In the format of Qwertie's Controversial Top Fives

• Wanted Convenience Features
• Wanted Emulation Improvements
• Wanted things for Marat to do

Top Five Convenience Features that should be added to iNES and the other emulators, if applicable.... iNES for Windows costs $35 US, and, while the emulation is fairly good, I just can't bring myself to fork over all that cash when it's just not complete. I've sort of designed this so each slot covers as much as possible to avoid turning this into a top ten list....

1. Real-time saving feature - On a real NES, you could leave it on all night, paused, and continue your game in the morning. It was annoying, but it could be done. Well, one my computer, I can hardly keep Windows 95 running for more than an hour straight without a crash. And, I have to turn it off at night (don't ask... I just do, okay?) Since iNES can only save the battery back-up, it's fairly useless for most action games (unless you particularly love playing the first two levels over, and over, and over....) On those games with top ten lists, you can't keep one (I know, you couldn't keep a top ten list on a real NES either - and that was stupid too.) It would be nice if there was more than one save slot you could choose, also.
2. Allow .MID or .MOD sound logging! Paso has it (although it's quite buggy), after all.... I know the NES didn't have any award-winning compositions, but some of these tunes are worth listening to even when you aren't playing.
3. The ESC key should absolutely not kill your game! Using the ESC key is the habitual way of getting in and out of a PC game's menu. Out of habit, or even by accident (believe me, it's easy to hit ESC by accident.) I will hit the ESC key, then hit myself for being so idiotic. Although, I can see the need for a "boss key" at work... maybe ESC could optionally be used to minimise the program. If I really wanted to quit, I would hit Alt+F4... something rather difficult to do accidentally.
4. Allow the game to be optionally synchronized with the speed of a real NES. It would accomplish this the same way VGB does: it would skip frames if it isn't going fast enough, and sleep() off its timeslice when it's going too fast. There could also be a control so you could choose to set it to, say, 70% or 120% of real NES speed.
5. Have more options in the settings dialog box. As well as a main volume control, Separate volume bars for the different sound channels would be nice... I, for one, think channel 4 is too loud. It would be nice to reduce the volume without turning it off altogether. A slider should be added to change the SoundRate. Probably most importantly, the keyboard should be customizable.

Top Five Emulation Improvements for iNES

1. Fix the sound! On many people's computers, iNES has chunky sound. (This can usually be fixed by adding the line SoundRate=8192 or less in the .INI file) On my computer, there's a 20-30% chance that it will crash itself and MMSYSTEM (SND930.DRV), thus forcing me to do a reboot to get any sound, and sometimes, to even get the thing working. (One workaround to both problems, and this doesn't always work, is to activate the WinGroove "wavetable synthesis imitator" before you start the program.)
2. Many games' status bars don't work right, such as SMB3 when you are playing it. Fixing time!
3. Make it so that you can see the text in Star Tropics! And fix the palette.
4. and 5: Under construction

Five Things Marat Should Do

As everyone knows, Marat Fayzullin is the author of iNES Windows and several other emu's. It seems opinions of him range from indifferent to resentful. Here's some things he should do to put a better connotation on his name:

1. Lower the price! After imprementing all of the things in the above lists, well, okay, maybe it is worth those big bucks after all, but not in its current form.
2. Put out a good demo of iNES that can make people decide they want to buy it. Why buy something when you don't know what you're getting? I never do. The demo should show off the important features, like real-time saves, battery back-up saving and good sound. It would only have to have some small but very annoying problems, like that there could be a countdown when you start it and after every three to ten minutes playing, and the .INI file saving and loading code would be missing.
3. Make the emulator more pirate-resistant. Don't tempt me. When somebody puts out a "neutered" iNES and says "hey, d/l it now", who can resist? Especially when I know I wouldn't have bought it anyway.... however, don't lose your sanity like The_Brain and try to make a iNES-OS that you have to run from a floppy, or anything rediculous like that....
4. Come on EFNET IRC and chat with us! Once everybody gets through calling you a f'ing lamer, you could turn into another one of those great addicted zombies like us and be the virtual cool guy of the year!
5. We know you have a ton of games, including Zelda II. Release them!

By the way Marat, good job on SMB3.... I hope you're working on fixing thee palette and the status bar...

Questions, Questions, Questions

• Why did you order the discontinuation of your VGB DOS port?? I can't say I care a whole lot given that it's great already, but is there something wrong with even better versions coming out?
• Why is iNES-Win $35 but iNES-Unix/X $0? It's not that bad programming windoze as compared to Unix... and besides that you hardly have to deal with the GUI in an emulator... btw if you want my money you better implement those features quick 'cause I'm considering getting linux... mwah ha ha!