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I like the idea on paper; I have some reservations about how the final product will function.

The price point will be the primary factor that determines if this will fail or succeed. Comparison to the Laseractive seems natural, but we must remember that the Laseractive failed because it was so expensive that only the wealthiest consumers could afford to buy it.

I think the major selling point is the PC Engine/TG-16/CD-ROM features. I believe this is the first console to emulate Turbo Duo, and only the second console to emulate PC Engine (after RetroFreak). If they can keep the price point well under the cost of a TurboDuo, we could see some real value.

I guess my thought was if one wanted a 1080p picture, save states, less space, etc. emulation does all that stuff. The only thing emulation lacks is the ability to dump your own carts.

Another thing I'm wondering: do the Retron or Retroblox systems require original, authentic controllers, new USB/Bluetooth ones, or the flexibility for both? I could see that being really desirable, since most analog controllers wear out after several years and it sucks not being able to replace them with something more common like dualshock controllers. I have a few adapters like PS2 to Gamecube or PS2 to Sega Saturn for this reason.

I wonder what version of Retroarch this will run.

@Anayo - Don't know about this thing, but the Retron supports all kinds of peripherals.

@fast - Yeah, the "Hybrid Emulation" thing has me real curious as to what's really going on under the hood here.

Emulation quality will be a huge deal for someone like me. I am picky about my PCE emulation, and so far only one emulator (the least friendly to use) is fully accurate.

If "Hybrid Emulation" is marketing speak for FPGA on par with the RetroAVS then consider me interested. If this is a Retron 5 with addons...meh.

I brought up in the Retro Freak thread that there will always be circular arguments (internal for me ) with these devices. The Retro Trio supports EverDrives, the Retron5 allows save states & patches, the Retro Freak supports carts and SD card ROMS, who cares about those I run PC emus, who cares I have all 5+ options above . At some point, they're all redundant. Doesn't take away from the ease of use or preservation aspect.

I do think it is important to remember the old consoles will eventually die or at the very least require capacitor replacements sooner than later. We're already seeing this with Game Gears & Turbo Duos which are notorious for bad caps.

Not to mention lasers for disc based systems. This is why I've been so into PS1/2 loading via USB & HDD lately, and researching other ODEs. It's an area of hardware preservation lacking IMO.

Anayo wrote: The only thing emulation lacks is the ability to dump your own carts.

This guy allows you to dump your actaul carts via USB, then drop into emu. Will even let you use original controllers within emus.
http://www.retrode.org/about/

bmoc wrote:If "Hybrid Emulation" is marketing speak for FPGA on par with the RetroAVS then consider me interested. If this is a Retron 5 with addons...meh.

Good point. If it is like the RetroAVS I am all in. If it is like the Retron 5, well I still dont have one.

Accurate FPGA work takes a lot of time and effort. It's not as easy or cheap as software-based emulation. I doubt they would be doing a multi-console emulator with FPGA emulation unless they were using a relatively high-powered FPGA core (expensive) and then dynamically loading the hardware profile each time you launched a game. This is certainly doable, but I'm not sure any retro-hardware groups have the resources to coordinate something like this on an appropriate level for multi-console work.

Yeah, if I had to guess, this is basically just a cart dumper/CD ripper and Android-based emulation. Kinda hard for me to really get on board right now.