As some users here are finally receiving their Retroids and finding disappointment, here's someone who goes into the faults of and performance issues with the Retroid Pocket 2 in-depth
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Damn. And here I bought into the hype after the early reviews—mine should arrive in the next few days.
Oh well, I didn't really need it it anyway as I already have several other capable handhelds (PSP Go, Vita, New 3DS, jailbroken iPhone 8+) that cover most of the systems, but I wanted something new and cool to mess around with. Hopefully I can at least get a few N64 games out of it. Some portable Ogre Battle 64 would basically be worth the price of admission.
which one of these would be good for a young kid to introduce them to games? i'm talking 3-4 years old
Got a chance to play some PSX on the RG350M, really disappointed by the scaling here. "Hardware" option is obviously bilinear filtering and too soft/blurry for my liking, and "nearest" is visibly distorted despite most games being a clean 320x240 that should scale to the screen perfectly. I don't think I'll be fully happy with anything short of a PSP/Vita for PSX games.
Gonna say that oddly enough the Powkiddy V90 that Zeiretto never received might be a good bet for young kids because even though it's not powerful at all it is fairly cheap and it has a clamshell design that should make it less vulnerable to little kid damage
As I said, this shows that vertical handhelds are making a comeback.
PowKiddy V90 Review
The PowKiddy V90 is a new clam shell retro handheld for playing all your old Mega Drive, GBA and SNES games. Come on over and read the PowKiddy V90 review.obscurehandhelds.com
I ordered the PowKiddy V90 for some Gameboy Advance nostalgia. It's like 30 bucks.
It's supposed to be pretty good for SNES, Megadrive and GBA, which is all I care about right now. But definitely thinking about getting the RG351P or the Retroid Pocket 2.. or whatever they come up with in the coming months. This market is super saturated! Taki Udon and Retro Dodo are pretty great channels to keep up with what is worth buying.
Speaking of Clamshells, keep in mind you can get legit Nintendo DS Lites for a song these days (though they will be around $50 for ones in pristine condition) and you can pick up physical copies of the DS and GBA games they can play for pocket change.
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I would advise to watch out for all the fake DS and GBA games out there.
Heads up phone users, the PowerA - MOGA Mobile Gaming Clip - for Xbox One Controllers is on a small sale at Amazon and Best Buy
This clip is unlike most clips that have a single hinge, resulting in the weight of the phone making it top-heavy, instead this has an extra point of articulation that allows the phone to be angled "in front" of the controller, bringing it closer to your eyes and distributing the weight more evenly.
Note that this is for the Xbox One controllers, for the brand new Xbox Series controllers (the ones with USB-C) there is an upcoming clip from 8-Bit Do that will do the same thing for those.
This clip is unlike most clips that have a single hinge, resulting in the weight of the phone making it top-heavy, instead this has an extra point of articulation that allows the phone to be angled "in front" of the controller, bringing it closer to your eyes and distributing the weight more evenly.
Note that this is for the Xbox One controllers, for the brand new Xbox Series controllers (the ones with USB-C) there is an upcoming clip from 8-Bit Do that will do the same thing for those.
I'm getting an ever increasing amount of youtube suggestions now after watching some videos and researching these things and I came across this one which I found really interesting; it demonstrates the potential that the Retroid Pocket 2 has just by virtue of having android and wifi and bluetooth
I don't think Ogre Battle 64 should be a problem for the Retroid Pocket 2 or other reasonably fast retro portable handhelds, being a turn based game gives it a lot of leeway after all.
I hope so. It'll be the first game I put on the thing—possibly the only for some time.
Thanks for the video, I'd been looking for some tests of Ogre Battle 64 but didn't find any.
Fingers crossed the N64 Goemon games also work well.
When you get it, there is a wiki where people add settings as they test them for tricker systems like N64.
Mupen64 seems to be the way to go for N64 as it allows a fair bit of per game profiling.
Games - Retroid Handhelds
Some settings for Ogre Battle are on the N64 page.
When it rains, it pours. Looks like the RG280V is finally in a lot of reviewers' hands, here is a roundup of the latest videos about it:
It may not be very powerful and the screen is very small but one thing these videos do show off is just how nice it looks and well designed it is
It may not be very powerful and the screen is very small but one thing these videos do show off is just how nice it looks and well designed it is
I already beat the game TWICE on my GPD XD back in 2018. One was during a 16+ hour plane ride.
So this has been possible for years.
OP
OP
My Retroid Pocket 2 arrived today and so far I love it. I can post a full review later but in general I disagree with the review posted above. I prefer the controls, formfactor, OS and overall functionality to the 350m and it the N64 games I have played have been ran well.
OP
OP
The complaints in that video don't make a tonne of sense to me. One of the biggest complaints raised indicates that the system treats the right analog stick as the same as the left analog stick, at the hardware level. So you can't use it for c buttons on say, N64 games. But this isn't true at all in my experience. By default the right analog is mapped to the up/left/down/right c buttons. I was literally playing Smash earlier today and jumping using the c button (which the reviewer says is impossible? It works out of the box? What?)
Also in the comments he and another person discuss the boot time being 50 seconds. For me I just timed it at 24 seconds. Additionally, since it has a sleep mode, you never really need to power it off entirely unless you lose battery completely.
The complaints at the end of the video regard the illegal software download feature, which doesn't work as well as the reviewer would have liked. I think that aspect of the system is probably beyond what we should discuss on era, but I will say that the fact that it doesn't have all the games he wanted on there is probably a good thing. You should acquire your roms legally and while I don't have an issue who can't extract roms from their own carts getting the copies from other people (so long as they legally own the game) I think having a download feature for a tonne of roms that folks don't legally own, rooted into the system, is not a good idea.
As is, I was able to just move my roms from my PC over to the SD and have 50+ games up and running in minutes on the Retroid Pocket 2. Just move the roms into their respective folder (e.g. n64 then boot your respective emulator and load the rom you want to play). On n64 you have to set the emulation profile profile to 'GlideN64' for most games, but then the games themselves run very well.
For me it's way better than the rg350 for a number of reasons. The buttons feel much nicer to press, the dpad and face buttons feel very clicky and immediately responsive. Almost like buttons on the PS Vita or PSP Go. The fact that it runs android does make things like the boot time a little slower, but it also means that you have a recognisable and understandable OS.
For instance, if I want to go to the home menu on the Retroid Pocket 2, I press the home button, and then I can load whatever I like. To do the same thing on the RG350 requires me to remember the specific combination of buttons that brings up the menu to close the emulator. It's not a disaster but it's not a good user experience. There are lots of little things like that that irritate on the RGB350. For instance, on the 350, you can't see your battery life without closing your game and loading the 'system status' application. Because the RP2 is android, it displays the battery life as a percentage at the top of the screen, whenever you press home.
N64 performance (and all below) seem very good on the RP2. I was able to play F-Zero X at a constant 60 FPS, Banjo Kazooie seemed to keep a stable 30 (I didn't play past the first area, I suspect could dip when you start flying about in the bigger stages). I'll try some more later but I'm happy with performance overall. I'm really keen to play Paper Mario to be honest.
Got my Retroid Pocket 2 (RS2 color variant). I don't mind tinkering with stuff at all so I set up the Pegasus frontend with the metadata from this repo and it was pretty much plug and play with Retroarch, Mupen64, and Drastic. The form factor is really cute.
I installed a Switch theme for Pegasus and it feels like having an even tinier Switch for Retro games, down to the home screen with dedicated game icons, sleep mode, save states, etc. So slick. The screen surprised me with how crisp and vibrant it was, and retro games scale beautifully. I'm looking forward to seeing Pegasus even more optimized and more work being done on the official Android update for this device since that part is a bit janky (bit advantage is installing a red light filter that turns on automatically - so fucking sweet for nighttime playing.)
I wish the d-pad was a little tighter, it's the only "loose" feeling component and it feels like a manufacturing variation since there's apparently a fix by tightening a screw inside the unit, which I don't really want to open up. The left analog is surprisingly pleasant to use and in games that don't "need" the d-pad, I default to it. Used it during my entire playthrough of Minish Cap so far. But also the d-pad placement has absolutely not been an issue (I'd still say the overall unit is too tiny for really fast twitched platformers and my hands do start to cramp up, but it's the tradeoff for having a truly pocketable device).
DS emulation is killer, all of the Mega Man ZX games and Castlevanias play so beautifully as none of them ever really need the other screen except for some menus (rom patches can take care of any touch screen actions) and the aspect ratio means that the game screen itself fills up the Retroid Pocket screen. Weird that GBA emulation with the default Retroarch isn't that good, there's another Retroarch app that runs it better but I prefer having my hotkeys and emulation settings uniform across all of my Retroarch emulated games so I can deal with the slowdowns here and there, I'm hoping for a less janky workaround.
Honestly for $90 including shipping this unit is pretty sweet, considering I was ready to drop $200 on an Analogue Pocket until I realized it was too far off... I'm pretty happy with this. I'd probably pick up a Retroid Pocket 3 Day 1, hopefully we reach the point where we get better 3DS emulation on these cheap Android devices as well.
Paper Mario looks great on the device, I haven't put in the optimized settings so there are minor graphical glitches here and there but it's so nice.
(also... anyone have any recommendations for great DS games that don't really use the other screen? haha)
I installed a Switch theme for Pegasus and it feels like having an even tinier Switch for Retro games, down to the home screen with dedicated game icons, sleep mode, save states, etc. So slick. The screen surprised me with how crisp and vibrant it was, and retro games scale beautifully. I'm looking forward to seeing Pegasus even more optimized and more work being done on the official Android update for this device since that part is a bit janky (bit advantage is installing a red light filter that turns on automatically - so fucking sweet for nighttime playing.)
I wish the d-pad was a little tighter, it's the only "loose" feeling component and it feels like a manufacturing variation since there's apparently a fix by tightening a screw inside the unit, which I don't really want to open up. The left analog is surprisingly pleasant to use and in games that don't "need" the d-pad, I default to it. Used it during my entire playthrough of Minish Cap so far. But also the d-pad placement has absolutely not been an issue (I'd still say the overall unit is too tiny for really fast twitched platformers and my hands do start to cramp up, but it's the tradeoff for having a truly pocketable device).
DS emulation is killer, all of the Mega Man ZX games and Castlevanias play so beautifully as none of them ever really need the other screen except for some menus (rom patches can take care of any touch screen actions) and the aspect ratio means that the game screen itself fills up the Retroid Pocket screen. Weird that GBA emulation with the default Retroarch isn't that good, there's another Retroarch app that runs it better but I prefer having my hotkeys and emulation settings uniform across all of my Retroarch emulated games so I can deal with the slowdowns here and there, I'm hoping for a less janky workaround.
Honestly for $90 including shipping this unit is pretty sweet, considering I was ready to drop $200 on an Analogue Pocket until I realized it was too far off... I'm pretty happy with this. I'd probably pick up a Retroid Pocket 3 Day 1, hopefully we reach the point where we get better 3DS emulation on these cheap Android devices as well.
Paper Mario looks great on the device, I haven't put in the optimized settings so there are minor graphical glitches here and there but it's so nice.
(also... anyone have any recommendations for great DS games that don't really use the other screen? haha)
I got my Black RP2 and am enjoying it thus far. I have a blue variant on the way, and I'll have to probably tinker with it and set it up completely prior to gifting it like I intended.
It's a great little device as long as you're not expecting official handheld quality and polish, both in terms of hardware and especially software.
It's a great little device as long as you're not expecting official handheld quality and polish, both in terms of hardware and especially software.
I was going to make a comment about those reviews with my own experience.
But I feel GungJoe and Serif have made the points I wanted to much better than I could have.
For the price and once you have it sorted it is a great little device. Also stuff like android is a plus for me (it means my setup is exactly how I like it and completely different to other people) and the mouse mode is a non issue once you have it all set up. Really comes down to expectations and how you plan to use it.
I have just recently started looking into DS and surprised by the quality of it, especially on games where you can use the enhanced 3d rendering (DQ9 looks so nice with it on). Anyway, I get it isn't for everyone but for me it is great. As I mainly want to replay my fav games (mainly RPGs) with little QOL things like Fast Forward, save states etc all in one place.
But I feel GungJoe and Serif have made the points I wanted to much better than I could have.
For the price and once you have it sorted it is a great little device. Also stuff like android is a plus for me (it means my setup is exactly how I like it and completely different to other people) and the mouse mode is a non issue once you have it all set up. Really comes down to expectations and how you plan to use it.
I have just recently started looking into DS and surprised by the quality of it, especially on games where you can use the enhanced 3d rendering (DQ9 looks so nice with it on). Anyway, I get it isn't for everyone but for me it is great. As I mainly want to replay my fav games (mainly RPGs) with little QOL things like Fast Forward, save states etc all in one place.
As I think you have already noted that the Castlevania and Megaman games will work well if you use patches for their touchscreen functionality since they otherwise just use the second screen for maps, I found a list:
- "Advance Wars: Dual Strike
- Aliens: Infestation (from comments)
- Asphalt: Urban GT
- Assassin's Creed II: Discovery
- Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (with No Touchscreen patch)
- Contra 4
- Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime! (from comments) (except optional minigames)
- Final Fantasy III (from comments)
- Geometry Wars: Galaxies
- Mario Kart DS
- New Super Mario Bros. (except "reserve" item)
- N+
- Mega Man ZX
- Metal Slug 7 (though Metal Slug XX on PSP seems to be a superior version of this game, and runs perfectly in lr-ppsspp)
- Phoenix Wright games (from comments) (unconfirmed)
- Sonic Rush (except special stages)
- Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
- Super Mario 64 DS (only after you've saved in-game at least once - on the first playthrough, you're required to touch the star - also, optional minigames require touch)"
Is goretroid.com basically the place to buy a RP2?
I was also looking at the RG351P, but I have no clue which one would be better.
I was also looking at the RG351P, but I have no clue which one would be better.
Black Friday Retro Portable Deals
retrogamecorps.com
Looks like it's just more Aliexpress and Retromimi deals, but Amazon does have SD cards and accessories on sale at least
2020 Retro Handheld Black Friday Deals
Hi everyone, here are the deals that I’ve found so far for Black Friday this year. I’ll be sure to update this page as I find more deals for you. Please note that some of these links ar…
retrogamecorps.com
Looks like it's just more Aliexpress and Retromimi deals, but Amazon does have SD cards and accessories on sale at least
OP
OP
I don't have the P but I would probably go with the RP2. I prefer the form factor and aesthetic of the RP2.
Goretroid is the right place but it took 8 weeks for mine to arrive. Worth bearing the long shipping in mind.
Yeah, I just assuming anything from China will take forever... as long as it arrives. lol
Anyone have any opinions on the Evercade? Tempted to grab one and some carts for the gimmick of it all... lol
For anyone that has a Retroid Pocket 2, how much can I expect from the PSP emulation? Like I know it won't handle god of war, but how does it do with Crisis Core, the Wipeout games, Tekken, God Eater etc? How does it compare to the GPD XD+?
There are many videos of people testing out PSP emulation on the Retroid Pocket 2 due to how popular it is, but the results do appear to differ wildly, probably due to different emulators and settings being used?
This Taki Udon video shows the best GOW performance and the cleanest video I've seen, the framerate is a bit choppy and there are missing effects but it actually looks playable.
This Taki Udon video shows the best GOW performance and the cleanest video I've seen, the framerate is a bit choppy and there are missing effects but it actually looks playable.
love the carts, but the hardware I'm not a fan of. Still... collecting for the Evercade is fun. Device has a bad lcd, is clunky, only has basic features compared to those amazing Anbernic devices by example. But, it still plays well.
Just buy a hacked PSP or Vita if you want to play PSP games. RP2 and RG351P aren't doing a good job.
Yeah, I'm half tempted to spend the 400 bucks to basically collect everything that's been released... but then it's like, why would I do that? lol
I'm still not sure if I should pull the trigger or not because they happen to be on sale for the next couple of days. lol
but they do a better job emulating the other systems, aside from psp and psx
I wish there were more videos of Ocarina of Time being tested on these devices, everyone always goes for Mario Kart 64. Can anyone confirm it runs well on a Pocket 2 or Anbernic RG280V?
Half speed and less for pretty much anything with a 3D camera. Even Lumines struggles...freaking Lumines.
The only stuff I find close to playable is 2D or some 2.5D stuff
The retroid pocket 2 struggles so much with everything psp & Dreamcast I've thrown at it, N64 runs still pretty poorly but I'd consider it quite playable. Do not buy a retroid pocket 2 for psp or Dreamcast games, it isn't fit for the job.
I kinda feel like it's worth waiting for next years models as they will probably be able to give decent performance on n64 and later. Having said that, I do find myself hovering over the buy button for rg351p from time to time.... both it and the rp2 look so nice
does not work well on RG280V, but it does work well on an Anbernic RG351P.
Retro Pocket 2 I don't know, but it doesn't have the right buttons as the right analog stick isn't an analog stick
Doesn't Retroarch do PS1 well? PSP emulator is free. The only thing I can think of that is not free is Drastic for DS.
Anyway, with the new Android update is Redream still not viable?
Interesting Tips on Retroid Pocket 2 performance:
-Disable background processes
-Turn off all the android phone stuff
-(Read this on a related forum) Disable all android power saving features
-Disable background processes
-Turn off all the android phone stuff
-(Read this on a related forum) Disable all android power saving features
I bought one of these, the silver one, on black friday. It was 43% off on the Anbernic store. Should arrive sometime this week.
OP I just want to say fuck thank you for making me spend money I barely have during the holiday season on a cool ass retro handheld purely for nostalgia reasons.
Hmm this hasn't really been my experience with some PSP titles? If you wanna play the more graphically impressive stuff then yeah, definitely wait -- but a ton of PSP and DS stuff works fine