When comparing ZSNES vs Papers Please, the Slant community recommends Papers Please for most people. In the question“What are the best low-spec PC games?” Papers Please is ranked 1st while ZSNES is ranked 61st. The most important reason people chose Papers Please is:
Papers Please has a unique puzzle solving element. Instead of using mathematical logic, or quick matching thinking, the puzzles in Papers Please involve checking people's background information to make sure everything matches the immigration requirements and following clues to find anything amiss.
Specs
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Pros
Pro "Compatible" with most games
ZSNES has been in development since the 90's, and in that time has been fixed to run the vast majority of SNES games smoothly.
Due to it's "accuracy", it can run roms that most other emulators would break. Not because the emulation is broken, but because the roms are broken.
Pro Fast playback of ROMs
ZSNES is hand-optimized for x86, so it will run incredibly smoothly even on older computers.
Pro Built-in video capture
Gameplay can be recorded and saved as both raw or lossy files. Quality settings can be tweaked in zmovie.cfg file.
Pro Games can be saved at any point
Pro Multiplayer support
Games can be played with other people over TCP/IP network.
Pro Built-in support for cheat codes
ZSNES supports Game Genie, Pro Action Replay, and GoldFinger cheat codes.
Pro Built-in audio capture
Game audio can be saved to a .spc file.
Pro Can speed-up and rewind games
Pro Unique puzzle solving through clue based deduction
Papers Please has a unique puzzle solving element. Instead of using mathematical logic, or quick matching thinking, the puzzles in Papers Please involve checking people's background information to make sure everything matches the immigration requirements and following clues to find anything amiss.
Pro Will require making ridiculously hard decisions
There is a fine line to walk while playing, whether it is worth following the rules and ruining lives or bending the rules at the risk of getting caught in order to help destitute people. The moral choices in the game are often difficult and require hard decisions.
Pro Endless mode
Once the main story is beaten there is an optional endless mode for those that want to see how long they can play without losing.
Cons
Con Laughably out of date
Not only was it abandoned over 10 years ago, the strides that other emulators have made in the same time is astounding.
Con Inaccurate compared to competition
ZSNES sacrifices emulation accuracy for speed (relative to e.g. Higan emulator). Sound emulation is a particularly large weakness.
Con Abandoned
While no official statement on discontinuing the software was made, last progress update was posted in 2007 and now seems highly unlikely that any further updates should be expected.
Con Simplistic gameplay mechanic
The gameplay itself, once the player gets a grasp of it can get repetitive pretty quick due to there really being not much deviation from a singular gameplay mechanic.