Retrogaming Hardware

[jpfriction]

I ordered a stupid RP5, seems to check all the boxes for something I can dink around with while on the couch watching tv. Kind of a silly purchase as I have a pretty new anerbic RG35 but it is just a bit too small to use comfortably, I think I’ll give that away as a christmas present.

 

[Kazin]

Ooh, let us know how it is - I've watched reviews of it and it looks pretty great. Hopefully you like it!

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I've recently learned about Portmaster and I'm half-tempted to get one of these just to have UFO 50 on the go...

I should probably just wait until it comes out on Switch instead tho

 

[Becksworth]

Was looking at some new retro handhelds before thinking to myself I should just look into upgrading the Franken DS instead.

For starters 8bit do makes a blue tooth telescoping controller now, and that should be a way better dpad: https://www.8bitdo.com/ultimate-mobile-gaming-controller/

 

[Patrick]

I've been uninterested in smaller retro handhelds, because I don't want to buy redundant hardware. Like, it would be worth it to buy a system that could play portable PS2 and Gamecube games since I can't play those on a portable system now, but I can already play 16 bit/PS1 and older games on a number of systems.

But man, the Trimui Brick is extremely tempting. It's cheap, looks extremely nice, and it's basically perfect for 2D retro games. The Minui OS has the kind of simplicity that totally appeals to me (Vita, 3DS, and Wii are extremely clunky at running retro games in comparison). The screen is smaller, but it has a 4:3 aspect ratio, so it doesn't actually lose that much usable screen for old games. There are a few Portmaster and Pico 8 games that would be easier to run on it than on my Vita. And technically I could play Dreamcast games on it, though I've heard that it gets hot when playing with anything newer than a Playstation. Really I'd use it for SNES/GBC/whatever.

It's almost totally redundant, but maybe I'd be more likely to bring it with me and play old games because it's more portable and a nicer experience? Or maybe I just like that it's new and I'm trying to convince myself to buy it. But, it would fit into my game budget and I'm giving it serious consideration.

 

[Kazin]

$100 more gets you a Retroid Pocket Mini, which is also 4:3 and can run Gamecube and PS2 very well, although yeah, it's Android, so kind of a pain to get setup (although once you get that all out of the way, it runs great imo). Fantastic battery life as well.

There are also places you can "obtain" Android apks of games, so I grabbed the six mobile versions of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, all of which run great on the Retroid Pocket Mini. Played through all of III again, since I just find that game a joy to play through. I sure wish the font upgrade were available; for some reason you're stuck with the crappy tiny font on Android, and I couldn't "find" one that modded a decent font in. Ah well.

Currently played the Beacause Canon Addendum retranslation of Final Fantasy VII on there, just left Costa del Sol. Wow is the Duckstation emulator really good - even if you hard close it, it saves your state on exit and you can start right where you left off without having to load the title screen, load the save, etc. Looks and runs smoothly as well at 3x resolution - I could probably go higher but portably it wouldn't make any difference.

I haven't had access to my 4K TV for about a week (that's downstairs and the wife and I are isolating from each other because she caught covid), but I did get my Retroid dock in the mail last week and have been using it a bit on the TV upstairs which caps out at 1080p. I'm kind of bad at changing output settings, it seems, because most of what I've played has been 720p on this TV - not sure if it's me, the emulators, a limitation of the dock, etc. (although the purchase page for the dock says it goes up to 4K). But either way, stuff looks and runs pretty great on it. I was playing Gamecube PSO, and my bluetooth modded original Gamecube controller worked well, although I had to use the touchscreen on the Retroid Pocket Mini to actually switch controller profiles rather than it autodetecting each time, which was unfortunate but at the very least, something I'm willing to deal with. I wonder if there's a way to make things just work that I'm unaware of.

 

[Patrick]

Hmmm.

RP5 is $220, with a 5" screen , RPMini is $200, with a 3.7" screen, Brick is $65 with a 3.2" screen.

Going for a more capable device is a good thought, but I feel like, If I was going to spend more than double as much and get something that played PS2/Gamecube games, I'd want the big screen of the RP5. And, I don't think I want to make that big of a purchase right now. Both because of budget, and because I'm having fun working my way through 16-bit and earlier systems.

Since I put Retroarch on my Vita I've been playing a ton of games from that era and really enjoying myself. Also, I don't really have time these days to sit down and play through long games. I play games on the train or when my son is napping. Short gaming sessions are a good fit for where I am right now, and portable/older games are good for that.

My thought is: what would be the best hardware for that style of game? The Vita works well, but the screen and sticks are kind of wasted. It's a bigger and bulkier device than necessary, plus the bubble OS is kind of an annoyance when I just want to play Tetris or whatever. Something with a 4:3 screen, Linux based (dead simple) OS, and no analog sticks would be a better fit. I've has the RG35XXH in my mind for a while too, but it kind of bugs me that there's no model without the analog sticks. And the design of the vertical version/Miyoo never appealed to me for some reason. The Brick just looks so much nicer.

At the same time, it's a pretty small device and, again, redundant. I probably should not get it. But, I might.

 

[jpfriction]

Also the RP5 preorders are still slowly trickling out so you wouldn’t have it for a bit if you ordered one now, says the guy forlornly refresh the tracking page on his early november preorder for the fifth time this week.

In other news I put Knulli on my Anbernic Rg35 and damn that’s so much better than the stock OS. Loads really quickly too, they must have made some improvements since the dude from Retro game corps was tinkering with it.

I ordered a few Miyoo A30s to give out as christmas presents because my sickness cannot be contained, I’ll let you guys know how those feel.

 

[Becksworth]

The only low end retro devices of interest to me right now are those 1:1 ratio square screen devices, if only to have something ideally suited for Pico-8 games.

 

[Beowulf]

In other news I put Knulli on my Anbernic Rg35 and damn that’s so much better than the stock OS. Loads really quickly too, they must have made some improvements since the dude from Retro game corps was tinkering with it.

Which 35XX? I actually like stock just fine on the RG35XX-H, but I changed out my original RG35XX for Koriki and haven't looked back.

I ordered a few Miyoo A30s to give out as christmas presents because my sickness cannot be contained, I’ll let you guys know how those feel.

You'll want to put a custom OS on those when you put fresh SD cards in them, but that's a delightful little device, shockingly powerful for the size and very convenient. It's become the go-to "throw in the pocket in case somebody gets bored" device around here.

The only low end retro devices of interest to me right now are those 1:1 ratio square screen devices, if only to have something ideally suited for Pico-8 games.

I've heard the RGCubeXX is pretty sweet, actually, and Pico-8 runs fine on everything I've tried in the XX line.

 

[Kazin]

Oh for some reason the listing I saw for the TrimUI Brick was for $100+shipping, my bad Patrick. I dunno if this will move the needle for you or not, but the sleep functionality of the Retroid Pocket Mini (and, I assume, the RP5), is fantastic. I've kept multiple Gamecube and PS2 games asleep while working or sleeping or whatever, and hit the button and they boot back up later on, if that helps you with quick play sessions.

 

[jpfriction]

Which 35XX? I actually like stock just fine on the RG35XX-H, but I changed out my original RG35XX for Koriki and haven't looked back.

RG35XX-H. Stock runs okay but I don’t really see the point of the two separate ways to get into game lists, that each have their own uses for the hotkey button. Also I like an emulation station style front end. So nice to be able to pull up a manual or short video of a game while I’m browsing. (I also managed to bork up the genesis cores so they don’t run anymore and figured if I was going to reflash my card, may as well try something shiny. Protip, don’t update your core files, retroarch is locked down by default for a reason).

Of course I’ll probably end up giving this away to someone who will just use it to play like three games once I have my retroid and have it how I like it. Ah well.

You'll want to put a custom OS on those when you put fresh SD cards in them, but that's a delightful little device, shockingly powerful for the size and very convenient. It's become the go-to "throw in the pocket in case somebody gets bored" device around here.

Noted, thanks. That’s my favorite part anyway.

 

[Patrick]

Oh for some reason the listing I saw for the TrimUI Brick was for $100+shipping, my bad Patrick. I dunno if this will move the needle for you or not, but the sleep functionality of the Retroid Pocket Mini (and, I assume, the RP5), is fantastic. I've kept multiple Gamecube and PS2 games asleep while working or sleeping or whatever, and hit the button and they boot back up later on, if that helps you with quick play sessions.

No worries!

Yeah, I’ve heard only good things about the RP5/RPMini. But, I’m not planning to drop $200+ on an emulation handheld right now. The Brick caught my eye because of the price (I just saw it for $53 + shipping after writing that last post), so it’s between something like that or just sticking with Retroarch on Vita for a while.

 

[Patrick]

Well, I found the Trumui Brick on sale for $51, and then I noticed that I had $7 in my paypal account that I had forgotten about, so I rationalized it as costing $44. That's not actually how money works, but it's too late I already ordered it!

The other thing that motivated me to get it was remembering that I bought a New 3DS XL last year because I wanted a portable that played SNES games, and then I later realized that SNES games look better on the Vita because 3DS has a really low resolution screen. So the New 3DS has been sitting in the same box as my old 3DS. And I don't really care about the other New 3DS features (improved 3D, a few exclusive games, minor performance bumps), so I should probably sell it and get that wasted money back.

So, I think I'm going to use my old 3DS for DS/3DS games, use the Vita for PSP/Vita games, and use the Brick for older stuff.

 

[Patrick]

I got a note on Aliexpress saying that my device would ship in 9 days, and then several hours later I checked the app and it shows that the package already shipped. So that's pretty weird. We'll see if it actually shows up. In the meantime I'm gonna pick up a microSD card and format it and start following a guide for installing Minui as far as I can. I think I can just copy roms from my Vita, so I shouldn't have to spend a ton of time messing around with those and applying patches.

After giving it more thought, I'll probably sell my old 3DS and keep the new one. It's a bit nicer looking/feeling and I'll probably be happier with that one down the road. Also, I'm just thinking about how much time I spent injecting games for 3DS and tinkering with Retroarch on Vita and I realize I should have bought a dedicated device a while ago. It's totally possible to play retro games on them and they work well, but it's such a mess to set up and there are so many weird edges to the experience. It did get me to actually play a few dozen retro games over the last couple of years, so I guess it was worth it for that.

 

[Beowulf]

After giving it more thought, I'll probably sell my old 3DS and keep the new one. It's a bit nicer looking/feeling and I'll probably be happier with that one down the road. Also, I'm just thinking about how much time I spent injecting games for 3DS and tinkering with Retroarch on Vita and I realize I should have bought a dedicated device a while ago. It's totally possible to play retro games on them and they work well, but it's such a mess to set up and there are so many weird edges to the experience. It did get me to actually play a few dozen retro games over the last couple of years, so I guess it was worth it for that.

One of the first retro handheld experiences I had was a hacked PSP, and the experience on the Anbernic RG350 was so much better that I never really considered hacking another device--especially when devices that could play DS games started appearing. (And now I've ordered an RP5 that I expect decent 3DS emulation from, even!)

Though sometimes the hacking and setup are the real fun part of the project. I think I ended up spending almost as much time trying out custom OSes and fiddling with settings on the RG35XX as I did actually playing it.

I'll be interested to hear your impressions of the TRIMUI Brick. I thought the original TRIMUI Mini (the one the size of a credit card) was brilliant, and though I admit it has shortcomings I really like the TRIMUI Smart Pro.

 

[Kazin]

DS and 3DS on anything with a single screen is a deal breaker for me, so I'm keeping my hacked 3DS and original DSi and DS Lite with a flash cart for those games, even if I can't uprez the visuals. I cannot stand duplicating screens on a single screen, it never looks satisfying to me. I'm jealous of those who aren't bothered by it, to be honest, it'd be nice to uprez the games lol.

Someday I hope these companies will release a two screen handheld, hopefully with big OLED screens in them. Being able to uprez 3DS games portably and with two screens would be fantastic.

 

[Beowulf]

Someday I hope these companies will release a two screen handheld, hopefully with big OLED screens in them. Being able to uprez 3DS games portably and with two screens would be fantastic.

Your lips to the developers' ears. I don't mind the side-by-side screens, but I'd totally dig that.

 

[jpfriction]

Though sometimes the hacking and setup are the real fun part of the project. I think I ended up spending almost as much time trying out custom OSes and fiddling with settings on the RG35XX as I did actually playing it.

Certainly my experience, although I did play my RG35xx so much it gave me a bad bout of carpal tunnel. Hoping the retroid is more comfortable for me to hold, I never have trouble with my switch lite.

Got my christmas present Miyoo A30s and throwing spruce on all of them as we speak. Neat little guys.

 

[Patrick]

One of the first retro handheld experiences I had was a hacked PSP, and the experience on the Anbernic RG350 was so much better that I never really considered hacking another device--especially when devices that could play DS games started appearing. (And now I've ordered an RP5 that I expect decent 3DS emulation from, even!)

Though sometimes the hacking and setup are the real fun part of the project. I think I ended up spending almost as much time trying out custom OSes and fiddling with settings on the RG35XX as I did actually playing it.

I'll be interested to hear your impressions of the TRIMUI Brick. I thought the original TRIMUI Mini (the one the size of a credit card) was brilliant, and though I admit it has shortcomings I really like the TRIMUI Smart Pro.

Yeah, I did enjoy having projects and I was happy with what I accomplished. And, I ended up playing a ton of 8/16-bit games, so it was a success overall. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with hardware that you slready have on hand. It’s just that you’re still limited by the weird quirks of the hardware and software that were designed for a different experience. I think my dissatisfaction with those aspects built up over time.

And, a big reason I’ve resisted retrogame hardware until now is that there are so many new releases, and they get eclipsed so quickly. I felt like if I picked something up it would feel outdated almost right away. But, the Brick is slightly better than immediate competitors in screen quality and power, has some nice features like function buttons, and the design is way better looking. I feel like I could leave it on my coffee table, if I didn’t have a toddler. It seems nice in the ways I want a device to be nice. Even if a better version comes out, I feel like I’ll be happy hanging on to it for a good while.

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, the OLED screen on the Retroid Pocket Mini is what sold me on it. None of my existing devices in my entire house save my Switch OLED had that technology, so the (to me) massive upgrade in image quality was worth it. That it can also run Gamecube and PS2 portably is nice as well.

Oh, that reminds me, I found another game that I cannot get running well on the RPM - Dirge of Cerebus on PS2. I've still never really played it before, but I was getting like 15 FPS, sometimes less, in any configuration I threw at it. Apparently that's a problem game for many emulators anyway.

 

[Patrick]

Yeah, the Vita OLED is a standout.

Brick has an IPS, but it’s very high resolution. The thing that really ended up bugging me about playing on 3DS was that any content that wasn’t integer scaled looked terrible. So, I’d end up playing Game Boy games in a little square in the middle of a big screen to try to make it look sharp.

With Vita, I could scale it to the full height and it looked close enough to perfect unless I really looked for an odd pixel on a slope or something like that. That high resolution makes a huge difference when you’re switching between different systems.

 

[Sarge]

After seeing the OLED on the TV (LG B4) I bought during Black Friday, I do think that perhaps I need to consider that for any of these handhelds I snag. The contrast is ridiculous. Hoping to put it through its paces this weekend - I've already been messing around with the right settings with the RT4K, looks pretty darn nice. (I did learn that you have to enable 4:4:4 for the CRT masks to look right, though.)

I'm still not sure it's going to displace my 32" Trinitron, though, haha.

 

[Beowulf]

GB300 Seven Simulator Plus
($12 on AliExpress)

This was an impulse purchase because it looked like it was going to be another Game Boy-like 500-in-1 Famiclone device (the packaging is almost identical to the FC500, the first system I did a “What’s on this $10 handheld?” thread for), but claimed to run “Seven Simulators” and was only $12.

This is very reminiscent of the Data Frog SF2000, which I also paid $12 for on AliExpress. (I think the same people are making them, and it may well be the same chip as they’re close enough hardware to swap the stock OS between them.) As promised, this runs NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, GBA, GBA, and PCEngine. (Interestingly, it doesn’t have MAME, and this may be the first multi-emulator device I’ve seen that doesn’t!) The UI isn’t exactly the same but it’s very similar, with long lists of games that don’t seem to repeat; and also search, favorites, and history menus. There's no menu button, so you have to press Start + Select for the menu, and your only options available are save states (of which there are four slots per game) and key remapping. As with the SF2000, there’s no cheats, no fast-forward, no resizing, no frills. (Unlike the SF2000, which impressively saved sram, this doesn’t—at least, not for SNES or GB. It does for GBA. I’m guessing that’s a function of which versions of emulator cores got dropped onto this.)

We’ve got the standard 3”, 4:3 ratio screen for this sort of device; Game Boy is stretched and GBA is squashed slightly to fit. This has a minimal number of buttons and ports, too: one SD card slot, a volume knob, a slider for the power switch, USB-C for power (and the battery is removable), and a headphone jack that can be used for an RCA cable for TV output. The build quality is acceptable; the d-pad and buttons are certainly better than the two power bank devices and about on par with most cheap Famiclones of this style—the face buttons are a little mushy and can sometimes register extra inputs; L and R are oddly shaped and rather clicky. For the price point? Perfectly respectable.

How’s the emulation? Mostly mediocre. Everything on here is playable; I didn’t see any terrible slowdown or crashing, but there’s some jerkiness and the music on some games gets messed up. (Honestly, the sound emulation is particularly bad, and I’m wondering if that’s the speaker rather than the software.) Also, amusingly, the copy of Actraiser on this is glitched so that you can’t actually play the game—you can start the story, but the Master is stuck at level 0 and you need to be level 1 to fight monsters in Fillmore.

I first thought there might be custom firmwares out there; turns out that you can only swap between the stock OS for this and the SF2000 stock firmware (aka, “V2”); and that there are utilities that let you add more emulator cores and add games to the various lists. I followed the Retromods guide to try out Multicore; there’s actually very little you can change, you need to add new games individually to the ROMs list (rather than the system-specific lists, where they’ll only use the default cores), and I couldn’t actually get other systems like Game Gear or Lynx to load the games properly. (I was probably doing something wrong.) Anyway, at the end of the day, you can tweak the functionality to improve this somewhat, but not significantly; and it’s a lot of work for a $12 device that’s never going to be amazing.

Overall: Like the SF2000, this is really impressive for the price point. Instead of a $10 Famiclone, you could just play all the NES games on this and still get a better experience because you have save states. Granted, right now we’re totally spoiled for amazing devices in the $30-60 range that have better builds, better firmware, more powerful hardware and the like, but there’s still a place for the super-cheap device that you don’t care if you drop it in the pool or your toddler throws up on it or something.

 

[Beowulf]

RG50XX Handheld Retro Game Console (NOT Anbernic!)
($40 on AliExpress)

I dropped $40 on this knowing that it was a knockoff intended to capitalize on the success of Anbernic’s XX line (like when Powkiddy made the X350); I just wanted to see how bad it was. And it’s…mediocre hardware running really crap software. I’m strongly reminded of the M17, actually.

The device: It’s shaped and styled like a Switch Lite; I got one with a transparent blue shell. The screen is actually 5” (though the bezel is deceptively large), and nothing special. The body is a soft plastic, comfortable to hold, with a design etched into the back. The buttons light up (in static colors). The D-pad is four buttons rather than a single cross-key, which is suboptimal but playable; and in general the buttons are a little mushy but acceptable. There’s only one set of L and R buttons, despite this running PS1 games. There’s a dedicated menu button, which is always a positive in my book. The chip in this is actually half decent: This can run lower-end N64 and PSP games, and systems like SNES run fine. Not amazing but not bad, right?

Then we hit the bad stuff: The A and B buttons and X and Y buttons are flipped and mapped wrong in every system, and you can’t remap them. The screen is 16:9 and virtually every system is stretched, and you can’t change it. (The Retroarch menu that the menu button pulls up is thoroughly locked down and gives you save/load state only.) There are no real options available in the main menu. While there’s a search feature for the roms, they are an extensively random collection that are often mislabeled or with badly-translated names, and that search function only sometimes recognizes the mistranslations (searching for “Salda” still doesn’t turn up “Legend of Salda,” for instance). If this had proper, unlocked RetroArch like the R36S (even with the crappy frontend instead of, like, EmulationStation or something), then you could just adjust the settings and it would be a half-decent device. But the lock-in to stupid settings is really just awful.

Oh, and when I tried to add roms to it, it turns out there’s a static set of game list files, and no mechanism inside the OS to refresh it. So in order to add new roms, you need to edit the rom list files manually to include them. The retroarch core files seem to be visible and could potentially be edited/replaced, but I suspect that requires a greater level of programming skill than I possess.

Annoyed by how good this could have been versus what it was, I wandered back to the AliExpress listing for it (to see if what they advertised matched up to reality, and technically it does), and I noticed the “free returns” and thought maybe I could get my money back. Turns out that because it technically arrived late, “No longer needed” was an option, and when I submitted the return/refund, they just gave me back my money and said I didn’t need to return it. So I got this for free! It is absolutely not worth $40, but for free, I’m willing to spend some time going through the SD card and fiddling with things, because I don’t actually care if I accidentally brick this.

Overall: Absolute rip-off waste of money; glad I effectively got it for free.

 

[Kazin]

Finally sat down and scraped all the data for all my games in Emulation Station Desktop Edition (ES-DE) on my Retroid Pocket Mini from screenscraper and, annoyingly, figured out how to make everything launch from it (other than Android games, which I'll tackle next, if possible). Re-enabling Switch in the "Alternative Emulators" menu requires downloading some XML files and putting them in the ES-DE "custom_systems" folder, which allowed me to point to the uzuy standalone emulator for my Switch games (the very few that I have). I had to reinstall Dolphin to get it to launch Wii games (weirdly, Gamecube worked fine), but once I did so after exporting my settings (which thankfully preserved all my custom control settings and, even more importantly, saves), it was fine. For PSP, I had to launch PPSSPP on the home screen, hit Browse, and make sure the folder name on my microsd card was "psp" and point the emulator to that folder and allow permissions, and those games launch from ES-DE fine now too. I mention that because the folder names are very important for ES-DE - I had to rename my "megadrive" folder to "genesis" to make the theme display the Sega Genesis logo as opposed to Sega Megadrive, which is my preference, for example, and many people on reddit say to make sure the names are exactly what ES-DE wants to make sure everything launches fine.

I would like to customize the Art Book Next theme I have to change what game art is in the background while selecting a system, because I do not think of World of Goo as a Wii game, for example (that should have Wii Sports on it, even though there's no chance I ever play that on my Retroid Pocket Mini lol). I'm sure that is a pain in the ass and will require arcane secret knowledge that I will have to hunt down on reddit, but it will be worth it to get fully customized screens in that launcher. If anyone here knows how to do it, lmk. Otherwise I'm putting all this information here both for others, and in case I ever get another android handheld and need to do all this over again lmao

EDIT: Adding Android games requires downloading and installing this app. Once you launch the app, you can select which apps/games/emulators to install. You can also disable apps from showing up in the list at all, which allowed me to prevent like Google Chrome from showing up in ES-DE - the only apps I added were games, no emulators or apps to prevent those categories from appearing on the ES-DE carousel. After that, launching games from ES-DE works perfectly, though neither scraping websites worked for AM2R, Stardew Valley (which is wild to me), or FF8 Remastered. Still, I could probably figure out how to add custom art for those.

 

[muteKi]

The fact that the retroid pocket 5 is just over $200 is a sign that handheld gaming/entertainment devices have reached their apotheosis in much the same way computers and televisions have

well, that and the fact that the new iphone is the same as the old iphone, but now there's a little guy in there who summarizes your email badly

 

[Beowulf]

The fact that the retroid pocket 5 is just over $200 is a sign that handheld gaming/entertainment devices have reached their apotheosis in much the same way computers and televisions have

I mean, we've definitely come a really long way over the past 5 years or so, since I got into these things. There are now $12 devices that play all the 8-bit and 16-bit systems acceptably; and $30-50 devices that play up to DS really well and with all the bells and whistles. And a $200 device that'll play Wii and PS2 (and hopefully 3DS, which I'll learn when mine arrives). I think it's going to be interesting to see if it tops out from here, or if the Retroid Pocket 8 also costs $200 and plays PS4 games.

 

[jpfriction]

Oh snap, my retroid 5 is two towns over. I may be tinkering by this time tomorrow.

 

[Patrick]

My Brick tracking info just updated from “will be delivered by 9pm today” to “will be delivered by 6:30 pm Monday.