Retro Freak Console

Yesterday was a pretty brilliant day in spite of being fairly stressful. First off we need to talk about how amazing this artwork is of my Cast Ranger from Phantasy Star 2. Some time back I had commissioned my friend Ammo to draw yet another character portrait, and she has truly outdone herself. I more or less expected it to be fairly flat shaded and she went above and beyond to capture the metallic nature of the armor and its reflections. Basically every image you see in the header of this website and the header of AggroChat.com were created by Ammo and represent years worth of projects. I cannot recommend her enough for whatever projects that you might have coming down the pipe.

Next up I got in a package I had been waiting on from ebay. I’ve always wanted to own original copies of the various JRPGs that I played growing up, and some that I didn’t get to play because they never released in the United States. The other day out of curiosity I did some searching and stumbled onto an auction that included eight different cartridges for $50 and I could not pass that up. The titles included are:

• Final Fantasy IV
• Final Fantasy V
• Final Fantasy VI
• Dragon Quest I + II
• Dragon Quest III
• Dragon Quest V
• Chrono Trigger
• Seiken Densetsu 3

Of these titles, I of course had the United States release of both FFIV which came out here as Final Fantasy II, and FFVI which released as Final Fantasy III. I also have an english version of Chrono Trigger, but the others I did not have in any form and had always wanted to own copies of the Dragon Quest series, Final Fantasy V and Seiken Densetsu 3 which recently released here as Trials of Mana.

So “Retro” gaming right now is super hot and a big business, but I was into these game systems before it was really a thing. This is an image that I have salvaged from an old version of one of my websites. This used to be part of an image map that allowed folks to see what everything in that image, but I used to have this complicated sequence of A/B switches that would allow all of those game systems to be played on that RGB monitor. I still technically have everything listed there, but it has been packed away in my closet for awhile now because as we moved into the era of HDMI it just became a pain in the ass to get anything working. If I can remember it all off the top of my head… what you are looking at is:

• Original Red/White Nintendo Famicom
• Sega Dreamcast
• Nintendo 64
• PlayStation 2
• Neo Geo CD
• PlayStation 1
• Sega Saturn
• Genesis model 1 with model 2 CD system and a 32X (also had the power base converter somewhere)
• Nintendo Gamecube
• Panasonic 3DO
• Sega Master System
• Atari Jaguar
• somewhere there is an Intellvision and an Atari but I don’t think they are hooked up.

For me it was far less about the glory of retro gaming, and more about me reliving bits of my childhood. My first console was an Atari 2600, and as a result I lived through the heyday of all of these systems but couldn’t own most of them. Once I graduated from college, got a job, and with it got my first disposable income… I went through a period of trying to snap systems up that I never got to play so I could experience them. There have been many times I have contemplated just getting rid of everything, but here lately… maybe another sign of a digital midlife crisis… I have been thinking more and more about these original systems.

For awhile now I have been enthralled by the notion of the various systems that allow you to play multiple systems on one modern console with HDMI output. I was aware of three systems, the Polymega, the Retron 5 and the Super RetroTRIO Plus. The Polymega is this complicated system that involves buying a bunch of hot-swapmodules to play various cartridge based games and the base unit with no cartridge support clocks in around $400. The Retro 5 is a system that as its name states supports 5 systems, but based on my research has issues with compatiblity and audio output while also clocking in around $150. The Super RetroTRIO Plus claims is a SOC (system on a chip) based console with extremely high compatiblity and is the cheapest of the three at $80.

In my process of consuming reviews and thrashing about on the interwebs, I discovered that apparently there was a fourth option that I was unaware of. The Retro Freak is a Japanese emulation console, that out of the box supports Famicom, Super Nintendo, Super Famicom, Genesis, Mega Drive, Turbografx 16, PCE Engine, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance titles and the prices vary but you can pick it up from Play Asia for $230. With adapters you can play American Nintendo games as well as Game Gear and Sega Master System. This covers a broad range of the game systems that I would actually like to play and it also has the added benefit of being able to dump rom images from your cartridges to an SD Card allowing you to play the games without having to break out the original cartridges each time.

Now we are swinging back around to why exactly I decided to purchase all of those Japanese games. One of the features of both the Retron and the Retro Freak is the ability to apply game patches when you load a game. So within a few minutes I was able to gather up a few translation patches from RomHacking.net, load them onto the SD Card and now I can play each of these games in English. There are a truly staggering number of these cartridges that have been translated by fan groups, and when you combine this with the fact that there is almost no retail value for the Japanese import cartridges on the open market, it becomes a very reasonable way to play these classic titles. I found another auction for the original 3 Final Fantasy games on the Famicom for right at $20 shipped, and I plan on playing them through translations as well.

So last night I spent a good chunk of my evening playing through various games and putting the console through its paces. I have it running through my Elgato HD60 Pro capture card with the scanlines option turned on. Since I played most of these games on a television growing up, it just looks weird to me not to have artificial scanlines enabled. I am super impressed with both the quality of the emulation and the sound output, because effectively everything sounds like I remember it sounding. Castlevania Bloodlines is a cartridge that a lot of emulation systems butcher, and it played exactly like I remember it.

The only negative that I have run into is some weirdness with the controllers. The default one that it comes with is not amazing, and through the course of the night stopped registering some of the inputs. I had read online that the system had wide support for all XInput and DirectInput controllers. However in practice this does not seem to be the case and it appears that everything you use with it needs to be able to operate in the DirectInput scheme. This rules out any Xbox style controllers that are not capable of specifically switching to D Input. PlayStation controllers appear to work, but the Hori Fight Commander that I was hoping to use has some button switching capabilities and this appears to completely throw the console off.

The controller I finally settled on is my 8BitDo 3N30 pro+ bluetooth controller, connected with a USB Cable to the console. I had to manually switch this to D Input mode, but after doing so it largely worked as intended. I did encounter some weirdness, but it was manageable. I was having trouble remapping the controls however, so at some point I will likely swap out to another controller. I ordered one of the RetroBit official Sega Saturn controllers that I am hoping will fill the need perfectly. I greatly prefer the two rows of three face buttons configuration that the second Genesis and Saturn controller had. This specific Saturn style controller was designed for the Nintendo Switch and as a result has more buttons which should come in handy as the Retro Freak requires you to make keybinds for its in game menu and return to the main menu buttons.

All in all I am having a freaking blast and enjoyed playing a whole slew of games last night on various platforms. I am super happy for example to have a console that I can play digital pinball classics like Alien Crush from the PC Engine. I wish the Retro Freak had support for the Super CD games like Castlevania: Rondo of Blood… but I guess for those I will just have to play emulators on my computer. I mean that has always been an option, but there is just something about playing games on a console, even when that console is just running emulation. The Retro Freak also appears to have a thriving community and folks developing custom firmware that I might explore at a later date once I figure out the limitations of the official one. For now I am just super happy to have a system that outputs to HDMI and can play all of my original cartridges.