Raspberry Pi 5 Recalbox Emulation Tested

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Solid Sega Saturn gaming

LeePSPVideo tests emulators on the Raspberry Pi 5
(Image credit: LeePSPVideo)

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.

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LeePSPVideo tests emulators on the Raspberry Pi 5
(Image credit: LeePSPVideo)

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.

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Les Pounder
Les Pounder

Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mitch074
    "the PS1 had much better 3D performance " - not true. However, the Saturn used a quadratic accelerator when PS1 (and PC) were using triangles; properly made ports for the Saturn were 30% faster than PS1 (see : Tomb Raider, which actually came out on Saturn first), however many developers decided to make ALL their games using triangles, and simply used squares with a side set to 0 to emulate these. And when they made a square ? On PS1 you needed 2 triangles, and on Saturn... They used 2 triangulated quads instead of using a single quad. Because, who has time to make a proper port?

    That's before mentioning the lack of perspective correction on the PS1's texture mapper, causing all the textures to warp hideously.

    So, no - the main reason wasn't because the Saturn was less powerful - if anything, it was the most powerful 3D-capable 32-bit machine of the time, ahead of the PS1, the N64, the 3DO or the CD32.

    The Saturn's main problem was Sega's own 32X Megadrive/Genesis extension : ask a game maker to port their game to Sega's platform, and they have to choose one or the other (while using similar chips, the 32X, with or without Mega CD, had very little else in common with the Saturn). So, which one? Almost unanimous answer was, "Meh - I'll do PS1 instead, and treat Sega's platform once Sega sorted out their crap".
    Reply
  • artk2219
    mitch074 said:
    "the PS1 had much better 3D performance " - not true. However, the Saturn used a quadratic accelerator when PS1 (and PC) were using triangles; properly made ports for the Saturn were 30% faster than PS1 (see : Tomb Raider, which actually came out on Saturn first), however many developers decided to make ALL their games using triangles, and simply used squares with a side set to 0 to emulate these. And when they made a square ? On PS1 you needed 2 triangles, and on Saturn... They used 2 triangulated quads instead of using a single quad. Because, who has time to make a proper port?

    That's before mentioning the lack of perspective correction on the PS1's texture mapper, causing all the textures to warp hideously.

    So, no - the main reason wasn't because the Saturn was less powerful - if anything, it was the most powerful 3D-capable 32-bit machine of the time, ahead of the PS1, the N64, the 3DO or the CD32.

    The Saturn's main problem was Sega's own 32X Megadrive/Genesis extension : ask a game maker to port their game to Sega's platform, and they have to choose one or the other (while using similar chips, the 32X, with or without Mega CD, had very little else in common with the Saturn). So, which one? Almost unanimous answer was, "Meh - I'll do PS1 instead, and treat Sega's platform once Sega sorted out their crap".
    I was about to say the same thing, the PS1 succeeded so well not because it was more powerful (it definitely was not) but because the Saturn was more difficult to program for and Sega had alienated external developer so it got fewer titles, the Saturn was more expensive out of the box, and Sega couldn't stop being their own worst enemy. Sega of Japan had to have control over everything even though Sega of America was making most of the sales and most of the market, there was very little communication back and forth between the two organizations so they both ended up duplicating efforts and thats how we got both the 32x and Saturn. Sega America wanted to extend the genesis life out to 1996 and hoped the 32x add on could add more capabilities while keeping the genesis market, project Neptune was going to make an all in one 32x Genesis console before it was cancelled. The plan was to release a "true" Genesis successor in 1996 or so, but Sega of Japan did its own thing and came up with the Saturn, which admittedly did win in the home Japanese market (The Saturn outsold the Playstation in Japan for the first 3 years or so, thats the only market Sega won in, and it was Sega's best selling console in Japan). In the process they alienated the rest of the world, its was a giant crap show that everyone got to watch.
    Reply
  • SirNathan
    mitch074 said:
    So, no - the main reason wasn't because the Saturn was less powerful - if anything, it was the most powerful 3D-capable 32-bit machine of the time, ahead of the PS1, the N64, the 3DO or the CD32.
    More powerful than PS1 certainly, but the Saturn is absolutely not more powerful than the N64. You might look at a detailed spec comparison and cherry-pick a couple things where Saturn came out ahead, but N64 has higher polygons/second, and that's what people are usually comparing - 3D performance. Nobody denies that Saturn was a 2D powerhouse though, and many will admit it had tricks up its sleeve not used by most developers.
    Reply
  • mitch074
    SirNathan said:
    More powerful than PS1 certainly, but the Saturn is absolutely not more powerful than the N64. You might look at a detailed spec comparison and cherry-pick a couple things where Saturn came out ahead, but N64 has higher polygons/second, and that's what people are usually comparing - 3D performance. Nobody denies that Saturn was a 2D powerhouse though, and many will admit it had tricks up its sleeve not used by most developers.
    The N64 was easier to program for, since it had a single 64-bit processor; but, due to bus width and RAM usage constraints, it was mostly used as a 32-bit processor - where it did shine. However, while it was far more complex to program for, the Saturn had more (non-unified) RAM and, cumulated, equivalent potential processing power - and used a CD for storage, which allowed far more textures to be used.
    Still, yeah, the N64 could dispute the title of most powerful 3D console of that era. It's debatable though, as few games were ported to both; Quake was, and it looked better on N64, but Panzer Dragoon looked fantastic on the base Saturn where games like Rayman 2 needed a RAM expansion pack to shine.
    Reply