WELL THIS IS INTERESTING.. Retron 5

[foxhound1022]

Yeah, I wasn't sure how much of a difference it would make, but to me it was a vast improvement. I'm also not sure why some people say that they don't really see any difference between the filters; they all have their own merits.

From what I've noticed so far, the Super Eagle filter seems to work best with Konami games like CV and the like, while the 1st party SNES games seem to look best with the Scale x2 filter.

@E.E. - Not yet, I'll have to mess around with it when I get home later.

Edit: I will add that the controller they give you is a cool concept, just poorly executed. The clicky-stick is great; it's almost identical to the one in my 360 fight pad, but the controller shape is simply poopdickery.

How did that awkward shape make it all the way from the design phase to production? That is the only gripe I really have with it, but it's minor.

[aaron]

hopefully they'll come out with a revised "Retron Super Arcade Controller Pro v3++#Accent Core" or something.

[Tanooki]

I've mostly been a proponent of playing games on their original hardware, this would be one of the few times where I can really say that from a purely aesthetic standpoint, this is superior.

From a gameplay aspect, once I get to actually sit down and play some games on it, will that become clearer.

You and I are on the same page. I did not preorder this and was NOT convinced by it at all. Only seeing one in person and playing a few parts of world 1 on SMB gave me a feel to appreciate it more. Seeing the short comings having it with the original .20 and 1.0 firmwars in place that's what got me digging and eventually befriending the head retron tech which got that whole long run of me coorelating my own tests with others information and firing it off to him which got so many of those rapid fire updates in the first month having more specific fixes on a per game basis or adding in missing features like the genesis mode button as another requested be done.

I finally got ahold of the guy last night, seems they're doing a lot of heavy work on it right now that kept him offline. They took what I could dig up on the FeRAM vs SRAM and have been pounding away at fixing the random death of SRAM/FeRAM saves on GBA games written back to the cart. Other stuff that wasn't specified on is being updated too. I put my $140 into this and I plan to see this to be the best it can be if I can help it any tiny little way.

I like you detest clones, but I got my start with emulators in the 90s in their PC infancy for Nintendo stuff. Seeing what this could do, and how HDMI-NES behaves in general thanks to another slowly brewing project out there it caught my eye. With a toddler I can't play my old games much, the hot saves fixes that issue too. IT convinced me that an emulation box with true controller inputs and save write/read capabilities is totally worth it.

[DonSilvestre]

Hearing Foxhound and DSH takes on it, now I want one again. The whole "seeing games for the first time again" is what really strikes me. I mean its not like I stopped playing my originals on CRTs, but a crisp HD image of an NES game is a sight I must behold. Still no PCB shots of the controller, but I am sure I can solder it into a spare arcade stick.

It really is awesome, I might even go so far as to say it's actually superior to playing on original hardware/CRT. Does that mean it's as AUTHENTIC as playing on original hardware? Obviously not, but the overall experience is better in my opinion.

That said, I do want to caution EVERYONE that there is still some input lag (inherent on ALL HDTV's, no exceptions apparently). The HDTV you have WILL make a difference. I can't feel it on 99.9% of games, but I still haven't managed to beat Mike Tyson on Punch-Out!! (I can get SO close...then again maybe my skills have just declined after not playing it on a cart/CRT for 7 years...), and my TV has a "great" rating from displaylag.com. Just a fair warning to manage expectations appropriately.

[Tanooki]

Displaylag.com I think the site is, and if you can find a TV with 30ms and under lag, games should have no issue with being played unless you're in a really slim set of very hypersensitive people to such things (or have an overactive imagination because you've heard about it so you experience it like a placebo effect.)

It really is like playing these things all over again for the first time, especially the non-portable stuff. Funny thing is that the portable stuff built for slower LCD screens don't have the issue with the lag as it's compensated for. That's why some people have issues with the 8/16bit console games because they're designed in an era of no LCDs so they didn't have to design around some known potential of input lag over a LCD refresh rate. Modern games compensate for it manually, or for the really twitch sensitive like those guitar hero games it has a calibration screen to track the lag level and setup to deal with it in how it renders to screen.

[ExedExes]

Hearing Foxhound and DSH takes on it, now I want one again. The whole "seeing games for the first time again" is what really strikes me. I mean its not like I stopped playing my originals on CRTs, but a crisp HD image of an NES game is a sight I must behold.

NES looks great, and even simple black and white Game Boy games just look brilliant. I'm looking forward to playing my newest Genesis acquisition, Phelios, for SOTM next month.

I finally got ahold of the guy last night, seems they're doing a lot of heavy work on it right now that kept him offline. They took what I could dig up on the FeRAM vs SRAM and have been pounding away at fixing the random death of SRAM/FeRAM saves on GBA games written back to the cart. Other stuff that wasn't specified on is being updated too. I put my $140 into this and I plan to see this to be the best it can be if I can help it any tiny little way.

That's good. I started up Konami Krazy Racers with the SRAM battery again on my regular GBA, and I'm gonna play it on the Retron 5 and see if it will write back to the cartridge later on. Again thanks for all your efforts, I've been reading your exchanges with the tech since the launch date.

[foxhound1022]

Yes, GB games were surprisingly clear as well. I played through a few levels of Wario Land as one of the original GB games I tested.

[Tanooki]

The GBA stuff is less clear for me, but it's by choice really. I don't like playing them in a small box so I have them fill to the screen. Some do look quite a bit nicer as they scale well, but some, such as the FPS games like DOOM turn into a very blocky hot mess though still very playable, it just shows the corners cut due to resolution size used because of the little screen it was meant for.

[ExedExes]

Ok, so I think something's going on with Konami Krazy Racers and it's not the SRAM battery.

A few days ago, I started a new file on the GBA and saved. Today I brought up the save no problem on the GBA. I put it in the Retron 5, hit Copy Save To Retron, and it's a totally blank file as if nothing was originally saved there. Took the cartridge out, put it back in my GBA, save file is gone. Tried starting a new game on the Retron 5, saved a new file there, hit Copy Save To Cartridge, it looks like it did, but nothing was ever transferred.

It can't be a dead battery because it held a save for days. Something's up with the SRAM saving still, so for now I saved a state on the new file I just made on the Retron 5. No way am I gonna trust Game & Watch Gallery 4 that also uses a battery on the Retron 5 quite yet. I have a lot of progress there. At least EEPROM/FeRAM works as it should for now.

[Tanooki]

Like I said about a day ago FeRAM and SRAM is still glitched and they now have a team on it to figure out what the hell is wrong with it and recode it to stop the problem. They've been busy the last week which is why I hadn't heard from him and I"m sure that's part of it.

My suggestion to you is two fold. 1) Do not put SRAM/FeRAM games inside the system at all. 2) If you want to, disable in the system menu 'copy save to retron on first boot' so it sees no reason to touch it.

I'm not sure that's 100% safe as I haven't even tried it, but I'd think if it never touches the chip, the chip shouldn't get screwed with. So if you do disable that thing and keep using it, that's what the hot saves and save states are for. Eventually when it is fixed, then you can copy a save back to the cart.


I did hear at one point that if a game has a very weak battery that'll still detect ok enough not to erase the data in part or fully from your save slots on a cart on real hardware, there's a chance the R5 could break the data copying/writing it as it does to another system. I'm not sure if that's true since save/write should be all the same but given the system with some multicarts will spit out that low voltage, remove game before pressing Ok message, anything is possible.