I have to say that I really like the upscaled image and that's how I played games on different emulators for like 20 years now. I spend endless amount of time tinkering with emulators to get the best image out of some old game, often spending more time setting it up than playing the game. That alone was so much fun. However, I always struggled with setting it up that it really works overall. Every now and then, 3D Elements used as 2D elements have strange artifacts, e.g. with texture filtering and mess up with the nice image. That's why today I just stick with the native resolution look. As someone who always played upscaled that was quite a change, but I don't mind it much anymore once the game really gets going.

I think the Duckstation effects, especially the ‘smoothing’, is seriously impressive.

DuckStation offers the option of using on a Xbox Series X (which is awesome for modern displays), but the MiSTer with the analog output to a CRT wins the day for me for the original display authenticity.

cool vid; although i did grow up with a ps1, i find that visual enhancements rly improve the experience with 3d games, having smoother textures with less pixelation takes out a lot of noise from the screen, making it easier to enjoy

Nice video, I don't know if this feature was available on Duckstation when you made this video but the down sampling option on Duckstation is amazing, basically you can render the game to 4k and then it down samples that image to it's native resolution, benefits are it gets rid of all the noisy aliasing however the image remains softer / more true to the OG lower resolution the PS1 provided meaning textures and backgrounds don't stand out like a sore thumb as pin point sharp boxy images. So that's my middle ground don't personally want to deal with the hassle of a CRT so I use duckstation 4k downsampled to native output resolution with PGXP options enabled, Overclocked the CPU by 500mhz to clear up frame dips certain games had on OG hardware, 4:3 aspect on my LG OLED with BFI enabled to get close that CRT motion clarity with an additional CRT filter applied. This way I think it preserves the authenticity and art of the OG hardware whilst also adding some quality of life modernisations to smooth out framerates / reduce texture wobbling.

when comparing audio output there's a relatively easy way to find the difference between two waveforms. If you line up two tracks EXACTLY in an audio editor or DAW and invert the phase of one track they will cancel each other out and you will be left with the difference between the two sources. You can test this with a sine wave (or any identical audio file) and if done correctly there will be zero audio output despite playback. This needs to be sample accurate, and the level of the two tracks needs to be identical to be effective. Due to this it can be a little finicky but if executed properly one can definitively see if there is any difference in output on a technical level. Granted this will not tell you which is "better" or more accurate, but you will at least be able to assess whether there is a difference. Would be interested to see something like this in future videos!

Pretty cool, how would you rate ease of use for the duck station? I have no problem with emulation, although it could be just me, but I’m always finding myself messing with my PC far too long to get the damn things to work right vs just turning my Mister on and tweaking a few settings.

I grew up with PS1 (well playing it, not owning it, I was a Nintendo kid :D), and yeah, I prefer the original PS1 look on MiSTer. I do think sometimes it's bit too old for my taste with all the warping and pixelated mess, but it's also part of its charm and I get that! As for the logos, I love both and my MiSTer is probably the best addition to my gaming life of the last decade, but I'd give the slight edge to DuckStation because their logo is really nice :D

To answer your question "what are you trying to achieve?" To enjoy the games I grew up with on the ps1 easily on whatever hardware I have lying around, whether it's an old phone, an old laptop/desktop or even a smart tv. I'm a big believer in the 80/20 rule. If you can achieve 80% of the result with only 20% of the cost/effort, that's a win. The mister is a fantastic piece of hardware that I would love to own someday, but it's quite expensive. Duckstation gets near as makes no difference results, for free. Duckstation passes the 80-20 rule with flying colors, more like 99-0. So the winner in my humble opinion is clear :)

I agree, Duckstation looks like it has a softer, blurrier image when outputting native resolution. The Ridge Racer comparison really shows the much cleaner and sharper edges being output by the MiSTer. However, I don't think anyone is using Duckstation without hardware rendering unless the situation calls for it being turned off. 8-bit and 16-bit, I don't think there's any question that the MiSTer is my favorite way to experience that era of gaming aside from real hardware. But 32-Bit is tough. Early 3D can be rough at times and I love when an emulator can kind of clean some of that up or better yet, get the game running at a higher or more stable framerate. While it isn't as "authentic" so to speak, it can actually greatly improve the experience of certain games from that era and make them more enjoyable. Great video!

I choose both. I also can recommend "xiaomi hdmi stick 4k" with ePSXe + 3d plugin. This little device has very powerful CPU and GPU. You would need OTG USB cable to plug extra USB storage with games and bluetooth controller(s), but result is astonishing. Very cool device for traveling (the smallest portable emulation-station-beast), if you want to leave your MiSTer at home.

Can you share power consumption of your PC running the Duckstation? MiSTer is ~15 Watts. If PC consumes 300 Watts, we are looking at 20x more electricity usage.

While I enjoy the enhancements to some of the 3D games (like you said, games that tend to have more colors usually look very good with enhancements, my personal choice being Megaman Legends 1 and 2), the lighting on R4 there is surprisingly different, at least to my eye. The shading from the lighting seems better on the Mister, and while you get a similar effect emulated, the color just doesn’t seem right. Also, the cars on the Mister look shiny, where on Duckstation they look matte most of the the time. In some scenes, they get the shine back, but I’m surprised how I noticed it. Could just be my brain fooling me, but I would play with the Mister for the “original” feeling, and then Duckstation enhanced and with a racing wheel for the “what-if” feeling.

Great video. Grew up during the 8-16-32 bit eras (got a PSX a week after release just before my 13th birthday). While I love the pixelated look with 2D stuff (pre-rendered backgrounds aside), I can’t stand 3D in low-res. Until MiSTer can do some sort of internal upscaling, I’ll stick to Duckstation in 1080p.

Can you give me your setting video on your mister please ? Thanks

Looks and enhancements aside, I could never get the same lap times in games like Rage Racer and Gran Turismo on emulation that I did on my original PS. I thought it just was me getting old, but enter MiSTer, and my lap times were back on track. I don’t know why, though. Timings?

Do you know what the status of Fast Disc Speed hardware emulation on MiSTer? MiSTer would be a great replacement for PS1 speedrunners if it loaded at PS2 FDS speed. For example in Crash Team Racing this is absolutely critical.

Funny, that's the first odd thing I noticed when I started using DS, that clockface in Symphony of the Night :)

I grew up on ps1 so I would say I like the look of PlayStation on Mister, but the moment I prefer to play on duck station mainly due the the geometry correction and up scaling even more so on games I played to death it makes them feel and look different but familiar at the same time 🕹👾🕹👾

I had a PlayStation in high school, and I think DuckStation adds new life to games that I enjoyed. Need for Speed High Stakes (and so many others) look insanely good with the enhancements!

I prefer the original resolution on a CRT. I like uprezzed tweaked PS1 visuals at first but now I find they look odd more often than not. I've gotten my 7yo son hooked on Pepsiman recently he's singing the theme tune at every opportunity.

Depends on the game. Something that's mostly 3D can look really good with all the enhancements but stuff that was mostly 2D or a mix of both generally looks better on a CRT with mister personally.

I want an accurate ps1 so the MiSTer. Also people who chose a fpga solution had emulation and are not satisfied with emulation. Its the main reason to get a MiSTer imo.

I grew up with the PS1. I have a PS1 with a X-station, and use duckstation or Beetle HW through Retroarch. I go back and forth on how I play PS1. I love the upscaling features of the emulators and think the games look fantastic. The upscaling to near PS2 quality doesn’t bother me. It’s the fact that I have the actual PS1 machine and if I’m not going to use it then why own it. So I push the round power button on the PS1 and grab the wired controller and boot up Arc the Lad II in its low res glory. Unprezzed or pixelated is a win because it means I’m gaming which makes me smile. Overall no preference either way. I enjoy having options.

I like to play on crt and feel the nostalgia. So I prefer the closer ps1 option. And knowing how mister works, I will prefer it. Also because probably the inputlag is the same or better than original hardware. Emulators usually has ton of input lag.

Haven’t used duckstation, but I like the graphical enhancement. Except with a few things like Tekken. I felt like I wanted a smooth looking Tekken. Until now.

Original look is amazing with CRT TV + HD Retrovision Cable

I grew up with a PlayStation and I still prefer to enhance the 3D visuals on PS1 when I can. I have vivid childhood memories of my eyes hurting and watering after a little while due to blurry and pixelated visuals on my old CRT VCR combo.

Grew up with the playstation, and I loved messing with upscaled graphics on emulators at the start of the new millennium lool. Nowadays the 15khz OG signal does it for me

I grew up with Atari 2600 then NES and eventually landed a Playstation. I prefer Mister only because it's connected to my TV and looks exactly like the PS1 (or close enough to fool me). I with there was something better than Bob/Weave to some extent on Mister but everything is playable exactly like I remember. If I want to play Metal Gear Solid with better quality though, Duckstation. In some regards I guess it is kind of exactly what you are saying - some games I would prefer Duckstation others, Mister. The end.

Hmm that software rendering looks more like 20% better on the Mister core tbh. Better contrast, colours, clarity. Other words starting with c. More cohesive :) DS version looks a little washed out and soft maybe. I tend to use DS these days though.. The perspective correction thing is a big deal imo (even if I have a soft spot for the authentic look too) *20% might be a bit much actually. Let's say 10% :)

for the SOTN question, i think the first clip is duck station and the 2nd is mister.

Duckstation -> high internal resolution and geometry fixes -> output in low resolution to old normal sized CRT That's what I would do for 3D games if actually possible, but I don't have a CRT :D So I'd love for someone to compare that. Also, MiSTer-Kun is fine (never liked Diskun), but the duck is a 10/10

I think the MiSTer sounds a little more authentic. That kind authenticity that wouldn't force a CS2 review on a guy who just wants SSRPG content. I dunno, might just be my headphones. Or maybe a tube is starting to go on my amp. Hard2Say.

Depends. PS1 wasn't made to be viewed on LCD televisions, so I'll take Duckstation in hardware mode if that is my only choice. If I have a CRT then I want hardware accurate graphics, with graininess and dithering, because the CRT will smooth that out a bit anyway.

Voices in Castlevania sound slightly higher pitched in Duckstation. Nothing game breaking, though. I probably wouldn't have noticed it without a direct comparison, despite having heard this part a tew thousands times on real hardware. I never tried duckstation, but it seems like a very fine piece of sotware.

I like the look of PS1 games upscaled to 1080p and anti aliasing to max. I like my 3D games to have no jagged/pixelated edges. It looks like a PS2 hd remaster of PS1 games. PS1 emulators allow for a super sharp image that I've never been able to equally match with PS2 games on PCSX2.

the visual differences are pretty obvious: mister seems to use nearest neighbor scaling to upscale to whatever resolution you're rendering the video at, meanwhile duck station uses bilinear scaling. i bet there's an option in duck station somewhere to do it. also duck station uses a different gamma curve i think. regarding audio - i'm an audio engineer btw - the duck station option sounds better. the mister one sounds like there are some bits missing in the output of the speech audio - alucard sounds bass boosted because of that and it's like his voice is compressed. I'm not sure which one is more accurate to the hardware, but my guess would be duck station, since clearly a lot of care was put into those samples, and on the mister they sound bad enough that in a commercial game of this size they'd require re-mastering. i personally grew up with consoles starting the atari vcs and later c64 and sega megadrive but i didn't have a ps1 or a saturn or a n64, i went straight to pc in 98, so my thought is always higher resolution = better. also on the 16 bit consoles and the sega 32X which I had, the gritty rotation effects on sprites never looked imo. i prefer when the rotation is done in a clean manner, so i prefer the duck station version of the cross being thrown by alucard. honestly i'd love to see games rendered on the duck station in high resolution mode, but then "pixelated" using a crt filter to give it that grit. I think that could be pretty interesting. also wanted to commend you that you're speaking more and more clearly with every video, good job 👍

I'm not sure which I prefer but fast forward 30 years and these types of emulationwill be the only options. Although I would like to believe that software emulation will be 99.999% accurate as well.

Personally I prefer the high res rendering of duckstation at least if it's going to be played on a modern TV and I am someone who grew up with ps1. If you're truly after a more authentic experience then I think you at least need good quality crt shaders because there games even on mister do not look like what we used to play on modern tvs

Once again, I truly wish PGXP was feasible in MiSTer. Also, as an aside: I thought I outgrew texture upscaling filters, but DuckStation's JINC2 actually looks decent sometimes IMHO.

It was already pointed out in the comments but it looks like you left bilinear scaling enabled on DuckStation, which explains the blurrier image compared to MiSTer. So this is kind of an apples and oranges comparison and doesn't represent "the difference between MiSTer and Duckstation". There shouldn't be any difference between them when using the same scaling method. As for my preference.. I'm probably in the minority here, but I always prefer the original unaltered look for any console including pixel wobbling and dithering on the PS1! I grew up with the PS1 and how it looks is part of the whole experience for me. If the games are smoothed out and rendered in high resolutions, they lose their charm and start to look like early 2000s PC games. It doesn't feel like I'm playing PS1 anymore at that point.

I grew up with the PS1 (and older consoles), and yeah I prefer the pixelated look for these games.

why not just render on duckstation at native settings?

MiSTer is obvious option for me. I like this pixelated image, closer to original and more authentic

The PS1 core has really pushed me over the edge in overall value and cost of buying all the hardware. I love the religious zeal in terms of accuracy, but PS1 specifically has one enhancement I’d love and I think everyone else would. Reduced load times. Do you know if this is being considered/developed at all?

Duckstation with perspective correction on a CRT TV feels so good... It's just the way it should be played.

i think all comes down to input lag and crt output in favor of mister. anywere else, duck station takes the cake.

title has too many shoulds! :D

I need to mess around with Duckstation more. 2d games smooth out a bit too much with the settings I use. SOTN I have a date with once I get my Retrotink. There's a Saturn Translation out there and I need to play as the superior Maria. That version of her is exclusive to the Saturn version.

i think the sound on the mister is deeper the voices have slightly more bass to me.

The only plus of Mister is the easy way to connect it to a CRT. if you dont need that then you can save 500$ and use emulation that gives more flexibility (graphics, save states, shaders etc..). Another thing is the difference you point out are just a matter of settings (probably a bi-linear filter is on) because with duckstation you can have the EXACT same look of mister, not the other way around when upscaling and perspective correction.

The DuckStation logo reminds me too much of Crossy Road 😅 Besides that I'm a MiSTer user, so I'm totally biased on the subject of this video.

I’m personally a fan of duck station duck. The low poly nature of the logo feels right to me plus it’s a duck

Mister is a LOT sharper in software.

Mister wins BUT ONLY if you pair it with a CRT (less than 1 frame latency is absolutely unbeatable) . if you are using HDMI however, mister is just an expensive way to play the same games as emulation with about half as many features.

😍

Duckstation is good enough for me honestly. And it runs on almost anything.

The only enhacements that I feel are objectives superior on emulators are the warping correction (some people like it, I Alas found it very distracting) and the dithering blending, taking these games to higher resolutions just doesn't looks right. I was really considering a Mister just because it looked easier to connect to a CRT. Thankfully I was able to find a transcoder for a fraction of the price and I can hook up my emulation PC to my CRT over component.

The comparison from how it looks versus how it feels is entirely different. I have yet to come across an emulator that feels as "snappy" as the MiSTer. I do appreciate the fact that my peers can still choose to play over software emulation when we do high scores though and we hardly have to worry about accuracy in most games since software emulation has improved so much.

The mystery is on duck station. I usly see muring lines in mr. but not duck.

I have played on both, the duckstation playability is good but You feel that artificial emulator thing and laggggggging in some faster shmups and other games like Crash Bash. On mister everything is smoooooth and more real, it cost a lot of money but... it's worth of price. An extra feature is that You can connect it to CRT TV and all look mindblowing, and at the same time make the capture with HDMI, don't forget that the low res signal that produce PSX looks the best way on the CRT TV and that is the best option to play. I have used the Retropie connected to CRT TV with VGA666 before and I was happy with it but it was loose with mister... The Retropie feels like an emulation same to Duckstation, with a lot of slowdowns, to slow button responses... On mister that just does not exist... If you consider buying mister think that if You want to buy every second-hand system that you have on it you will pay lot more money and even the mister have better output quality then some of them. For example to get the same quality output from my SNES it needed mod and recap.

MISTer is about hardware accuracy.

That’s duckstation ..I play on a crt so MISTer all the way .. Also Mr.Kun is way cooler , the duck logo looks like some shitty playmobile knock off toy ..