Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 11:29:52 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Knock-off emulation machines

Started by Famous Mortimer, July 27, 2019, 02:08:50 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Spiteface

Been looking at the Bittboy and LDK consoles.

Used to have a GCW Zero that I lost, and one of these might kinda fill the Dingux-shaped hole for a hell of a lot cheaper than the GCW cost me.

Famous Mortimer

The Retrostone looks pretty nice, too. A little more expensive, but it'll do pretty much everything I want.

Also, someone on Reddit (in the middle of calling people tards and so on) recommended the Xperia Play, the phone / handheld hybrid which will play a heck of a lot of old games. They're pretty cheap, too. More research is needed. Or I just need to buy one and shut the hell up.

And the PS Vita, too, but the problem seems to be it needs a specific firmware on it to be able to do roms and so on. Hmm.


Are you wanting specifically handheld then? PSP is widely considered the best in that case. Easy to get stuff running on it. Actually feels good to hold and play. Most of these alternatives will do the job but they'll feel clunky in comparison.

NoSleep

The GPD XP still looking good to me (just because it plays PSX games well).

madhair60

Quote from: The Boston Crab on August 02, 2019, 03:08:55 PM
Are you wanting specifically handheld then? PSP is widely considered the best in that case. Easy to get stuff running on it. Actually feels good to hold and play. Most of these alternatives will do the job but they'll feel clunky in comparison.

PSP is insanely, ridiculously easy to get custom firmware on, then it's just a matter of dragging and dropping your roms and emulators. The only thing that may be tricky now is finding the eboot versions of PS1 games, since Emuparadise went down, but I'm sure they're about somewhere.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: The Boston Crab on August 02, 2019, 03:08:55 PM
Are you wanting specifically handheld then? PSP is widely considered the best in that case. Easy to get stuff running on it. Actually feels good to hold and play. Most of these alternatives will do the job but they'll feel clunky in comparison.

Please bear in mind I had a thread like this a few years ago where, instead of just buying something and trying it, I sat with my thumb up my arse and did nothing: I hope to be different here, but I'm also hoping any other CaBbers reading this who are more willing to do stuff may read this and get a few ideas.

I like the idea of a PSP, though (also, turns out some guy near me on Craigslist is selling a PS Vita with the right firmware and everything on it, so I might go and have a look at that).

Haha, fair enough. To be honest, I do think retro games are really good in handheld these days. I'm tempted to hack my Switch but I'd be gutted if my account got banned so I'm not going to gamble.

Famous Mortimer

I've been watching the Games Done Quick events on Youtube, and I'd really like a bash at the old Metroids, and Castlevanias, and Marios. From having a Commodore 64 as a kid, I had an Amiga for a bit but then never really got back into gaming til the Saints Row / GTA 3 era. So something to play the older games I never messed with will be fun, I reckon, and I did enjoy using a PSP when I borrowed one for the weekend some years back.

peanutbutter

Quote from: madhair60 on August 02, 2019, 03:48:12 PM
PSP is insanely, ridiculously easy to get custom firmware on, then it's just a matter of dragging and dropping your roms and emulators. The only thing that may be tricky now is finding the eboot versions of PS1 games, since Emuparadise went down, but I'm sure they're about somewhere.
You can get software to convert ISO to EBOOT, if it existed and worked in 2006, I'm sure it's probably even easier to use now. Might be harder to get those crazily compressed eboots that were on emuparadise though

madhair60

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on August 02, 2019, 04:07:55 PM
I like the idea of a PSP, though (also, turns out some guy near me on Craigslist is selling a PS Vita with the right firmware and everything on it, so I might go and have a look at that).

Vita is NOT easy to hack. I really would recommend a PSP over it. It's so easy to fuck up and sometimes just won't work for no reason. PSP is risk free and a child could do it.

Quote from: madhair60 on August 02, 2019, 03:48:12 PM
PSP is insanely, ridiculously easy to get custom firmware on, then it's just a matter of dragging and dropping your roms and emulators. The only thing that may be tricky now is finding the eboot versions of PS1 games, since Emuparadise went down, but I'm sure they're about somewhere.

Emuparadise only removed the download links. Brilliantly, the files are still on their server. And luckily some clever people have created tampermonkey scripts to restore the links.

https://www.arcadepunks.com/you-can-still-download-roms-from-emuparadise-the-hack/

madhair60

Quote from: Huxleys Babkins on August 02, 2019, 11:13:54 PM
Emuparadise only removed the download links. Brilliantly, the files are still on their server. And luckily some clever people have created tampermonkey scripts to restore the links.

https://www.arcadepunks.com/you-can-still-download-roms-from-emuparadise-the-hack/

ahahaha. absolute cast calcium legends. thanks

Famous Mortimer

Hopefully some other site that doesn't force you to disable AdBlocker to read it will have the same information :(

I bought myself a PSP off of Facebook Marketplace. It was a bit sudden (I emailed this person and they were all "I'm ten minutes away from you, I'll drop it off right now" so I don't have a memory card or a wire to connect it to the PC yet. But we're halfway there!

madhair60

If you need a hand with anything let me know. It is dead easy. Mega Drive, Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy/Colour/Advance, Lynx, Atari 2600/7800, Spectrum, C64, Neo Geo Pocket Colour, PS1, PC Engine, Wonderswan Colour, etc, all now on the cards with very little difficulty.

SNES remains a problem, but some stuff works.

Famous Mortimer

It's working great! The install of the firmware took about 15-20 minutes, following the instructions on a Youtube video, and then I was looking for the best emulators and found a Reddit thread which talks about one download which is a suite of emulators, nice graphic front end for them all, and the emulators come with a handful of games each (I only did it last night and didn't spend a lot of time with it, but I noticed the original Metroid was on there).

So, thanks for whoever initially suggested a PSP, and to anyone else interested in doing this, it couldn't be easier.

madhair60


NoSleep

What's the PSP like for emulating the PSX?

NoSleep

Just found out it's easy if you convert PSX games to PSP format using an app called PSX2PSP.

madhair60

Perfect, if you can handle the lack of L2/R2. You can put them on the analogue nub, I think. You need eboot files of PS1 games, they're available online or you can make your own.

NoSleep

Quote from: madhair60 on August 15, 2019, 02:42:54 PM
Perfect, if you can handle the lack of L2/R2.

Depends on the game, I guess. But worth a try for being an inexpensive option (working PSP's going for £30-£60 on ebay).

Glad to hear you got it going, sounds like a great option!

Famous Mortimer

Man, I suck at these games. Despite having completed Super Mario Brothers as a kid, it now took me three game overs to get past 1-2 (I'm sure I'll get better at it); and I'm still stuck on the first big jumpy-uppy bit of Metroid (but I don't mind, it's a lot of fun to control).

Get ready for more "Mortimer sucks at games" posts in the near future.