RetroArch Wii CRT Journey & a Request for Help

RetroArch Nintendo consoles
#1

I’ve been experimenting with RetroArch on my Wii, connected to a CRT TV, and I think I’ve finally found the sweet spot. I’ve managed to balance the screen size, performance, and all the different settings. A big tip for anyone with a SNES Mini gamepad : it connects perfectly to a Wii Remote, and everything just works.

Emulation for consoles like the PC Engine, Mega Drive, NES, and SNES seems to be fantastic. Perhaps the only one that doesn’t sound perfect is SNES9x , which seems to have some audio issues.

Unfortunately, I ran into a serious problem when trying to play a Commodore 64 game using the VICE core. I was trying a game in the .CRT format (cartridge), and it completely broke RetroArch. I had to reinstall the entire application on my SD card. I can’t understand how a single game file could corrupt RetroArch to that extent. I even tried manually deleting retroarch.cfg , but it didn’t solve the issue.

I also haven’t had much luck with MAME . I tried the MAME 2003 Plus core because it was a popular suggestion online, but there are so many cores inside, and it’s not at all clear how to get a game to launch. I’m really interested in getting this to work on the Wii because I think it’s worth it.

The Wii truly seems like the perfect console for anyone who wants to use an old CRT TV for retro gaming. I’d love to keep this conversation going. What do you all think?

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#2

From what I’ve read this is to be expected. I haven’t updated the regular Wii port for ages. The console ports in general tend to be hit or miss in my experience. There are unofficial compiled versions of RA cores around, you can try you luck with those, but no VICE. Frodo might be working.

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#3

IIRC it loads the latest core that was loaded when you start RA on Wii. So if Vice is broken it will always crash. You’ll have to delete the core or the history or something. It’s not a game fault but a broken core.

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#4

Strange that a secondary file would corrupt the emulator structure …And Mame ?

#5

It didn’t corrupt the emulator, it just tries to load the core but Vice is broken on Wii and system hangs.

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#6

Technically, even if it doesn’t corrupt the emulator, it actually gets stuck and has to be reinstalled every time. I’d like to understand which file is corrupted; it’s definitely not retroarch.cfg.

#7

the vice core in retroarch for wii is complete broken and simpley does that everytime there some other cores you find on some sites , it was called RA-Wii Frankenstein…it has a lot of non official builds from cores it has as example a better working snes core , and some for systems that are not in the normal version…downside is it totally screws up the config ,you would have to setup everything in retroarch for each core again for some strange reason with that pack …and a gamble cuz every third core i tried with it corrupet it in a way it wont let retroarch start https://gbatemp.net/threads/unofficial-some-libretro-cores-compiled-with-retroarch-wii-v1-7-9-and-other-versions.648742/page-9 the link is in this thread …for the C 64 on wii …best thing you can do is to use the standalone frodo emu for wii …even if you go back to an old version where vice still works or an unoffical frodo core …they all have issues or straight go berzerk

also never tried the mame core on wii…but why not use FBAlpha ?

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#8

Thanks for your valuable advice. It’s really fun to experiment with the Wii on a CRT with RetroArch. I’ll follow your advice with fbalpha and Frodo as well. Thanks!

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#9

no problem i started to use CRT’s for a while first just VGA (with custom res for CRTswitchres )…then i got a regular CRT TV and since i figure out and orderd some stuff and converters to get it connected to my Main PC …also quite a journey i now have still to wait for a converter board that should make it work …but till i get it to work the Wii is hooked up to the TV and i mess around with it from time to time

also look up the RSDKv5=Sonic Mania,1,2 and CD decomp ports for the WII they also support 240p

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#10

I use a scart cable, yet from the Wii settings I see 480i but not 240p. I don’t understand how the Wii can run at 240p.

#11

you can’t set in in the system settings , cuz normally all WII and GC games don’t use 240p BUT the Wii is able to output 240p

240p also just works via scart when the wii is set to 480i (don’t ask me why ask nintendo :smiley: )

so homebrew can force 240p with this setup , and virtual console games are able to do it without any modification or hack at all

here a link about it

retroarch forces 240p if you set the res to 320x240 …the pictures in my MBZ overlay thread are made on a PAL wii , and it runs non interlaced 240p in 60hz just fine

to force 240p in sonic mania you need to edit the settings file AND you need to search the pal fixed version if you run a PAL system :slight_smile:

i know that some standalone emulators for the wii also handle 240p but i never tested it with other emus

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#12

I don’t understand why in my retroarch (last official version) 320x240 is not available, but 336x240

#13

Any CRT TV will expect 480i as that’s it’s native expected mode. In 1 second it will draw odd field 30 times and even field another 30. When 240p the TV will double strike odd field 30+30 times. Even field stays empty creating the dark scanline effect.

When you set to 480p, the system sends a signal that a CRT TV can’t do, it’s a 31khz signal. It asks the monitor to draw a 480 field 60 times per second.

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#14

Yeah you won’t see a difference as long its just horizontal …good example on my VGA crt i have to use 2560x240p to reach 31khz for 240p

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#15

Perfect! Now I can rest easy, I thought it was my mistake :smiley:

#16

That’s the horizontal pixel clock limitation counted in Mhz you’re trying to meet, not the vertical frequency. The GPU can’t go lower than x Mhz (lower than x resolution).

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#17

it sounds strange i know but…

also thats on my PC not the wii :sweat_smile:

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#18

240p is possible here through the increased refresh rate (120 hz), unless you have a multisync monitor. The superwide resolution is as Darius stated relevant for GPUs, it’s not for the monitor. Though it is also better for masking non-integer stretching artifacts anyway and covering a lot of integers.

The Wii has it’s own limitations, it doesn’t output any true low resolutions like 320x240 either.

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#19

If you output 480i on a CRT using a PC let’s say using these cheap hdmi to composite adapters and write a shader that blanks odd field every 2nd frame (actually just blank the whole screen), technically you’ll have scanlines but on a 30hz and reduced brightness. Only the 2nd field will remain visible heh

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#20

On the PS2, the homebrew GSM tool allowed for selecting 960i which covers 31 Khz compatibility though this was taken out in later versions, I don’t remember my results with it.

I also got a Retroscaler2x from Aliexpress some time ago which has an option for linedoubling. I was thinking I could use that with the PS3’s 480/576i composite output to turn it into progressive and then use scanlines for 240p content with the RA port or other emulators. Well, that didn’t work with a DVD Recorder, and it didn’t work with the Scaler either - scanlines result in unbearable flickering.