When comparing ZSNES vs Thomas Was Alone, the Slant community recommends ZSNES for most people. In the question“What are the best low-spec PC games?” ZSNES is ranked 61st while Thomas Was Alone is ranked 64th. The most important reason people chose ZSNES is:
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.
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 Enjoyable professional narration
What really drives the well crafted story home is the wonderful narration done by British filmmaker, comedian, writer, actor, and presenter of radio and television, Danny Wallace. Not many indie small budget games receive the polish this game has in their voice acting, which really adds to the experience when playing the game.
Pro Great story
For what is a pretty simplistic looking game, Thomas Was Alone offers a truly great story that actually gets the player to care about what are basically squares and rectangles.
Pro Polished ethereal soundtrack
Haunting guitar strums mixed with beautiful piano chords and bits of chiptune creates a very fitting soundtrack that allows for an experience of polish not often found.
Pro SImple, peaceful gameplay
Gameplay is introduced at a relaxed rate, and is never frustrating or off-putting. It's not big on challenge, but does require some thinking. Everything is solvable, new techniques are introduced as they are needed for the story, and the whole thing just radiates relaxation and love.
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 Short
The gameplay only lasts about 3 or 4 hours.
Con Some puzzles can be difficult
Here an there are a few really tough puzzles in the game which can be frustrating, luckily they are few and far between as the gameplay does not tend to repeat itself too often.