Anbernic RG Arc

[frozen dove]

Could maybe beat the Saturn controller I'm using currently haha

[visual stream]

I remember seeing someone on Reddit being as passionate about the GC controller as I was about the Sega stuff, so I asked him why

I think he explained that different size buttons made sense as A and B tend to be the main buttons in most games — that tradition basically dates all the way back to G&W/NES

And yeah, Gamecube looks kinda over-engineered to me, but definitely not N64 levels of WTF

I think it's also a bit like Genesis in the sense that most good games have been re-released elsewhere (Switch Online for first party games, Xbox Gamepass for Rare stuff)

So that's why it's hard to make an argument that you absolutely need a special device to play Super Mario 64/Zelda stuff

[leaden plover]

you don't need a special device, you either need a) nintendo to make the port or b) enough compute power

[visual stream]

Exactly. But I think N64 has a fairly small library, and only about a dozen games everyone really cares about, and those are available on modern platforms

I think Golden Eye has been the last bastion, but even that has been rereleased this year

[dusty orchid]

They also run way, way better on modern platforms than on the N64. It's night and day.

Also considerate of nintendo to make a cartridge based console, to keep the file size down for easy emulation 20 years later 😄

[spice topaz]

Really? I didn’t think the T618 needed frame skip on Saturn. I’d prove it but honestly I’m having trouble setting up my Saturn emulation on my RG505 😅

But if you do use a framing hammer all day, and you get a chance to play when it’s over, which ergonomic would you prefer?

Powerslave used an amazing engine! That could explain why it ran smoothly

[visual stream]

The reviews I've seen are a bit inconsistent, but here's Sega Rally at 1X in T618 with skipped frames #1156905227014914068 message

So yeah, it seems like when people say "T618 plays Saturn well" what they mean is "T618 can play Saturn games at 60FPS with auto frameskip"

[frozen dove]

oh no, I am thinking about the library in general, even for emulation 😛

it has some absolute stellar games like Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Doom 64, etc.

and those which are good are REALLY good

but there's not that many good games when compared to NES, SNES, PS1 or even the GameCube, I feel like

[leaden plover]

much smaller library. I think about 600 games or so?

thinking about it, I kind of like nintendo's approach to cartridge based games

creating the artificial constraint of limited game size meant that developers had to really think about what they wanted to put in their games

I think the very largest games were about 32mb or so?

[dusty orchid]

A few were 512mb

They did cartridges to avoid piracy mostly.

[leaden plover]

that was one of the reasons, yeah

[leaden plover]

which ones? I'm seeing maxed at 64mb

oh you're talking mega BITs rathers than megabytes

[dusty orchid]

And loading times I guess

[leaden plover]

certainly a lot harder to damage a cartridge game, too

[dusty orchid]

I meant bytes, but yeah, I think I was getting bits and bytes mixed up

[leaden plover]

512megabits is 64megabytes which makes sense

[dusty orchid]

Obviously

😆

🤷‍♂️

[leaden plover]

I was reading some pretty interesting stuff about the nintendo 64 and the indigo/silicon graphics workstations, the architecture of the nintendo 64 in general and their ethos. I'll see if I can dig it back up

oh it was just the nintendo 64 wiki page. Look that up if you want to see some interesting stuff 😄

[spice topaz]

I mean, it’s hard to get a feel for motion in a screenshot. As long as frame rate is pretty consistent, it feels pretty smooth to me at 30 fps and above (24 fps movies don’t bother me). I doubt a 58-60 fps would irritate me as much as fluctuating between 29-30 fps, if you follow. But I guess it’s somewhat personal tolerance. And I appreciate your effort sharing the snapshots on multiple games.

[spice topaz]

Less than 300

[leaden plover]

388 if you include the 85 japan releases

[visual stream]

I get what you mean. Fluctuations between 50 to 60 FPS would not bother me as well as long as there are no sound stuttering/clipping

[leaden plover]

compared to the 7,918 games for playstation

[visual stream]

~380 is the size of Game Gear library as far as I remember

[leaden plover]

and then how much of those 388 are actually good? probably about 15

[spice topaz]

I studied Japanese in high school and one semester of college, and I don’t consider Japanese games with text to be playable 😂

[spice topaz]

Yeah! It’s surprising how much sound has an impact on the experience!

[leaden plover]

I'm sure some of those games might be good if they got fan translations

[spice topaz]

Kanji is a pain 😂

[leaden plover]

sounds... fun 🤣

[spice topaz]

And yeah, Japan’s got some incredibly talented game designers and storytellers, but really the N64 had one of the smallest libraries of a home console. It’s almost always a surprise when people realize how relatively few games came out for it.

[leaden plover]

yet some of those games are heralded as the greatest of all time

seems like they really went for quality over quantity at first glance

[spice topaz]

(But tons of my classmates had one, with the Mario games, golden eye, Pokémon snap/stadium, Perfect Dark)

[leaden plover]

but I wonder how many of those titles are just shovelware

[dusty orchid]

Could be worse. Check out the size of the Wii U library (not including random downloadable games).

Not full of the greatest of all time either 😄

[leaden plover]

I quite like the gamecube and wii library

had a go with Red Steel 2 the other day. It's very "bordlerlands with wiimotes" in styling

[spice topaz]

I think we can all agree each system has had its gems and hidden gems.

[leaden plover]

NO WE MUST ARGUE

[spice topaz]

But why?? We all like videogames!

[leaden plover]

NO WE DON'T

I HATE VIDEOGAMES I JUST LIKE ARGUING

RAAAAH

[spice topaz]

Did I join a Call of Duty lobby just now? 😂

[leaden plover]

sorry.

ah, I miss the days of the Call of Duty: Black Ops lobbies

[spice topaz]

Was Red Steel 2 ported to switch? Sounds like a cool hidden gem. I want to play Phantom Dust, which is like an real time action card game, but Xbox emulation blows 😂

[leaden plover]

I don't think so? It's a crime that it wasn't

needs porting to Steam VR for sure

[spice topaz]

That sounds like a good idea!

[leaden plover]

it reminds me such much of a VR game

[spice topaz]

Someday I’ll get a PSVR2 🥺

[leaden plover]

I'm still slumming it on my HTC vive

[spice topaz]

puts a penny in the piggy 🐖

(If you know what piggy banks are/were)

[leaden plover]

ah yes, when we enslaved pigs to make up the banker shortage of 83

weird times

was a lot cleaner, too!

[spice topaz]

https://tenor.com/view/thatll-do-pig-james-cromwell-farmer-hoggett-christine-cavanaugh-babe-gif-16430795

[leaden plover]

right, sorry for going off topic all, I'll go back to studying my circuits and such

[mint crescent]

Any real news yet?

[visual stream]

Yeah, compared to N64 the Saturn library has like 2.5x more games, but arguably very few must plays (maybe Panzer Dragoon). Like I don't even think there's a Saturn Sonic game everyone needs to replay all the time.

So IMO Saturn library is mostly full of niche highlights (like Batsugun or Radiant Silvergun in shmups or Assault Suit Leynos for mecha games, certain fighting games, etc), but not necessarily Super Mario 64-level blockbusters

[spice topaz]

We realized that the processor is rumored and not confirmed/mentioned by anyone at Anbernic yet.

[vagrant cradle]

The blockbusters that Saturn got was also on Playstation

And the relative Sonic game was basically Nights into Dreams, which imo was just better Sonic in every way

[mint crescent]

oh good maybe more power for saturn

[spice topaz]

Depends on what you value. Saturn has a number of excellent Schmups, yes, but also fighting games, beat ‘em ups, strategy games, some unique RPGs, racing games, etc. Saturn did not get a new Sonic platformer entry, just Sonic R and a “classics” compilation. It’s a system that has a lot of gems worth mining for, even if you never considered it before.

[left phoenix]

which are the unique RPGs?

[dusty orchid]

I found a list of saturn games I intend to work though, this is the top 15. If you like platformers you'll struggle, but there is some nice stuff there, including a lot which most won't know about unless they had a saturn.

[mint crescent]

Action Elevator Returns is a great Saturn game also.

[dusty orchid]

FYI, don't dismiss Saturn Bomberman as just another bomberman. That thing let 10 PEOPLE PLAY (if you had two multitaps).

[mint crescent]

Any Bomberman is good.

[granite schooner]

Legitimately has the best single player of any Bomberman too. 94 is respectable second place.

Been playing a lot of Bomberman lately for some reason so I'm pretty much an expert now 🤓

[dusty orchid]

I think the saturn was the first time the bomberman team could just do whatever they wanted, without hardware constraints, so they just went crazy.

They even did online...

[frozen dove]

Yeah that's sort of what my original point was. The Saturn was a better console with a better controller and more devs making games for it... But so few are truly great.

I haven't played many, but off the top of my head, what Saturn games are remotely close to OoT or Mario 64 in level?

The most acclaimed games are Symphony of the Night, Mega Man X4, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Grandia, Shining Force 3, Tomb Raider and Nights Into Dreams

But how many of those are on the same level as the best N64 games?

[dusty orchid]

Nights and the panzer dragoon games for sure.

Imagine being used to Megadrive/snes stuff, and then you encounter THIS

https://tenor.com/view/panzer-dragoon-panzer-dragoon-zwei-golia-gif-25821412

[frozen dove]

I need to finally play either of those, then!

[vagrant cradle]

I think OoT and Mario 64 are a bit overstated, the games you listed definitely stand next to them in their respective genres

[dusty orchid]

Guardian heroes, if you like side scrolling beat em ups, is immense.

I'm not a huge JRPG guy, but loads of those as well.

[grizzled geyser]

I'm not a saturn guy but I loved shinobi x. I don't know why it's never listed anywhere. The gameplay is stellar and it has such cheesy good fmv cutscenes

[dusty orchid]

Cheesy? Never.....(skipped to a good bit)

https://youtu.be/Wt_Nef4Dx_Q?feature=shared&t=3291

[mint crescent]

I would take all these Symphony of the Night, Mega Man X4, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Grandia, Shining Force 3, Tomb Raider and Nights Into Dreams over Mario64 and OoT

[strong tendon]

powerslave is also a saturn banger (there is a ps1 port but the saturn version was better)

[visual stream]

Off the top of my head (not an RPG fan)

Baroque (also on PSX, but Saturn should have better graphics)
Shining Force 3
Legend of Oasis

[strong tendon]

shining in the holy ark also

[dusty orchid]

Oh yeah. The saturn also has a genre most will be unaware of. It's like, an interactive movie? Basically a load of cut scenes in a choose your own adventure style game.

They were all awful. But it's worth playing one just to see what people thought was the "future of entertainment" at one point.

[vagrant cradle]

you're talking about FMV games

[strong tendon]

also i think the first devil summoner was saturn only but i dont think thats even fan translated?

[vagrant cradle]

and yeah I think most people are gonna ignore it

Devil Summoner is saturn only (the sequel is on 3DS) and is yet to be translated, correct

[dusty orchid]

Yeah. That. They were terrible. But really funny.

[dusty orchid]

Phantasm was the one that came on 8 discs, right? Crazy stuff.

[grizzled geyser]

It also got one of the better 3d sonic engines but sadly no real game out of it 😅 If they polished this and made a real game it would have been awesome

[visual stream]

I mean, there are FMV games so bad it gets good

On DOS I really liked Harvester and Phantasmagoria 1/2. Also Gabriel Knight 2, but that's just a nice adventure game

The first two are like trashy horror B-movies, more or less

[strong tendon]

deep fear for saturn is in my backlog. sega's attempt at the RE formula

[left phoenix]

thx will look into them for my library

[dusty orchid]

I think phantasm and phatasmagoria were the same thing

Or maybe I am misremembering

[grizzled geyser]

Isn't phantasm a movie?

[dusty orchid]

Yeah, it was phantasm on the Saturn, but phantasmagoria on the pc.

[dusty orchid]

Yes, but unrelated 😄

[visual stream]

That's a trick question!

I would take SoTN over any N64 game except for maybe Doom 64. But I wouldn't want to play that one on an N64 controller 🤣

(yeah, that's just me, I know)
(and yeah, PSX had a better version AFAIK)

[visual stream]

Nah, Phantasmagoria 1/2 aren't based on anything

It's basically two edgy/horror adventure games from Sierra (the guys that did Space Quest/King's Quest/Leisure Suit Larry)

[dusty orchid]

It's not based on the saturn game. I mean the saturn game and the PC game were the same game, but they just slightly changed the title.

[visual stream]

Oh shit, you're right. There's Phantasmagoria for Saturn, actually

Well, it's trashy, but I can recommend that if you're into that sort of thing

[frozen dove]

Ohhh that's on my list for sure!

[frozen dove]

I'll be damned.

Do you like OoT and Mario64 and still prefer those, or do you just find the 64 games overrated?

Personally I played OoT for the first time this year and it was amazing, but y'all are making me really excited to dive into saturn. 😛

[mint crescent]

I like those games. I just would rather play the others. Grandia is top tier JRPG. I am also a big Shining Force fan. I guess more of personal preference.

[spice topaz]

I wouldn’t say there are exact, direct counterparts for each of your N64 picks. But it’s a shame most people have missed out on the Saturn gems.

N64 didn’t really have a game comparable to Final Fantasy VII, but Panzer Dragoon Saga did (they’re both quality, but different enough to enjoy both together, nice/fresh take on the genre). You could compare it to Zelda a bit, but OoT was kind of its own thing as an adventure RPG… but on the RPG front, Saturn got the Lunar games (no random battles, you could see your enemies!) and Grandia (same), for a bit more realtime action (closer to Zelda) you’ve got Magical Knight Rayearth and The Legend of Oasis. If you like the SNES Zelda games, The Legend of Oasis fits right in.

There aren’t many 3D platformers on the Saturn, but there are many 2D platformers like Clockwork Knight, Astal, and Rayman are cool. For a 3D platforming adventure, maybe Burning Rangers (made by Sonic Team) counts?

Goldeneye was fun, especially multiplayer, but Powerslave (Exumed in EU) had a more interesting single player (it’s like a FPS Metroid). Saturn didn’t have a Smash Bros, but it was the best place to play Capcom games and anime stylized fighting games (super smooth!) and the controller was great for those. Did the N64 have anything like a MegaMan? Vandal Hearts and especially Dragonforce are really cool strategy RPGs, with the former being like Fire Emblem and the latter being especially unique with realtime battles with tons of fighters in action at once!

Saturn also had a bunch of lightgun games that played like the arcade, this was really cool on CRTs at the time, takes extra effort to emulate authentically today. Sure, many Saturn games were PlayStation ports, but many of those did not appear on the N64. In the end, I don’t think there has to be a better system… the Saturn is a nice compliment! And just most people haven’t tried it.

[spice topaz]

Oh, and in case you don’t know, the first two Panzer Dragoon games are on-rails shooters (kinda like Starfox, but you can rotate your view 360°, and the second game has multiple paths in levels/evolutions for your dragon), but Saga is a RealTimeBattle RPG (like FF7) with 3D polygon environments to explore (with random battles, yeah). Cutscenes and voice acting too, very ambitious.

[granite schooner]

Saga is absolutely insane for a 5th gen game imo

[spice topaz]

I played Mario 64 in the day and again recently in emulation. It’s really a classic, has great inertia and polish to the movement, and the levels are pretty memorable. OoT is not something I got to play back in the day, and the controls are kind of a nightmare for me now. I’m trying, but I’m still at the beginning. If you haven’t played Majora’s Mask, my no-hobbies-but-games-and-tv friend says Majora’s Mask is one of his all time favorite games.

[spice topaz]

Yeah, PD Saga and Burning Rangers were pretty epic system swan songs that really pushed the Saturn. Magical Knight Rayerth was a bit more traditional, but also apparently well liked (I have yet to play that).

[mint crescent]

To be fair the N64 commercially failed also. Just not as badly as the Saturn. PSX is still the king of the 5th gen games.

[frozen dove]

Magical Knight Rayearth and The Legend of Oasis are both on my list, they look amazing

[spice topaz]

Yeah, because the Saturn actually sold pretty well (was a success) in Japan. Sega US was kind of at odds with it though, hoping to promote the Sega CD and 32X add-ons 😅

[frozen dove]

I agree with your point @spice topaz!

I didn't mean to discredit the Saturn library, I was just shocked that with so few games, N64 managed to get quite a few that are still in people's top 10s...

But I guess a point could be made that the Saturn had games like these too, and the only reason they aren't talked about today is that very few people played them

Honestly I think that in a world where Sega US pushed the Saturn more and a 3D Sonic game existed there, Sega might still be in the console game

[spice topaz]

With the 32-big gen (N64 is part of this), it was either rough 3D or really polished sprite art. Saturn is cool because a lot of games really leaned into the latter. So, they were often less cutting edge for the time (with a few exceptions), but the pixel art IMO stand the test of time better than some of the polygon games 🤷‍♂️

[mint crescent]

they handled the release bad also.

[frozen dove]

yes, the 32-bit sprite games look hot

Astal and Mega Man X4 in particular are stunning

[frozen dove]

That's honestly a bigger compliment to these Saturn games. 😄

[spice topaz]

Good games for the fans! Hope you love them; I need to play completely through them too. Had one friend with a Saturn, lol, my wife had never even heard of it growing up. I’ve been watching Metal Jesus and Sega Lord X on YouTube for the past few years tho, played a few emulated on my NVIDIA Shield.

[spice topaz]

Yeah, especially in the US, hurting relations with retail stores.

[mint crescent]

Astal looks great doesn't control great and feels like there is something missing from it. Some great ideas in the game that are used for very small part of the game.

[frozen dove]

both of those guys helped me build my Saturn list!

I'm yet to finish any, though

currently working through the Mario series in chronological order, got stuck on World 4-4 of The Lost Levels for a week

[spice topaz]

I feel ya… honestly so many games, but it’s kinda nice to feel like you won’t run out of something amazing to play!

[spice topaz]

To be fair, sometimes that rough early polygon look has its own charm: https://youtu.be/dQb6MEBNqd8?si=C3j5wRC_TXYhNmBd

[frozen dove]

oh, never! my list on HLTB is 1820 titles long and keeps getting longer 😄

[gaunt ore]

This is gonna my playing N64 much more enjoyable

As long as there's a stick . Where's the stick?

[mortal prism]

no stick, 3566

probably not an n64 handheld

[gaunt ore]

Then it's DOA

[mortal prism]

I mean if it's dirt cheap it's a niche sega genesis only handheld

[gaunt ore]

It's just a waste of resources. There's already 10000 devices than can play that level of games. This one just looks like an official Gen controller.

I need to start designing at big A

[mortal prism]

I mean there aren't that many 6 button devices

but I agree that a stick and a t618 would've made this go from 'ultra niche genesis handheld' to 'this is actually pretty dang good for everything gen 5 and down other than DC games that need analog triggers and the few PS1 games that need a right stick'

[mint crescent]

dirt cheap and anbernic don't mix well

[mortal prism]

I dunno, they priced the 405v pretty aggressively

[strong tendon]

if youre looking for something to play arcade and genesis games on this is gonna be good tbh? my only concern is its gonna be too expensive for that niche if it has the extra ram and touchscreen that their android 3566s do

i think companies are realising that if they go outside the box a little and dont try to be as one-size-fits-all they can be successful beyond "is this the most powerful thing at this price point" and i think this could work out for anbernic too. the genesis style dpad is definitely better for a lot of arcade games and other specific types of games than the nintendo style (isometric games for instance)

[frozen dove]

35xx is dirt cheap and much better than the RP2+ and RP3+ in my opinion

[mint crescent]

Also does a lot less. I don't see this being in the 35xx price range.

[mortal prism]

as far as I'm concerned the main competition for this with a 3566 is the RGB30

and that's $85 including shipping

not that they do the same things

[strong tendon]

yeah i think this is their attempt to counter the rgb30 in terms of targeting arcade

[mortal prism]

but in that they're both 3566 devices with unique form factor as their selling point

[frozen dove]

That's what I'm thinking!

If this used the 35xx SOC and was under $70, I think it would be a hit

But it's probably going to be 3566 and $90+, which imo would make it DOA

[spice topaz]

*Not confirmed

[mortal prism]

I hope the early prototype shell is also not final

and they wind up doing this as t618 with a stick

[visual stream]

Damn the price elasticity is turbocharged on this server 🙂

[mortal prism]

I think as long as it's under $100 including shipping it being basically just for neogeo and megadrive would be fine

[spice topaz]

I’m going to just pick up a job at the grocery store. They have shockingly good health benefits now, and a better hourly pay rate than I had at Apple just 6 years ago 😂

[frozen dove]

I'm just being pragmatic 😛

This doesn't play any systems my 35xx can't already play and $90 + shipping and taxes would make it $130 for me, which is way too much

$70 + shipping and tax would stay under $100, which is what I'm willing to pay for a bigger screen and better experience for one specific system 😛

[granite schooner]

I have to laugh at all the price discussion knowing I'm just going to buy it at whatever they charge anyways. I've been waiting too damn long for a handheld with that d-pad and 6 fat face buttons

[visual stream]

Oh, wow, that’s rough indeed

[frozen dove]

yeah, considering that I'm currently unemployed and my last job paid me $5.50 per hour, $100+ for a handheld that doesn't give me access to new games is a roughie haha

That's why I so desperately wanted it to be a T618 with 6 buttons and a stick, that would open up N64 for me and make it easier for me to spend the $150+ I'd have to save up for that ;P

[mint crescent]

https://tenor.com/view/stop-it-get-some-help-stop-gif-15995092

[left phoenix]

pretty much:

• its gonna be either novelty "genesis" device ... aka niche that already has some 6button devices , so price needs to be low for me to even consider it

• or with t618-level of power and at least a stick .... it could be "almost ultimate" sega device i would be willing to spend more on ... cause all the already existing 6button devices can barely touch 5th gen

[visual stream]

There isn’t anything else on the market with a Genesis layout

[mortal prism]

yeah I'd be a sucker for it if they added a stick and a chip capable of n64 so it could cover that niche too

but yeah 4" screen is a huge upgrade from 3.5"

as sacriligous as it may be I'm sure this will do PS1 well too

[visual stream]

There are some cheap six button “arcade” handhelds with a stick, a Powkiddy A20 and a fairly expensive portable hardware Genesis clone

Everything else would be limited run China-only devices, basically

[mortal prism]

yeah, unfortuantely most of them are too old/weak

[left phoenix]

yes ... but powerwise it wont be that much above A20 for the "6button consoles" use

[mortal prism]

the a20 is running what, android 6?

[left phoenix]

even less without the stick

[visual stream]

I don’t think A20 came with decent software even by Android standards tbh

[left phoenix]

it was a big mess iirc

[visual stream]

Yep

[left phoenix]

but i am kinda looking at it from PoV of "i own too many hanhdleds already" so "it had to fit the niche i am missing"

and "just genesis" means the price has to be looooow for me to consider it

[visual stream]

Oh sure, just saying. Been around 16 years since we last had a Sega-focused handheld

[left phoenix]

yeah 🙂

i am just bit sad that it doesnt seems to be the one i am missing at current rumoured form ... and will have to wait longer

the "so close , yet so far" kind of deal

[visual stream]

I hope the trend for niche handhelds continues, honestly. Definitely more interesting than the general “let’s make a switch lite and throw in everything we can” stuff

RGB30 is pretty cool even if I don’t care too much about GB games

[mortal prism]

yeah, a 4" 4:3 6 button handheld with a stick capable of DC/N64 would fill out my roster pretty well

[left phoenix]

yup totally 😄
Kinda why i ordere the 405v

so weird i had to had it 😄

[frozen dove]

agreed!

[mortal prism]

the RGB30 covers my SNES/NES/GB/GBC/PC ENGINE stuff really well, the max 3 I love for PSP and GBA, a 6 button 640x480 4" t618 would be great for n64/dc/saturn/genesis/neogeo

[frozen dove]

I just hope they start using the 35xx SOC instead

[left phoenix]

same for RGB30 and its 1:1 screen

[frozen dove]

plenty of power for all the retro systems, fantastic battery life and runs MinUI

3566 is overkill for the 4th gen stuff and PS1, and not powerful enough to run N64 and DC, feels like a waste of money to me :/

[mortal prism]

I highly doubt the 3566 is actually much more money than the 35xx SoC

[frozen dove]

the devices are 😅

the cheapest is what, the RGB30? RK2023? these are both twice as expensive as the 35xx where I'm from

[mortal prism]

yeah that's some europe specific powkiddy pricing problem, for us here in NA after shipping and coupons come into play the 2023 is only $10 more than the 35xx and that gets you a bigger battery and sticks as well as the SoC upgrade

[mint crescent]

That unsed MP3 player SOC has made anbernic lots of money

[mortal prism]

anbernic 3566 devices might be overpriced but I don't think that's because the 3566 costs a meaningful amount more than the 35xx SoC BoM wise

[left phoenix]

the worst offender for EU shipping is Retroid 😦 (twice as much as anvernic or powdaddy for me)

[visual stream]

I think without shipping/taxes the difference between RG353PS and RG35XX is about 20 bucks. This one might have Android , but it’s also coming out at least six months after 353PS

[frozen dove]

yeah, that makes sense

we have a retailer who sells Anbernic stuff at pretty much MSRP, so the 353PS costs less than the RK2023 here lol

[frozen dove]

it's 35, not including shipping and taxes

[visual stream]

On Anbernic’s website rg35xx is $56, rg353ps is $88

[frozen dove]

oh yeah, fuck Retroid man

the RP3+ cost me $240 and turned out to be dogshit, I'm not buying anything from them until they fix their shipping and their face buttons

[frozen dove]

that's $32 then, closer to my estimate than yours 😛

[visual stream]

Damn, need to go to bed already, my brain seems to be shutting down 🙂 of course you’re right

[frozen dove]

anyway, we got off-topic again 😛

[mortal prism]

yeah the PS/VS are overpriced because they didn't want to undercut the V/P/M too much I think, which are overpriced because they have touchscreens, emmcs, android, etc

[frozen dove]

same here, time to sleep haha

[mortal prism]

I'm hoping for this one they can start fresh and look at their competition rather than their own lineup

[visual stream]

This whole week is a major holiday in China, might as well discuss Castlevania, we’re probably not getting any more news any time soon 🙂

[frozen dove]

the PS shot itself in the foot in Europe by not giving us the no-SD model

it's $109 here with the 64GB card, so about the same as the RGB30 without an SD

but I'd much rather have the RGB30

ah, it seems the only good retailer we had went to shit too

the 405M was priced at $180 here, only $10 above MSRP

[visual stream]

I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been checking through Neon Rabbit, Nittrx and a couple Baidu threads daily since this was revealed

Can’t remember being as hyped over any other handheld this year 😂

[mortal prism]

yeah if you're like super into megadrive games that use 6 button controllers this is a slam dunk

[frozen dove]

405V is at $180 as well, though, but that's $50 above MSRP

[visual stream]

That, but also the dpad. Genuinely love it on my retro gamepads

[frozen dove]

I hope we're not ruining your hype by wanting either a cheaper or a more powerful version haha

the circle d-pad is sick and I really want it

[mortal prism]

we don't even know what the price is yet to know if a cheaper version would be needed lol

[granite schooner]

I'm trying to stay calm knowing that it's probably far away by Anbernic-tease-standards (we usually don't see anything as early as a first test mold), but FUCK I am so excited 😭

[frozen dove]

but the value proposition has to be there

[mortal prism]

if it's under $100 including shipping I'll own it eventually

assuming no major dealbreakers like the buttons falling out or the firmware being irredeemable

if the thing is just e-waste I'll buy an 8bitdo m30 instead

[frozen dove]

yeah same

I'd say $90 including shipping is the upper barrier for me I guess

[visual stream]

I mean, usually it’s not too long with them. Of course, rg35xx took four months from a black test mold to a retail unit, but that one had a “new” SoC

[frozen dove]

Nano took like a month from the first prorotype pic to hitting retail lol

[mint crescent]

firmware is my secound biggest concern with this. No Jelos or Arkos. Maybe Garlic but I hate Garlic. MiniUI all day on the 35xx.

[frozen dove]

yeah same

never used JelOS, that seems pretty alright though

[mortal prism]

minUI on this would be sick

[visual stream]

May depend on how different it ends up being

[frozen dove]

Garlic is dogshit imo

MinUI is the best one I've tried

[mortal prism]

I like onion now that I've switched it to boot directly into the gameswitcher

[visual stream]

Batocera seemed to miss the target for 353 series in the next release (still ironing out the bugs). If this just has a different control scheme, I’d actually try to submit proper configs for v39

[frozen dove]

I guess if it's a 640x480 3566 it wouldn't be hard to take the preexisting JelOS for RK2023 and use it here

[mortal prism]

would still require a dev to do it, and then keep it up to date with jelos improvements, etc

as a fork

[frozen dove]

onion looks so much better than garlic I think

never used onion

but Garlic is

genuinely

fucking user hostile

and ugly, and poorly designed, and uh I hated it so much

[visual stream]

Onion is nice, but networking stuff is still kinda rough compared to EmulationStation, unfortunately

[frozen dove]

the hotkeys were designed by a monkey with all the fingers cut off

[mortal prism]

The batocera 3566 support is based on the work done by JELOS so if this doesn't get JELOS it probably isn't getting batocera either unless they have a kernel dev that really loves anbernic and the megadrive over there

[frozen dove]

I think we underestimate the amount of bored devs who might go "fine, if no one else does it, I will"

[visual stream]

Ultimately depends on how different this is internally from other 353 devices

[mortal prism]

if this is the 405m screen that will be the hard part

since the 3.5" 640x480 in both variants has been submitted to the mainline kernel

but the 4" screen has never been used in a linux device AFAICT

so it will need panel timings, DSI stuff, etc

[mint crescent]

The drama between a couple well known devs and anbernic doesn't sound like they will ever be too bored.

[frozen dove]

yeah I know the story, Anbernic is being a bunch of dicks to the community and the JelOS devs are some of the pettiest people alive, both sides look horrible in this

I'm saying that some unknown dev will take it on their hands and do something about it

happened with the 35XX and the T618 devices

[mortal prism]

t618?

I'm not aware of any linux build for the t618

[frozen dove]

GammaOS makes these devices so much better

[visual stream]

GarlicOS 2.0 was supposed to run on T618. Haven’t heard anything about in a while though

[mint crescent]

Black-Seraph and Shawn are well known

[frozen dove]

They are now, were they before though?

genuine question

[visual stream]

Yeah, they were

[mint crescent]

Yes.

[frozen dove]

ah, okay

[visual stream]

BS did Android builds a-la GammaOS prior to Garlic

[frozen dove]

I joined the hobby right as the 35xx came out

[visual stream]

MinUI originated on TrimUI model S

[mint crescent]

Seraph been making OS in 2018

[frozen dove]

and I remember everyone crying that it won't have custom firmware because the devs don't want to support the new chip, and then couple of weeks later there's custom firmware available

but I wasn't in the scene yet so I guess I didn't quite understand everything right lol

[visual stream]

It ended up having 3 or 4 firmwares depending on how you count

[mortal prism]

most of the firmwares for it are just running on top of anbernic stock

rather than actual fully open firmware

(or in the case of garlic it's fully closed)

[frozen dove]

MinUI is, but it's so good that I don't really care 😅

[mint crescent]

when you give a dev the source code things happen fast

[frozen dove]

I agree that Anbernic should be more open, ofc

[mint crescent]

just saying they gave one person it and he was able to make a CFW fast. I think that is the main reason why.

[mortal prism]

anbernic just needs to fix their stock android rom and stick to unisoc/mediatek hell land

just be retroid

no point in making linux devices if you aren't gonna support dev on them imo

[frozen dove]

Please don't be Retroid

Unlike Retroid, Anbernic makes quality hardware, I don't want it to be ruined by running Android

(I should rename to "Retroid Hater" but I can't help it, bought two of their devices and both were ewaste)

[visual stream]

I think they should just copy Powkiddy’s approach — just ship the device with a CFW

The issue would be bringing new chips to the market, but I guess, Hardkernel to the rescue 🙂

That being said, rg35xx is still one of the two most widely supported Linux devices on the market by a wide margin, so I think the whole “devs won’t touch Anbernic devices” thing is kind of a stretch at the moment

[sweet frost]

This is 100% going to be for the Sega library and arcade/neogeo for me

And I can’t wait

[mortal prism]

Yeah I’m hopeful that this one will be good

Even if it winds up a touch pricy compared to the RGB30 or whatever I can cope my way into mentally subtracting the price of an 8bitdo m30 from what anbernic asks

[dusty orchid]

Could you not get 4PX?

[left phoenix]

yup but overall its still usually more than half the price of the devices on shipping+vat+customs

[dusty orchid]

UK based, but for me 4px was $15, and skipped VAT/Customs entirely. DHL was $40 + VAT/customs.

4px takes a week longer....but if it saves $100 I am not in a rush.

[frozen dove]

I ordered with 4px

I paid $150 for the RP3+, $15 for shipping, $37 in tax (to Retroid) and then $37 more in tax (to my government because Retroid pocketed my "tax" money and never forwarded it to the authorities)

$240 total

for a device that was a piece of crap

still haven't gotten a refund for the $37 they stole from me, and I'm not the only one apparently

[left phoenix]

you dont like it that hard?

[dusty orchid]

Have you tried their customer service discord channel? I've literally never heard of that happening to anyone else, ever, so it seems like something they could resolve.

[frozen dove]

yeah

didn't play the systems it was supposed to play (GC, PS2) AT ALL, even games that aren't super hard to emulate like WindWaker and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time didn't reach full speed

the face buttons were membrane while the d-pad was dome, which made playing retro stuff uncomfortable

the face buttons were terrible, which is a separate issue

the sticks were very hard to use

start and select placement made those buttons unusable

(this one is not Retroid's fault) there was no good front-end on Android at the time, Daijisho and Digg both were frustrating to use

[frozen dove]

I wasn't on the discords back then, contacted them through email and they insisted they did pay my taxes

several people on reddit had the same issue, though:
https://www.reddit.com/r/retroid/comments/yyi9fu/warning_if_you_purchase_from_the_eu_you_will_pay/

[left phoenix]

i see 😄 so basically stuff thats obvious with little prior research 😛

[frozen dove]

This was my second bad experience with Retroid, I bought a used RP2+ before, the controls were awful and the screen was so bad

Made me want to never deal with the company again haha

[left phoenix]

tbh maybe do bit more research before buying things 😛

[grizzled geyser]

Huh? They don't sell used devices?

[frozen dove]

well yes, at the time I was super new to handhelds though and everyone hailed the RP3+ as "the best thing to buy"

[frozen dove]

I bought it second hand lol

[grizzled geyser]

When the 2+ came out there wasn't really anything better for<100$ though

[frozen dove]

I usually do, I watched like 15 reviews of the RP3+ and everyone kept saying it "could play most GameCube games" (these reviewers were all using PAL ROMs, the less accurate MMJR emulator and numerous hacks...) and nobody was mentioning how horrible the controls were

[frozen dove]

yeah, maybe

I bought it this year and found it absolutely unusable

[left phoenix]

tbh controls are often very subjective

you seems to have pretty specific needs for controls and emulation

[frozen dove]

I just want them to be good

RP2+ had a stiff d-pad, tiny face buttons and a really bad analogue stick

RP3+ had a great d-pad, but tiny and stiff face buttons, tiny sticks and start and select at the top for some reason

I've used 2 Anbernic devices (RG280V, RG35XX) and they both nail the controls, they're absolutely perfect and I wouldn't change anything, so at this point I just trust Anbernic haha

[left phoenix]

cause when i grabbed Rp3+ all of those things you mentioned were widely known (i i went fot it with that in mind although with a discount)... and you wont get full GC/PS2 emulation under 200$ anytime soon

[frozen dove]

even the tiny 280V had a bigger d-pad and face buttons than the RP2+

[frozen dove]

As I said, I was very new to the scene and got baited by Russ, Adin Walls and a few others 😅

tbf the RG405M didn't exist yet

[left phoenix]

tbh my 35xx was bit messy ... especially with dpad

[frozen dove]

well, instead I got 10% of GC/PS2 libraries for $240

[left phoenix]

until i did the tape fix for both dpad and back buttons

[frozen dove]

I never needed to do the tape mod, fortunately

[left phoenix]

its definitely more than 10% from what i tried so far 😄 But i never expected it to do tjat much

[frozen dove]

my 35xx d-pad feels just like my DMG d-pad did

[left phoenix]

but maybe back then the drivers was less mature for T618

.
anyway back to the topic
really curious if they reveal RG Arc before or after i accidentally get A13 🤣

[frozen dove]

I tried 5 GameCube games and 4 PS2 games, only Final Fantasy XII (PS2) ran at full speed

LEGO Star Wars (GC)
WindWaker (GC)
Twilight Princess (GC)
F-Zero GX (GC)
Super Mario Sunshine (GC)
NSMB Wii (Wii)
Shadow of the Collossus (PS2)
Final Fantasy X (PS2)
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (PS2)

were all unplayable, either never reaching full speed or frequently dipping below 80% speed

[frozen dove]

what's the A13?

[left phoenix]

windwaker run at 2x with rare minor dip for me 🤔

[left phoenix]

basically arcade stick with a screen by powkiddy 😄

[frozen dove]

ahhhhh I've seen this one! 😄

looks cool

[frozen dove]

really? were you using the PAL or NTSC rom and what was your config?

I used the stock Dolpin emulator, rendered at 1x

NTSC rom

it was dropping to 75% speed even in the starting village

[left phoenix]

was MMJR, vulkan and NTSC rom for sure

[frozen dove]

Interessant

Maybe I should have given MMJR a shot, but I didn't want to tinker

My philosophy is that if it doesn't run out of the box, it doesn't run 😆

[left phoenix]

😄

[vale thunder]

Pocket 3 plus is great for no tinkering Nintendo 64 and below but I would never recommend it for PS2 or GameCube

And I agree the controls are terrible specifically the start and select button and the sticks too

[frozen dove]

Yeah, if I had these expectations it would have been a different story

[left phoenix]

i have been kinda destryed by modern console gaming ... where everything barely runs at 30 with heavy "upscaling"

[frozen dove]

I'm planning to save up money for a 405M down the line

It seems to have much better controls than the Retroid and this time I'm coming in with the expectation of only playing N64, Dreamcast and some, inaccurate Saturn maybe 😄

[vale thunder]

I'm extremely picky though, I've been looking at and watching handhelds and these types of communities for years and I've only just now pulled the trigger on one, being the Odin 2

[left phoenix]

so running at 90% speed is not a problem after trying to play Pokemon Shiled on original Switch .. where it sometimes go even under 20fps

[frozen dove]

Oh yeah mate, I hate that

The upscaling is just false advertising. Starfield says it runs at 1440p on the Series S, but it's actually 900p

[frozen dove]

You should be pretty happy with that one!

It might still have the dome/membrane mismatch that disqualifies it for 2D gaming in my book, but at least the buttons and sticks look waaaay better than RP3+, performance should be sweet too

[frozen dove]

For me, I just don't accept a game running worse than on original hardware

Modern game being choppy is more acceptable to me than old game slowing down

But I also just don't buy the poorly optimised games

[left phoenix]

Odin 2 loooks super intriuging ... but i just cant atm ... maybe if the IGG still runs by the end of the year or erly next year 😄

which one you picked?

[vale thunder]

I ordered a 12 GB superfan Pro in SNES Gray

[vale thunder]

I'm the same way honestly, if a game is running worse than original hardware I probably won't play it on that device

[grizzled geyser]

I'm pretty sure they will sell it on their official store next year

[left phoenix]

yeah but at much worse price 😄

but will try to work hard to wait it out

the seethorugh blue looks sweet though 😄

[granite schooner]

RP3+ is most certainly not "a piece of crap", and people have been warning over and over and OVER again that it's not good for PS2. I have no idea why people constantly ignore these warnings and then get pissy when it turns out to be the case. That price is certainly a piece of crap though, yeah.

[granite schooner]

If the A13 is as good as the A12 then I can't recommend it enough. That thing kicks so much ass.

[left phoenix]

its kinda similar but a13 has better screen and works as clamshell

[visual stream]

What's A13?

[left phoenix]

clamshell arcade stick with a screen #1129074522214105158 message

[visual stream]

Ah, forgot about that one, thanks

[left phoenix]

kinda prepared myself few devices to look for during 11.11 or black friday 😄 or i will scrap those and go for odin 2 ... depending on the mood

[frozen dove]

Yeah, of course it is my subjective experience based in part on false expectations

Though I did go through the compatibility spreadsheet, but I guess I have higher standards than the people making it because most games market as "playable" weren't.

Even still, I disliked the controls so much that I wouldn't have kept it even if I didn't have those expectations and Retroid didn't overcharge me

[left phoenix]

yeah the overchatge sounds awfull

[visual stream]

Good to know, because your preferences seem to be similar to mine (I also like fluid/non-stiff d-pads)

But I guess there's really no way to know what you like until you try a few devices

Surprisingly Miyoo d-pads are better than Anbernics in my experience

Accurate, but very easy to pivot

I wanna say "loose", but that's probably not the word here

[frozen dove]

I've heard great things about Miyoo d-pads!

Anbernic d-pads do have a tiny bit more resistance than I'd consider perfect, but nowhere near as much as the RP2+ one.

[visual stream]

I often play shootemups, and I've noticed that it's easier for me to move the ship around on my MM+, and I actually don't die as often as I used to on my RG351MP

[spice topaz]

Woof, I had a higher hourly rate, but I’m also currently unemployed so we’re in the same (or at least similar) situation. Now that it’s October though, I’m going to take a break from rejection letters and ghosted applications, and instead pick up a seasonal job at a retail store, or even a grocery store… Aldi’s starting pay is $17/hr! That’s more than I made after 5 years doing tech support at Apple! Another local grocery chain is known for great employee benefits!

[dusty orchid]

I've heard Aldi are quite good employers. They know it's not the easiest of jobs, so they try and look after their staff.

[tepid grotto]

Aldi's nutz hahaaaaaa

[spice topaz]

https://tenor.com/view/starship-troopers-traitor-of-mars-starship-troopers-gifs-they-are-everywhere-everywhere-gif-9385373

[tepid grotto]

I work at Costco and it's pretty decent! My friend applied for Aldi's and said they have similarly good benefits and pay

[frozen dove]

Damn what the hell, where are you from 😮

I'll check, I have an Aldi 2km from my house, if they offer me $10 or so I'd be over the moon tbh 😛

Congrats!

[outer kayak]

Or stop companies doing shit and getting away with it?

[spice topaz]

I feel bad for people like my ex-roommate, who went to prison from stealing from his last employer, and found it hard to get any sort of job again. But yeah, it seems even entry level jobs aren’t horrible anymore, better than nothing at least.

[spice topaz]

Congrats for what?

[spice topaz]

I’m in Pennsylvania 🇺🇸 , but it surprised me and I just wanted to share in case it helped you too!

[dusty orchid]

Post prison employment is tough. Some employers are more accomodating than others, but that assumes you know where to look for work.

[spice topaz]

Yeah… I didn’t know he had been to prison, I sorta understand why he didn’t tell me, and we started being roommies because we both got a job at a retirement home. Things were ok for awhile, until he was IMO unjustly fired (it’s a very guilty even if proven innocent industry) and he couldn’t find new work.

[dusty orchid]

That's sad. Also why a lot of reoffences occur. Lack of opportunities for regular employment.

[frozen dove]

for getting a good paycheck! 😄

I'm in Poland, the average wage here is about $9-10 per hour so obviously I'll get less, but the costs are lower to so eh

[spice topaz]

Yeah, a lady with dementia in the memory care ward was on the toilet, screaming at him “You’re going to HELL for what you’re doing!”
What he was doing was standing at the doorway in case she needed assistance, as he was supposed to, and he replied “I already am.” Someone else overheard him, reported him, and he couldn’t come in for work the next day. I was there a bit longer, and extra careful because they knew he was my roommate, but one day a woman on a floor I never worked on said I came to her in the night to fondle her (there literally wouldn’t have been time between my radio check-ins at each room), and despite her UTI, I was out too. I got another job relatively fast. As you suggested, after awhile yeah my roommate stole my wallet and tried to leave the state with stuff he bought on my credit, enough for a felony charge. Felt bad in many ways.

[spice topaz]

Oh, well that’s just the plan right now, still unemployed at the moment. But I think it won’t be too bad.

I’m reading right now about food price increases in Europe, so I imagine working a grocery and getting a discount on necessities is almost like extra pay.

https://apple.news/AhA-0uBmFQzyv1X_drGN7Cg

[dusty orchid]

Yeah, it's not good for the person coming out of prison, or people they effect afterwards. It's good you can take a global view of it though.

[spice topaz]

Yeah, like… I wish things had turned out differently for him, and I recognize his struggle to stay on the right side (even going so far as to ONLY use my credit card, so I could claim fraud and now be forced to pay back), but at the same time, I was the one who called the cops and got him caught.

But up until about a month before that, he was my friend.

[dusty orchid]

I doubt he'd blame you for it.

It's just sad societies tend to take the approach of brutal prison systems with limited after care.

Societies that focus more on rehabilitation than punishment, and helping people find work afterwards (scandinavians etc) have much lower reoffending rates.

It's not even counter intuitive or anything. Who's more likely to reoffend, a prisoner that's had an awful time in prison and has no job prospects coming out, or one that was treated well, got a qualification in prison, and comes out into a job?
Should be obvious which is better for the prisoner, and society in general.

I get the impulse to punish. And there should be some element of punishment involved. But you can have punishment and rehabilitation.

[frozen dove]

oh, for sure man

a tomato used to cost about $0.08 here in 2018, now it's like $0.50

bread went from $0.50 to $3.50, etc. 🥲

getting a 10% discount on groceries would go a looooong way

[dusty orchid]

https://tenor.com/view/money-cash-counting-bills-how-much-do-you-want-gif-17289977

[severe parcel]

"I’ll tell you what's sick. People in the UK, in the US, fuckin' Canada, Sweden. They pay their taxes and some remote piloted drone fires a missile into a public market to hit some warlord. Yeah, so maybe war doesn’t happen for another six months, and the price of their gluten-free sorghum bread stays low. It’s not sick to arm people. It’s sick to bump off their crooks and dictators in protection of our interest, and then call it 'international justice'."

Whoever gets the reference will win a to be paid AYN Odin 4.

[spice topaz]

The Jackal in Far Cry 2? You can’t be serious tho 😂

Interesting how prevalent drones HAVE become though.

[severe parcel]

The Jackal knew it all along 😆

[severe parcel]

You won the prize, now I'll only need your bank account informations, your home address and number of functional organs.

[visual stream]

Man it's wild to see the turns this discussion has taken 🙂

[dusty orchid]

https://tenor.com/view/nights-christmas-nights-nights-saturn-nights-sega-gif-27106107

[mortal prism]

https://tenor.com/view/sega-sega-logo-logo-sonic-the-hedgehog-sonic-gif-17589254

[granite schooner]

I grew up with only an N64 that gen and remember REALLY wanting to play Christmas Nights. It looked so freaking majestic. Finally got to play it as an adult a few years back and maaaaaan... What an awesome little expansion. Legit would've made my head explode if I played it as a kid.

[dusty orchid]

Christmas Nights has to be up there as one of the best free console games ever.

Chu Chu Rocket was another banger of a free game from Sega.

[granite schooner]

Chu Chu Rocket was free? I didn't even know that. I just remember getting SEGA Swirl for free

[dusty orchid]

It was in the UK, it was just mailed out for free to promote the Dreamcast online stuff. Was it not everywhere else?

Sega Swirl was also free, part of a pack of other, er, low tech games.

[granite schooner]

I don't remember that being a thing in the states at least, but it may have been briefly as some promo thing. I have a retail copy of the game fwiw.

[dusty orchid]

Huh, I learnt something there. Looks like it was sold normally in Japan, at a discount in USA, and free in Europe.

I just assumed it was free everywhere.

I would have paid for it though. Genuinely one of the best multiplayer games I have ever played.

[visual stream]

This is probably the Saturn game I want to play most of all, but it's Japanese-only at the moment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz3ybgfYlmM

They're actually rereleasing it next year for modern platforms, but I'm not sure if it will get translated

There are three really cool mecha games on SNES that are somewhat related (Cybernator, Metal Warriors and my favorite, Front Mission: Gun Hazard), but Saturn definitely brings some incredible graphics here

I think this is actually the same series as Cybernator

[dusty orchid]

Gundam, gun griffon, amok, virtual on, mech warrior 2, bulk slash, ghen war....

Lots of mech stuff on the saturn

[visual stream]

Oh, cool, I actually only heard about half of those, thanks!

[dusty orchid]

FYI, that's not a list of all the mech games on the saturn. That's just really good mech games on the saturn 😄

[visual stream]

I really enjoyed Gun Hazard on SNES, would love to find something similar.

It's a spin-off, so not an SRPG like the other Front Mission games, plays more like a mecha shooter game.

But it's still a Square Enix game and has lots of RPG elements not to mention a story with some pretty brilliant scenes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcgsEd1hfvo

You level up here, can buy new mechs, loadouts and assign sidekicks. There's also some typical RPG grinding here, so it's not exactly skill-based, but the grinding is still pretty fun

[granite schooner]

Probably gonna play through the first Assault Suit Leynos when I get one of these things in my hands. That upcoming Scramble Vice game looks really cool too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78pTufgAJq8

[visual stream]

Oh wow, this actually looks glorious. Complete with giant robots, boobs and pterodactyls

[granite schooner]

Right? It's got it all.

[frozen dove]

alright lads

assuming everything we know about this console is true

recommend me your favourite MegaDrive games to get me hyped

[strong tendon]

i havent really gone deep enough on it yet myself beyond the obvious classics but sonic 2/sonic 3 & knuckles, streets of rage 2 (but 1 and 3 are also good), gunstar heroes, thunder force iv, contra hard corps, castlevania bloodlines are all essential imo

[frozen dove]

The Sonic games and Gunstar Heroes I've played and love, all the others I'm yet to check out 😄

many people recommended Vectorman, but it is really hard for me for some reason

[strong tendon]

yeah i still need to play that myself

[frozen dove]

Moonwalker is not a great game, but the music, predictably, makes it twice as good as it really is

Rocket Knight and Shinobi 3 are ones I haven't played but look really cool

[strong tendon]

oh yeah rocketknight is good. i need to play all the shinobi gamesw

[frozen dove]

And the RPG selection isn't as impressive as on the SNES, but I definitely want to check out Shining Force 1 and 2 as well as Phantasy Star IV

ohhhhh and I need to revisit World of Illusion

had that as a kid and it genuinely was one of the best platformers I've ever played, wonder how it holds up

[strong tendon]

...it wasnt too well-liked as a gotm lmao

i went on a sega mickey mouse game binge at the time and honestly i liked the master system/game gear ones better

[frozen dove]

really? why?

[strong tendon]

clunky controls and physics mostly imo. and level design was mixed too. visuals were great tho.

[frozen dove]

innnnteresting

I remember this game really fondly but only played through the first level in the last 20 years so my memory might be flawed

[visual stream]

Advanced Busterhawk Greylancer
Battletech
Terminator for Sega CD
Snatcher for Sega CD
Robocop vs Terminator
Skeleton Krew
Doom Resurrection for 32X
Darius from the first Genesis Mini
Castlevania Bloodlines
Contra Hard Corps
Streets of Rage 2

Rent a Hero is kinda cool, but haven't progressed too far yet. Has a bit of Earthbound vibe, I think

Also there are a couple of cool aftermarket games — Demons of Asterborg/Astebros series, also just checked out Tanzer, really like the style and music

Why Konami never produced a Gradius game for Genesis is beyond me, tbh

Don't remember if they made any other shootemup for the platform

[frozen dove]

gracias!

Robocop vs Terminator is a really interesting one for sure, one of the few movie tie-ins that got critical acclaim

did someone fix 32X Doom?

[vagrant cradle]

Shinobi 3 with the 6 button patch is the best action platformer ever

[visual stream]

It's brilliant

I do have a soft spot for FM music, and that romhack has a great rendition of Doom's OST

But other than that it runs full speed, full screen and I think uses the superior Jaguar engine. It also utilizes Sega CD hardware to boost performance

[frozen dove]

holy shit

that's great

I always wanted to see how much the 32X could realistically accomplish

[visual stream]

It's also possible to add any soundtrack via a cue file with CD tracks. There's a version with PSX soundtrack out there

[frozen dove]

the real answer is probably "not nearly as much as the Saturn so it shouldn't have been made", but hey

[visual stream]

Need to figure out how to add the live recorded 3DO version

[frozen dove]

I Want It That Way mod is so coming through when I play it

[tepid grotto]

32X Doom fixed up and with PSX Doom music? Interesting combo. Any real reason to play that over just playing PSX Doom?

[vagrant cradle]

(same goes to the Sega CD which is probably why Sega stopped making consoles in general)

but hey

fun

[visual stream]

Honestly I don't know if there's anything to complain about that version. Even has a split screen and network co-op using the cable from Zero Tolerance

https://youtu.be/nrPOMsn3BZM?si=I5hJwGLXB-duQobq&t=2171

[strong tendon]

if we are counting sega cd i like Soulstar a lot

[visual stream]

If anything I only wish there was a Doom 2 conversion so I could use the super shotgun

[visual stream]

Via emulation — probably only if you love the FM music

I love that, and I kinda think this is insane https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzIIQTtjFUk&list=PLREYF4RnDeQDiGAbaNZcRrI6tB0XOOG90

[frozen dove]

this past week made me a huge doom fan so you know what I'll bloody play BOTH the original 32X one and the fixed 32X one if I get this device

[frozen dove]

ohhh, this sounds goooood

[visual stream]

There are modern fixes to the AdLib version for DOS (same family of sound chips as Genesis), but it's not even close to this

There's also actually a major revamp to the PSX version, forgot what it's called

Ah, it's this one https://doomwiki.org/wiki/PlayStation_Doom:_Master_Edition

But I think the focus here is on bringing a bunch of maps, all the way to SIGIL

[strong tendon]

No rest for the living is really good

[spice topaz]

I’ve beaten the first game, no prima guides (or internet), you’ll figure it out eventually. I think taking it slow and exploring makes it easier to stay alive, but I forget if there’s a time limit.

[spice topaz]

The Shining Force games are… well I thought their opening acts look like 8-bit NES games, but the story and battles are really good once you get used to them.
If you liked the sprite-based Final Fantasy games, the Phantasy Star series is cool!

I had a lot of fun with the puzzles in The Lost Vikings, to this day only the Genesis version has the “correct” crunchy and pulse pumping EDM soundtrack for my tastes (I think the OST is the same for MegaDrive?).

[spice topaz]

They did, and it plays amazingly smooth. Wizardry!

Aladdin and Toy Story were cool platformers. Of course I also recommend a full Sonic 3 & Knuckles connected playthrough, which lets you save, and the final true ending with Sonic is very cool and rewarding.

[spice topaz]

Oh, and the Road Rash series! Motorcycle racing, but with melee combat too!

[mortal prism]

Road redemption is an amazing spiritual successor for PC btw

[granite schooner]

Since you mentioned you like action-adventure games like zelda:
Beyond Oasis
Crusader of Centy
LandStalker
Light Crusader
King Colossus
Monster World IV
The last two have translation hacks. I generally prefer arcadey games so I've only actually played through two of them.

[lime hamlet]

I recommend YT Channel Console Wars to see which cross plat games are better on Sega too.

They do funny videos on basically all games that were both on SNES and Genesis/MD and rank points for them.

[paper apex]

Warsong/Langrisser and its sequel are both on the Mega Drive, very good strategy rpgs and worth the play since it's one of the earliest console games that does branching story paths

[dusty orchid]

It got a steep learning curve for sure. Playing a platformer where you might fail to get past the first enemy you come across multiple times is an odd experience.

[hard locust]

yep, Doom 32x Resurrection and its fantastic. And seems like the Slayer Edition for Jaguar Doom is finally moving along as well

[spice topaz]

What? I think the first enemy is a stationary turret on the ground! It’s not a hard game like Bloodborne or Goblins & Ghouls!

[dusty orchid]

I mean, it's been a while, might be 🤷‍♂️

I was thinking it was one of those rock guys. Generally in those sort of games when you encounter the first thing that can kill you, you can just stand still and press some buttons to see what works, and it's fine. Vectorman is dicey.

[spice topaz]

I always thought they looked like mud/poo, haha.

[prisma prism]

why did this thread become a catch all for anything lol

[dusty orchid]

https://tenor.com/view/sega-sega-logo-logo-sonic-the-hedgehog-sonic-gif-17589254

[visual stream]

I mean, that's most of #1095014087232077935 at this point lol

I figure whenever we get actual news, someone will bring it to #🔥│upcoming-chat

Usually that's what happens

[dusty orchid]

Otherwise for a long time, it's just a thread that updates once a month with a picture of a shell or something.

[visual stream]

Yeah, until Anbernic actually starts promoting this handheld it's going to be like that

And because of the holidays I would not expect any news this week, maybe even longer

It's also not like these threads are actually useful to give feedback to these companies. Both Discord and Reddit are banned in China (VPN-only AFAIK), it's hard to tell if manufacturers monitor anything that happens here

[frozen dove]

I know for a fact that Chinese audio companies do

One of them even stole my mod of their IEM that I only posted in one reviewers' Discord server and started selling it commercially

[visual stream]

There's three cases where I remember someone from these companies joining Discord — Lao Zhang from GKD, «Rayman» (?) Feng from TrimUI and Gao Feng from Gameforce.

Maybe there's someone else, but I think otherwise the communication happens via people like Jutleys, Jdewitz, etc

[spice topaz]

Ouch!!!

[frozen dove]

I was mad at the time but it's 3 years now so whatever haha

KZ, what a beautiful company that is

[frozen dove]

Don't Retroid have their own official Discord?

[visual stream]

Oh, right. Anbernic has one, too, but I think it's just Jutleys there

[tepid grotto]

Retroid has a server with retroid employees and Ayn has one too

Actually them needing to use a vpn would explain a lot about how not often they're able to post!

Nil has a server for the kt-r1 too that I'm still in for some reason

[left phoenix]

oh ttotally forgot about the "Great Firewall"

[visual stream]

I think there was an instance during the RG353V "teasing" phase where the community has been raving about atomic purple Gameboys and Anbernic suddenly added that color for the very first time

Not sure if it's not a coincidence though

[frozen dove]

I can pretty much bet it's not haha

[granite schooner]

God the jamz in Warsong were so good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBMYnjWBpIM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVMe0Alp8hw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgJ1C_Ka0io
Protip to change your audio to "Nuked 2612" in Genesis Plus GX core to get audio on a whole other level. It's a really demanding setting so it's not set by default, but the rk3566 can handle it fine.

[paper apex]

You caught me at a perfect time with this because I was just about to boot up Shining Force

[spice topaz]

I just saw some footage. It had cuts and edits, so I’m not exactly sure it was the very beginning, but you might be right about the first enemy being a rock dude. But he doesn’t move, and if you duck he can’t hit you, so you literally can just crouch there and kill it. I’m honestly surprised to think someone would get hit three times by it.

Otherwise, the game had amazing music, animation, graphics, might be worth taking another look at and seeing if the MegaMan meets Donkey Kong gameplay has something in it for you.

[visual stream]

Oh, great point about nuked. Yeah, even if RK3566 doesn't bring a lot of new platforms, it should allow for some nice QoL improvements

I love this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5OCfGgEtqk

Also my favorite, but this is a SegaCD game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saDkR6SfF_s

[granite schooner]

Exactly. I play the same stuff I would on a RK3326, but with a bunch of extra bells and whistles. I know I couldn't play with Nuked audio and one frame of runahead on my rk3128 (pretty comparable to an rk3326, a smidge worse) at fullspeed, but on the rk3566 I can.

[mortal prism]

There are very real benefits to using a chip that emulates those systems easily rather than just barely - shaders, runahead, rewind, fast forward speed, etc

[vale thunder]

Truthfully there is way too many channels on this Discord. I know I'm probably not alone in saying that, I have about half the channels muted and in general people don't like to segregate topics so strictly and so channels end up being a catch-all for everything

[frozen dove]

I like it this way tbh

people are generally messy and sticking discussions to a single topic can be boring

[visual stream]

You can hide channels you don't need. Awesome feature, really

I mean, here's what RH looks like to me ¯_(ツ)_/¯

But yeah, we've written over 1500 comments here based on four photos, so I get what you mean

Not a single full shot of the device even

Then again, a single patent entry was enough for people to start 3D printing a fake Miyoo Mini Flip and write over 2000 comments here, so...

[mortal prism]

Sega, clamshells, and ps2, these are the underserved pockets of this niche that get people really hype I guess

[visual stream]

Oh absolutely

I personally have ranted about how I need an M30-like handheld to anyone (who in hindsight didn't really want to hear that) for nearly two years

[granite schooner]

God, next week needs to hurry up and arrive so they can get back to work and tease us with more pics 😭

[left phoenix]

tbh i love the channels for speciifc devices 😄

only thing that annoys me thaht 405v and 405m are grouped together _:-D

[spice topaz]

Yeah, I don’t think this topic will get updated with substantial info soon, but meanwhile someone asked what games would play well on a 6-button controller, and frankly I was excited to chat with people sharing similar interests and seem fun to talk to.

At the end of the day, is Discord more of an information-dense platform like Wikipedia, or is it for socializing with friends (whom you may or may not have just met)?

[visual stream]

I just love to talk to people that share the same hobby, honestly

Also, on a slightly more related topic — man, the aftermarket scene for Genesis is vibrant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58bKZ9ZbjKE

There's also a part 2 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUrfdqo7gPQ&t=4s

[spice topaz]

What’s the Chinese holiday about? Kinda cool that it lasts several days. Most holidays I celebrate last just one day, but often I wish to do multi-day things around them!

[visual stream]

I think it's the National day this week

Basically China celebrates the founding of their country as far as I understand

Sooo pretty huge as you might imagine 🙂

Fixed, the National day is Oct 1st, but it is followed by a week off for everybody

https://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/festival/national.htm

[granite schooner]

Here's what I got from a sloppy search

Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhongqiu Jie (中秋节) in Chinese, is also called the Mooncake Festival or the Moon Festival.

As the second most important festival in China after Chinese New Year, Mid-Autumn is an official public holiday. In 2023, the festival falls on September 29th, which is close to China's National Day on October 1st. Therefore, people living in Mainland China will enjoy an 8-day public holiday (from September 29th to October 6th).

In China, Mid-Autumn Festival is a reunion time for families, a little like Thanksgiving. Chinese people celebrate it by gathering for dinners, worshiping the moon, lighting paper lanterns, eating moon cakes, etc.

I guess it's sort of like their thanksgiving, but it lasts a week and they eat these delicious looking things

That's my ignorant American understanding at least

[mortal prism]

Yeah, the trade off for holidays is that they basically get zero in the summer in exchange for a fair number in the fall/winter

While in the west we tend to get one every month or two fairly evenly spaced

[visual stream]

I wonder what this is

Looks pretty cool

[spice topaz]

Maybe a moon cake?

[spice topaz]

Pretty cool! kinda like a July 4th with a week off then, eh?

[strong tendon]

yeah its a moon cake. im not chinese lol but i live near chinatown, the bakeries have all been selling them

[visual stream]

There are numerous varieties of mooncakes consumed within China and outside of China in overseas Chinese communities. The Cantonese mooncake is the most famous variety. A traditional Cantonese mooncake[2] is a round pastry, measuring about 10 cm (4 in) in diameter and 3–4 cm (1+1⁄4–1+1⁄2 in) thick, with a rich thick filling usually made from lotus seed paste (other typical fillings include red bean paste or mixed nuts) surrounded by a thin, 2–3 mm (approximately 1/8 of an inch) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs.[3]

Sounds incredibly complex

[strong tendon]

there was some pretty big midautumn festival stuff in toronto last weekend

[spice topaz]

Eh, I don't feel like that, but maybe you're in Europe or I've only worked for companies that don't treat most US holidays as "real" holidays where you get time off (or even 2x pay). I do remember being a little annoyed working with some europeans and it seemed they took off work every month while I had to keep working, like I had to do things and they wouldn't pay or do other things with their holiday as an excuse. LOL, maybe I'm just a workaholic, but if you look at me now it seems I burned out, I sure would have liked those holidays haha

[strong tendon]

canada definitely makes up statutory holidays just to have some during certain seasons

[spice topaz]

I can get behind that.

[strong tendon]

the government made up Family Day in February like 10 years ago lmao. and we have a weird one in august that i dont think even really has a name? its just the august holiday lol

[spice topaz]

I'm not really being critical of countries/religions that have frequent holidays, I'm just envious 😂

[spice topaz]

We have one on Feburary 14th, its the "make a family" holiday 😉

(jk, its more like pressure to find a date and buy witty perfect fitting thoughtful cards and chocolates day)

[mortal prism]

Yeah, in Canada we went through and basically any time there was more than a 2 month gap between stat holidays we made a new one

[visual stream]

I mean we have very long (up to 10 days) New Year holidays here in Russia (NY is bigger than Christmas here), but what amazes me about Europe and some other countries is that their holidays apply to absolutely everyone. Stores, cinemas — all closed

I mean, it's perfectly fair, just can't imagine everything not working for several days

[mortal prism]

We just had a long weekend last weekend and then because our thanksgiving is even earlier this year we have another long weekend the very next week

[spice topaz]

Better health care, regular holiday intervals, maybe my wife and I really should have been refugee immigrants when we were worried about a certain presidential election 7 years back 😂

[visual stream]

I know everything is closed on Sundays in Germany, for instance — also incredible to me

[spice topaz]

That used to be the case in the US

Oktoberfest lasts from September to October, it's basically a really long wedding celebration! Pretty cool tradition.

[spice topaz]

Oh, by the way, I came back here to share this top-25 Genesis/MD games video! The host honestly is pretty goofy and a little manic, but his positivity is infectious, and more importantly his game selection (and demo clips) are unique and make me want to try out a few of these new-to-me games: https://youtu.be/lBWLsB_cbug?si=U6609uDTdSc0yZOc

[visual stream]

It's pretty counter intuitive, but I really recommend Genesis reviews by SNES Drunk 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqscLvYnZR4&list=PLib8CA6AKJM9pVu6ve6rHmGr7KOny3jDT

He doesn't have any nostalgia for Sega, so kinda tries to review these games with a fresh eye, so it's a pretty useful perspective

As someone who only played on PC as a child (so I don't have nostalgia for any console) I would actually appreciate something like this for every platform

[strong tendon]

yeah. Sega Lord X has an interesting perspective as a diehard sega fan too but sometimes he does have the rose coloured glasses on lol

snesdrunk talking about sega and sega lord x talking about nintendo both tend to tell it to you straight lol

[visual stream]

Oh, didn't realise sega lord did Nintendo videos

[strong tendon]

game sack is also pretty good for retro content cuz they tend to cover notable games regardless of quality so u kind of get to see what notable genesis games maybe dont actually hold up

hes got a few yeah

some turbografx stuff too lol i think he just owned a lot of consoles hes just sega first. he had a 3do too (rip)

[visual stream]

I also like this wiki https://vsrecommendedgames.fandom.com/wiki/Mega_Drive

They tend to go for deeper cuts and I also appreciate that they try to highlight platform differences for multi-platform games, whether a translation is available and sometimes even mention essential romhacks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQbitmR_YBY

[frozen dove]

I once watched a 3 hour video of a guy who decided to play through every RPG present on the 3DO. It was such a fever dream. A genuine acid trip of a video. By the time you were an hour and a half in and thought the weirdness was coming down, it went next level weird.

[strong tendon]

lmao ive seen that too. really good video

[granite schooner]

https://tenor.com/view/dance-dance-boy-gif-23762739

[visual stream]

What's the best one?

[livid briar]

This is spectacular.

[spice topaz]

I was hoping someone would react to that!! I agree ♥️

[dusty orchid]

I dunno, this isn't badly spaced. About 30 days national holiday. They also get up to 15 days annual leave, depending on how long they have been working, and other stuff, like maternity/paternity leave, childcare leave, even marriage leave for newly weds. China's not bad for time off.

[mortal prism]

yeah, just interesting that they get no holidays in july or august, when in the west those are when everybody wants their time off

the over 3 month gap between the june holiday and the september one is a large gap at least by european or canadian standards

but yeah I agree that overall total time off in china looks good

[dusty orchid]

Maybe it's a UK thing. But our national holidays are weighted like that as well, not a lot in the summer.

We get more annual leave than in China though, so you can move it around however you want. Summer annual leave usage for people with kids is useful 😄

[grizzled geyser]

Battle Mania Daiginjou, Alien Soldier, Dynamite Headdy, Vapor Trail, Midnight Resistance, Zero Wing (fr), Earthworm Jim 1 and 2, Mortal Kombats, Thunder Force 3 and 4, probably way more

[visual stream]

What does (fr) stand for for Zero Wing?

[grizzled geyser]

for real

just in case zero wing is still associated with this 20 year old meme

[dusty orchid]

^all your base are belong to us, for anyone who doesn't follow.

[left phoenix]

https://tenor.com/view/all-your-base-are-belong-to-us-cats-all-your-base-meme-engrish-gif-15689147

[frozen dove]

I remember when I was 11, reading about that in a Polish gaming magazine, and with my limited knowledge of English I couldn't understand what was wrong about this sentence

[spice topaz]

In the US, there’s basically no holiday from Independence Day (July 4th) until Labor Day (Sept 2).

[spice topaz]

The flash video on Newegg was very catchy 😁 But yes, the intro cinematic has charmingly wild grammar in every sentence (What you say?!?), and is followed by an attractive and well playing (but challenging!) shoot em up game.

“We have captured all of your bases. Enjoy what little time you have left to live.”

Sounds soooo much less unique and memorable than the weird Japanese translation of:
“All your base are belong to us.
You have no chance to survive make your time.
Ha ha ha . . . .”

Move ZiG!

https://youtu.be/mvWZq1S9x0g

[visual stream]

There was also a shootemup on Genesis where you could "steal" enemies' abilities/weapons after defeating them. Does anyone remember the name?

[frozen dove]

I don't but sounds great

[granite schooner]

Gaiares

[visual stream]

Oh, right, how could I forget

[spice topaz]

Kirby Force 4?

[livid briar]

It's the mullet, for me.

[paper apex]

Zero Wing is great, just don't play the arcade version unless you like highly experimental synth music (read: hot garbage)

it's like they wrote good music but used the wrong instruments for everything

[dusty orchid]

This sort of gives away how bad the clubs were that I went to. But remixes of this song were everywhere. Great memories.

Normally before they played this. It was a simpler time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE-1RPDqJAY

[leaden plover]

man, they played this in the clubs near you?

i's a good song dont get me wrong but it's a bit niche

[mortal prism]

So do we think this is the next anbernic release or nah?

I guess this and the 35xx plus are the ones we’ve seen actual prototype shell pics for

But they also might just announce something completely different like they did for the 405v

I hope they feel compelled to give us some real proof of life on the 506/406 to counter some of the Odin hype

[leaden plover]

405D. The D stands for diagonal.

405Z. The screen is positioned at one end of a cylinder, with the controls being placed along the length of the cylinder, and the battery being placed at the other end.

[spice topaz]

lol, that got played all around my school

[spice topaz]

Dunno man, I feel like we know next to nothing and jump at shadows. But yeah, there’s a lot of Sega passion, yet the Dreamcast and especially Saturn are like China: untapped markets that could reach a whole lot more people.

I suppose the RG505 came out last year, and Anbernic just released the 405V; how often do they typically release new products?

[mortal prism]

more than one every two months, less than one every month

[left phoenix]

505T ... T for tate mode 😄

[mortal prism]

I'd buy it

[dusty orchid]

I, uhhhh, went to some fairly goth/alt clubs in Birmingham. They love this sort of stuff.

Put it this way. This was one of the biggest bands on the scene, and this was their biggest song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul4V4xGlP0A

And there was loads of stuff like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNAdtkSjSps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlTZOemc6zk

[fading horizon]

What about DJ lord of the rings
https://youtu.be/18G2VYNSY4o?si=QBOU923SlQaRpK73

[dusty orchid]

My kind of festival.

To be fair though, Download was like this when I went to that 😄

[rigid depot]

Do the posts of the device not get pinned anymore? Kind of a pain having to scroll back so much to see what the device looks like

[spice topaz]

Here you go: #1156905227014914068 message

[tepid grotto]

They're right though it should be standard for a mod to pin the images of the device

I think they make sure to pin images when it goes from thread to a proper channel but still

[spice topaz]

Since it was the first post, on my iPhone I just tapped the time at the top of the screen, and it scrolled all the way to the top.

[leaden plover]

I can pin, if you point me towards which images you want me to pin.

[dusty orchid]

#1156905227014914068 message

Ok, fine. I just wanted to see if you would 😛

[frozen dove]

@leaden plover is a G like that

[frozen dove]

[dusty orchid]

https://tenor.com/view/yessss-hell-yeah-brother-gif-22960551

[spice topaz]

#1156905227014914068 message 🤣 🔥

[rigid depot]

Ty for the pins

[granite schooner]

Alright, holiday and weekend is over! Time to give us new pics Max!

[visual stream]

Anbernic is still chilling, I take it

[granite schooner]

noooooooooo 😭

[leaden plover]

https://tenor.com/view/toodaloo-muthafukors-the-hangover-ken-jeong-gif-10315830

max zhou right now

[mortal prism]

https://tenor.com/view/master-master-chang-big-chief-grand-chef-senior-chang-gif-25145635

[mortal prism]

I hope he had a revelation on his trip and is now redesigning the RG arc to have one stick and a t618

[visual stream]

Given that it's been said it's a dual OS handheld, and the chip hasn't been explicitly named in the leaks, I lowkey hope for A311D

The chances for that are next to zero and it would open a whole different can of worms, but could be cool

The "rg35xx is technically a dual OS handheld and so it could be just that ATM chip" theory would be sad if true though

Hell, between playing some Saturn and playing no Saturn at all I'd definitely prefer to have some Saturn.

Not to mention using extra power for rewind, runahead and better sound in Genesis games

[mortal prism]

lol the a311d in an anbernic device would be absolute e-waste since it wouldn't get any of the CFW the max 3 has

I have the same concern about the 3566 in a new anbernic device too fwiw

at this point unless they're gonna start sharing source code they need to just stick to android chips

[cursive fulcrum]

If they make this I'm 100% in. I was into the megadrive in a big way. Just stick the T618 in and release it.

[leaden plover]

snapdragon 8 gen 2

i will acept nothing less

[granite schooner]

Pretty scary to think we're probably just going to have to suffer through whatever Anbernic dumps on the device by default. I'm sure I'll manage, but I've never had to use the default OS on one of these ARM Linux handhelds before

[leaden plover]

aye unless black seraph like the console, or is paid to do it, then we'll get garlic OS for it or something

[mortal prism]

replacing one closed source linux firmware with another is not what I hope to see here

I think my ideal if it is a linux chip and basically a dedicated megadrive handheld is minUI

no idea if Shaun has any interest in that

but somebody else could fork it I guess

[visual stream]

I would follow Allium closely for that. Basically a MinUI-like interface that has a potential to become platform-agnostic, since it doesn't rely on Miyoo's software

I know some of its devs were considering rg35xx as the next target, but from what I understand, not being tied to a specific proprietary Linux flavor is part of the project's design

So in the long run it could actually become an alternative to EmulationStation on a lot of devices

[visual stream]

I have a similar concern, but from a different POV

The JELOS issue is simple. Rebrand JELOS, ship the device with it, post the fork on Github. Boom, no one could complain.

Last year JELOS was actively against it (and implemented measures to prevent that kind of behaviour), but we can see with Powkiddy that times have changed.

The problem is that since I'm not a tinkerer, I would not want a device that only has JELOS as a CFW. And no user-centric CFW has been ported to A311D so far.

[mortal prism]

I don't think they were ever against proper open source forks

as long as their branding is removed and the fork is open they're cool with it

[visual stream]

They literally had a mechanism that would slow down the CFW if they detected it was mass-flashed. Fewt said that

[granite schooner]

I kind of forgot anout Unoffical JELOS, is that dev still around?

[visual stream]

Last year he also mentioned they made it harder on purpose to rebrand JELOS. So their stance obviously changed with Powkiddy

Kinda hard to find the quote since Fewt left both RH and RGH servers, but the sabotage mode really was a thing.

I think he talked about that when GKD shipped M+ with modified JELOS

[leaden plover]

petty

[granite schooner]

JELOS dev is fine 98% of the time, but every once in a while he'll throw a tantrum out of nowhere or just be a dick to people.

[mortal prism]

They have a mechanism that slow boots if the cards are cloned, properly flashed cards are fine - that is to avoid the cards with both jelos and a ton of roms on eBay

That is avoidable easily with separate OS and rom cards, also if somebody actually forks jelos they can just remove that

What they did was make it so you can’t include roms on the OS card or rebrand the OS without actually making your own fork

The license of jelos explicitly allows forking to just make your own, but then your fork has to also be GPL

[visual stream]

And you think Powkiddy doesn't sell devices with ROMs? Something's gotta give here

Not to mention you still need to mass-flash cards if you want to sell a few thousand devices even without ROMs

[mortal prism]

You can mass flash from an image without cloning

And it’ll work fine

[visual stream]

And I don't think any of these companies sell devices with a single card, if that's the issue

[mortal prism]

You could even clone a flashed card as long as you haven’t booted it in a device and done the initial setup yet

The issue was never powkiddy

[mint crescent]

If you flash your own card. You will be fine. The anti cloning doesn't hurt the hobbyist. If you want to sell preloaded cards on Etsy or anywhere else, I guess you can call that petty.

[mortal prism]

It was “pissyslayer13579” on Etsy/eBay selling preloaded microSD cards

Jelos is making things difficult for those scams

[granite schooner]

why you gotta namedrop my business like that

[mortal prism]

If those scammers knew how to write a single line of code they could make their own fork for their Etsy shop and brand it/clone it/stuff it with roms however they like

In a way that isn’t gonna result in jelos devs getting angry letters from Nintendo

As is powkiddy sells rom cards separate from jelos in a way that the jelos devs have decided to be ok with, and that is their boundary to set wherever they like by right

And anbernic is free to fork jelos for their own purposes, jelos just won’t let them use their brand the way they’ve decided to let powkiddy, and the main jelos distro won’t support (new) anbernic devices so anbernic will have to maintain their own fork

Anbernic could also do the same with arkOS, emuelec, batocera, or any other gpl licensed firmware

As long as they release their source code nobody would be pissed and some of those might even integrate anbernic’s changes and support the device with their main distro

[leaden plover]

yeah, they sort of shot themselves in the foot by not delivering what they promised

[mortal prism]

The nano firmware situation I think was what really made me lose hope in anbernic coming around and doing the right thing

They did the exact shit they used as their excuse to not share 35xx sources

A ratbag closed source ripoff of a competitors open source firmware

[leaden plover]

yup, no arguments there

totally unethical

[mortal prism]

When it would’ve been so easy for them to just share source for their funkey fork and it would’ve made the nano a better device lol

Instead of it taking a month of pulling teeth to get funkey CFW to mostly work on it

[leaden plover]

now it's handicapped for... no reason.

[visual stream]

I'm not saying it isn't their (JELOS) right to decide what happens with the software they've worked on. It absolutely is.

I'm just pointing out JELOS stance has changed massively since last year, and I don't see why Anbernic can't do the exact same thing Powkiddy does — now that it's allowed

[mortal prism]

Because you need explicit permission to use jelos branding and trademark that they won’t give anbernic due to anbernic’s rat behaviour

Anbernic has however always been free to fork jelos as is literally anyone else on planet earth because it is your right under the GPL free software framework

[mint crescent]

Taki pointed out how anbernic will F you over after his 552 video. The JELOS devs picked anbernic's side at the time. Which bite them in the ass in the end. Because anbernic did the same to them.

[visual stream]

Oh, yeah, when devs took credit for blacklisting Taki it was wild (it wasn't JELOS though, but another dev)

[mint crescent]

They were part of the pile on. Maybe didn't get him blacklisted or push for it.

[mortal prism]

There are definitely things jelos would change about powkiddy too but at this point I think despite them cloning devices from hardkernel and including rom cards they’re seen at the lesser evil

[visual stream]

Yeah, things were wild

[granite schooner]

A lot of devs seem to have a screw loose. I do hate Taki though too

[leaden plover]

TTTC blacklisted taki because he "attacked" the 552?

in what sense?

[granite schooner]

Christian is the coolest dev

[mortal prism]

Tbh if it were up to fewt I think jelos would just go x86 only and not deal with any of these arm Linux devices but obviously fewt is not the only jelos dev

[mint crescent]

Christina, Shawn and Gamma have cooler heads

[vale thunder]

"Attacked" = point out obvious flaws or negatives, such is the way in our modern world

[leaden plover]

Gamma is the only one I've talked to out of those three and he seems cool

[visual stream]

I honestly believe 99% of the drama in the hobby would go away if devs would just work on devices they genuinely love

[leaden plover]

quite a few devs seem a bit twitchy

[leaden plover]

wowwww.

[mortal prism]

I dunno, I’ve talked to a bunch of devs and at least when they’re pissed about something they’re pissed and correct, which is more than I can say for the other side in shouting matches

[visual stream]

When I buy a device, I don't expect someone to work on it for free

So that whole model where devs are expected to ship a firmware for every single device Anbernic/Powkiddy/whoever ships seems deeply flawed to me

[mortal prism]

Yeah I like Christian’s model of only supporting devices he actually wants to use

[visual stream]

If the device is genuinely cool, someone will want to tweak it. That's the way it should work IMO

[mortal prism]

I think jelos does more or less do the same, they just have a lot more than one dev

[leaden plover]

well no, but I don't expect anyone to work on it at all. I'm always inspired by the ones that do, though. Deep respect.

a lot of these devices are just so bad without CFW

companies are leaning heavily on depending on the devs to work on it for free, yeah.

[visual stream]

I mean, there used to be reviews where people would say "yeah, it's not great, but devs will make it better"

You don't know that. When a CFW ships, then we'll talk

Thankfully it's less common these days

[grizzled geyser]

I think that was the 35xx

[mint crescent]

I am happy that there is CFW on these things. I also understand that they are doing it for free. I appreciate all that they do.

[mortal prism]

Yeah bad firmware is a dealbreaker for me but I’m not gonna spam Shaun begging him to put minUI on this

[vale thunder]

In a perfect world I think companies would pay Developers put awesome custom firmware on their devices day one

[mint crescent]

I hate this comment "yeah, it's not great, but devs will make it better" during a review.

[mortal prism]

Either somebody makes good cfw for this or they don’t, and if they don’t I will not buy it

And that’s anbernic’s problem not the devs

Who knows maybe the stock firmware will actually be good

(It won’t)

[leaden plover]

well, they should reach out to devs ideally, before it's finished and say "hey, weve got this device we're thinking of making, looks like this, uses this chip, has this screen etc, interested on devving for it? we'll pay x amount for cfw that can do this, that and the other thing" and if they can't seal the deal, pay someone else or deal with the fact that their device is handicapped by their weak fw creation ability

[mortal prism]

A lot of these devs don’t want to do the work for money because then they’re beholden to deadlines etc and it stops being fun

[leaden plover]

but with a big enough deadline, it could be okay, maybe?

[mortal prism]

Jelos for example explicitly will not accept any monetary anything, just some dev units to do the work on

[leaden plover]

aha.

[mortal prism]

Basically if somebody not named anbernic sends jelos a device or two they enjoy porting jelos to new devices as a hobby

Lately they’ve added support to a few loki variants for example

[mint crescent]

I believe anbernic already has two devs outside China now.

[visual stream]

The sad thing is that outside of the whole sources drama Anbernic really tried

They literally created a standalone dev unit way in advance of a 503/353 series and shipped it to devs. It was like a plastic RG353M (well, a bit simpler)

Then it got bad, yeah

[mortal prism]

As long as this device gets at least one firmware that is both good and open source and reviews of the hardware itself are good I’ll buy this I think

Megadrive and neogeo device sounds fun to me

Might even explore some MAME stuff

[leaden plover]

so they sent a dev unit and then drama happened?

to be honest, I tend to keep my nose out of this, I see a lot of opinions about anbernic's shady reputation but I don't know all the facts... was this a JelOS drama thing or...?

[dusty orchid]

That's also why they fell out with Ayaneo. Ayaneo stopped sending them the free devices.

I get that Ayaneo devices are more expensive than the average Powkiddy offering, but expecting them to work for free and pay for the device seems a bit much.

[mortal prism]

I mean if they thought the devices were worth buying and wanted to use them they’d support them anyway

But when you already have plenty of handhelds you aren’t gonna go spend your own money just to help ayaneo out with free dev work lol

[mint crescent]

still mad a couple people chased Devs away from the KTR1

[hard locust]

What was the ktr1 drama? I completely missed that one

[dusty orchid]

There isn't "a" KT-R1 drama. It's more of a long running, and neverending story.

[mortal prism]

First fewt got lectured by random ktr1 people who didn’t know the history for not liking Jutley so he bailed and then Shig bullied off the kernel dev that was supposed to be mainlining the device for insisting Nil properly share his kernel sources

[dusty orchid]

https://tenor.com/view/arya-never-ending-story-got-gif-14139723

[leaden plover]

right... but were they wrong for asking for kernel sources? that seems to be a huge point of contention in all these devices

[mint crescent]

This makes me tear up every time.

ARTAX

[dusty orchid]

Basically, a very slightly dressed up way of showing ||death from depression. ||which is pretty hardcore for a kids movie.

[mortal prism]

I don't see how they could be - the kernel is GPL so we have a right to it

actually, I should correct that - we have no right to kernel sources for windows handhelds, and maybe some MIPS stuff

but anything with a linux/android kernel

android gets tricky because some of the violations are 'downhill' - chip makers forcing handheld manufacturers to violate gpl (the t618...)

[leaden plover]

seems the kernel dev was in the wrong if you're entitled to it

what a pain in the ass.

[mortal prism]

?

the kernel dev was the one who wanted it

they wanted the stock android kernel to modify for linux

nil refused to share it

[leaden plover]

misread.

[mortal prism]

or offered to share it under NDA which would force the linux kernel dev to break GPL

[leaden plover]

right, I see now.

[mortal prism]

anyway nil has now shared the kernel sources with gamma but I think the linux ship has sailed on the KTR1 at least for now

[leaden plover]

kernel dev basically wanted what he was entitled to, nil took their bat and ball home

okay, that's... better.

[granite schooner]

What's funny is that Fewt was (mostly) okay with that. What made him quit development was someone calling him childish for his meltdown over seeing Jutley.

Jutley appeared in his usual drunken norf stupor and Fewt started posting vomit reactions images, hilarity ensued

[mortal prism]

you have it backwards - the fewt/jutley stuff happened before the kernel source stuff

[granite schooner]

That's why he quit developement though, he already knew about Nil withholding the screen bit beforehand

[mortal prism]

I don't think he was following the screen bit that closely since that was Maya's department

he basically left it up to Maya to decide if she was willing to reverse engineer the DSI or demand the android kernel to work off of

[granite schooner]

I don't know how closely he really followed that part, I just find it funny he quit because of Fishku calling him childish

[hard locust]

Sounds like that was a “last drop before spill” scenario

[mortal prism]

anyway I mostly try to stay out of the handheld drama deep lore since it was before my time but in the end open source is life for me

its as much of a political stance as a practical one for me

[dusty orchid]

This is a really interesting interview that goes into that side of things.

https://novaramedia.com/2023/08/02/acfm-microdose-californian-capitalism-malcolm-harris-palo-alto/

[visual stream]

Kind of a long story, and I do not maintain 100% accuracy here as I'm not part of JELOS or Anbernic.

The devs got the devkit and sources under NDA prior to RG503 release. There was also an embargo for code to be released publicly approximately 6 months after RG503 went on sale.

Some developers (AmberELEC) refused to work on 353 series as long as the code was not public. Fewt said this arrangement complies with GPL since you can still request source code. Anbernic explained that this was Rockchip's requirement for a then new RK3566 (??? sounds like a lie to me tbh, why would Rockchip not want more clients).

Then the code got leaked between RG503 and RG353P as part of JELOS Github tree. Fewt would be "blacklisted" by Anbernic, but still managed to add support for RG353P over literally a weekend using 503 sources. So the blacklisting thing was removed and Anbernic explained they just needed to show Rockchip they did something about the whole incident.

Then between RG353P and RG353V GKD would make an RG353P clone (GKD Mini Plus) using "leaked" JELOS code for a lot less money than RG devices. Anbernic would again cut JELOS off the source code (and cite the GKD situation as the reason). Then fewt took a harder stance and first threatened to not support RG353V, so Anbernic just sent code commits to JELOS Github page for RG353V.

This was not a good solution for JELOS, because they still had to maintain separate firmware images for all devices. Anbernic's stock firmware is a single image and Anbernic did not disclose how they did that even though it could help JELOS save time and resources.

Then rg35xx happened, and this time Anbernic likely wanted to copy the Miyoo model — completely closed source, but CFWs exist and cannot be ported to anything else. At that point JELOS would disown Anbernic and devs would openly critisize Anbernic and users who bought Anbernic products.

So in the end, it all started really well — basically the only time there was a coordinated effort to bring a new chip to Linux handhelds.

But Anbernic was really afraid they would get a Hardkernel situation on their hands where they the work and then 15 clones happen.

[leaden plover]

so they leaked the 503 source earlier than was allowed

[visual stream]

Yep

[leaden plover]

and devs refused to work on the 353 as long as the 503 code wasn't public, or the 353 code wasn't public?

[leaden plover]

and i don't understand another thing: if you're able to request source, does that mean that you're sometimes not able to freely distribute it

[visual stream]

AmberELEC did. JELOS originally had no issue with that

[visual stream]

Basically NDA/embargo is a big no-no under GPL in general

I think some of the devs went with it, because otherwise the arrangement (devkits, etc) was truly impressive

I mean, to have RG503 released and have day one community support seemed like a huge win at the time for everyone

[leaden plover]

right but being able to request source and the source being available to all are completely different thing

just because you can request, doesn't mean you'll get it

it's just available to a closed community

[visual stream]

None of that arrangement is GPL-compliant, you see

[leaden plover]

so fewt went along with violating GPL

[visual stream]

Originally, yes. Then changed his mind

I wouldn't blame him for that though. But it is the reason why I really dislike the moment where he decided to take the holier than thou approach

[leaden plover]

should've just stopped working on the device.

[visual stream]

Exactly

[mortal prism]

you're only entitled to the source code under GPL once the binary is distributed to you

there's no problem AFAICT with them having sources shared under embargo as long as they don't share binaries until the embargo lifts either

IE: working on JELOS but not releasing it until the embargo lifts

so if I send you a dev unti you're owed my kernel source (assuming it's a working dev unit that has one)

[visual stream]

I think they saw that arrangement as a step in the right direction.

Fewt also said they were trying to at least talk Anbernic into reducing the embargo to one month, for example

But then GKD happened, Anbernic feared this will be the next OGA moment (which it was) and backed off

[mortal prism]

but the general public is not owed it until I start shipping for retail

or until I share the firmware on my website

basically anyone you give the binary to (either preinstalled on hardware or otherwise) is owed the source code

[visual stream]

Besides, the community at this point basically expected devs to support every Anbernic device day one, which I imagine is not a fun feeling

[leaden plover]

what's a binary?

[mortal prism]

the compiled software

so the firmware basically

in this case

if I make my own fork of jelos for example and share it with 5 friends I have to give those friends the source code to my fork

[visual stream]

Yeah, that's my understanding as well

If you're shipping GPL software in any form, you have to provide sources

[mortal prism]

but if some random person from across the world requests the source from me I don't have to give it to them unless I've given them the binary by selling them a device with it on it/making it freely available for them to download

[leaden plover]

and that's the entire code for the inner workings, not just the changes in the fork?

[visual stream]

Here's a comment from RMS himself on the matter

https://gcc.gnu.org/legacy-ml/gcc/2001-07/msg01342.html

[mortal prism]

yeah, when you make a fork of a GPL project that includes the code from the thing you forked from

[visual stream]

Basically you can embargo GPL software, but then it should never leave your company

[mortal prism]

you can get into grey areas by making open source 'patches' that modify a closed source binary

there are loads of grey areas really

[leaden plover]

let's see if I'm understanding this: They weren't allowed to release jelOS until the embargo lifted?

[mortal prism]

where you debate over what consists of two programs that work together (where one can be closed source without a GPL violation if it doesn't contain code from GPL projects)

[visual stream]

They weren't allowed to share sources for six months after RG503 went on sale

Which is not compliant with GPL

[mortal prism]

anbernic I think would've let them release already compiled images but not source code, GPL wouldn't allow them to release compiled images without the source code

[leaden plover]

ah, right

[mortal prism]

so that's why fewt landed on 'we'll release jelos when the embargo lifts'

but yeah GPL stuff is a mess because it relies on shitty copyright laws for enforcement which create standing issues

[leaden plover]

right, so they wanted the compiled firmware/software/what have you, but didn't want anyone else to be able to replicate that for fear of a direct competitor

they being anbernic

[mortal prism]

the license says I'm entitled to the miyoo firmware source code because they shipped me a miyoo mini plus and let me download their firmware updates, but now that the GPL license has been violated who gets to sue? only people who hold copyright over the GPL code they used in their firmware

[visual stream]

Yes, exactly

[leaden plover]

fewt worked on it, made it, then changed his mind and gave them the software but also fully released it as per GPL

[mortal prism]

so I have been wronged according to the license but there's no legal framework to enforce outside of contributors to the linux kernel asserting copyright over miyoo for not having permission to use their work (permission that is granted under GPL but only if you follow the terms and give me the source code)

was the leak intentional?

I thought it was a mistake that lead to the source going out early

[visual stream]

Publicly — no, not according to fewt. But there's no way to tell for sure

[mortal prism]

but yeah technically once anbernic gave fewt the source code he was under no actual obligation to withhold it from anyone regardless

since he isn't an anbernic employee and it was licensed to him under GPL to do whatever he wanted with it

[leaden plover]

of course, but it results in closing your relationship with the manufacturer, clearly

so...

[mortal prism]

basically the only way for this drama to ever end is for GPL licenses to actually get followed properly

and have these hardware companies compete on hardware instead of trying to lock down their firmware

but that's a herculean task

[leaden plover]

yeah. Anbernic gave him some constraints and he didn't follow them, so burned bridges with them

[visual stream]

I mean, Anbernic started releasing a lot of Android-only devices after that

So that's another way to deal with that, I suppose

[mortal prism]

Android devices fall under GPL too, it's just even more of a wasteland so people have just given up there

[leaden plover]

honestly I think, in a perfect world, with full integrity, he should've stopped working on it if he had GPL concerns

[mortal prism]

I think his intention was to work on it and release it when the embargo dropped

jelos has a lot of devs so who knows what really happened to cause a leak

could've been an honest mistake

wouldn't be the first time someone accidentally put a youtube video or github page to public when it was supposed to be private

[leaden plover]

Guess we'll never know, really.

but coming in all self-righteous and making others suffer for that mistake is a bit disappointing

[mortal prism]

but yeah the obvious easy answer is for anbernic et all to fuck off and stick to the license of the linux/android kernel if they want to use linux/android, if they don't like it they're free to code their own operating system from scratch or pay for windows ARM licenses

[visual stream]

I mean, the weird move was when he started engaging into nearly everything related to Anbernic on this server or on Reddit

Like literally to the point where someone would ask, what kind of carrying case they should buy for an RG353, and fewt would tell them to drop it on the ground and stomp it

[mortal prism]

who is suffering here?

[leaden plover]

well, look at the drama that was stirred up a few months ago.

kicked up a fuss about it.

[mortal prism]

I don't think it's unreasonable to assume a fuss will be occasionally kicked up about a problem until the problem is actually resolved

[leaden plover]

just seemed openly hostile to Black Seraph who was also working under the same restrictions that fewt was, it seems.

[mortal prism]

except black seraph ships closed source GPL violating binaries behind a patreon

and continues to do so

which is an ongoing problem

[leaden plover]

which ones are strictly behind a paywall though?

[mortal prism]

his lineage android builds for starters

and then early access to garlic updates intermittently

[visual stream]

Not exaggerating here. Does not really help the GPL cause even if I can symphasize. But this was going on for quite a while

[mortal prism]

but regardless even if there was no paywall garlicOS is a gpl violation

and I don't think it should be verboten to point that out

[leaden plover]

it sounds like it is, yeah.

[mortal prism]

the scene would be better off if we stuck with FOSS software

[leaden plover]

I suppose there's a loophole that he's dancing around carefully for that.

[mortal prism]

there isn't

[visual stream]

Yeah, there's no loophole as far as GPL is concerned

[mortal prism]

he's straight up in a position where any contributor to the linux kernel could have him kicked off patreon

[leaden plover]

the fact I've personally not had to pay for garlic os means it's not technically a purchasable software

[mortal prism]

it's distributed software

that's the only test

you have the binary, so you're entitled to the code

BS, like anbernic, is banking on being too small potatoes to get in serious shit from the FSF or any other entity that holds copyright over parts of the linux kernel and actually attempts enforcement

since people like the FSF are busy suing multi-million dollar router manufacturers etc

[leaden plover]

I think anbernic is relying on being a chinese handheld company

nobody's gonna chase them up

[visual stream]

I think GPL can simply be unenforceable in China

BS is taking a risk though

[mortal prism]

yeah, nobody is gonna file suit in china, but technically they could get a judgement to prevent anbernic devices from getting imported into NA/EU if they cared about such a small potatoes niche industry

[visual stream]

I mean, even shipping with ROMs does not prevent them from being sold in NA/EU

[mortal prism]

the legal questions about GPL and the ongoing enforcement work by entities like the FSF are far larger than this little fake gameboy hobby

[mortal prism]

it very well could if anyone wanted to bring a suit

presumably even nintendo has decided that isn't a case worth pursuing since it would call attention to these devices being available all over the media and also they'd just stop shipping with roms on it

[leaden plover]

huh. Yeah, maybe?

[mortal prism]

front page of IGN "nintendo files suit to prevent import of $70 device capable of playing every SNES game ever" just makes people want to buy one lol

[leaden plover]

essentially BS is put in a position where he knows he has to violate GPL to make CFW for anbernic.

[mortal prism]

followed by "what happened to that suit anyway? Oh I can still buy the device but I need to provide my own roms? I'm fine with that"

[leaden plover]

which is the same position fewt was in

[mortal prism]

my opinion on that is that he should stop making CFW for anbernic if that's really the ultimatum

[visual stream]

I mean, doesn't stop them from cracking down on ROM sites though

I think it's more a matter of time, really

[mortal prism]

plenty of other manufacturers to make CFW for

[leaden plover]

sure, but if he's getting paid well, people want to buy anbernic products, and he wants to, and understands the risks, and people are happy with the product...?

[mortal prism]

I don't believe anbernic is paying him?

[leaden plover]

there's not a lot of incentive

oh, well probably not, but his patreon pays nicely.

[mortal prism]

I'm sure people would be happy to support his patreon if he made open source software too

loads of open source projects get plenty of donations

[leaden plover]

another angle is... He seems like like the rg35xx hence his involvement

[mortal prism]

he could do open source on top of stock kernel like all the other CFW devs for the 35xx

(or MM+)

[leaden plover]

he could, but his modified kernel seems to work well.

it may be the only way his CFW is able to work at all

[mortal prism]

in the end I'm gonna put the linux kernel over any enhancements to donkey kong country 2 machines personally

[mint crescent]

His patreon payments went way up after the release of garlic.

[visual stream]

That's pretty much it

FSF-friendly handhelds exist (Hardkernel handhelds, the original Gameforce Chi)

The problem is that they suck hardware-wise

[mortal prism]

if the devices suck on a closed source stock kernel they should move to an open source kernel

[mortal prism]

quite a few powkiddy handhelds are FSF friendly now

and a bunch of x86 ones

[leaden plover]

I respect your opinion as an informed consumer, but 99% of consumers aren't going to be aware of the issues, and prefer the enhancements.

speaking hyperbolically

[mortal prism]

the gameforce ACE I believe is supposed to be fully open source too

[hard locust]

I caved into that one

[mortal prism]

I'm waiting on reviews of the hardware

[visual stream]

That's basically the OGA situation all over again

I'd love Powkiddy to bring a new chip to Linux handhelds, but I really doubt they will

[mortal prism]

they technically did with the max 3

[hard locust]

I fully expect that the build quality is going to suck

[mortal prism]

though the a311d is very similar to the s922x

[leaden plover]

I think another issue is the fact they use ACTIONS for their chips, which seem sketchy. Imagine you release the inner workings of your chip and it's found out that it's based off a 10-year-old samsung phone. That's gonna draw a lot of trouble your way.

[mortal prism]

powkiddy has claimed they're gonna do a 3588 handheld too - probably waiting for linux support to be better for that chip (ACE is shipping with android for a reason - it's open source and linux for it exists but it's 4.X BSP etc)

[visual stream]

Now x86 would be another story

Maybe I'm ignorant here, but I think as long as the handheld runs Intel/AMD hardware and doesn't use a weird Wi-Fi chip it should just run Batocera day one sans maybe the screen rotation thing

[leaden plover]

I think they don't release kernel source because it will implicate them in something. There's no spec sheet for the rg35xx chip that gives you anything useful.

[visual stream]

That's why an N100 handheld could actually be more appealing than RK3588 for Linux people

[mortal prism]

I'm pretty sure it's just that they don't want the $30 e-waste on aliexpress like the datafrog etc to turn into 35xx clones

[leaden plover]

intentionally obsfucating data as a lie of omission

[mortal prism]

I think controls and screen will require some kernel work even if the device is x86, but yeah it should be easy

how easy I think depends on whether the screen they choose is already in the mainline kernel or not

[leaden plover]

oh yeah, of course, that's clear too.

[mortal prism]

like can you imagine if the datafrog was a 35xx hardware clone and you could install garlic on it?

[leaden plover]

ACTIONS have had issues with replicating copyrighted chips in the past however.

[hard locust]

I would probably use my frog on daily basis lol