Steam Deck is the best emulation machine out there right now for me.
I’ve been thinking about getting the new pixel fold or the Samsung z
flipfold. When you open them to tablet mode they’re a big square screen. When you clip on a controller it looks like a sick retro gaming handheld because of the screen ratio.That’s a $2000 gaming setup! ($1900 for z fold, $100 for gamesir controller.)
I think I’ll just get a Powkiddy RGB30 with a square screen for $80.
I mean, it’s a phone + tablet first. The gaming is a nice bonus. Plus you really don’t need the fold 6 when the 5 will do just fine.
Fold 5 is still like $1000 refurbished. Again compared to $80 Powkiddy. Plus a few hours of gaming doesn’t take away from your phone battery life.
You linked a Fold not a Flip. The difference is nearly $1000.
That said the Fold is a solid choice but if you’re only going to play games, save a couple bucks and don’t get a 6. The improvements have been so incremental you might be able to make due with a 4 or 5.
This is similar to what I do. I have an old pixel 3xl and a Sunshine server running on my gaming PC. Moonlight is installed on the Pixel and I stream my games to it from the PC. I have a WireGuard VPN setup for when I am outside the house. It works very well!
Edit: Inside the house, I have a Rasbery Pi 5 with Libreelec installed which has a Moonlight addon as well for when I want to play on my big screen TV.
I have a surface duo 2 right now, and had the Motorola razor (rip the iconic chin design they ditched with the new models) before that. Emulating the ds on a flip phone is goated
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Too clunky. Modded Nintendo Switch is more portable and has better battery life
Will respectfully disagree. My steam deck can do way more than a Switch!
Where is the raspberry pi at 30$??? it is more than that nowadays
They’re inflated right now, depending on where you buy them. I got one for MSRP (around 30 bucks) last year at my local electronics store, but I had to give them my info to deter scalping.
“Right now” for Pi inflation has been since like 2016. This is just their price now.
Well that sucks. I’ve heard the competitors are pretty good now though.
Yeah, there’s a lot of competition in SBC these days. People seem to like the OrangePi lineup and some others.
An official raspberry pi isn’t worth gettin imo. Especially after their artificial availability issues during the pandemic.
Plenty of alternatives out there, which is what I’d recommend. OrangePi is much more reasonable price wise.
And if you don’t need arm, a used thin client will do the same job, cost a lot less, and have more compatibility.
I’m hoping risc-v can join soon at reasonable speeds.
It’s got to the point were for the price of a Pi 5 plus necessary kit, youcan just get a Mini PC with an Intel N100 (maybe the only decent thing Intel has done in the last couple of years) which has a lot more power and expandability though it consumes 15W instead of 7W and would probably be a better choice for running emulators.
Yeah I’m a huge Raspberry Pi fan but not only is it practically impossible to find a pi at that price, pi’s also can’t reliably emulate games past the 32 bit era
Yeah I basically got this exact advice and was surprised to realize they cost much more than that anymore.
Get a mister.
It IS the original hardware; its an FPGA
It perfectly emulates the CPU, but it’s not the same as touching the actual hardware. For better or worse.
It’s still emulation. Yes, it’s emulating hardware, as close as possible and often indistinguishably close, but it’s still emulation.
For example, my EDGB X7 runs fine on any real Game Boy I have, but can’t switch games on an Analogue Pocket.
Another weird issue that I had was that if I launched my Pokemon Crystal save on Pocket it would, for some reason, permanently change my character from a boy into a girl (without saving the game!). This wasn’t happening on my Game Boys (I restored the save a couple of times to test it).Not always, the mister would need more elements to do an actual 1:1 for many newer consoles and the cores are often reverse engineered best guesses and not replicating the original asic design.
On the other hand, original hardware goes through revisions and the silicon can change (snes 1chip vs 2chip for example) while still be perfectly compatible so it really depends ho much of a stickler you are.
By its very nature, an FPGA is not original hardware.
An FPGA is hardware that is designed to be very similar to original hardware, but it does not actually use original hardware components, and because of this it can actually have bugs or inaccuracies that were never present in original hardware.
An FPGA is hardware that is designed to be very similar to original hardware,
Well to be even more precise, its designed to be able to replicate most hardware of anything. Not designed for a specific device
Mister people are equally obnoxious about this
It’s also about as cheap to just buy the original consoles than a kitted out mister.
Although if you figure in AV switches, upscalers and everdrive carts, the price for convenience does swing back into the misters favor
Now this is the real solid advice
30 bucks?! Where?!
To be fair the meme just says “Raspberry Pi”. Nothing about the four or five! 😂
O wouldn’t dream of buying a pi 5…a pi 3 is like a month’s salary in my country (damn shitty hole) so if you have a 3 selling by 30 dollars I’d try to buy.
Sorry, I don’t have any rpis. Is it possible for eBay or AliExpress to ship to your country? I see Rpi 3 on these sites for $30 to $36.
Honestly, I will emulate almost all consoles EXCEPT N64…. This little weird Frankenstein console barely holds by a thread so most emulators can’t recreate its flaws and quirks correctly (which, funnily enough, are needed to run games smoothly)
PS2 emulators on the other hand, are FREAKING awesome!!! :D Live upscaled Battlefront 2 is GREAT!!
Still waiting for an N64 emulator that renders Bomberman 64 menu properly
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This one was me removing it because I posted something about modern games not working on emulators but it is in the retro games thread so I realized it was kind of a foolish place to state that “all” games don’t include most of the games people play these days.
Edit: was something like "The wording always annoys me because emulating any game from consoles excludes the PS5, Xbox X, and most AAA games created in the last 15 years unless you pay more than $30 to figure out a graphics card etc etc etc. {dumb thing to say in retro games
Fair enough, thanks for chiming in and correcting me! I’ll remove mine too, so it’s not overly antagonistic in an inappropriate place (though I do think what I said was accurate, just not the place to discuss it, haha)
I understand, there is a lot of animosity on Lemmy (not trying to compare to other platforms just recognizing it exists.). I think .world will keep getting hate but it likely will also keep growing due to other places having strong opinions that do not align with .worlds view. Doesn’t make them right or wrong, just that opinions are segregating themselves to find hives of echos. Shit, now I’m discussing what you said was not the place to discuss. Haha. Hope you have a great day.
What about an FPGA for running the original game cartridges? Such as the Analogue 3D when that eventually releases. Quirks and all included as it becomes the N64. It even supports Bluetooth controllers too and 4k or CRTs.
If it works well, I’m all for it! 😁
(In the past years I’ve seen too many hyped projects just crash on release, so I’ll be observing the progress but I won’t be praising something that’s not even out yet)
This is true, but Analogue has a great reputation already in this space from their other products so I am hopeful.
It’s usually the reverse in my experience. I love playing on original hardware when I have access, but some people get really anal when you emulate.
I tell you something that will make a big difference for titles pre-2005 or so: playing on a CRT television.
Especially on SNES titles which I played a lot as a kid, the extremely sharp look you get from emulators on flat panel displays just looks wrong.
Are there CRT filters to blend the pixels?
Sort of. They do add things like blur and scan lines, some even distort the frame to try to simulate the bulbous screen of a CRT. But it’s a bit like that VHS filter that Gen Z is so inordinately fond of; it’s artificially emphasizing the worst qualities of the medium, while still not achieving the benefits.
Plus, input lag is real. A lot of modern games are designed to take the lag between the console and the display into account, retro games aren’t. Playing Donkey Kong Country on an LCD TV made me feel like my reflexes had aged 50 years, hauling out my old CRT fixed that (but made my back feel like it aged 50 years).
Some filters are better than others for certain tastes. The glow effect on CRT Royale is what gives me the nostalgia buzz, but it looks much better on 4K displays. On my 1080p displays I use a package that adds a bezel for the display to reflect off of which gives me a similar effect.
I’d rather have a native CRT display, but I’m used to larger displays at this point and I couldn’t physically handle anything even in the high 20 inches range.
I didn’t consider lag. That’s more than aesthetic.
The artists also took that into account, used it in their favour.
Source: worked with pixel artists early 2000.
The artists did and the engineers did.
For example, the Apple II achieved 16 onscreen colors via NTSC artifacting. The 8-Bit Guy did a great video on this; programmers could choose like 4 colors, but if you put them next to each other in certain combinations they would turn other colors. Which is why white text would turn green and/or purple at the edges.
The IBM CGA card took it to a whole other level; it had a 4-bit digital RGBI video port for computer monitors and a composite port for televisions. When plugged into an RGBI monitor, you got a sharp picture that would display in one of four four-color palettes: black, white, cyan and magenta, or black, yellow, red and green, both in bright and dark. But if the artist dithered the graphics properly, and the card was plugged into a composite TV or monitor, the same graphics would appear softer, but in 16 colors. Text was harder to read, but games looked better, so business customers could buy an RGBI monitor and gamers could use a TV.
In the 16-bit era, I can cite titles on the SNES and Genesis that took advantage of the limitations of the NTSC standard to get graphical tricks done that the console couldn’t actually do. Like transparent water. I think it’s in Emerald Hill Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and in some levels of Super Mario World, where you can enter and exit water that is drawn by rapidly jiggling a dithered pattern back and forth. On a CRT television this blurs into a translucent effect, when viewed on an entirely digital monitor it looks like an opaque checkerboard or grille.
No one is listening to us 😅
That’s really cool and I’m glad people want to maintain the heritage of gaming, but I’m the exact opposite. I never want to play on old hardware or even use old style controllers again if I don’t have to.
I like to use controllers that have new tech but the old layout for the beat of both worlds
I have a friend like this, I’m a Nintendo collector and enjoying the hardware is my hobby. I know it’s an expensive endeavor, and I don’t expect anyone else to do it. I genuinely think any game should be up for piracy and emulation support, and it’s incredible what can be done to make games look, sound, and play better than the original. But when I’m sitting there having fun with Metroid Fusion on my GBA SP and you sit there going “why would you ever do that when emulating is cheaper and better” I don’t think you’re conversing in good faith.
Side note, if anyone knows how I can play Splatoon on an emulator using my Wii U gamepad, I’m all ears lol
Does anyone “prefer” emulation?
edit: I should added the caveat “if it’s feasible” because yeah it often isn’t. We don’t all have a lot of space, time, and money to deal with multiple old systems.
edit2: okokok there are plenty of reasons to prefer emulation. I was just thinking of controller/feel of the games almost always was best on the original.
I do - but I don’t necessarily think it’s “better”.
I actually do. Upscaling, fast forwarding, modding, cheats, save states are all nice QoLs. A lot of emulators for these retro consoles are pretty platform independent too, so I can run them from anything from a PC, a handheld device, phone, other gaming consoles or smart fridge with my choice of peripherals.
When it’s the only way is probably the only good answer to this; whether because you don’t have hardware or can’t set it up properly for whatever reason etc
https://youtu.be/ywWwUuWRgsM?si=Hv4-fVm5hNGF9MUZ
take a look at this and then tell me with a straight face that I should be playing Ocarina of Time on an n64.
I do. I have Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock on PS3. Console has 300ms latency which is a dealbreaker while RPCS3 on laptop or even just Clone Hero has much lower latency. If you have multiple consoles, emulation can bring all your consoles into one. I also have H.A.W.X 2 which drops frames on PS3, maybe emulated could run better. I want to freely approach frigates from low altitude without factoring in FPS drop when I blow them up :)
You can also use any controller you want with emulation. You can even replicate a crt filter or even get a real crt and emulate onto that to replicate the good ol days. I’d say a crt helps more than original hardware. Even with original hardware, pixels are too sharp and clean on modern screens. Old games benefited from smoothing and blurring the lines, which helped create a more realistic image.
There’s something relaxing about swapping carts on a SNES.
And booting up an OS, running the emulator, and selecting a save state just ruins the experience of playing a retro console.
Why would you swap carts when all you need is Super Mario World?
LTTP slip your mind?
Yeah but… SMW?
Sadly my SNES tends to reset games when jostled, so it’s gotten a little less relaxing for me.
I never liked ROMs on my computer, but I have a modded SNES Mini that feels legit enough for me.
How well does it emulate Metal Gear Solid 4?
A dream project for me, when I have the space for it, is to have a set of Ikea kallax shelves with a cubby for each retro console with some LEDs inside hooked up to a retropie emulating those consoles so those cubbies light up when that console is being emulated.
I have a lot of the actual consoles and they’re in working order, but it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to get them hooked up, swap cartridges, etc. sometimes. And I have just enough programming and electronics background that I feel up to the task of trying to make it work, just don’t have the space for a big display shelf at the moment.
I can appreciate the experience of playing on the actual hardware and the cases where it’s superior, but for me the experience emulating them is 99% as good with significantly less effort. Totally cool if others prioritize things differently though.
That’s an amazing idea…
Yeah, I like to bring it up and put the idea out into the world whenever I get an opportunity because part of me is kind of hoping that maybe someone out there will do the hard work and write the code and share it online so someday when I have the space for it all I have to do is wire up the lights
Also when it comes time to fill in the gaps in my collection, I can save some money and still get the same effect because the console doesn’t even have to be in working order, it just has to not be too beat-up looking. I could probably even 3d print some dummy consoles to hold me over (though of course I’d prefer to have actual working consoles if possible)
I’m not super techy, but I have an idle raspberry pi and tons of retro consoles… The idea is now in my head.
If you take up the project and decide to make my dream your reality, all I ask is that you share the code
I haven’t done a deep dive into how I’m going to make it happen, my programming is rusty as all hell, and I’ve never tinkered too much with a pie or this kind of project
But on its surface it seems like an easy enough problem, just need to turn on the appropriate lights when an emulator starts.
Easier said than done I’m sure, I also suspect you’d probably need some kind of led controller or maybe an Arduino or something between the pie and the lights, I don’t think the 3.3v it puts out from its GPIO pins would be enough for some light strips.
If someone had a lot of money to throw at the project, I imagine you could also do a pretty cool setup with smart lights like Philips Hue that would be pretty clean and require minimal tinkering with the physical electronics side of things, but you’d probably be throwing as much or more at it in bulbs as the rest of the project put together.
FPGA master race!
