Why is my computer so extremely bad at handling NES emulators?

[*Laurelindo*]

This is ridiculous.
I have tested countless NES emulators for like 30 minutes now, and they all have some lame flaws that make them useless.
Either they have bad sounds, cannot load Full Screen, have bad colours, play the sounds too quickly, or simply refuse to load in the first place.

The only emulators that seem sensible so far are FCE Ultra and Jnes, but - yes, they also had flaws.
FCE Ultra cannot show Full Screen mode ("DirectDraw: Error setting display mode" yadda-yadda) and Jnes is bitching with me - it plays sound fine on American versions, but refuses to play it on Japanese versions (and I wanted to play Dragon Quest in Japanese ).

Why do they suck like this when every site boasts about how awesome and compatible they are?

I used to play on NesTopia, but that emulator has started to have some serious sound issues lately and constantly slows the sound down, then quickly jumps back in sync all the time which is really annoying.

[Sylvie]

Have you tried using NesterJ?

[*Laurelindo*]

Have you tried using NesterJ?

Hm yes, there were two issues with that emulator, but luckily not too major:

*Full Screen doesn't actually show the full size, it just shows the game at small size in the middle of the screen with a huge black space filling up the rest of the screen

*the GamePad controls are super-complicated and only refer to the buttons as "Button 4" etc.

Other than that it seems very good, I just need to fix these two problems somehow.
How can I do that?

FCE Ultra would also be great if I could just solve that stupid "DirectDraw: Error setting display mode" stuff, which is apparently only there to stop me from using an otherwise good emulator.
I mean, it's the only emulator that cannot show Full Screen at all but every other emulator can do it just fine - Murphy's Law at its finest.

Further help would be greatly appreciated.

[Tigmafuzz]

The only NES emulator that ever worked for me was VirtuaNES. Everything else was far too much trouble.

[*Laurelindo*]

The only NES emulator that ever worked for me was VirtuaNES. Everything else was far too much trouble.

Hm this is the best one so far, although there's a problem even with this one - for some reason the graphics become dramatically worse if I use Full Screen, but it stays fine if I use the "Zoom x 4" option (which is practically the same as Full Screen).
The problem is that "Zoom x 4" also leaves the menu and stuff at the top of the screen, and I prefer to play without such objects in the way, so is there any way to fix the actual Full Screen option?

[Old Manus]

I'd hazard a guess that your hardware/OS is a bit too high-tech for these decades-old pieces of freeware. Is it a new computer?

On the other hand, you could be trying to run this on an Amstrad or something

[*Laurelindo*]

Is it a new computer?

It's not ancient, but it's not new either; I bought it in 2008, about three and half year ago now.

[Sylvie]

Are your video drivers up-to-date and running properly?

[*Laurelindo*]

Are your video drivers up-to-date and running properly?

Yes they are, but actually I've heard several people having the same problems with NesTopia, with skipping out-of-sync sound etc, but it seems like using Save State and saving the game somehow fixes this problem.
At least I seem to always get good sync a few seconds after using Save State and saving the game there, don't know why it works but apparently it does.

I've also noticed that Jnes only has mute sound for the first two Japanese Dragon Quest games, it works perfect with Dragon Quest 3 and 4, so I'll try that emulator when I get to those games.