Hard EverDrivin'! Flash cartridges & ODEs

[Sarge]

Wow. That's, uh, a lot of Guitar Hero.

 

[Kazin]

I could've gotten away with a 1tb HDD, and if I ever upgrade to a SSD I may go that route. I've gotten nearly everything I could conceivably see myself playing and still have 1.2tb to spare. Although I have to figure out how to turn bin/cue files into iso, because there are some games (like Chulip) that I can't install. I tried ImgBurn, but it didn't work (it made them into ISOs, but also generates a .md5 file that I don't know what to do with. Booting the ISOs ImgBurn made just makes the PS2 freeze on a white screen).

 

[Sarge]

Hmm... I think the MD5 file is just a checksum to make sure the rip/conversion is correct. I haven't really done anything with them in the past, though.

I feel the same way with my Saturn: I put a 256 GB card in there, and I've still got over half the space available even after loading it up with a bunch of interesting RPGs that are still in Japanese that I can't even play.

I really ought to upgrade my setup, though - I have no idea how much longer this honker IDE drive will last, and while I have qualms about long-term data retention on SSDs, it might be a good option now, especially as cheap as they've gotten.

(I'd also like to try my hand at doing the reset glitch hack on one of my 360s, as well as get a bunch of cheap SSDs for my 7th-gen consoles. I really, really wish it was as easy as hacking the PS3 - I'm half tempted to just be lazy and buy an RGH3 360 to save myself the trouble.)

 

[Kazin]

I can't see myself bothering with the PS3/360. Most, if not all, of the stuff I'd want to play on those have been ported to the PC. Like, my favorite 360 game is Fallout New Vegas, and that's much better on PC with no loading and mods and whatnot haha

 

[Sarge]

True. There's a few I'd like to play on there, though, like Lost Odyssey or Magna Carta 2, although I suppose the former is still available on XB1/XSX. I don't remember how many true exclusives the platform has at this point. And yeah, the PC experience would be better across the board I'd think, especially for games like New Vegas with all the mods and such. (I do have that on Steam.)

 

[Kazin]

Crap! Lost Odyssey, yes. How has that not been ported anywhere?! Dangit (also I do not own a more recent Xbox than a 360 lol).

 

[Sarge]

Haha, I didn't have an XB1 until very recently. A local pawn shop was getting rid of "broken" systems, and, well, turned out a bunch of them actually weren't really broken. (Some were, but I came out pretty good on the deal overall.)

And seriously, someone should port that one to another system, but I don't remember - did Microsoft publish that one? I know it was a Mistwalker jam.

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, Microsoft published it, and I believe owns the IP. Only chance I play it is if it comes out on PC. Oh well, it's far from top of the list anyway lol

 

[Sarge]

It keeps sliding down mine, too, despite its excellent reputation. I got to disc 2 back in the day and wasn't super enamored with it, though, but maybe I'd have a better time with it today.

 

[spines]

thinking of buying a pc engine this year before it's like 2030 and i'm like "dammit, i should've bought one of these back when they were only 3 digits" or something. has anybody here used one of the flash card -> pc engine/turbografx products and have thoughts about it? i know they're not, uh, the most common consoles around. there's like a big box addon thing that uses an fpga for the cd core and has hdmi out that seems kinda handy but i really find the everdrive stuff kind of romantic since they have similar form factors to the original cartridges, haha

 

[Kazin]

@spines Cannot recommend this enough. Not only does it work on every type of Turbo/PC Engine hardware (including my beloved PC Engine GT/Turboexpress), it will also run CD games (including on the Turboexpress, which wasn't possible before!) even if you only have the bare Turbografx/PC Engine unit itself. If you're only using a RF connection, though, you won't get audio - this will allow you to get audio out for both CD and hucart and also give you composite out video as well (I've not used this - I've modified my PC Engine to output s-video and audio using the Turbonanza, so if you're into modding and have an s-video TV, that's an option, too). In any case, the Turbo Everdrive Pro has run everything I've thrown at it without issue (though I've mostly played Castlevania Rondo of Blood on it, because, you know. Rondo.).

If you only want to play hucard games, the much cheaper Turbo Everdrive v2 works fine. I had one of these before the Pro version came out, and it worked wonderfully, but yeah, no CD or Supergrafx games, just regular hucards.

The big box addon thing, the Terraonion Super System3 Pro, is not something I've used, but it is a product made by assholes (the person who runs the company that makes them shit on krikzz, the maker of Everdrives, for escaping from Ukraine when the war started, for example), so I wouldn't recommend it, personally. I've heard it works fine, at least. It's less sleek than an Everdrive, anyway, and for me personally, the stock PC Engine console is so tiny and cute I don't want the added bulk on it haha.

EDIT: Oh and also, if you're looking at buying the Analogue Turbografx FPGA thing, note the Everdrives won't fit properly in the cartridge slot.

 

[spines]

thanks Kazin, a firsthand recommendation (or the opposite if it were applicable i guess, lol) for the pro is exactly what i was looking for, sounds like exactly what i want to go with! rondo is probably at the very top of the list of games i wanna play on the thing (though there's lots of stuff i want to check out) so having the cd functionality easily is a high priority for sure. and i agree on the base console being too cute to attach a bunch of extra plastic to if i can avoid it

there's definitely a slight perk to having the hdmi since it'll plug easily into my current stream setup, but tbh by the time i'm thinking about plugging more than two different consoles into my capture card it's probably time to start thinking about getting standalone splitters and upscalers and stuff anyway...

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, I can't speak to streaming, I've never done it haha. Let me know what you end up going with! I'm always interested in how much the stuff costs nowadays too since I haven't looked since I bought mine, if you're willing to share that (nbd if not).

 

[Kazin]

Also to be clear, you cannot run Supergrafx games on any of the Everdrives unless you have a Supergrafx console. I believe the Terraonion thing can run Supergrafx games but I'm not 100% on that, so if that's something you're leaning towards, double check lol. Now I believe I've covered everything lmao