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Evening. My niece and nephew recently got one of those nice little Snes mini's and while I have mostly resisted thrashing them on SFII my kids have really taken a shine to Mario. I then remembered I had a snes emulator on my laptop so let my daughter play Super Mario on that, then she wanted something else to play and has gotten into Sonic The Hedgehog. My son really seems to like that too.
My wife is a big nintendo fan too and had a snes growing up so when I mentioned the snes mini she was all set to buy one, but my preference would be for Sega...anyway I then remembered that Sega released a compilation of their games on PS2, and PS3 it seems. Some googling later and I discover there's an android emulator that does Snes, Megadrive, Neo Geo and more, and if I had a newer tablet I could screen cast to my tv.
And so I am now confused by too much choice. Snes mini, Megadrive mini, a second hand ps2 or PS3 or a tablet and emulator? I would have to buy a second hand ps3 (or 3) but all the solutions seem to work out between £60 - £100. I'd prefer not to have multiple devices. I'm keen to hear from owners of any of the above, and opinions or suggestions. The tablet appeals because it could be used for general web browsing and media, the others appeal for simplicity.
TIA
Raspberry pi here. Fantastic little machine if you don't mind a bit of tinkering.
Yep, RetroPie supports most systems up to the Gamecube era - the Pi 3 is quite a capable little thing. I've been meaning to build a little bartop arcade for one, but just putting one in a case and hooking it up to the TV with a couple of gamepads attached would do fine too.
Sinclair ZX Spectrum is where it’s at, n00b 😉
RetroPie
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A new rabbit hole emerges.
Ha. Console wars.
Amiga 500+ is where it's at.
The A500 wasn't a console. Go sit in a corner and think about what you've done.
Can't beat the old games, I've got a megadrive & master system still in their original boxes that I dug out the other day. I'd forgotten how addictive stuff like Road rash and Alex kid in miracle world was!
Surely for proper retro gaming it should be a grey import PC Engine.
Pook surely you mean Atari? 😁
Ugh, that's brought back memories of the disc swapping era...when games came on a dozen 3.5" floppy discs.
For you youngsters those are what we had before CDs, DVDs and downloads...with a whopping 1.44MB capacity.
You can have all you wish for and more on the SNES mini, I currently have it running Game Boy/Color/Advance, Game Gear, Master System, Mega Drive/CD/32X, Neo Geo/Pocket, PC Engine/Duo-R, PlayStation plus all MAME arcade games...
Garage dweller, get out.
Cougar, I know exactly what I've done. And mine was a 500 +.
Way better than the consoles.
For you youngsters those are what we had before CDs, DVDs and downloads…with a whopping 1.44MB capacity.
Pfffft!
Get you with your High density 3.5 inch floppy disks.
Youngsters these days! Wouldn’t know a 5 and a quarter floppy if it smacked them in the face, never mind some C90 cassettes or Atari 2600 cartridges .
Just got myself a Pi3, awesome little doohickey. Running Recalbox. It's a stark reminder that I was never amazing in fighting games though. And some games haven't aged well but others are just as good as 25 years ago!
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Just in a temporary case that I knocked up. PS3 controller works a treat wirelessly.
Ugh, that’s brought back memories of the disc swapping era…when games came on a dozen 3.5″ floppy discs.
I remember playing Monkey Island and panicking because I couldn’t find disc 9 of 12 when I needed it.
SNES and Mega Drive were brilliant. So many addictive games. Loved the Amiga 500 too, especially the bitmap brothers games.
I remember the days when computer mags had pages of code in the back, assuming you ever managed to type it in without making an error you'd get some crap game at the end that you'd probably play for less time than you spent typing in the code. Still, some days it was just preferable than waiting 16 minutes for Manic Miner to load off tape (assuming it did load and you didn't get the dread 'click' from the tape running out without it loading).
Still, some days it was just preferable than waiting 16 minutes for Manic Miner to load off tape (assuming it did load and you didn’t get the dread ‘click’ from the tape running out without it loading).
Your tape deck was running too slow! A nifty three minutes or so for Manic Miner. Provided you got the volume/treble settings just right and didn't have to do it again, and again, and again.
@palmer77 , what's the interface / usability like with Hakatchi?
Its basic, but functional. The instructions are fairly easy, and once you have flashed a custom kernel you can either add games to the internal memory (230Mb) or use a USB stick with an On The Go through adapter. I’m using a 256Gb Sandisc with mine and have about 550 games on it. There loads of guides on YouTube, with Kyland K and Patten Plays the most helpful IMHO. If you decide to do it and are not happy with it it’s very easy to return it to standard configuration, but it’s extremely addictive getting retro games to work. The SNES mini form factor, controls and GUI are also very well thought out.
@martinhutch - awwww man! That brings back some memories. I spent sooooo much time looking at that.
That, and typing programmes into my ZX81, which would inevitably overheat by the time i'd tediously tapped in the Basic.
Its basic, but functional. The instructions are fairly easy, and once you have flashed a custom kernel you can either add games to the internal memory (230Mb) or use a USB stick with an On The Go through adapter. I’m using a 256Gb Sandisc with mine and have about 550 games on it. There loads of guides on YouTube, with Kyland K and Patten Plays the most helpful IMHO. If you decide to do it and are not happy with it it’s very easy to return it to standard configuration, but it’s extremely addictive getting retro games to work. The SNES mini form factor, controls and GUI are also very well thought out.
Thank you, I'll look into that. It definitely appears to be the most attractive option now. The wife wants something plug and play, the Sega system appears to be trash and this retro pie appears to be a wormhole I'm not sure I wanted to go down. The snes mini would be good from the offset and I could then look into hacking it down the road. Can you run any other joy pads with the snes / hakatchi?
So I've got Hakachi and Retro Arch installed on my Snes Mini, do I just need to add the MAME Roms to get it to play old arcade games?
I would recommend using hakchi2_CE_ 1.0.1 as the newer version still has some bugs when uploading HMODS (the mods that allow you to play different consoles etc). To do this you have to enter development (FEL) mode when the system is plugged into your computer, by holding down reset when turning the system on. I would suggest only adding multiple batches of the smaller ones, and the larger ones MAME etc one by one, otherwise the system struggles. MAME2003 will work for many of the games, but you may need to add FBA2012/16. You will need to change the command line as well, but take a look at the guides online.
EDIT: I forgot to say, you can use the Wii Classic or Pro controllers with the system as they have the same plug, have analogue controls and work great 🙂
If you get an OTG to run USB-HOST you can also plug in USB controllers/keyboards/mouse etc..
was gonna say, DO NOT get the mega drive thing, heard nothing but bad news about it!! The SNES mini on the other hand is awesome, obviously plug & play and pretty expandable (by the sounds of it, not done it yet myself!)The wife wants something plug and play, the Sega system appears to be trash
The fact that you get genuine Nintendo controllers is a massive bonus for me, YMMV.
^^^
That's really good info palmer. Thanks very much
No problem, there has also recently been a grey area concerning the BIOS required for certain systems to run the various ROMS/ISO/CUE&BIN files etc. A lot of the developers have now grouped together their efforts at Hakchi Resources, however, this has raised their respective profiles and subsequently a lot of the newer HMODS no longer have the BIOS built in. There is a new BIOS installer HMOD available, but you need to locate the BIOS yourself (as with ROMS) as sharing is illegal. According to the developers this is easy to locate online, but is also very easy to extract if you have the HMODS already installed. For example, if you open an HMOD from 3-22-18 or before with 7 Zip, you can locate the BIOS in the 'System' folder. More information on this here:
Changes to your game core sets! Hakchi Bios Installer SNES Classic (Tutorial)
SNES Classic - Operation BIOS Recovery (No BIOS left behind:)
Update. Been away for a few days but ended up buying the SNES mini. Good product, the console is hilariously small and the controllers are decent quality.
The obvious big games are there but will definitely look into hakchi options after a while
The original Wii is great for emulating older machines. There's a massive homebrew movement and loads of info for how to hack the system and then use it to its full potential. Dirt cheap as well, you need a Wii and an SD card.