One rotten fan can spoil a community, but only if we let them
Thoughts on the BS emulator developers deal with every day, and what we can do about it.
Welcome back, ROM readers! Or maybe you should be welcoming me back? How does this work when I took an extra week off due to the flurry of gaming news last weekend? Maybe we each bust out a "nice to see you again" and get down to business.
This week's main focus is a bit different than usual — a personal reaction to a story I saw more than a week ago that'd been eating at me ever since. There's been a good bit of emulation news since last issue, but this felt like a more important topic to me than an extremely questionable PS3 Android emulator that somehow made its way onto the Play store (maybe I'll revisit this one next issue).
Does this issue's topic have anything to do with a yearning desire for solidarity with the millions of people across the United States protesting our deeply corrupt and hateful administration? Yeah, there might be a little bit of that going on! I'm well beyond hoping that we can all just be nice to each other and mend the state of our society, but I do think on the micro level, within the small spaces we choose to spend our leisure time, we can at least make things a little bit better, even just by being a little more aware.
So you're in for a little bleeding heart advocacy this week, but after that I promise it gets a bit more fun. A wealth of patch notes, fresh MiSTer cores and fan translations abound.
Tons of cool stuff! Let's go.
The Big Two
1. If you want emulation to thrive, don't just ignore retro gaming's worst fans — actively reject them
In early June, Flycast developer flyinghead (who I interviewed back in February about DCNet online multiplayer) announced on Discord that the iOS version of the emulator was discontinued, effective immediately, "due to persistent harassment from an iOS user." Not just harassment, but death threats, sent over Discord DMs from someone who kept rejoining the emulator's server on new accounts despite multiple bannings.
The response on Reddit, where I first saw this story, was... not great.
There were sympathetic messages, but they were few and far between in a sea of people stirring up arguments with the same old irrelevant arguments ("Apple is for morons") or revealing just how much they cared about the person receiving those death threats ("why not just ignore or call the police? What an immature move").
Imagine learning that someone who makes something you like and care about — someone who has likely devoted thousands of hours of their life to that effort, for nothing in return — is upset about getting death threats, and reacting with "What ever happened to the block button?" For fuck's sake, man.
I don't think this is how most of us behave. But I do think that in online communities, particularly ones that tend to attract these sorts of maladjusted fans, it's very easy for us to see "not being an asshole" as sufficient. And this incident with Flycast reminded me that it really isn't.
I reached out to flyinghead for more on what happened, and of course the story is more complicated than getting a few mean messages and saying "I quit" (and to be clear, the emulator remains in development — just not for iOS).
"First, I would like to make clear that dropping iOS support isn't because of a single individual. And although I publicly said it was the case, he was just the straw that broke the camel's back," flyinghead told me. He puts much of the blame at Apple's feet — specifically the fact that it doesn't allow JIT compilers, "a crucial feature if you want decent performance with any 6+-gen console emulator."
"So iOS users have to resort to hacks to enable JIT for an app, or jailbreak their device. And it's the usual cat and mouse game, with developers finding new hacks and Apple fixing them. In many cases, users aren't even aware of this and complain that Flycast is crashing when they start a game. This is a very frustrating situation for everybody, me included."
When PPSSPP found a way around needing JIT, many Flycast users asked for the same — which flyinghead estimated would be doable, with a lot of work, to get somewhere between 80% and 90% of the Dreamcast library up and running. "But the remaining 10%-20% are out of reach (in particular Windows CE games)," he said. "So even if I implemented it, which requires a significant amount of work, users would still complain about the games that don't run or run too slowly, and iOS users are particularly demanding."
When the user he described as a neo Nazi arrived in the Discord, insulted him and other members, and kept coming back after repeat bannings, he decided to pull the plug.
You could look at the existing issues flyinghead faced on iOS as evidence that he exaggerated the impact of that one bad apple. But to me, the challenges he faced getting Dreamcast emulation working on iOS and the unrealistic user expectations only emphasize how truly thankless the work is even when people aren't being dicks.
At the risk of sounding corny, I want to believe that part of the cure is proactive empathy. Not just lurking in an emulator community Discord and downloading the latest build, but saying thanks. Taking three minutes to describe what game you played on it and why it was meaningful. Engaging in a way that gives the person making the thing just a tiny bit of encouragement that all the time they're spending has a positive effect on the world, rather than purely serving as a magnet for problems and complaints.
But even more important than that positivity, I think, is rejecting the assholes. Shutting down their behavior, challenging a "joke" or tossed off uncaring comment — questioning why, if they're there because they ostensibly love this scene, this is what they've chosen to bring to it.
Flyinghead showed me a dozen banned Discord accounts he'd identified as belonging to the same user, who also messaged another emulator developer "Release the update lazy ass, if you don't wanna end up like Flyinghead."
"The worst part is to have to waste time on this: installing mod tools, verifying new members' profile, etc.," Flyinghead said. "I'm an older guy with a very stable life so it's not affecting me that much. But each such incident does take its toll, particularly when seeing how other people react. They don't give a shit but love the drama, like it's a great sitcom."
But he knows some people do care — like the fellow developer who posted a heartfelt message about their own similar experiences, and criticized the sorts of posts I called out above for failing to be supportive when it mattered most.
A single user did not kill FlyCast.
by u/AnotherSoftEng in EmulationOniOS
"You have no idea what it’s like to see your stuff being talked about online... You cannot partition this from your personal life and it leaks into how you feel for every moment of every day. I guarantee you that this same behavior was what built the circumstances up to this moment. The projects I ended up staying with were the projects in which the community showed empathy, understanding and support through hard times—regardless of a toxic, vocal minority. Heck, some of the communities I ended up sticking with had the largest vocal minorities. The community always made up for that."
It really is never just one bad actor that ruins things in any fandom. It's on to the people arround them — you and me — to either shrug and let their shit slide, or do our best to counteract it.
2. "Fan" translation no more with Hilltop Works, XSEED and Milano's Odd Job Collection
Months ago, fan translator Hilltop Works — featured many times in this newsletter, but in particular for his hacking and translation work on Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 — told me that his next project was actually stepping out of the world of unofficial translation into a licensed release of an old game that had never been available in English. Finally, at last weekend's Wholesome Direct, we got to see what it was: Milano's Odd Job Collection, a lighthearted PS1 game from Wonder Boy developer Westone.
If you're not familiar with the game, I recommend this concise video from Jimmy Hapa showing it off and talking a bit about its history. A slice of life minigame collection that has you playing a young girl working odd jobs over summer break, you'll also get to decorate your (uncle's) home and do some other small activities that'd be at home in a life sim today.
I can see why Marvelous's XSEED, which just released a new Rune Factory, would be hot to publish Milano's Odd Job Collection in 2025. It's the kind of game that I can't imagine sold many copies in 1999 (and of course was never released in the west), but slots right into a thriving cozy ecosystem today.
The emulation is being done by a small company called Implicit Conversions, with Hilltop regular (and another recurring interviewee here at ROM) Cargodin doing translation. Features-wise, Implicit Conversions says to expect "Rewind Timeline, save sates, and trophy support" and the option to choose from newly recorded English VO, or the original Japanese VO along with new English text.
I'll admit I hadn't heard of Implicit Conversions until now, so I'm eager to see how the emulation here compares to, say, Digital Eclipse's legacy collections or Nintendo's often poor showing with its own games. They actually have three projects launching with Limited Runs Games this year: re-releases of Fear Effect, Fighting Force and its sequel. That's a bit surprising since Limited Run has been working on its own Carbon Engine to emulate a variety of classic systems, including the PS1 which all the above games were released on. Maybe it's just down to bandwidth? Limited Run's got a whole trilogy of Gex games on the way, after all.
It wasn't so long ago that I talked to Limited Run about the debut of the Carbon Engine and speculated that its success could perhaps pave the way for new translations of games that had never before been released in English. It's beyond heartening to not only see that playing out, but to see folks like Hilltop Works, who've spent years doin' it just for the love of tha game, involved in making something I'll be able to buy on Steam and helping bring these games to a new audience. It's a long overdue acknowledgement that the work of romhackers and translators isn't just important — it's every bit as good as it needs to be to slap a price tag on it.
Patching In
PPSSPP 1.19 builds in modern multiplayer, newly reverse-engineered audio – Quite an exciting update for the already great PSP emulator. The new implementation of Sony's proprietary Atrac3+ music format is one major component. Developer Henrik Rydgård says the this was previously "mostly based on guesswork and vibes" but he's now "reverse engineered in detail how it works, mainly through intense testing on hardware" and as a result fixed "a large number of long-standing compatibility problems" with music in games including Flatout, Digimon Adventure and TNT Racers. There are also graphical fixes for Persona 1/2 and Jack & Daxter.
But the multiplayer stuff may be the biggest deal. There's now built-in support for connecting to fan servers that have resurrected PSP multiplayer. Wanna play WipEout or Syphon Filter multiplayer on your PSP? Get to it. Don't let your dreams be dreams.
BigPEmu and BigInstinct embiggened – Rich Whitehouse's pair of boutique emulators for the Atari Jaguar and Killer Instinct arcade game have each gotten updates in recent weeks! For BigPemu, there are some niche fixes, new Linux Arm64 builds, more scripting functionality, and features brought over from the newer BigInstinct. Meanwhile, BigInstinct now has a stereoscopic 3D option, Arm64 and x64 Linux builds, and an "artificial read delay" option. That one's so people stop messaging Rich "wanting to replicate original hard drive 'fight on' sample timing."
Always read the Dolphin Progress Report – Remember that Dolphin can now run a limited number of GameCube/Wii games at 120 fps? This latest report goes into detail on that feature, but it also talks about a nice new feature called the Granule Synthesis Audio System that minimizes the annoyance of audio slowdown, as well as significanta improvemements to frame pacing (mmmm, smoothness!). It's a great read as ever.
SquirrelJME gets DoJa audio support – One of the key in-development emulators related to Japanese flip phone (keitai) preservation is makin' sound! An exciting milestone for a still rapidly growing scene.
Core Report
MiSTer Taito F2 core and Sega Saturn core hit update_all – This Taito F2 release landed at the end of May, but with this issue's delay I'm just getting around to hitting it now. Look at all these supported games, courtesy of dev wickerwaka: Cameltry, Dino Rex, Don Doko Don, Drift Out, Final Blow, Growl, Gun Frontier, Liquid Kids, Mega Blast, The Ninja Kids, PuLiRuLa, Solitary Fighter, Super Space Invaders '91.
Meanwhile, the long-in-beta Saturn core is also now available via update_all with more recent fixes as well. I guess this is basically the "official" release, so, yeehaw: MiSTer Saturn!
Super Cassette Vision gets a MiSTer Core – I'm sure everyone was really champing at the bit for this one, right? I mean, where else are you going to find a Dragon Ball game?
Jotego releases Metro Cross and Laser Ghost – Jotego's latest for the MiSTer and Analogue Pocket is this Namco arcade platformer from 1985. Or was his latest when I started taking notes for this issue. He's since also dropped Laser Ghost, a 1990 Sega light gun shooter. Looks pretty fun despite a We Have Ghostbusters at Home aesthetic.
Translation Station
I regret becoming aware of Misfortune: A Story of Suspicious Friendships – Hooray, a translation of a PS1 kusoge (shitty game), like Ancient Roman, only instead of an RPG it's this... hideous horror adventure? I think I've been cursed just perceiving it.
Patlabor for the Sega Genesis – I quite like the Patlabor anime film, but never thought to look into any games based on the series. Of course there's a handful of them, including Patlabor: Type-98 Activate! for the Genesis. "If you're a fan of the show, or a fan of gameplay that is similar to Snatcher then you'll probably enjoy Patlabor," says translator Barbarian_Moham. Here's what it looks like in action.
Jingle Cats will serenade you all night long – A smaller Hilltop Works release, but fascinatingly odd. "If you don't know, this is a PS1 game where you make cats fall in love so they will sing pop songs for you, using the Jingle Cats novelty CD license," writes Hilltop. "AKA, the type of weird shit I can't get enough of. I hope you enjoy." Listening to cats mew along to Like a Virgin, I'm not sure enjoy is the word I'd use. But man do human beings come up with some amazing stuff.
Good pixels
The Patlabor fan translation got me curious how many cool lookin' Patlabor games there have been over the years, so off to Mobygames I went...
