Raspberry Pi 5 Recalbox Emulation Tested
Popular Raspberry Pi YouTuber LeePSPVideo has been testing a beta release of the Recalbox emulation operating system for the Raspberry Pi 5 and has managed to get some decent emulation for those harder to emulate machines.
LeePSPVideo ran through a series of tests using the emulation OS. By dropping ROMS and BIOS files into the corresponding folders, LeePSPVideo was able to activate emulators. Some of the harder to emulate consoles are the Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn. You may be thinking why are they so hard to emulate? In both cases it falls to having custom hardware.
LeePSPVideo first demonstrates N64 emulation, but after a few crashes he changes the emulator and has some success with the Libretro_Parallel_N64. Playing Destruction Derby 64 and Toy Story 2 with some graphical corruption involving the timer in Destruction Derby and a weird rectangle in Toy Story 2. Does it play Goldeneye? Nope, it just flat out crashes. Remember this is a beta, and work is happening being the scenes to make emulation better on the Raspberry Pi 5.
Next up is Sega Saturn and this performed remarkably well on the Pi 5. LeePSPVideo tested Mortal Kombat and Sega Rally, both of which ran well. Later, he tests Burning Rangers (a classic for this console) and it has a small amount of slowdown, but nothing that would impact gameplay. The Sega Saturn was a console with an eclectic mix of games. If you like 2D shmups (shoot 'em ups) then the Sega Saturn has a a bunch for you! Sadly the Sega Saturn arrived at a similar time to Sony's PlayStation 1 and the PS1 had much better 3D performance, in a generation where many 3D games series were born.
LeePSPVideo also tests Sony PlayStation 1 emulation and this remains a solid experience. PS1 emulation was possible with certain games (Crash Bandicoot for example) on the Raspberry Pi 3. But the Raspberry Pi 4 provided a little more horsepower and with that more PS1 games were playable. The Raspberry Pi 5's extra power provides a better emulation experience and Tekken 3 looks perfect.
Sony PSP emulation is improved on the Raspberry Pi 5, LeePSPVideo tests Burnout Legends and the only crashes were due to his driving and not the emulator. The omission of God of War: Chains of Olympus is odd. This game is known to be hard to emulate and is often where we see the emulator fall. Perhaps he is saving this for a future video.
LeePSPVideo includes games and BIOS files for Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 2 emulation but it seems that the emulators underneath Recalbox have yet to be updated to run. LeePSPVideo has released separate videos covering Nintendo GameCube, Wii and Sony PlayStation 2 emulation. He notes that Nintendo Wii emulation is slow but playable. We have also dabbled with GameCube and PlayStation 2 emulation.
We will have to wait a little longer for Recalbox and the underlying emulators, to catch-up with the Raspberry Pi 5, but we cannot wait to swap out the Raspberry Pi 4 powering our Picade cabinet, for a shiny Raspberry Pi 5.
