Hardware Archives - Page 5 of 6 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Rg350 Emulation Handheld Thoughts

April 23, 2020 by Belghast

taking a photo with my phone of me playing Final Fantasy V on RG350

Yesterday’s post spawned a whole slew of interesting comments. First off I don’t want it to ever sound like my view of grinding is the penultimate view and that everyone should adopt it. In fact I think Bhagpuss has it right, that when I am talking about grinding I am actually talking about playing while in a “flow state”. Folks enter this in so many different ways, but for me I find it deeply relaxing to just do mildly enjoyable repetitive tasks while watching the numbers go up. Proof in point, what did I do last night while laying in bed? Well I started a new game in Final Fantasy V on my rg350 handheld emulator console and ground my level to 13… with a party that is multi-classed with level 3 of two different jobs. In theory you should be around level 6 when you arrive at the Ship Graveyard… so I mostly just did a bunch of repetitive nonsense while listening to the evening news and the late night shows.

Some look to gaming for a sense of adventure and discovery, and I absolutely love that at times. However there are a lot of times when I am playing, especially with MMORPGs that I am playing for comfort. My life is often times a little crazy, especially on the work side and what I am needing is some control. Repetitive and predictable gaming helps me feel like I am taming that chaos and that sense of calm allows me to weather uncertain times in other aspects of my life. I find myself needing it more than usual because during the pandemic my home life seems to be in not so much a state of chaos but more a state of forced stasis. My work life however is absolute chaos as we are trying to adapt to doing everything remotely. So the reaction to the upset balance in both of those spheres has lead me to crave something like leveling all of the alts in World of Warcraft because it gives me a sense of calm that I can use to shield me against the things that are otherwise unbalanced in my life.

Retro Emulator Handhelds

Random sampling of Emulator Handhelds on AliExpress

Over the last several years there has been a constant flood of relatively well designed emulator handhelds coming out of China. In the past these were blatant knock offs attempting to look like other systems, but something changed. Instead what we are getting are attempts at unique gaming experiences of their own and with them some pretty interesting developments on the software front. For the most part all of these handhelds run on a Linux Distribution called OpenDingux. This got its start as being a Linux operating system designed to extend the functionality of the Dingoo series of handhelds, which were for years effectively the best possible handhelds you could get out of China for emulation purposes.

What OpenDingux buys this current generation of hardware are some much needed standards and with that a certain measure of community and mod support. The handhelds function in a similar manner and because of that it makes them fairly easy to contrast and compare. While the emulator is generally the same regardless of the handheld, the hardware ultimately dictates how well the various games run on it. If for example you only care about Game Boy Advance games, then you have a wide variety of options and price points that will support those titles. If you want to start dipping into newer Arcade emulation or the Sony PlayStation, then you are going to need a bit more horsepower to back that demand up. I embedded the above video by YouTuber Taki Udon which gives a pretty solid rundown of the various options. His channel has been useful because he seems to review every one of these new handhelds as they release, however if you prefer the printed word here is a decent rundown by Retro Dodo of 16 handhelds.

I started down this rabbit hole originally because of the above unit. I’ve wanted something to play Gameboy Advance games on for awhile other than my Sony PSP, because for the life of me I never can seem to keep track of that console and or keep it charged. I wanted something that had good battery life and that I could more or less just chuck in my pocket for gaming on the go in those various moments where I am stuck waiting around. This is a fantasy I often have but never seem to actually make good on since when I am idle I tend to just keep scrolling twitter. The Pocket Go effectively was a handheld that was good at 8 bit and 16 bit era consoles as well as the Gameboy series of handhelds. The price however was ultimately what attracted me because you can pick one of these up for in the neighborhood of $30. So on a whim I decided to order one.

Shortly after placing my order I was informed by the company selling it out of China, that they were currently out of stock of the Pocket Go, but for $5 more I could upgrade to the RG350, which admittedly was another option I had been looking for. I however largely ignored it because traditionally these are more in the range of $80-$100 which is out of the range of my normal “whim” purchases. Effectively I think in order to close out the books they were willing to sell me one at closer to their unit cost, which is entirely fine by me. I accepted and opted for the above color scheme… which in person looks more Gameboy as those buttons are actually maroon rather than fuchsia. The RG350 has considerably better hardware and with it comes two analog thumbsticks which in theory extended the sorts of games I could play on it.

I had not really talked much about this handheld up until this point other than randomly mentioning it one morning, because I wanted to spend some time with it before I ultimately decided if it was a good thing or not. At this point I have tested out all of the emulators that were installed on it and have some opinions of the handheld in general. First off lets start with a list of the platforms that are supported.

Nintendo
Super Nintendo
Genesis
Sega Master System
Sega Gamegear
Gameboy
Gameboy Color
Gameboy Advance
TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine
Wonder Swan
Neo Geo Pocket / Color
Sony Playstation
Mame
Final Burn Alpha
DosBox
Various Open Source game ports like FreeDoom

Of these I have played with everything but DosBox, only because I just never got around to it. The systems that I have spent the most time playing are Sony PlayStation, Super Nintendo and Gameboy Advance. I have to say while PlayStation games look pretty dated on a big screen, it feels amazing to play Legend of Dragoon on a handheld while laying in bed. The unit ships with 8 gb of onboard storage and the package I ended up getting shipped with a no name aftermarket 32 gb SD Card. When it comes to throwing multi-disc ISOs for the Sony PlayStation on a SD Card, you can eat up 32 gb really fast.

I opted to upgrade rapidly to a 256 gb card but ran into some initial problems. Firstly the unit comes with zero documentation, but thankfully the RG350 is fairly ubiquitous in emulation circles and there is even a Reddit devoted to the device. After some googling I figured out what the issue was. First off the card has to be formatted in FAT32… which in theory it already was but I wanted to reformat just to make sure. This lead me to have to find a third party formatter since Windows will not format a 256 gb drive in FAT32 by default. After doing this it still didn’t work, which lead to more research and finding out that the volume label for the drive must be “SDCARD” otherwise the Open Dingux installation will not mount the device. I share this anecdote not because it was difficult, but because you have to be willing to dig when you encounter friction when using a largely unsupported device like this.

After market thumbstick replacements for the RG350

As far as the games and gameplay goes, I am exceptionally happy with the handheld. I’ve heard tale that there are a few late release PS1 games that have slowdown problems like Bloody Roar 2, but these are the same games that generally have trouble in desktop emulators as well. The build quality of the unit feels solid and it has some heft to it, weighing about the same as a standard mobile phone. The only real complaint I have with it is the thumb sticks, which are unfortunately the dual analog sticks were one of the initial selling features. The sticks do not feel comfortable and there is something about the left stick that causes it to occasionally stick. The other issue is the fact that they stick up as far as the unit greatly hurts the whole “shove it in your pocket” aspect because they tend to hang on the fabric or pull random other things out of your pockets along with them.

There are a number of aftermarket mods available like these thumbsticks that I am showing you from Etsy. They are of course 3D Printed, but without a 3D printer or access to someone who has one I would have to ultimately order them online. I like the concept of having them sit flush with the device, so at some point I am probably going to order a set or try and find someone local to print them for me. I think I would also like to get a set of the Super Famicom colored buttons and maybe swap those out as well. However none of these complaints are really enough to detract from the function of the device. Since I am mostly playing JRPGs with the Sony PlayStation Emulator, it isn’t like I actually need the thumb sticks and have found it way more comfortable to just control everything with the dpad.

Would I recommend the RG350?

I guess at the end of the day it comes down to this question of whether or not I would recommend this device. If you only care about playing 8 bit, 16 bit and Gameboy era games, then I would probably go with something like what I was originally seeking out… the Pocket Go because it has an attractive price point at $30. Also the lack of the sticks makes the entire package more sleek and easy to toss around. For the price I got my RG350, which was ultimately around $40 I would absolutely recommend it. I am finding it way more enjoyable to play Sony PlayStation era titles on the device than I thought it would be. If you can find it for around $60-70 then I still think it is well worth the price to add better game support. However for the original release price of $100 I think I would probably pass and wait for newer devices to end up coming onto the market.

The Cutting Room Floor Post

April 10, 2020 by Belghast

This morning is technically part of my weekend, and as such I contemplated following “holiday rules” and ignoring a post. However since we are in the middle of Blapril that might set a bad precedent for the various participants. Instead this morning you are going to get a random assortment of blurbs that are sorta left on the cutting room floor. These are things that I don’t necessarily want to devote an entire post to, but still have things to say. For example here is a picture that my friend Storm sent me from Astral Chain because apparently in that universe I am a Toilet Fairy. I can’t say it is a profession that I would have chosen for myself, but I am also not going to fight it terribly hard. I should probably play Astral Chain at some point because it is either going to be right down my alley or I will thoroughly reject it… because I am not sure there will be much of a middle ground.

Unlike Microsoft, Sony keeps unveiling their system bit by bit… and up until this point we really didn’t have much to go on as far as stylings for this next generation. However if this controller is any indication for what the final system might look like I am completely on board. This controller reminds me of you took the vibe of Tron Legacy and combined it with the Robotic designs from Portal. It also looks like maybe just maybe they are making a design that is a little bit friendlier to larger hands. There is a problem I have with the Dualshock 4 that my pinky fingers fall asleep when I am gripping the controller because I am sorta having to tuck them back up and under to get all of my fingers on the sides. I’ve written about my favorite large hand controller designs before, but this is definitely a thing for me personally. Thanks to growing up on movies like Bladerunner… this is what I expected the future to look like and I am thankful to Sony for starting to realize that cyberpunk reality. If the new console is inexplicably orb shaped they will even score more points with me.

The Friends and Family Alpha for World of Warcraft Shadowlands started this week, and like I assumed I did not get an invite. There was a time when I was pretty much getting these like clockwork, but I feel like I have said enough bad stuff about the company and the game that I am no longer considered friend nor family. All of that said I am excited it has started because I actually do love World of Warcraft spoiler season. I have a weird stance on spoilers in general, because they actually enhance my enjoyment of the product and hype me up about it. Now I tend to try avoiding some of the story beats, but the various world building products that start leaking out and how the systems are going to work are absolutely candy for me to gobble up. On one hand I have to admit that I would have liked being invited because it would have been fun to test out the various classes. On the other hand I wouldn’t want to burn myself out on a game before it even releases as I have done a few times in the past. I have a lot of hope going into this expansion that it will start to turn the game as a whole around. Having been back the last few weeks I am remembering how fun it is at times, and how much enjoyment I get out of piddling around. The corrupted item system however can die in a freaking fire.

Destiny 2 on Google Stadia Fake Screenshot

Another thing that happened this week that is worth talking about is that Stadia went open to the public. Everyone can sign up for 2 months of free Stadia Pro to get in and kick the tires. The problem I have seen so far is that the tires might fall off. Stadia appears to be actively blocking any third party capture solutions, including even GeForce experience and as such you have to rely on their baked in screenshot functionality accessible by hitting F12. The problem with this is that the above image bears no resemblance to the image that I actually saw on the screen while playing the game. I am guessting that the image is saved on the server side where the fidelity is significantly better. That image is perfectly fine and if the game looked like that while playing I would consider this a rousing success visually at least. What the game-play instead looks like is more akin to what I remember playing Destiny 1 on the PS3 felt like.

The nail in the coffin for me however is how the game performs. I specifically chose Destiny 2 just like I did when I was testing out GeForce Now because it was a game that I have deep experience playing and understand how it is supposed to be performing. I opted not to connect this up to my cross save so that I could experience the New Light intro. In it you pick up the Khvostov auto rifle, a weapon known for its smooth handling and honestly probably the ideal starter weapon. Trying to aim down the sights and take out Fallen felt like my mouse was jumping all over the place constantly. The cursor movement felt exceptionally jerky and random making it near impossible for me to stomach playing through even this first mission. I’ve stopped and restarted it a half dozen times, and for reference I am using the chrome based web client over a wired gigabit connection straight into my router. This machine has full access to my 350 Mbit internet connection, which should be more than cromulent for playing 1080p gaming.

Contrast that to my experience with the same game on GeForce Now and I am questioning how viable Stadia is for pretty much any sort of shooter going forward. I am going to play some of the other game that are less demanding on fine motor skill and see how they work out. However in playing GeForce Now it was not that different than playing over Parsec streaming to my desktop upstairs on the same LAN. The sad thing is… I am pretty close to their ideal customer given that I play games remotely all the freaking time. However the end result just did not feel good… and it could be that the server is just overloaded at this point. However it felt the same at 10 pm at night as it did this morning at 8 am… which should have significantly different bandwidth footprints. Not my jam but I am thankful that I did get to play with it in person.

Well folks it is finally here, and as I write this I am hearing the soundtrack playing in the background. I am weird and have all of my consoles connected to a capture card instead of directly into the television. So that means while I am playing games I am actually doing so through the Elgato HD Capture software window maximized. It works for me because it allows me to capture footage directly while playing and just hit the print screen key in order to take screenshots. Anyways all of that nonsense aside I have Final Fantasy 7 Remake up and ready to go and a day off work to play it. However I have to admit now that I do… I am thinking about playing other things. Seven was not the pinnacle game for me that it was for so many others. I originally played it on the PC, and really the game that blew me out of the water was Final Fantasy 3/6 depending on when it was released. The first Final Fantasy game I played on the Playstation was the 8th, and as a result I probably have more affinity for it than I do this one. That said I do plan on playing it this weekend, just not sure how far I will make it.

With that we bring to a close my random list of topics. I am once again going to spin this around to Blapril for a moment, because quite often you are going to find yourself in this situation where you have a bunch of small bits of content that don’t really fit together. It is perfectly fine to do one of these cutting room floor posts where you clear out a bunch of thoughts that are disconnected. It helps greatly to break things up with images and captions like I have done, or to at least use headings to help the readers shift between them. As time passes and you get more used to creating content on the fly, you can pretty much take any assortment of things and make it work. My readers may however disagree with me and tell me that these sort of posts are crap, but they have always been a crutch that I could fall back on when I didn’t have much else to talk about.

Seasonal and Sundry

March 20, 2020 by Belghast

Good morning everyone. Welcome to the end of my first week of remoting, and the beginning of a weekend that suddenly means significantly less. I had originally taken today off, but I cancelled my vacation because in theory we are not going to go anywhere due to trying to do our part and social distancing. I had been following a routine of going to the corner convenience store and this morning I even stopped that because we officially have community spread. So I am like so many and just trying not to freak out about everything and live what passes as a normal life. Thankfully I like my house and I like my spouse and we’ve spent over twenty years of coexisting in the same place without fighting so I think I am better off than a lot of people.

Since my last Diablo 3 related post I have “finished” the four chapter seasonal journey and have the 6 piece Natalya set, which allows me to comfortably run through Torment IX without much issue. I’ve done a solo 45 Greater Rift, and I ultimately NEED to get it to the point of being able to do a 55 for the seasonal conquest. So far I plan on doing a solo 75 which should be easy when I get my multi-shot build working, and last night Grace and I did the achievement to kill over 300 critters during a cursed chest event… we got something silly like 450 which admittedly was mostly her because I don’t kill that fast yet. So the last of the three conquests is likely going to be getting through a GR55 on 6 different class sets, which should work because we plan on running up a pair of Witchdoctors as well.

On the home front I wanted to share a little innovation I had with you, pardon the shadow and the adhesive residue from what used to be hanging on the back of the door. Ultimately I have a large number of controllers and wanted a good way of storing them to get them out of the way and keep their cords from getting tangled. My wife has used over the door shoe storage for various purposes and it gave me the idea to try and use it for controllers and other gaming kitch. So far it seems to work beautifully and all of those controllers for systems I don’t use regularly are neatly hanging behind the door with only the Xbox 360 and its enormous cord looking a little unseemly. For reference I am using this 24 pocket organizer from Dollar General, but I am sure you can find something similar at pretty much any other store.

Another thing that I have been playing around with quite a bit is my RG350 emulator console. This is of course a publicity shot and not my actual unit, but I did get it in the same color scheme because it reminded me more or less of a gameboy. There are a bunch of different versions of these custom emulator consoles running OpenDingux coming out of China and originally I was just looking for one that would play Super Nintendo and Gameboy Advance titles, which caused me to land on the PocketGo. However at the time I placed my order it was out of stock and I was given the option to upgrade for $5 to the RG350 which was capable of emulating way more systems including pretty flawless PSX games. Since then I have been spending a bunch of time poking around in Nintendo, Super Nintendo, TurborGrafx, Gensis and Playstation games. Playing Legend of Dragoon on a handheld is pretty freaking awesome, and this gives me a good system for Four Job Fiesta this summer. Additionally it gets roughly six hours of constant play out of a battery and charges quickly off USB Type C.

Lastly we have the significance of today. I will be adventuring off on an island getaway and playing a core Animal Crossing game for the first time. I mean I also have the other big release which is Doom Eternal, but more than anything I am interested in getting engaged with and seeing how the Animal Crossing fans live. I may or may not have it running in the background while I am typing up this post and am getting lulled to sleep by the Nook Inc island music. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and stay safe out there. Again I am reminded that I should keep telling folks that I love them, so I love all of you out there who are my regular readers. Writing this blog is mostly therapy for me, and you reading it means you are playing a part in that process. I hope we all make it out of this weird time we are living in safely and can tell stories about it on the other side.

Backyard and Banana

May 23, 2018 by Belghast

Last night was a pretty chill night and was spent either gaming or hanging out on the patio off our bedroom. Here is a photo from my chair as I waited to top off the pool and played Monster Hunter Generations. There was a nice breeze and it was making the wind chimes do all sorts of happy sounds. My wife was hanging beside me doing school work… because unfortunately it is both hobby and job rolled all in one. I love our backyard even though I don’t spend anywhere near as much time as she does out in it. Last night however was a perfect storm of overcast and cool which is about my sweet spot for outdoors. My eyes are super sensitive to light and there are times where while I am sitting in the shade… the world itself is just too bright for my tastes. The flowerbabies of course are doing okay still, and I need to wrap up this post soon so I can go out and give them all a drink.

As far as Monster Hunter Generations… I am largely playing it over 4 Ultimate because of the impending release of Generations Ultimate for the Switch. Monster Hunter is way too complicated a game for me to really enjoy playing it on a tiny screen with a thinkpad trackpoint nub serving as my second thumbstick. That said I do know that whatever effort I make is going to transfer over to the Switch so it feels like it is allowing me to have a bit of a headstart as it were. There are still three months until the release of Generations Ultimate and that gives me some time to casually work on leveling my Palicos and progressing through the quests to a point where I might not be completely on ground one at launch on August 28th. I am super looking forward to having a newish to me Monster Hunter experience to sink my teeth into… that I will be able to play on my 43 inch monitor upstairs.

The tail end of the evening I settled into playing some Iron Banner in Destiny 2 as I had not honestly played much of that since Curse of Osiris. I am nowhere near as good at Crucible as I once was because I am simply out of practice, but then again I never was terribly good in the first place. I did manage to turn in a couple of packages, one of which getting me the Auto Rifle that looks like Scathelocke. I am super pumped about it because firstly I love Auto Rifles and secondly… I had really wanted to try that weapon out and was afraid that I lost my chance when the season changed. There is another auto rifle available as faction rewards so I am wondering if I want to try grinding out 30 packages… and I pretty much figure the answer is no. I do however want the super high rate of fire weapon because it has auto loading holster and high impact rounds and seems like a much better version of Perseverance/Valakadyn… which are both weapons that I hated on the console but have come to enjoy with a mouse and keyboard.

I have significant problems with Destiny 2… but damn does that mechanical loop still feel fun.