Retrode 2

[pvt_awol]

I'm not sure if this belongs in the emulation forum or not. (Since you technically still require the game to use it) but I figured that this was cool news.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Retrode-Gen ... 13736.html


The thing that piques my interest the most about this is, you can use the actual controller for the game on the PC. There are numerous ways to do this now, of course, but I look at this as just one benefit. Another is: your saved games are still saved on the cart. You can play on legit hardware in the living room, save your game, and switch over to the laptop when your wife kicks you off of the TV.

I dunno if anyone else thinks this is sweet, but I'm gonna look into getting one.

[KDub]

This is actually pretty cool! Since most emulators run the games near perfection (compared to on chip systems) and you can use the actual cart with the actual controller...it is like the best of both worlds. It is authentic but running through your new computer and emulator so it offers so much more. Using the emulator you can upscale the graphics, do easy video capture, play on a nice flat panel screen.

Way over priced though!

I'd also be interested if CD systems (Sega CD for example) and other systems like Turbo Grafx 16 will be supported later with these add ons.

[pvt_awol]

^

that is a great thought! Since it is using emulation anyway, a standard CD-ROM would be just fine. It would be really cool if they had one that would function for everything up to and including the PS1 and Saturn. (PS2 and Dreamcast would be nice, but you gotta have a beefy rig to play the games well.)

[Ziggy]

I badly want to get one, mostly to upgrade to USB from the parallel programmer I have now, but the price tag is a little high.

[KDub]

To me it is only worth maybe half or less of what they are charging. A chip system that plays NES, Genesis and SNES cost about $60.

[Ziggy]

You can use it with an emulator on the PC to kinda be like a console, yes, but that's not all it does. You can dump a cart to a ROM file with it. Maybe that's not useful to most of you that find it easy to download a ROM for free, but if you ever find a rare beta or unreleased cart, it would come in handy. The feature I want it for though is the ability to read and flash the SRAM on carts. I have a programmer that will let me do this with SNES carts right now, but it uses a parallel port. The Retrode is USB, which would be a lot nicer. Mostly so I can finally ditch my old PC I'm keeping around solely for the parallel port. And the Retrode supports more than just SNES.

Being able to read and flash the SRAM on a cart is a great thing. Let's say you read about a game so you decided to try it out on an emulator. As it turns out, the game is awesome. You quickly decide that you must buy the game on eBay, because we all know that real hardware is better than emulators, but you can't stop playing the game in the mean time. The game comes in the mail a few days later, but you're already a few hours into the game, you don't wanna start from the beginning again. No matter, just take the save file and flash it to your cart. Now you can continue playing the game, right where you left off, on your actual cart.

Don't think that would happen often enough? Well there's more. You can backup the SRAM on your carts and save them on your computer. So maybe you wanna just backup some RPGs or games you worked really hard on. Or maybe you wanna back up a save so you can change the battery, then restore the save. Or maybe you were playing a game on a flash cart and decided you wanted to buy the actual cart, you can transfer the save.

It's a great tool to have. I definitely wanna get one. I just don't have the cash right now, and yeah, the price is a little steep. But the dude worked hard on it. This isn't some company that's making it. It's just a regular guy like you or me.

[KDub]

True the ROM dump feature is very nice, it be nice to have. I'm sure I'd use that feature at least once. I kinda forgot about that so the price isn't as steep but still steep for sure.

[Ziggy]

I agree, the price definitely seems high from our point of view. But again, I understand that this is a guy that put a lot of time and money (prototyping and production) into this product. If you go to his site for the Retrode there's some videos on there you can watch:

http://www.retrode.org/

It's been a while, but IIRC, there's a video of him explaining the new Retrode 2 before it came out. He did a lot of talking about the designing aspect of it. You get the impression that he's a really cool person, and that he cares about what he's doing. Also, IIRC, he's a college student and the Retrode is a little project of his. And the plain fact that it's not exactly cheap to get the casings made up, especially for a guy that's doing this (I'm assuming) out of his house. Plus the cost of the rest of the components. Plus all the time and money he spent with prototypes. Unless it turns out that he's netting like 75% or more on each sale, I can appreciate the price.

[KDub]

Fair points!
He should look into getting in touch with Hyperkin or something. Strike a deal!

[Lokkenjawnz]

It also includes two Genesis and two SNES controller ports, and buying four of those USB adapters separately would cost 60 some dollars at roughly $15 a pop, so for $20 more you get a ROM/SRAM dumper in a nice compact case. So, while expensive, I'd say it's a pretty awesome deal for what it really is.