Kawaks emulator -- is it worth using?

[sofakng]

It seems as though Kawaks supports just as many games as MAME but I heard it supports "extra features".

What are these extra features?

Does anybody use Kawaks for some games but MAME for the others?  Is this worth doing?

[Lilwolf]

depends.

if you can run all those games in mame full screen... probably not.

kawaks IS much faster.

as for the extra features.  These will make the games look better, but less authentic.  Like transparensies for games which the original didn't have them (like fireballs in SF games) and running games at higher resolutions with special algorithms to make them act like they are higher resolutions.

[SirPoonga]

kawaks is faster than mame in neogeo emulation.  Also there are games that did have transparencies and mame can't do that.  Also nebula and kawaks have a working memory card emulation.  They both can simulate MVS too, I believe.

[CthulhuLuke]

you can hack in your own system select in Mame, I believe they still have it in there commented out, and it becomes one of the options when you press tab.  Basically Kawaks and Nebula are faster than Mame and only run Cps-2, Cps-1, and Neo Geo.  They do run all of these well and have more video options than Mame, so to a fan of the games that are on these systems the emulators are a plus.  If you're solely looking for Neo Geo games, run NeoRageX, its been around forever, and theres been a lot of hacked versions released for newer games.  It will run on systems as low as my parents 333mhz celeron.
   If your system can handle all of the games Kawaks emulates in Mame perfectly, then there's no problem with sticking to solely mame, but if you want the extra video options, MVS/AES and country selecter, and all those other goods you can go with Kawaks.
   Btw, Nebula also supports multiple MVS slots, its a little buggy when selecting which game you have in the slots, like I think odd numbers of games will make the selection a little off, but it works fine.  This would be a cool setup if you had a real mvs cart and wanted to run it just like the real thing.

[JoeB]

I guess it all comes down to what PC you're going to be running your Neo Geo games on.

If you have a slow PC, or want to artificially make the video look better than the original, then use Kawaks or Nebula.

If you want the game to look as the original, have a decent PC, or connecting to a real arcade monitor, then MAME is your best bet.

[Howard_Casto]

kawaks is faster than mame in neogeo emulation.  Also there are games that did have transparencies and mame can't do that.  Also nebula and kawaks have a working memory card emulation.  They both can simulate MVS too, I believe.

Not true..... There were games with simulated transparencies and mame does indeed emulate that accurately.  What kawaks does is turn them into true transparencies.  Kawaks can do the region changes and stuff like cl said (which btw are virtually useless as you can also change the region in the soft dip in mame) but that's about all it has going for it, other than speed.  Afaik only nebula has mvs support, kawaks doesn't.  

So long story short.... no it isn't worth using, at least on a mame cabinet.  

As the others have said, it can "fake" higher resolutions, but that's dumb anyway as the graphics are raster and you can't tell any difference.  It is faster than mame, but there are other neogeo emulators out there that are faster than it.

As usual, the only benefit of running anything other than mame for neogeo games is the ability to put the games in "console" mode. But why you would want to run the console version on an arcade cabinet is beyond me.  


Kawaks and nebula are made for people who wish to casually play neogeo games on their desktop pc, not more hardcore people who have cabinets and launch from a frontend, ect....