Hey, these are actually digital! - The Analogue, Inc. Products Thread

[ShakeWell]

There's an old thread about the Duo, but surprisingly nothing that discussed the Pocket? I'm not sure we need THAT many threads for Analogue stuff?

Anyways, they're releasing a Glow-in-the-Dark Pocket on Friday that ships pretty much immediately and since I never got one in the original release... well. You know.

 

[ASandoval]

I was playing Klonoa: Empire of Dreams on my ride to work today. I love my pocket. It doesn't get the attention that it deserves all of the time because I have a mister at home along with a million other devices but it is perfect for 15 minute time killers on public transit and much more travel friendly than the Steam Deck or even the Switch. Beyond that though, while it's cool to play them on my 4K, I still prefer the handheld form factor for Game Boy and its ilk.

 

[lincolnic]

There was a bunch of talk about the Pocket in some of the retro gaming/handheld/FPGA threads, but nothing dedicated. I love my Pocket, though. I just used it to play Metroid Fusion for the first time over a long weekend. The display really is gorgeous, GBA games (or anything from the 16-bit generation onwards) look fantastic on it.

I do have a couple of issues with it. One, the d-pad isn't great, and the shoulder buttons are not only hard to press but feel mushy as well. Also, playing on the dock (which is fully optional!) has a little bit of added latency. I thought it would have the same "zero latency" mode that the Super NT has, but it doesn't. Granted, for 99.9% of games this isn't much of an issue, but I play a lot of kaizo SMW hacks, and I was hoping to be able to play more of them on the Pocket (its SNES core supports SA-1, the NT doesn't). If you're not trying to play kaizo, it won't be an issue for you.

Either way, no regrets on my purchase. Analogue as a company has a whole lot of communication issues that they seem to have no interest in solving, but I'm super happy with both my Super NT and Pocket.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Before I fell down the MiSTer rabbit hole, I got a Super NT, and it's definitely a good product. Sadly, since the MiSTer supports all the same games and a bag of chips, I mostly only use the Super NT once in a blue moon to play SNES games on my TV with a wireless controller (one of those 8BitDo SNES pads, the 2.4GHz one is pretty nice). I do appreciate that the NT let me rip my cart collection, which means all the SMW hacks I play are about as legal as something of that nature can be.

I've been tempted to get a Pocket since they were first announced, and the fact that so many MiSTer cores have been ported over to it is a huge bonus. But I'm not sure I'd actually use it all that much, since I mostly read when I'm on the bus and I'd probably be scared of it getting damaged if I took it with me every day. That, plus Analogue's exhorbitant international shipping fees, has kept me from pulling the trigger on one so far.

Like, truly ridiculous international shipping fees, what are they even doing down there?

 

[lincolnic]

I'd probably be scared of it getting damaged if I took it with me every day.

...I got a little carrying case pouch for mine. It also keeps dust from getting on/in it while I'm not playing!

 

[Kazin]

Didn't see this thread at first, so here's a good old fashioned crosspost:

Analogue announced a N64 system to release next year, apparently. No details on price yet, I'm sure it will cost one million dollars and half a million dollars for shipping.

 

[ShakeWell]

Yeah, I don't know. I'm generally confused at going N64 before PSX, but I guess Nintendo nostalgia runs more rampant than Sony, even if the PS1 outsold the N64 by a gazillion units.

It explicitly not supporting OpenFPGA sucks, I think I'm just taking a pass here. I already have an N64 with RGB mod+deblur and an Everdrive so I'm not really seeing a big upside for myself here.

 

[Falselogic]

Yeah, I don't know. I'm generally confused at going N64 before PSX, but I guess Nintendo nostalgia runs more rampant than Sony, even if the PS1 outsold the N64 by a gazillion units.

It explicitly not supporting OpenFPGA sucks, I think I'm just taking a pass here. I already have an N64 with RGB mod+deblur and an Everdrive so I'm not really seeing a big upside for myself here.

Same. I really want something other than my PS2 to play PS1 games on at this point. Or even PS2 games. I've got a ton of those and PS2 slims keep getting rarer and rarer...

 

[RT-55J]

From what I've heard, Analogue got an exclusive contract to use the Open FP64 core that some bloke has been spending the past 5 years working on, so my guess as to why they aren't releasing a PS1 thing is simply because they haven't (yet) found an appropriate core they can act as publisher for (assuming they aren't developing their own solution internally).

 

[ShakeWell]

Isn't Kevtris some kind of wizard? If there's a functional PS1 core for MiSTer, I feel like Kevtris could get it working on a beefier FPGA.

 

[RT-55J]

oh kevtris is pretty dang talented --- it's just that each successive generation of systems requires more engineering effort to reimplement, especially as Analogue is moving away from "stuff kevtris toyed around with years ago for his old Zimba 3000 pitch" to brand new territory. I'm sure they're working on other stuff right now, but it's clear it isn't ready yet (whatever that means in Analogue-world).

 

[Phantoon]

It explicitly not supporting OpenFPGA sucks, I think I'm just taking a pass here. I already have an N64 with RGB mod+deblur and an Everdrive so I'm not really seeing a big upside for myself here.

I'm guessing it's because if it did it'd be relatively easy to port the MiSTer PlayStation and Saturn cores to it, making it difficult for Analogue to sell you one later

 

[Kazin]

Like you said in the other thread - hopefully it's compatible with the transfer pak. That thing is the only reason I keep original N64 controllers around now.

 

[madhair60]

I love the N64 pad so much and I'm bummed that they're sort of validating the years of people who whinge about it.

But I'm also acutely aware that's stupid, and that it will work with OG N64 pads anyway.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I'm happy for anyone that wants this console, although I expect there will be significant sticker shock once the price is revealed. It'll have to have a better FPGA board in it than the Super Nt or MegaSG, and outputting to native 4k seems like a tall order. Allowing it to run other cores would definitely improve the value proposition, but it's not something Analogue always does, so it's a gamble. I'm pretty committed to the MiSTer at this point, and I sold off my collection of N64 cartridges a few years back, so this is a miss for me. As someone who always kind of liked the original format, I recently bought the official Bluetooth N64 controller from Nintendo, which I'm hoping to use soon as the MiSTer core matures. But the new 8bitDo controller seems neat, is it wireless or does it have an original N64 plug?

 

[Kazin]

I love the N64 pad so much and I'm bummed that they're sort of validating the years of people who whinge about it.

But I'm also acutely aware that's stupid, and that it will work with OG N64 pads anyway.

To be clear, I adore the original N64 controller and always have; I've been using the NSO N64 controller for a while now on my original N64, but it's not compatible with the transfer pak. Wireless with transfer pak functionality is what I want.

 

[muteKi]

I can see that being problematic for the same sorts of reasons that you don't see game boy/gbc wireless linkup solutions: anything trying to poll the transfer pak for data expects nearly-instantaneous random access without errors. If there were a wired solution that could just directly connect to a transfer or controller pak bypassing a controller while the system still polls the wireless control for actual input, that would be great.


That's not to say that it couldn't be done, but you'd want to load all the data from the pak before you started the game, and you'd definitely want to very carefully validate any writes after the fact. It's not that far off from what a lot of flash carts expect you to do in order to save, though those don't have the inherent flakiness of wireless communication.

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, I feel like a bluetooth receiver that's plugged directly into the N64 is the only way it'd really work, but afaik one of those doesn't exist. The receiver I have works with memory cards and rumble paks (lol), but not the tranfer pak (I've tried, even though the instructions say it wouldn't work anyway. It doesn't!).

 

[Sarge]

You can toss me onto the "I don't hate the N64 controller" bandwagon. I don't love the analog stick, but replacing it with a Gamecube-style stick with the proper ranges and sensitivities feels incredible.

 

[Kazin]

I received my Game Gear adapter for my Pocket in the mail directly from Analogue today, and could not get most of my Game Gear carts to boot (Shining Force: Sword of Hajya and my Everdrive were the only cartridges I could get to work). Following this post I found on reddit, I took my tweezers out, and carefully, gently, pulled the pins a little bit out towards where the cartridge would be seated, and now all my Game Gear games boot first try, even when removing and reinserting them. I cannot reiterate this enough - this is a brand new product I received from Analogue today and it wasn't working properly out of the box (all my games worked fine on my original Game Gear, too). Fucks sake.

Who knows what I'll do if the Turbografx adapter doesn't fucking work out of the box. At least the Neo Geo Pocket Color one will probably have bendable pins. (I don't give a shit about the Lynx lol)

 

[Sarge]

That is... not good. Analogue needs to step up their quality control.

 

[Kazin]

Thankfully, the TG16 and NGPC adapters worked fine out of the box, no issues whatsoever. Which is a relief, because the TG16 pins are difficult to get to, as you can imagine lol

I had some stickers left over that will help me identify what each of these are at a glance - I didn't have a Game Gear sticker, but a Master System one is close enough lol (by the way, I sold the Atari Lynx adapter, because I could not care less about the platform, and the Game Gear adapter fits in its place perfectly):

I really wish they were more easily identifiable besides the very difficult to read clear text on clear plastic they went with. Ah well, these stickers are easily removed without damage if I decide I hate em.

 

[Kazin]

I dunno about this Analogue Pocket d-pad. Sabin's Blitzes are very difficult to do, which is not the case for me on a regular GBA.

EDIT: So, I took it apart and put two layers of masking tape on the back of the dpad nub, and I can do Sabin's blitzes easier now, and Link's Awakening diagonals work perfectly (which is always my go to, that game has very picky inputs for moving diagonally). Voided my warranty when I opened it up, but I could only imagine how many millions of dollars Analogue would charge for shipping the unit to them anyway, so eff it.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

This doesn't really solve the thing you're worried about, but did you know that you can do blitzes using nothing but discrete cardinal inputs? The game will read either direction of a diagonal as being the correct input, so you can do Bum Rush by tapping LLUURRDDL, rather than doing a smooth 360 motion. Makes it a lot easier!

 

[Kazin]

This doesn't really solve the thing you're worried about, but did you know that you can do blitzes using nothing but discrete cardinal inputs? The game will read either direction of a diagonal as being the correct input, so you can do Bum Rush by tapping LLUURRDDL, rather than doing a smooth 360 motion. Makes it a lot easier!

I did not know that! Weird. Though, yeah, I couldn't even do Bum Rush correctly, and that doesn't have any diagonals lol

 

[Sarge]

How tricky was it to get in there without messing anything up? I'm kinda worried about it, but probably shouldn't be. I saw where someone replaced the d-pad with one from an NES, which is what I'm very, very tempted to do. That d-pad ain't great, no question.

@MCBanjoMike I used this trick all the time growing up - pretty sure I read it in Nintendo Power, and boy oh boy does it make Bum Rush easier to pull off.

 

[Kazin]

How tricky was it to get in there without messing anything up? I'm kinda worried about it, but probably shouldn't be. I saw where someone replaced the d-pad with one from an NES, which is what I'm very, very tempted to do. That d-pad ain't great, no question.

I'd recommend watching a video of someone doing it, just so you know how to take it all apart (the L and R pcb is weird, though not difficult, to remove, for example). It's mainly managing to not damage itty bitty ribbon cables. I did not detach the screen, since I could get to the dpad by just rotating the main pcb a bit, so I can't speak to the difficulty to reconnect that. Most trouble I had was reattaching the L and R button ribbon cable.

I wouldn't mind replacing the dpad itself, but I have a clear orange model and it'd look terrible lol. Been playing FF6A on the dock with an 8bitdo SN30 Pro and the dpad on that feels much more accurate to me.

 

[Sarge]

I may just give in and take the risk. And mine wouldn't look as bad since I have the black model. I'd just hate to screw up an expensive device like that! But... it would also improve my enjoyment of it considerably. Will definitely check out a vid first.