I recently installed xbmc on my pc and connected it to my projector via HDMI, with the intention of using it to replace my modded xbox. The modded xbox is awesome, but just can't handle hi-def video. I still use it however for classic console emulation. the problem is, there is no consistency in the interfaces of the emulators, and some are much nicer than others. I noticed that there is a launcher plugin for xbmc which is designed to launch pc games and emulators right from xbmc....so i figured i should give it a try. I figured that if it works well, thats awesome...if not, i can set up MaLa and try to get xbmc to launch Mala when i want to play emulators.
but the problem is, i haven't done any console emulation in a long time on the pc, so i'm out of the loop as to which emulators are good to use. (especially ones that are known to work well withing xbmc).
here are the consoles I am planning on emulating:
NES
SNES
Genesis/32x
Turbografx16
NES and SNES being most important to me. i don't care to emulate any of the really old consoles...i dind't have them as a child and have no attachment to them at all. and i really don't care too much to emulate newer systems either, sure there is the odd playstation game here and there i wouldn't mind emulating, but in all honesty, i just don't spend that much time playing games anyway (excluding my mame cabinets)
i need emulators that can be command line driven, and controlled by a gamepad (i'm was leaning towards a snes to usb adapter, but i found a wii classic controller to usb adapter, which still has the snes feel with a real Nintendo Dpad, but a few extra buttons that can come in handy for emulation purposes)
i am still kicking around the idea of an intel Atom based mini ITX system,but for now i am running it on the following system:
AMD Athlon X2 5000 processor
4gb ram
Radeon HD3400 graphics
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
as for the roms themselves, i have that under control, i think. i know mame roms have to be matched with the proper version of mame, but that doesn't really apply to console roms does it? i already have the roms i want on my modded xbox, so I am going to assume they will be fine.
so, which emulators should i be looking for?