myself something that can play all the old arcade/80s stuff up to PS2/Wii era so I'm researching as much as possible, especially since I've never built a PC before. 

Do you have any pics of your system and maybe a list of the components you went with? It would be an honour to see more of your build hardware.

Hey!

Sorry I never responded to you. I sorta forgot about this thread lol. I'm all over the place, total scatterbrain you know? haha

Anyway, the parts I used are as follows:

CPU: Intel i7-4790k 4.0Ghz
RAM: 16GB DDR3
GPU: AMD R9 390x 1.0Ghz 8GB

However, I can't stress enough that no one should ever buy that GPU. It's been nothing but a headache because it has severe heating problems. I would recommend an Nvidia GTX 1060/1070 instead. I've been wanting to swap it out but they are so pricey...

That being said if you are only going up to wii/ps2 you would be ok with a lesser card. The only reason I went so high is I also wanted to be able to play things like Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 at Ultra.

Also, if you want to see more stuff I post once in a while on my youtube channel (also called SkyHighGam3r) I've got a new video I just posted this week, and some older stuff showing off how I created my own physical media launcher.