old and retro video games and how you play them (emulation, fpga, vintage hardware, remasters, analogue, whatever)

psp is great too! sadly the battery on mine turfed out, and then i bought a replacement online which proceeded to grow very big and scary...

but the vita screen... my god. it's insane that that thing is as old as it is and still looks better than most things on the market. just a gorgeous screen. (the original vita specifically -- as i understand it, they cut the OLED from the slim vita!)

Ok I had had a digital io board on my mister and was running hdmi thru a series of different hdmi converters/scalers for crt... Finally caved and bought an analog io board. If you plan on using this thing on a crt even occasionally, JUST GET THE ANALOG IO BOARD. You can still use hdmi (afaict the only advantage of the Digi board is it lets you slot two ram cards, which is... Unnecessary for all stable core releases?) and the difference between a pure analog signal and an hdmi to converter... My god, THIS IS WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE

Also, the 8bitdo m30 controller is so damn nice

I'd use it for everything if the 6 button layout didn't feel weird for... Anything non-sega. I have an sn30 for everything else, which is... Fine? But not as good

How do you find the latency on bluetooth?
How are the various clone portables in terms of controller feel/responsiveness?

i don't use the BT much, i've just got them plugged by USB. i'm sitting right beside this little 20" trinitron so no need for it. i'll try it later today though

https://rpubs.com/misteraddons/inputlatency

from that list it looks like the worst case is about 30ms lag, which is a frame i think? seems within tolerable limits, much better than the brutal experience i had with trying a 3rd party switch controller on BT with my phone that one time (that was like 3 second lag. brutal)

30ms is closer to 2 frames, a 60hz frame is about 16.7ms

2 frames total lag (from button press to onscreen result) would be very good indeed but game, console, and monitor-specific lag all need to be taken into account and that list has latency figures *only* for the controllers and *only* when used with the mister

ok last spam of the day 6th gen poll (ps2 era)

any of yall use one of the many many handhelds emulator machines?

Think there was talk of this in the "what are you playing now", or some other I love games thread

Yeah, I recently got an RG35XX and I've been playing it tons. Currently working through some of the GBA library that I paid to access on Switch, but which I'd much rather play on this cuter/more portable device. I was worried that the 3.5 inch screen would seem too cramped, but it doesn't bother me at all.

It's also been fun for light tinkering; I installed a custom OS, and took it apart to install improved shoulder buttons/put some electrical tape under the D-pad, which was registering false diagonals. So now it feels really like it's "mine," which is not how I ever expected to feel about a piece of cheap consumer electronics. These things are neat!

looks way more affordable/easier to get than an Analogue... tempting

Yeah if not being FPGA isn't an issue for you, and you don't mind a cheap build quality, I say go for it. You get the added benefit of being able to play older console titles too, not just handhelds. Some of these things can even run up to sixth-generation consoles. As m bison noted, there are many of these things on the market, with a wide range of capabilities. It's quite the rabbit hole.

the steam deck is awesome but obviously much more than just an emulator handheld and much more expensive.
my only gripe is that many of the recommended "emulation launchers" are written by linux newbies who are figuring it out as they go along. not really an issue for most people, but there have been a few times where i thought i'd contribute or fix a bug, took one look at the code, and immediately dropped the idea

i still haven't installed emudeck. i hate steam deck desktop mode.

Chuck Tatum was your sticklebrick thing a "Multiface"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiface

I’ve got a miyoo mini+ loaded with onionOS. it’s great

i still haven't installed emudeck. i hate steam deck desktop mode.

yeah desktop mode is pretty intolerable without a mouse and keyboard, i generally try to do any non-steam thing remotely over ssh. but i'm also a huge linux dork who is over the moon that a best-in-class gaming device runs the OS

also if you're more used to the retropie-style retroarch+emulationstation approach, there's also retrodeck you can try but both will require dropping down to desktop mode :)

i got paid today so i dropped some money on the retroid pocket 4, i like that it'll handle all the n64 games im interested in and some ps2 as well

fyi. Just the screenshots alone are a serious trip.

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games

I bought a Mister FPGA and it’s maybe the best gaming purchase I’ve made. Totally rules and worthy of the hype. I know emulation has come a long way since I last heavily fucked with it, but at the time I remember being a little bummed that a lot of my old favorites didn’t feel as enjoyable as I’d remembered. Chalked it up to rose tinted memory.

But digging through stuff on the Mister has been a bit of a revelation. I think what soured me on my emulation travels, that I didn’t fully clock at the time, was the input latency. With a decent low latency controller plugged into Mister, there’s like zero (humanly detectable) lag and things just snap and feel right. Looks brilliant on a big ole modern OLED too with countless quality filter presets to tweak if you want a CRT (or just about any other) look.

It’s great. Been digging through the NEO GEO and Saturn catalogues as of late. Kinda want to fire up the 486 core and load up some stuff I haven’t played in 30 years. All sorts of old computer stuff in there that I haven’t even touched yet.

Can’t recommend it enough. Super cool thing.

PS2 hard drive soft-mod kinda unbelievably easy and great to run on these days!

I’ve been thinking about digging out my old PS2 and looking into mod options. Mister got me hyped on the retro game tip, so I made the leap and ordered a (expensive! but apparently excellent!) Retrotink 4K, which hasn’t arrived yet. Kinda wanna plug whatever I can into it.

Mister is definitely on my radar. I had one of the older Mists, with MIDI ports that I intended to emulate Atari ST stuff on, but could never really get it to work. 12 years ago, or whatever it was, it felt like a hobby unto itself to get this stuff even functional, so it seemed hopeless for creative work (for me! not to diminish anyone elses hobbies). Looks like things have come a long way. I would order one in a second if they could get a more modern 68k/OS9 core going.

Will say the Mister has been a fairly painless set-up process if you’re moderately Google savvy, took an afternoon to get up and running. And a nice “update all” script pulls all the basics from the internet to get you the essentials and latest updates.

Some cores need extra files and require a little forum diving, but I wouldn’t say any of them were a major headache. Save for the Neo Geo, which drove me a little mad. But once a core’s running, it’s running and you don’t have to think about it again.

Very easy to get lost in the infinite settings if you like to tinker though.

a mister is totally up my alley but i haven't really pulled the trigger due to a) it being dependent on a proprietary development board subsidized for customers putting in multi-million dollar chip orders and b) it's big and ugly as shit

the first point is somewhat mitigated now with the clone boards popping up, but i fear that the mister will always be an abomination of ports in every direction with daisy chained daughter boards

The DE-10 Nano? Not at all familiar with your ethical beef there, but be glad to hear about it. Makes sense for the community to agree on one FPGA board to work with just to keep this (international, highly collaborative) project from being a total clusterfuck. And it makes sense to decide on an affordable one used by students and

As far as your aesthetic beefs… it’s a circuit board that’s about the size of a cell phone.

Oops, finger slipped, unfinished post.

I could be totally ignorant on your former point, but you’re definitely confused about the latter.

rare example of a circuit board fan heating things up

is not having a Windows computer a barrier to getting shit working on mister?

No experience with it personally, but from what I’ve seen set up on Mac shouldn’t be a problem. Info’s out there.

lol darragh

Sorry if I came off hostile. The “huge, ugly, abomination” angle is just kind of a weird take, it’s a pretty tiny thing that is as ugly as whatever case you decide to stick it in.

There are optional boards you can get (I got the USB hub, recommended) that cleanly attach to the main board. And that all cleanly slots into my small, inoffensive case. Peripheral design another point in favor for using a standard.

Cool that there are clones in the works that will make these more accessible and affordable though. I get why it sucks having the project dependent on a specific manufacturer, just seemed like a choice that had to be made.

i don't want to belabor the point because i do think it's a cool project and i was being flippant. apologies if it came across as harsh; my criticisms are mostly "me problems" as i am an insufferable ass-thete and free software/hardware advocate