RetroArch
A pathetic excuse for emulator developers - such as those behind Genesis Plus GX, PicoDrive, ProSystem, and pretty much any actively developed emulator nowadays - to not bother their arses making any native binaries which would run faster and actually work properly instead of constantly breaking no matter what is done.
As for the program itself, it's meant to be a frontend for the libretro API, so it isn't an emulator in itself but loads emulator files known as cores and presents them in an interface. (Said interface looks pretty, but is laid out in a horrible, tangled, cryptic mess of menus.)
The developers of RetroArch do not seem to understand the difference between stable and nightly either. They simply choose a random release date and call it the stable release, no matter what the build is like. If something is wrong, it's never their fault.
Anything that is fixed in RetroArch seems to only ever pertain to shaders, overlays, playlist building, or input lag. Everything else is ignored, i.e. the non-fancy things that actually involve being able to just sit back and play a game in the first place, which is what I wanted to do, not faff around with the settings for half an hour only for it to crash and not save the configuration file.
It seems like the main reason it is so strongly supported is because of resources like emulation gametechwiki, which redditors quote verbatim, as well as the forced usage via certain emulators being unavailable elsewhere.
As for the program itself, it's meant to be a frontend for the libretro API, so it isn't an emulator in itself but loads emulator files known as cores and presents them in an interface. (Said interface looks pretty, but is laid out in a horrible, tangled, cryptic mess of menus.)
The developers of RetroArch do not seem to understand the difference between stable and nightly either. They simply choose a random release date and call it the stable release, no matter what the build is like. If something is wrong, it's never their fault.
Anything that is fixed in RetroArch seems to only ever pertain to shaders, overlays, playlist building, or input lag. Everything else is ignored, i.e. the non-fancy things that actually involve being able to just sit back and play a game in the first place, which is what I wanted to do, not faff around with the settings for half an hour only for it to crash and not save the configuration file.
It seems like the main reason it is so strongly supported is because of resources like emulation gametechwiki, which redditors quote verbatim, as well as the forced usage via certain emulators being unavailable elsewhere.
User: So what emulator should I be using these days? Just want to play games like Comix Zone and Virtua Racing Deluxe again, been years and I had to sell my old Mega Drive Model 1 and 32X...
Redditor: Kega Fusion? Bruh, that's so 2010! Get RetroArch, it's so amazing and lets you have shaders and overlays! Use Genesis Plus GX with the nuked YM2612 core, it's the most accurate one that's still fast.
*downloads RetroArch-x64, and after an hour of configuration, loads the game ROM only for it to crash. running the debug output to command line produces absolute nonsense*
User: Oh, feck it, I'll go back to Kega Fusion. What a load of old shite that was...
Redditor: Kega Fusion? Bruh, that's so 2010! Get RetroArch, it's so amazing and lets you have shaders and overlays! Use Genesis Plus GX with the nuked YM2612 core, it's the most accurate one that's still fast.
*downloads RetroArch-x64, and after an hour of configuration, loads the game ROM only for it to crash. running the debug output to command line produces absolute nonsense*
User: Oh, feck it, I'll go back to Kega Fusion. What a load of old shite that was...