Emu hunting...

[Azazel]

No, not my local flightless birds. 

I'm wondering what are considered the best SNES, Genesis/Megadrive, 3DO and PS1 emulators might be on PC? There seem to be a fair few out there, and I certainly trust the opinions found here than out there on the wider net.

[Velorath]

For Genesis, I'd probably go with Fusion. Haven't had any issues with it and it does Sega CD, 32X, and Master System games as well. With SNES I seem to recall using SNES9X at some point and it worked perfectly well. Never tried any 3DO or PS1 emulation.

[Rendakor]

SNES9X is the good one I've used too.

[Kail]

For the Genesis, depending on what titles you want, Sega's got a bunch for sale for the PC that run in their own emulator.

[ezrast]

I was always a ZSNES user but snes9x probably has a more modern interface. Emulation should be virtually perfect on either. For PSX, whenever I last paid attention (it's been a few years), ePSXe was the only software that mattered.

[koro]

My heart always belongs to ZSNES (which I've used since 2000), but SNES9x doesn't have issues ZSNES has with some titles, usually with sound.

ePSXe for PSX games. There's basically nothing else worth mentioning.

[Fabricated]

SNES: SNES9x is about the most friendly/easy of the emulators, Higan (formerly bsnes) is the most accurate meaning that it will play all games with accurate audio and no glitches (this is required for finicky titles like Star Ocean). It requires like a 2.4ghz dual-core CPU at a minimum though due to this.

PSX: I think the spergs perfer Mednafen (a multi-system emulator which happens to have a good/accurate PSX core) or PCSX Reloaded. ePSXe was updated not too long ago and still works pretty well for everything too.

Genesis: This is another one where I think some new emulator has popped up that's considered the best, but Kega Fusion is what I prefer.

3dO: As far as I know this is the only decent one - http://www.fourdo.com/

I used to be a ZSNES guy out of pure nostalgia because it was the first reasonably fast/compatible SNES emulator and blew my mind by introducing me to the concept of emulation. I was originally using it to play Final Fantasy 2 on a 233Mhz PentiumII system, before it even supported proper transparent layers so I had to turn layers off to finish the mist cave. It's pretty jank now though, and after a major code cleanup years ago still uses copious amounts of speedhacks that can fuck games up.

[koro]

Yeah, I remember my first version of ZSNES, back in who knows when. It didn't even have sound, and was DOS-only. I think I used it to play FFV.

Higan's good too, but if you play a lot of romhacks or fan-translated games, it probably won't run them.

[Azazel]

Arise!

So I've been thinking about buying/building one of those ultra-small HTPC-type micro-PC (NUC/BRIX, or similar) as an Emulation box to attach to my television. Mostly for SNEX/MAME/FUSION levels of old-school gaming, though PSX-capable would be pretty good as well. Does anyone here have any experience with this sort of thing, and/or any recommendations to look at or avoid?

[Trippy]

Do not get something with an Atom CPU -- those things are horrible. Get something that can fit a regular i3/i5 CPU.

[Fabricated]

A NUC with the latest i5 would be fine I think for most of that. PSX emulation might be interesting since while Intel's Graphics are generally capable (I mean they can drive 4k+ screens) their drivers leave something to be desired so I have no idea if PSX emulation might shit the bed if you go for GPU acceleration.

[Azazel]

I assume the Intel Baytrail is pretty much just the next generation of Atom CPUs?

Looking into the NUC more seriously, though they're a little more expensive once kitted out than what I wanted to spend on a little emu box for the TV.

[Trippy]

Bay Trail are older Atoms (circa 2013) meant for tablets. You could use one in a NUC but that's not what they were intended for. There are like a billion different Atom model so they are hard to keep track of.

[Azazel]

Wow ok. Older Atoms. Yuck.