I few months ago I asked some dudes about what Front Mission I should play first. Everyone had an opinion, but most say to start with Front Mission 3, a solid game from the sound of it.

I just started teh game, of course, but I'm enjoying it. I bought the PS one game to ripped my own BIN file to play on my Duckstation. I think it looks pretty nice. As with most early games the ability to upscale the game depend on what type off asset is being displayed. If you know that game I cna say that the "Network" screen where you use the Interbet and read email get no graphical uplift, but everything else does. The in-engine cutscenes look great and the battle maps where you move & fight with look very good. On the 'battle screen' the Wanzers look especially nice and cutscrense between batlles - very nice.

Some the descriptive 'choices' in the game for characters are...very 90s. I'm not sure you can call women that word anymore...or you shouldn't... it's a life-style.

I've also been messing with Duckstation recently, and I landed on the same settings as you. 5x internal resolution, anti-warp, 24-bit color (to eliminate dithering), and forced progressive scan are all essential, while in my opinion the texture filtering smooths things out in a rather unpleasant way.

I love front mission 3 so god damn much. I'm pretty sure you can actually still buy it on the playstation store as well.

I'm starting to expand the range of games where I don't wanna see filters on them. Give me those PS1 visuals as god intended, blurry and fucked up in weird ways.

This game was so special to me as a kid. I put god knows how many hours into it. Coming back to it on the Vita was really rough though, between random crashes and the suspend feature failing erasing lots of progress, the super long battle animations... oof. Would be nice to try it again, maybe on Steam Deck with Duckstation. If I could assign a fast-forward button and quicksave it would solve a lot of my problems.

I need to try out this Duckstation emulator that y'all are talking up. I'm still over here using ePSXe that hasn't been updated in 5+ years.

DuckStation is a solid project, but it is not getting updates. But, the fact is there are only 8-10 games out of 1200 that have problems that they don't work on DuckStaion, so I like using it a lot. "DuckStation" in RetroArch is called "SwanStation" now; but you cna still get Duckstation on Github

I like using DuckStation because it was really easy to setup, easy to start using, and the results I have have gotten on 15-20 games I own are excellent. I got it before the creator and Retroarch go into a tiff, so you cna relaly use either one. The other nice part is if you are like @efesell you can leave the games stock and just run they with the helpful features like 'save anywhere', using any joypad you want, take screen shots, and running everything on a PC...or Android.

Or creating my own files from my discs I personally use UltraISO Premium from ezbsystems.com.

Just some various games:

To be fair, that lady at the bar is a tramp.

I love this game so much. To me it's better that FF Tactics or Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together. The unit customization is way more satisfying to me.

Damn...it stopped in a loading loop. I'm so bummed, because the game was getting good!

As with many emulator games, there are unforeseen issues with game code running in emulation. The game stopped working a few mission in - sticking on a loading screen. I will have to see if I can find a work around. The game has been damn enjoyable so far, so I do really want to keep playing.

What I like is the battles are a bit easier to get you head around that Final Fantasy Tactics. Maybe, it get harder later, but so far I like the the battles only last a few rounds. If nothing else the on-ramping to the gameplay seems gradual.

Now, I have to laugh. I guess my decent luck with playing the game several mission to the campaign was was pretty good luck indeed! While I looked up solution, I saw everyone else was have even worse trouble with teh game on DuckStation, Retroarch, RetroPie!

I might have to drag my physical PSX out of storage to play this game that I now WANT to finish! I'd miss the cleaner graphics, but you gotta-do what you gotta-do. I looked on PSN and I don't see that game as downloadable.

Is there some reason you can’t just use the more established emulators. They’re very solid.

It is a good question.

I has a really horrible experiences with Retroarch, because you can set up different engine for different system si just overly complex and weird IMO, and some of the standalone emulators just were not very good. DuckStation IS actually one of the better ones and if the guy had not had a falling out with Retroarch he woudl still be working on that shard of it.

Second, I just found out the Front Mission 3 is a problem child on emulators anyway. Its the game I currently want to play and this switching emulator engines might not do me much good.

Currently I have pulled my PS3 out of storage and I am trying to get that to be happy. You would think taht woudl be easy, but my PS4 is REALLY ANGRY that I am trying to use my DualShock 4 on my PS3. I actually tried to started using my Wand and Move controllers...on a lark and it was sort fo working but I needed to set the up with the PS3 better.

To top off my whinging about stuff, I'm a week away from moving. So as you can imagine, having unpacked my PS3 a week before I am moving is a "backwards move" on my part. I'll get this stupid game working eventually! Even if it means I have to have my PSX, PS2, PS3, PS4, and PS5 all together like a disgruntled family reunion.

So anyway back to the questions at hand; what more established emulator would you recommend 'oh sage of the seven seas?' ;-)

I’ve had mostly smooth experiences with PCSX2 emulation. It’s not PSX specific and I don’t know if FM3 is on the fully emulated list, but the majority of games I’m tried running on it work just fine with minimal tweaks and it does have a PS1 mode.

@monkeyking1969: I dunno I just use ePSXe like an old man and it seems to run most games just fine.

I had a lot of trouble emulating Blood Omen for the PSX (I typically use ePSXe) and mednafen ended up being the one that got the job done. Dunno much about the hows and whys but that was the only one that worked well at the time (couple of years back), maybe worth a look?

EDIT: iirc there was no facncy functionality for mednafen: no save states, no filters etc. maybe that's changed...

I’ve started Front Mission 3 more times than I can count on many different platforms and emulators from original, PS3, PSP (Go), PS Vita, PC and Android (ePSXe).

Now this is all anecdotal of course but when not running original hardware, I’ve usually hit some crash or lock at some point so if you’re using an emulator the name of the game is save often! Some cases the crash was repeatable so I’d have to pull my memory card file and load it on another system/emulator to get past the part (even on Sony’s proper PS1 emulator on PSP/Vita!).

I just ordered my Steam Deck and it feels like time to make another attempt to actually finish this damn game. Either that or finally get a PS1 again (or see how well the MiSTer core handles it).

Edit: Oh and I just want to say how nice it was this morning to look at the latest thread list and see Front Mission 3! It made me smile big time!

I don't have an original or compatible PS3 joypad/DS3. But I got around the menu system on PS3, to register a DualShock4 as a Bluetooth device through arcane magics.

The good news is, I am playing again, and almost caught up to the mission I was on on the emulator. I miss the 5x resolution boost and the faster load times, but it still fun. There is a certain elegant simplicity to PSOne era games. I love the I can take the dithering off, sextuple the resolution, straighten the geometry, and remove the polygon seam clipping - but the core gameplay was always good.

I really enjoyed Front Mission 3, great story and good customization options for the mechs. It would be nice if they made a new game in the franchise, but I don't think that's quite likely to happen any time soon. I heard Front Mission 5 was pretty good, but it was only released in Japan.

Update:
The game stopped a certain point on PS3 too. I now have my PS2 with a PS1 save card (yeah, PSone games need the PSone card to save) and the game freezes up on the first mission! I might do a few more tests; but I'm starting to think this game just is on the razors edge of not working even on PS1

So PS4...nope, stopped working somewhere in Australia
PS3...nope, stopped working somewhere in South east Asia
PS2 original launch system...nope, I could no get past the first mission.

I hate to say it, but the furthest I have gotten in Front Mission 3 was on a 'pirate site' that ran the game in browser. Now, I guess I will have to try every emulator under the sun I guess. I JUST WANT TO FINISH THE DAMN GAME!!!!! Is Front Mission 3 cursed?!

Didn't you say that you ripped your own disk? Are you sure that your disc isn't corrupted or damaged? A search of "front mission 3 epsxe" shows me that other people have completed the game using epsxe using a different source for the game and specific settings.

Yeah I'm still confused as to the apparent problem cause I'm pretty sure I've watched two different streamed LPs of this game and I know they're not using official hardware.

Vinny, Jeff and Brad, (and probably Ryan) all frequently referred to nabbing ISOs. I don’t think anyone here would think I’ll of you over downloading a copy of a game to finish it.

Disk sounds suspect if it's crashing across platforms. Finished this game myself on PS1 back when, and at least once on epsxe. Hasn't come up for me in the duckstation era so I can't speak to that specifically. Get an iso "somewhere" and at least test your emu saves with it.

Just make sure it's a good rip because a common problem with crashing on epsxe was that there was a bad rip floating around. Make sure it's a Redump rip. Check the hash if you're unsure.