#Built-in emulator console

[elsafty9]

Retro Game Console, Retro Stick with Built-in 18 Emulators, 20,000+ Games

20000+ Retro Gaming Experience: This TV game console built in 20000+ rich games, is pre-install 18 emulators, and pack with 64GB TF card. No need to download and install by yourself, no internet required, you can play 20000+ classic games just by connecting to the TV. Let you play games without repetition every day and bring back your memory to the fun of childhood,enjoy family entertainment time

get it now from here

[stupidrant]

Since we’re on the topic of video games, im tired of these fucking remakes. Ive said it before but i’ll say it again each time. These companies dont wanna invest in an actually good remaster or port and would rather waste their time with these remakes bcuz “ooh look how shiny and better the graphics look!!1!1!1” often times it has an empty feeling because everything has to be ultra realism super 6000. Its gotten so bad that now regular gamers are starting to gaslight you into playing or enjoying them. So much has been lost artistically, (like the cool UI designs) that it’s now considered “juvenile” and that i need to “grow up” and “accept it” 😂

[severalowls]

The Steam Deck is now cheaper than a Nintendo Switch in some places. And the Steam Deck can emulate anything with about an hour of setup!

[miyooflip]

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With a simple setup, lightning-fast performance, and an impressive 5-6 hours of battery life, the Miyoo Flip is built for hours of uninterrupted gaming bliss.

Get yours at HERE

[tiny-brass-bot]

Hi! I saw a post where you had a game made in godot with old school rendering, do you maybe have any tips on how to make godot render a game like that instead of its normal rendering method?

I'd be right happy to!

I'll try to make this concise lol, I always end up overexplaining and then getting lost in the weeds. Buckle up, it's a loooooot of little little things that all add up.

First off, you should decide which look you're going for. N64 and PS1, the two consoles I'm emulating, both had drastically different specs. (plus, there's plenty of other early 3D systems I've not even touched!)

The N64 had texture filtering (textures were interpolated aka "blurry"), it had floating point vertex precision (points moved correctly), it had perspective correction on its textures (no warping)

The PS1 had no texture filtering, no floating point vertex precision (vertices snap and pop around), affine texture mapping (textures warp weird). I also think the color space they operate in is different? Don't quote me

So you can go hard one way or another or pick and choose what you think looks good! We don't have anywhere near the hardware restrictions they did in the 90s so go nuts.

RESOLUTION

To get a low resolution window, I set the window size of the game and the window override size to different amounts

In green is actually how big the window is on my screen (4k monitor) and in red is the retro resolution I want. If you set the stretch mode correctly (an option a little further down the Window tab) then it'll make the pixels big

COLORS

Now the PS1 had the capability of showing you over 16 million different colors, but it could only display 50,000-150,000 at a time, so in order to get more fidelity out of it, the engineers implemented a dithering effect to better blend the otherwise sharp edges between colors.

I used this shader to achieve the dithering effect. If you don't understand shader languages, that's fine. There are a few different pre-built ones for looking like the PlayStation 1 out there.

TEXTURES

Textures for the PS1 could be as big as 256x256, but they were typically 128x128. And they would squish everything a model needed into there usually, at least with like player models and objects and such.

As mentioned, if you're not good with shader language don't worry. There are countless resources out there that people will either let you use or teach you how it works. But I'm gonna touch on it a little bit here.

PS1 textures had no pixel filtering, so you could see individual pixels.

This is what determines that in the shader code. If you want it to look like the N64 (blurry lol), the proper hint is "filter_linear". Note that it won't be 1:1 with N64, cuz they used bilinear filtering (which kinda sucks and causes weird quirks) whereas now you'll only find linear or trilinear filtering. It's a negligible difference imo.

PS1 textures also were only saved using 15 bit color. I'm told that Photoshop's "Posterize" filter set to 32 can achieve this, but don't use photoshop if you can help it. I use GIMP, and while a newer version might have a posterize filter, or there may be a plugin out there, my version doesn't so I cluge it a little.

Change your color mode to "indexed", set color dithering to how you like it, and the number of colors in the palette to a number to get a good result. Usually I'll do 16, 8, 32, but occasionally I'll cheat and do a non-multiple-of-8 teehee >:3c

You can change it back to RGB after to make further editing easier.

LIGHTING

N64 and PS1 both implemented vertex lighting, as opposed to the more modern and (now) ubiquitous per-pixel lighting. Godot as it is right now (4.2 i think?) claims it has vertex lighting that you can set as a shader property but they're lying and it doesn't work yet.

The old consoles could only handle like, 2 lights though so it doesn't matter much.

The real star of the show, and in my opinion the one thing that makes a game most look like the 90s is the inclusion of vertex colors.

By multiplying the color of your texture by its stored vertex color, you can do all the shading yourself!

Plus you can reuse textures like crazy just by coloring them differently. The N64 also made heavy use of vertex colors by forgoing a texture on models entirely and just painting them using verticies. The only textures on SM64 Mario are his eyes, stache, hat emblem, buttons, and sideburns. Everything else is done with vertex colors.

Here you can see this level from my Crock Land with no vertex coloring, with some of the vertex colors only, and then with the two combined.

Rare loved this. Look at how colorful that cliffside is in Jungle Japes. It makes it so much more interesting than just a brown cliff face. Plus you can see the vertex coloration instead of textures at work on DK and the Gnawty.

My go-to example for PS1 is always Spyro, what a gorgeous game. All of those colors there are not made by a light or an environment. They're hand painted babey! Also! With spyro! The skyboxes are actually just huge domes made up of vertices that are colored in different ways! That's how they can look so colorful and "hi-res".

There's plenty more you can do, like adding a CRT filter or a little bit of chromatic aberration which I haven't gotten into yet.

The way I've learned all this is just by being curious as to how the old consoles did their thing, and slowly accruing the knowledge over time. There's still infinite stuff I don't know too.

I hope that helped! And wasn't too longwinded or confusing! Like I said, it's all about piling up tons and tons of little things, small details, weird graphical quirks that really bring out the retro 3D feel for me.

And I didn't even get into the modeling side of things! That's an entirely different "color-of-the-sky"-sized post though.

I'd be happy to re-explain or explain more about any of this!

[thumpypuppy]

oo! your last ask was really interesting! do you have anything to say on the relation between the various Loop related tracks?

it’s very cool that you’re talking about your music in such a way, thank you for engaging with this community!

So Loop's theme is just kinda silly weird mysterious. There's a chromatic walkup at the beginning of the melody because weird and silly.

Loop's hangout is one of the few tracks written by Alice Liston, who is no longer with the studio, but she's an incredibly talented composer who took a lot of the fundamental aspects of the original song and turned it into something dreamy, which I emphasized with some unique instrumentation.

Spoilers ahead:

The Loop fight is yet another one of my MEGA BATTLE compositions where I go ham because it's a fight song and I have to do way too much.

We start with that chromatic walk up in our classic title theme synth and immediately launch into Sandra's intense drums backed with Spitfire Audio's Albion ONE strings to fill out some space.

There are a couple of wild synth solos here written again by Alice Liston, and the drums move into a standard time with a staggered syncopation before jumping back into double time on the riff. Toward the end we build into a kind of combination prog rock EDM drop, and then…

Lo-fi! We take everything down here to a more sonically simplified version using some synth guitar designed in MASSIVE, a couple of simple wave forms, and some bit-crushed drums. We also introduce a new simple counter-melody here with a fairly straightforward motif we repeat while the exact notes change depending on the chord. We're still riffing on Loop's theme at this point, but we're adding some more context.

(Side-note: If you're interested in emulating vintage consoles of a particular era, one of the most important things to look up is the system's sample rate and bit depth! I'm 37 so "vintage" in this case is like… Commodore 64, NES, SNES, PS1, Sega Genesis, Neo-Geo, etc. It's also important to look up for something like the N64 where a lot of the sound design came from, like a lot of DX7 presets.)

Now with a powerful fill from the live kit we come back to our normal instrumentation, restating our previous section. Toward the end of this section we slowly build in our strings ramping up to a half-time breakdown that will lead into a totally new part.

The strings build intensity while also taking the responsibility of playing our main Loop melody, and we throw in a Dormont-style counter-melody to add to a sense of nostalgia as we ramp up our heart-string tugging.

Next, we bring in lead guitar-style synth to double our Loop melody that's playing in the strings to add an extra helping of epicness because come on, an electric guitar playing over the soprano part of a string section is like pique epic/dramatic.

Meanwhile the drums are still going in half-time to give it a breakdown feel (especially leaning on that china cymbal to give it a classic death metal breakdown feel), but at this point we're starting to get more embellishments and double kicks to make use of the space left to build further intensity until we hit that 80s metal crash mute and pause for emphasis, and then tom roll into our next section.

With the break into a new section we're saying NO MORE! We're getting serious now! We have a lovely riff written by Sadie Greyduck, which has a really uncomfortable and tense progression built into it that's emphasized by the strings that have moved to the very high soprano range to keep tension.

Then on our next repeat we jump into yet another solo! This one was partially written by Alice Liston, but ultimately I ended up fitting it into context and completing it. One thing you'll notice here is that there are a lot of passing tones and chromatic walk-ups to emphasize the Loop-ness of the situation.

Now we're jumping into yet another me(n)tal breakdown! This is more riffing on the Loop melody, but then we hear that brass section jump in! We're moving forward and doing a little more light riffing while the rest of the band takes us home in a slightly stronger and more triumphant fashion.

Finally we pick up the pace and we're back to our old classic, the title theme, but it's add odds with the context it exists in and starts to move in a spacier direction, eventually morphing back into Loop's theme.

For the album version we put a cap on it with a piano restatement of the beginning of the song!

(Also I finally looked it up and the other piano I used besides Spitfire Labs "Soft Piano" is Native Instruments "The Gentleman".)

Honestly I love fight/boss themes so much and they're always so fun to work on because I can go ham and the people I work with can do some of their more extreme work, plus it's always an excuse for Sandra to go nuts on the drums.

Thank you so much for sending in your ask! We're always so happy to get these and to hear how much our work has affected so many people! 🐶💙

[sourcreammachine]

if i were like really rich i’d hire an entire team to make everything run on all my devices. computer can run console games with a bespoke faux-native interface that they’ve built for me. they’ve torn open the steam deck to make it run switch games. they’ve torn open the switch to make it share its saves to the other places i can play those games. build me a fakeass ‘home console’ that’s just a pc with bespoke integrated, UX-focused emulators. the promise of everything being open, transparent and integrated without being locked in to the whims of one company’s distribution system. and i’d have the gang constantly tearing apart and modding the games to be perfectly optimised and stable for my enjoyment and mine alone. nefarious

[saintlesbian]

is the retroid pocket a good investment? i saw your tags and am curious! :]

i'm probably biased bc i'm so used to buying retroid but yea. it's slightly pricier than some other options you might find due to the price creep of the gradually upgrading chipsets but its definitely worthwhile from my perspective, as someone who likes retro emulation and android gaming. all retroids have bluetooth support to connect extra controllers, headphone jack for audio, sd card slot to load up games from, wifi for downloading more games, and display out options to connect to a tv or somethin! you gotta bring your own games unfortunately, but it does come built in with some emulation apps to install during setup, and a choice between using the standard android OS, or the custom Retroid branded Launcher to launch games from! generally i use my retroid to play PS1, PSP, PS2 and GBA games, although im pretty sure it can handle N64, Dreamcast, NDS and 3DS too. basically if there's an android emulator or RetroArch core for it, the Retroid can probably handle it, YMMV.

the most recent model line, the Retroid Pocket 5/Mini, is still available on the GoRetroid website. generally if you're buying a retro handheld then make sure you buy it directly from the original site/source so you don't get ripped off by some offbrand seller trying to pawn one of those 100-in-1 knock off consoles on you.

time for an autistic ramble about my collection since i love these devices so much...

the original retroid pocket 2! this was the first device that caught my eye and my gateway drug into retro emulation handhelds, as it only cost $80 back in 2020. there were pink, yellow and cyan colorways too, but indigo was the most popular option :P it was a little awkward, what with the switch style analog sticks not having R3 functionality and only having one gig of RAM, but it got the job done. it also had micro HDMI out to connect to a display, kind of a hassle since micro HDMI isn't too common, but they used to sell micro HDMI cords on their site along with other accessories (screen protectors, grips, cases, etc...)

the retroid pocket 2+ was an upgraded model released a year later for $90, with 2GB RAM and a touchscreen added. still no clickable analog sticks but oh well! i bought the PS2 style colorway, a lot of their colors are styled after other retro consoles. the 4:3 screen was kinda cute! difficult for playing PSP games since it letterboxes the screen, plus you have to do some extra tweaking in the emulator settings to get it to work properly...

less than a year later, they made the Retroid Pocket 3! this one signalled a change in their release system in many ways, most notably the fact that now every retroid model comes in 2 versions: a cheaper model (with less storage/RAM) and a premium model (with more storage/RAM). personally i've never had any reason to go with the cheaper model, especially since the power difference can be so vast between the two sometimes, so every model i have is the premium model. this one cost $130, which is quite the price jump, but the added quality made it worth it for me :) the RP3 was Retroid's first foray into a 16:9 device, great for playing PSP/NDS, and easy to work with the 3GB RAM. any 4:3 games will have letterboxing on the sides now (unless you have a widescreen hack or something) but i never minded that much. also, this is the first Retroid model with R3 functionality on the joysticks! it might not matter much to most people, but i really wanted to play Ape Escape on the go :3

at some point GoRetroid realized the Retroid line kinda peaked with the RP2 form factor, so they brought it back with some added improvements for those looking for an updated 4:3 handheld, now now known as the Retroid Pocket 2S. idk what the S stands for! its looks pretty similar to the regular RP2, but with clickable hall effect joysticks on the bottom, a PSVita style DPad, and up to 4 GB of RAM. i loved this one! for a while i used to switch between the RP2S and the RP3, depending on if i was in the mood for PS1 or PSP gaming. the black crystal shell was also neat, i love clear electronics :3 price went to $120, more expensive than the original RP2 line but cheaper than the RP3. worth the price, considering the QoL improvements they made over the original RP2!

then there's the Retroid Pocket 4, released around the same time as the RP2S. this model has the same shell as the RP3 for those looking for a 16:9 form factor, while retaining the improvements from the RP2S (hall effect joysticks <3). this device is currently my go-to for portable retro emulation, with 8GB RAM and android 13 compatibility. this one can play some lighter PS2 games, but i mostly use it to play balatro these days. also, convenient feature; since the Retroid Pocket series is just an android with a built in controller, any android games with controller compatibility can be played with the Retroid controls. theres also a gamepad mapper to map button controls to other android games that don't have built in controller support, but i've never used it so i can't vouch for it -_- the RP4Pro was $200 on release, yowch! still definitely a worthwhile investment, but a far cry ffrom the original price tag of $80 back in 2020... there's still some discounted models of RP4 on sale on their website, although there's not many left, as GoRetroid is mostly clearing space for their newest model...

...the Retroid pocket 5! this model signifies another shift in Retroid's design, as they've shifted to a PSVita looking model with the rounded features and glass front panel. i got the gamecube colorway since i really liked the vibes it has... aesthetically this is the best Retroid Pocket model yet. the 3d hall sticks also have RGB LEDs built in than can be customized from a built in app, and an OLED screen that looks especially gorgeous on the black RP5 model, as the bezel screen blends right into the rest of the glass face. this one is their priciest model yet, clocking in at $200 for the RPmini and $220 for the RP5. this model also removed the micro HDMI port in favor of a display out USB-C port like how the nintendo switch does. they also released an official dock with HDMI and ethernet ports to go along with it! i haven't switched over to the new model yet since its still 8GB RAM like the RP4Pro and it'll probably take a while to move some of my android apps over, but i've heard good things about this model! it's also linux compatible from what i've heard (ROCKNIX, Batocera) but once again I Haven't Tried Those Yet

but yea that's my collection! Retroid has served me pretty well over the years, i give it the Saint Lesbian Seal of Approval

[raven]

I want to play Final Fantasy, how do you recommend getting into it?

im the wrong person to ask because ive only played 7! or maybe im the right person to ask because thats how i got into it. play 7. you can buy it on switch/consoles or steam or emulate the original playstation version.

further unimportant information: i played on switch and then transferred my saves to steam (u cant do this unless your switch is hacked) the switch version is very good i just wanted to play it on steamdeck so i could stream it on discord. since its so old you can stream it from steamdeck which is kinda awesome. theres also mods for the pc version, but the only mods i used (speedhacks, turn off encounters) are built into the switch/console version so theres really no difference! you can use graphical mods on pc but i think everything looks great already. i think the only difference is that as far as im aware, the translation for the ps1 version is slightly different than the pc and console releases. ive heard the pc one is generally better but fails in a few ways. but theres issues with both. theres also fantranslations but those also have issues. i went with buying the game on steam over emulating when i decided to play it on my deck because i wanted the same translation that i had been using, and the transcripts i could find online used the ps1 translation and i just wanted to be able to compare them! none of this is very important though. just get the game on whatever platform you prefer. just play ff7

in terms of the rest of the series i dont love jrpgs so i dont know if i will be playing them but 8 and 10 seem the most interesting to me for their stories. pre-5 ff dont seem to be talked about that much around non ff fans but they all have slightly different mechanics that might be interesting to you. obviously getting more modern as they go along. 6 is very highly regarded but lowkey i have the opinion its overrated for literally no reason at all. i think 9 is also very highly regarded. 11 is gone/became 14. 12 has interesting battle systems. 13 does not seem to be a good game but the main character is cloud strife but a girl? (fact check: cloud strife was always a girl) 14 is an mmo. 15 and 16 both seem like lowkey misogynistic garbage, not that any ff has been NOT misogynistic, but they just seem especially misogynistic which is wild considering that theyre the newest. and yeah thats my final fantasy overview

[askagamedev]

With the announcement of the Switch 2 I was wondering how do games for an older version of a console work on a newer version of the same console? Will they run better from the start or do the devs have to go back and update or unlock something for it to work better?

It depends on how they go to the new platform. There are two main ways of doing this - porting the game project to the new platform or emulating the old game on the new platform.

Porting the game basically means taking the old code and assets and making them run on the new hardware. This involves getting the old game running natively (i.e. the game itself compiles, links, and runs) on the Switch 2. This is usually the choice for newer games and projects - stuff that's more recent usually doesn't rely on obsolete tools or a workflow that is no longer supported. Since we can still use the tools that the game was built with, we (or some contracting studio) can get it working on the new hardware.

Emulating the game means building a virtual machine around the original game that pretends to be the original hardware and modifies the inputs and outputs to and from the game. Emulation is typically done when the game development workflow is no longer feasible - e.g. the game was built with ancient tools on ancient hardware that is no longer supported anywhere. Because we can't modify the original game, we need to build a box around it that we can modify and run the original game within that box. [Click Here] for an an older post that goes into more depth about how virtual machines and emulation work.

The decision on whether to port or emulate is typically driven by what is easiest and most cost-effective. Porting is usually preferred to emulation if available, because it means that the porting team has access to tools, assets, and possibly even the original dev team to answer questions. Emulation means that any gameplay changes tend to be very difficult since rebuilding the original game is probably unfeasible.

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[elsafty9]

Retro Game Console, Retro Stick with Built-in 18 Emulators, 20,000+ Games

Retro Game Console, Retro Stick with Built-in 18 Emulators, 20,000+ Games, Plug and Play Video Game Console 4K High Definition HDMI Output for TV with Dual Controllers

[jjcattt]

maybe unpopular opinion but that direct was straight ass. just poop from a butt.

good bits:

DELTARUNE TOMORROW!!!!!!

not a hollow knight fan but I'm happy theyre finally getting their sequel after like 10 years

KIRBY AIR RIDE LETS FUCKING GOOOOOO

mario kart looks cool, not a big racing fan but if it was on the original switch I'd probably have fun with it

bad bits:

they put 5fps 10 pixel discord call in my nintendo switch

another fucking paid tech demo. and you KNOW they're gonna charge full price for this one too

paid DLC upgrades for your games. the games you can already play on the Switch 2. you have to pay for zelda gps.

buy a camera. buy nintendo switch online. buy a gamecube controller. buy game upgrades. buy an express micro SD. the call feature only works with NSO. game sharing only works with NSO. breathing only works with NSO.

remember how the 3ds came with a camera built in? remember how the ps5's game upgrades are free if you have the original? remember how you didn't need to pay a subscription to connect to the internet on any console before the mid/late 2010s? why do we need to pay for basic features now???

whoever works the tech for nintendo directs is getting shot and killed by doug bowser as we speak. what the fuck was that

the wheelchair basketball game is cool in concept but in practice it just looks like worse rocket league

why can't you use regular micro SD cards with the switch 2? like I know most switch 2 games will have data streaming and would be nonfunctional with a slower format but why not just limit it to switch games?

Miis in the settings menu again. bad sign. and I feel like if we actually had themes they would show it off, even if only for a few seconds. died never born 2025 welcome back switch 1's shitty personalityless UI.

I can't explain it but the new DK looks like a roblox game.

I cannot believe nintendo has actual competition in the handheld market (steam deck) for the first time since the PS vita and their platform is "discord but worse" and "exactly 5 exclusive games". following up tomodachi life and rhythm heaven with THIS should be a crime.

edit: good lord it's $450 USD with games at $80 USD digital. you would literally save money if you bought a steam deck. (and the games would be cheaper.) (and you can emulate without paying a 30 dollar monthly fee.) (and you have a completely unlocked OS you can do almost anything with.)

[game-boy-pocket]

Today I beat Mischief Castle for the NES.

This game is 10 dollars on itch.io, and you get an NES rom so you can play it on your emulator of choice or a flashcart such as the Everdrive, which is how I played it.

I had fun with it. It's a short game, I could have beaten it 3 hours give or take but there was a slight difficulty curve near the end, also I went back to hunt for a collectible I missed. Some might hear that and say "Well it's not worth 10 dollars" but I feel good supporting indie devs, especially those who would develop games for old hardware, it's a really niche thing that I want to se more of.

It's a simple game. Kind of a shooter, kind of a platformer, your character's shots are pathetic and so is their jump. But you can power up their shot. You can't do the same for the jump, but the game is built with their jump in mind, so the jump isn't so bad. My main complaint with the game is the knockback system. It keeps your character suspended in mid air if they get hit mid jump, which can lead to a few unfair hits.

I want more of this. More cute Halloween Homebrew. Horror games are a dime a dozen, but games that are just halloween themed and not generally horror aren't as easy to find, especially homebrew for older consoles. I wouldn't mind some for Christmas too.

I'd recommend this for NES enthusiasts, it's a good time. But I don't think it's going to do much for people who lean more toward modern games and only play games for older hardware because of their connections to legacy IP.

[techturd]

Do you know what this is? Probably not. But if you follow me and enjoy retro gaming, you REALLY should know about it.

I see all of these new micro consoles, and retro re-imaginings of game consoles and I think to myself "Why?" WHY would you spend a decent chunk of your hard-earned money on some proprietary crap hardware that can only play games for that specific system?? Or even worse, pre-loaded titles and you can't download / add your own to the system!? Yet, people think it's great and that seems to be a very popular way to play their old favorites vs. emulation which requires a "certain degree of tech savvy" (and might be frowned upon from a legal perspective).

So, let me tell you about the Mad Catz M.O.J.O (and I don't think the acronym actually means anything). This came out around the same time as the nVidia Shield and the Ouya - seemingly a "me too" product from a company that is notorious for oddly shaped 3rd party game controllers that you would never personally use, instead reserved exclusively for your visiting friends and / or younger siblings. It's an Android micro console with a quad-core 1.8 GHz nVidia Tegra 4 processor, 2 GB of RAM, 16GB of onboard storage (expandable via SD card), running Android 4.2.2. Nothing amazing here from a hardware perspective - but here's the thing most people overlook - it's running STOCK Android - which means all the bloatware crap that is typically installed on your regular consumer devices, smartphones, etc. isn't consuming critical hardware resources - so you have most of the power available to run what you need. Additionally, you get a GREAT controller (which is surprising given my previous comment about the friend / sibling thing) that is a very familiar format for any retro-age system, but also has the ability to work as a mouse - so basically, the same layout as an Xbox 360 controller + 5 additional programmable buttons which come in very handy if you are emulating. It is super comfortable and well-built - my only negative feedback is that it's a bit on the "clicky" side - not the best for environments where you need to be quiet, otherwise very solid.

Alright now that we've covered the hardware - what can it run? Basically any system from N64 on down will run at full speed (even PSP titles). It can even run an older version of the Dreamcast emulator, Reicast, which actually performs quite well from an FPS standpoint, but the emulation is a bit glitchy. Obviously, Retroarch is the way to go for emulation of most older game systems, but I also run DOSbox and a few standalone emulators which seem to perform better vs. their RetroArch Core equivalents (list below). I won't get into all of the setup / emulation guide nonsense, you can find plenty of walkthroughs on YouTube and elsewhere - but I will tell you from experience - Android is WAY easier to setup for emulation vs. Windows or another OS. And since this is stock Android, there is very little in the way of restrictions to the file system, etc. to manage your setup.

I saved the best for last - and this is truly why you should really check out the M.O.J.O. even if you are remotely curious. Yes, it was discontinued years ago (2019, I think). It has not been getting updates - but even so, it continues to run great, and is extremely reliable and consistent for retro emulation. These sell on eBay, regularly for around $60 BRAND NEW with the controller included. You absolutely can't beat that for a fantastic emulator-ready setup that will play anything from the 90s without skipping a beat. And additional controllers are readily available, new, on eBay as well.

Here's a list of the systems / emulators I run on my setup:

Arcade / MAME4droid (0.139u1) 1.16.5 or FinalBurn Alpha / aFBA 0.2.97.35 (aFBA is better for Neo Geo and CPS2 titles bc it provides GPU-driven hardware acceleration vs. MAME which is CPU only)

NES / FCEUmm (Retroarch)

Game Boy / Emux GB (Retroarch)

SNES / SNES9X (Retroarch)

Game Boy Advance / mGBA (Retroarch)

Genesis / PicoDrive (Retroarch)

Sega CD / PicoDrive (Retroarch)

32X / PicoDrive (Retroarch)

TurboGrafx 16 / Mednafen-Beetle PCE (Retroarch)

Playstation / ePSXe 2.0.16

N64 / Mupen64 Plus AE 2.4.4

Dreamcast / Reicast r7 (newer versions won't run)

PSP / PPSSPP 1.15.4

MS-DOS / DOSBox Turbo + DOSBox Manager

I found an extremely user friendly Front End called Gamesome (image attached). Unfortunately it is no longer listed on Google Play, but you can find the APK posted on the internet to download and install. If you don't want to mess with that, another great, similar Front End that is available via Google Play is called DIG.

If you are someone who enjoys emulation and retro-gaming like me, the M.O.J.O. is a great system and investment that won't disappoint. If you decide to go this route and have questions, DM me and I'll try to help you if I can.

Cheers - Techturd

[channeleven]

LTA: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated.

SpongeBob SquarePants Battle for Bikini Bottom is one of many underdog 3D platformers. When it comes to licensed games there is a low expectation to be met let's face it. The best licensed games, least at the time, showed that you could do a whole lot more with a license, BfBB felt like a legit platformer and its reputation could not be understated.

About the only negative thing I could say about it was that Mrs. Puff knew Patrick by name. Just wanted to put that out there.

Anyhow, to show how beloved BfBB became, it achieved what few other licensed titles could. A second life on modern (at the time) consoles. This came about after the game's publisher THQ was resurrected, sorta, as THQ Nordic, and they were looking to go through IPs under their control. Perhaps starting small or with something that already has an audience is the best way to go. While something like Super Mario 3D AllStars where it was essentially a glorified emulator for 3D Mario titles, or Sonic Adventure DX and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle where it was a port of the Dreamcast titles but with some additions or graphical face lifts, BfBB was gonna be something entirely different.

It was gonna be a remake. Now you'd think oh, this could be great. There was aspects that didn't make it to the final version of the original, maybe they can bring it to life. Well, just to get this out of the way it wasn't gonna happen. It was an entirely new developer working off of what was already completed. The game would be developed by THQ Nordic's Purple Lamp division, one of their earliest projects. Since then it appears that Purple Lamp has built up a solid resume, having also developed a remake of Epic Mickey which appears to have gained better reception than the original Wii game. Their work on this remake would lead them to work on the latest SpongeBob game The Cosmic Shake, which received mixed reviews, but who knows maybe it's good.

Now, why did I take so long to get to this game? I didn't own anything that could play it. I bought this on Steam then realized that my OS couldn't run it. I just got a Switch and this was among the short list I had in mind for games. I had been curious about this remake for a while, and if I were to ever get my hands on it I'd see if my impressions would be just.

Initial Impressions

When I first learned of the remake, I was just amazed that an old licensed game was getting this kind of treatment. Now look, I'm all for giving attention to games that deserve it. But in this situation, lest it's just an emulation of an old game, why not save the remakes for games that really deserve it? I.e., games that came out bad for whatever reason and would be given a chance to be good, show players how it was supposed to be. Revenge of the Flying Dutchman is the kind of game that really deserves a remake, especially given what the developers had gone through. Not even just SpongeBob, games like Crash Twinsanity or Sonic 06, where a good game is somewhere beneath the bugs. Lest fans wanna pull the weight like with Sonic P-06. Want something done you gotta do it yourself sometimes.

Right off the bat it looked as though Rehydrated - end of the full title and will be said as such for simplicity - was gonna primarily feature cosmetic changes, the big one being the character animations, but when we get there. For a time it looked as though Rehydrated was overshadowing the original game, and with such relevance and that version being at the forefront, it had better live up to the hype.

Whenever I got to play the game, I'd have as much of the original game in mind to see what has changed between either version

Playing the Game

Right off the bat, Rehydrated featured a number of cosmetic changes. They definitely adapted the original game faithfully, though there were certain changes. For example, the character animations. The original game featured more limited animation, especially showing when it came to talking to other characters. SpongeBob had two animations throughout them. In this game, they've added more animations in tune to what they say, for the most part. While it shows for most characters, others just cycle through their animations, Squidward being an example where he is perpetually unhappy, even in scenes where he'd be happy or laughing sarcastically.

Now I see the application, and whether or not it was necessary here, the writing in this game is great along with the line delivery. Either was strong enough to neglect the limited animation, this was early-2000s SpongeBob after all. Not to mention the limited animation lends better to some of the jokes in this, the quick cut to Patrick in the last convo you have with Squidward at Sand Mountain comes out of nowhere... I dunno, it feels like something was missing in Rehydrated's take. But on the inverse things felt more natural in the G-Love cutscene in Downtown Bikini Bottom, a build up to Gary destroying one of the robots.

But that aside, the model work in this is great, and if Purple Lamp were gonna be making more SpongeBob games after this it was fair to try and get a grasp on the models as soon as possible. I don't really have any standouts to name, but I haven't seen any particularly bad ones so, take that as you will. They did get a little cheeky with some idle and pedestrian animations. I've seen SpongeBob and Patrick pull the shocked face gag, I've seen one fish dab, remember when that was all over the internet? They also threw in some additional images, I've seen handsome Squidward for one. To be fair, the original also had a picture of Squidward's unsure face, but Purple Lamp's additions stick out like a sore thumb. Go to Squidward's Dream and look at the paintings in the background and you'll see what I mean.

Along with the characters they also redesigned the robots. In the original game the robots looked more, you know... robotic. You could make the argument that the robots for the most part looked out of place against the locales in SpongeBob, but that's kind of the point, SpongeBob taking out anomalies. The new designs blend in better with the game's universe, granted, and given how... cartoony for a lack of a better word SpongeBob became I guess it makes sense. The new designs aren't bad by any stretch, some are pretty negligible, only issues I could think of are minor nitpicks. For instance, Dick- I mean Slick's protective bubble is just that, a bubble, not an oil bubble. He still has the oil attack so that's why I bring it up.

The game plays the same as the original did, for the most part. Compared to the original the controls here feel a bit... best word I could use is literal. I feel like for the most part I had to space out my double jumps in areas I'd normally make with a rapid tap. It's especially noticeable on the sliding sections where you have to jump up to a high platform. Normally you're flung off and you can use the momentum and one jump to carry you to it, but what could be made in one or two tries had to be done multiple times because I either under or overshoot it, or suddenly my character halts because I didn't move the analog stick forward. Or I just haven't played either version in a long time.

Maybe it's down to the game's engine. The original game was built on the RenderWare engine, while this game was made with the Unreal Engine. Certain things would be tweaked based on what was at the disposal of said engine, and as a result the initial feeling of the game may change.

As mentioned before since this is more or less a ground up remake of the original Battle for Bikini Bottom you can put any hopes of new content to rest, at least in the main story mode. But that's not to say no changes were made. On the positive side, when it comes to enemies that shoot projectiles you can now see where said projectiles would land. This worked greatly in the Robo-Patrick boss fight where I was able to stay in one section of the arena and not get hit. In the very last level you are able to restart at the last fuse you break, compared to the original where you have to start from the very beginning.

Also in Rehydrated you have the ability to jump while in the Sponge Ball form. I can see scenarios where this would be useful, especially for jumps you can't make as easily as others.

As for some criticism...

In Mr. Krabs' dream, for some strange reason they put protective bubbles around the Duplicatotron 3000s. The level is merciless enough and given the oil projectiles flung at you you'd be lucky to even land a hit on the machine as is. This is the only level where it happened too, and it makes me wonder if either developer knew that this level would be a hell of an experience and nixed the content in Patrick's dream as a breather of sorts.

I noticed that the bubble barrier around Slick has a wider hit radius, meaning you cannot hit it up close without taking damage, least it happened to me. The Duplicatotron is also a bit more rapid-fire compared to how it was in the original, in that it takes less time for new robots to be spawned. This isn't always a problem, but especially in the last stage you'd feel like you have to rush to destroy the Duplicatotron before it spawns a robot that can either hurt you or knock you down.

The swing hooks are also a bit finnicky. In the original game all you had to do was latch onto it and let go by pressing the jump button. In this game you have to hold onto the B button and let go at the right time. It's more awkward compared to the original, and if you're used to said original's controls, and if you're soaring on the rooftops as this happens it's gonna be a very annoying experience. I had gotten used to this for better or worse, but mechanics you think you know from an older version not being replicated in the remake it has to be addressed.

The wall jumping is also fairly different, more rapid compared to the original version. I was able to clear walls sooner than I did before, but it also feels off. It was especially noticeable in the Graveyard of Ships, where your wall jumping skills are put to the test. As a kid I had to redo the jumps multiple times, but going through it in Rehydrated... I actually managed to get it on the first try. I think in the first you had to move forward as you hit the walls, but in this you're moved forward automatically you just have to jump to each wall to stay up.

Now, you remember the Ball Room? Sure you do. It was one of the harder levels in the game... and Rehydrated somehow made it more annoying. Piece by piece as the level was intended. The one piece of track you have to bubble bowl into place, while you can do it right away and it'll either stay as is or for long, in this game it'll go back to its old position in a few seconds, I had to learn that the hard way. Remember that GameSpot review of Rehydrated where the scrub couldn't push the button to lower the scoop? Either I pressed the button too soon, or you had to be super precise with your position to get it to work, especially if you let the ball get close and have no idea how long it'll stay down. The pressure pad track piece, bringing back the literal analogy, while you can get off the pad a little before the ball makes it to the other side of the gap, you have to let the ball make it all the way to the other side or it will fall. Finally the fan covering the launch button moves a lot faster. Despite all that, I was able to get past the pendulum mallet, the shifting board and the fan button the first time the ball got to either.

The slide levels, especially with the time trials on top of them are stressful, has been between either version. And by slide levels, I mean the kelp vines. Any criticism I have of the Kelp Vines can apply to the original and Rehydrated, very little space to move around, and with so many curves it's very easy to fall off. The turns combined with the momentum was so bad I wound up bailing on a leaf trampoline because I kept going off the edge. Ironically, had I just kept on the path, and hopped onto the next one above I could've got one of Patrick's socks and be done with the level in one fell swoop... provided I didn't fall and have to start from the beginning.

As a kid I struggled to hit the stone tiki switch that would raise the leaf trampoline and allow me to hit the button to open the gate to the Kelp Vines, until I learned that you didn't need to use the throw fruit to use the Patrick Teeter-Totter. And that's another criticism for both games, they mention you need the throw fruit to use the Teeter-Totter, but they don't outright tell you that anything you can throw would work... that is until you figure it out by accident or you get so frustrated you use a stone tiki as your plan B.

The cruise bubble is easily the most annoying weapon you can use in this game. In the original you were essentially moving a crosshair to your destination. But in this game the missile is shown, and somehow the controls feel heavier here. If you keep moving it in one direction it'll be hard to go back the other. The bubble bowl is also fairly unpredictable, getting caught in level geometry and sometimes just stopping at random, but this isn't frequent.

Then there's grinding. In the original game there was a cheat you can do to raise your shiny object count, if you wanted to meet Mr. Krabs' prices. In Rehydrated the cheat isn't there. And shiny object counts are hard to maintain, especially since you have to pay the tolls just to progress. I had died early on in Jellyfish Fields, and knowing of the grinding situation I would typically use that opportunity to fight and break respawned robots and tikis to make sure I had enough to get Golden Spatulas from Mr. Krabs every time I finished off an area.

But that's not enough to keep you ahead of the curve. Easily the most expensive area in this game is the movie theater, at a whopping 40,000 shiny objects. I knew it was gonna be a problem I had to deal with, especially since I was down to three last new areas, sure it wasn't required to beat the game 100%, but I leave no stone unturned in my games. To put it into perspective my journey to 40k shiny objects, every time I returned to Bikini Bottom I would destroy all of the tikis out in the open. Once I got every last golden spatula aside from the Chum Bucket Lab's, I had a little over 20k shiny objects, so I thought, why don't I resume destroying bikini Bottom's tikis? Knowing they reset, I would enter the buildings around and destroy the tikis across all three areas, rinsing and repeating across eight buildings... and it wasn't enough.

So then, I taxied to the start of the Sea Caves, destroyed the floating tikis and the Chomp Bot at the other side of the gap, went back to the sand castle and destroyed the tikis, Ham-Mer, Duplicatotron and Monsoons until I made it to 40k shiny objects. All of that... for a somewhat underwhelming concept art slideshow. Nothing against Rehydrated, I'd have the same complaints toward the original, as well as Pac-Man World 2 and Scooby Doo Night of 100 Frights. All that searching... for pictures.

And the Glitches...

I'm not gonna beat around the bush, depending on the version you got, Rehydrated had several glitches at launch, and even after some patches some had persisted to this day. Not like the original was totally polished, between certain things not being rendered fully, among other things you can get with enough prodding, but some were definitely noticeable in Rehydrated. I never got to experience the more notable ones first hand, but I did encounter some. One glitch I found happened when I used the cruse bubble, where I was unable to move beyond sneaking. Somehow I managed to undo it before I had to soft reset. Then there's a game breaking glitch that persists to this day.

In Sand Mountain, you know that one sock that you can only get if you destroy all eight sandmen on Flounder Hill? Compared to the original where you can only see the number of sandmen destroyed every time you hit one, Rehydrated gives you a counter. But in spite of that little effort, get this. If you fall or die going down the slope and you haven't destroyed all the sandmen, they will not reset, meaning you will not be able to get the sock for it, meaning you won't be able to beat the game one hundred percent, at least as the game intended you to play it. I heard that a similar soft lock occurs in the Krusty Krab if you leave the area before grabbing the sock in there, but back to Sand Mountain, I was lucky to have heard about the glitch before I started the game for the first time and against all odds... I managed to destroy all the sandmen without falling or dying and get the sock, so I was able to beat the game as intended. Here's my evidence.

But if you weren't so lucky, if you could somehow trigger a glitch that would allow you to clip into the movie theater you'll find a sock inside.

Another thing I noticed was when I directly warped to the second part of the game's final boss fight. When I got there all the fuses were broken and the trampolines were up. I would assume that there was no other way out, and that the only way to get back to this level properly was to play the Chum Bucket Lab from the beginning. Using the logic put toward a glitch where if you pay the clam to activate the bungee in the Trench of Advanced Darkness, only to fall off while doing the bubble bowl the sock will not spawn, the cutscenes act as an interim for the phases of the Lab levels, and because they didn't play when I got to the second part, there you go.

As another odd thing, you know that after beating the game, during the credits you are put into the Sponge Ball Arena. Well, after beating it you get to access it through a stand in the middle of the road in the second part of the Bikini Bottom hub world. Well in this game it doesn't happen. The only way you can access the arena again is if you play the Chum Bucket Lab again. Needless to say I was not gonna leave the arena until I got every last shiny object there. Just because it's an extra that doesn't mean people don't want to play in it.

Final Thoughts

Rehydrated is far from a perfect remake, even as a game in a vacuum. But I have a thing for flawed games, makes me appreciate them even more. I didn't go into Rehydrated with high standards, if anything it was a good excuse for me to have a childhood game on a modern system. There was some whiplash based on what I knew from the original compared to how Rehydrated handled it, but in spite of that I was able to make it through. Any flaws I brought up are either minor or are things you can at least adjust to overtime.

It's definitely not as great as the original game, and it's not the nostalgia talking. The original felt more fluid, I liked the more restrained art and animation style which allowed the writing to really pop, and overall it had enough to stand alongside the likes of Super Mario Sunshine and Sonic Adventure DX/2 Battle. Maybe I'm more used to the original, maybe Rehydrated has a few too many hiccups to rise above the original, but that doesn't have to mean the game is bad. If you know what you're doing you can beat the game in about a few hours, so it's not even that big of a commitment to make if you wanna play through.

As with anything following an existing version, if you come into Battle for Bikini Bottom for the first time, I strongly suggest you play the original first so you know what it was supposed to be like, then play Rehydrated so you can see how it stacks up. If you play the remake first it may lead to certain unfair impressions of the original. Such is the way with remakes and what they're remakes of.

If you want a rating, I'd give it a 7.5 out of 10.

[yeonchi]

Introducing: Koei Warriors Retrospective - the new Koei Warriors Rant Series (1000th Post Special)

In 2014, I began the Koei Warriors Rant Series in an effort to speculate the reason why Koei Tecmo weren't localising their games with English dubbing and hopefully find or get an official response. Two years later, this was followed by the Dub Logistics series in an attempt to broaden it to the wider scope of the Japanese gaming industry and English Dubbed Game News, a Facebook page intended as a counter to the Undub page informing fans about the localisation status of Japanese games.

For a number of years after that, I was calling out the duplicity of Koei Tecmo's PR and the intolerance of their fanbase and other non-English dub fans. In 2018-19, I ended my English dub rants, left the Koei Tecmo fanbase and deactivated EDGN after the dishonourable disgrace that was Dynasty Warriors 9. Then, when the pandemic happened in 2020, I decided to start indulging my guilty pleasure of playing my favourite hack-and-slash games from the company that made subpar localisations of those games despite knowing what they did and feeling bitter (yet somehow vindicated) over it.

In late 2021, I built a gaming PC and moved my games from my laptop (which was faster than my old PC) to it. At the start of 2022, I learnt that PS3 emulation was a thing and I decided that I had no excuse to not play the Koei Warriors games released for the PS3, with most of those releases not receiving PC ports. I also went on to play the newer PS4 games through their PC ports and went back to the older games on the PS2 and PSP (the latter I was already doing on my old PC during the preceding years).

Around the same time, I realised that in all the years I had been ranting about English dubs and localisation in Koei Warriors games and Japanese games in general, there was one thing I never did; I never really talked about the games themselves. As I played through the games, I had opinions about certain mechanics and issues with certain aspects of the games outside of localisation, some that fans know and some that fans may not know. So let's change that.

After being delayed by two years due to various factors, I am proud to announce the relaunch of the Koei Warriors Rant Series in a new format called Koei Warriors Retrospective. In each instalment of this new series I'll be talking about each generation of Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors and Warriors Orochi games along with their expansions and spin-offs on consoles, handhelds and PC (mobile games will not be covered). I'll also look into where Koei Tecmo went wrong for the Warriors games to be in the current state they're in. In a way, it's like WildcatWeather's "I Played EVERY Warriors Game" series, but more in depth, particularly with games that were exclusive to Japan where WildcatWeather only touched on them in his videos (as his focus was only on games released in the West).

Some things to note here - I will be reviewing Warriors All-Stars at some point, but there are some games that I will be unable to properly review for various reasons that I will mention during the series:

Jan Sangoku Musou/Dynasty Warriors Mahjong (雀・三國無双)

Dynasty Warriors Online (真・三國無双 Online)

Samurai Warriors Katana (戦国無双 KATANA)

Dynasty Warriors Next (真・三國無双 NEXT)

In addition, I have also prepared non-retrospective material that will be posted gradually. Aside from the list of recycled maps from DW6 being used in DW7, there are two other series coming up, namely Warriors Orochi: The Recollective Redux (a redo of the 2015 series) and the Dynasty Warriors Weapon Moveset Power Rankings (a review of the weapon movesets in DW7 and DW8). Other plans are also in the works as well, but for now, enjoy the lineup as I commemorate 20 years of me playing Dynasty Warriors games and 10 years of the Koei Warriors Rant Series.