RetroN 5 release updated to April 2014

[Seraphic]

Release for the RetroN 5 has been updated for April 2014 and the cost will remain $100.
The RetroN 5 will support save states, custom firmware and a host of other features such as scanlines multiple upscale filters.

CES 2014

Article:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/retron-5-cl ... 18187.html

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IsfKdLAxNA&fmt=22

RetroN 5 Game Demonstrations:



Super Nintendo Entertainment System

Star Fox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfo29u75 ... mORfj7hd=1

Aladdin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aee-Ub-Y ... V8jPMospor

Zombies Ate My Neighbors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2ceh0Eg ... cBEKTSOO_E

Donkey Kong Country
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqSLGnAoPSI

NBA Jam SNES - Dunk Anywhere Cheat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aUqvH9FeeE

Super Mario World - PAL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jit2XlZ_ ... -D3gs45Yj4

Game Boy Advanced

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past & Four Swords
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5EuAg9v ... wsxG-6n5v-

Nintendo Entertainment System

The Legend of Zelda
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW-8MNPf ... xc547fU6UF

Bubble Bobble
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jFihWxHt30

Contra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhIfRBkJN1A

Castlevania III Dracula's Curse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t03Te6Ln79c

Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers - PAL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fLLIH2lVNg

Super Mario Bros - PAL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx6J-Xtp ... CYmcCoIIKZ

Super Mario Bros. 3 -PAL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH_Oa3hZkhw

Mike Tyson's Punch Out!! - Overclocking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF3lUQUmD4s

Genesis

Streets of Rage 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GJtCVJrs_M

Sunset Riders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNfgGioa5oE

Mega Drive

The Incredible Hulk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcmh342lsfQ

[speedlolita]

[Ed Oscuro]

Part ghost containment device, part bathroom scale, part grill...all auto-patching piracy machine!

[evil_ash_xero]

It is pretty ugly.

[matrigs]

why would you add an analog stick?

or is this with microswitches like the neo-geo x?

[brownvim]

It has microswitches. Design is ugly, maybe if they did it all black it wouldn't look so bad

[Thrill]

Typical men... only looking at the outside. The beauty is inside!

[speedlolita]

There is no beauty, give me 20 year old hardware any day.

[Ed Oscuro]

Typical men... only looking at the outside. The beauty is inside!

Well gee, I thought ghost traps and bathroom scales were the height of fashion - don't project your lacking appreciation of advanced aesthetics onto me!

That gussied-up contraption of tons of different ports routed into one PCB in strange ways with long signal paths and lots of opportunity for interference and strange voltage paths - well, the belly of the beast is where it's hottest...and slimiest...I'm sure this console won't get too hot (or slimy, hopefully) but I am always wary about these things. On top of it all - it's just an emulator box. Perhaps a good one, but still an emulator box.

(Apparently nobody who ever lauded a games console for its beauty is a man, because almost every single one ever made has been hideous to some degree or another.)

[kamiboy]

Who cares about the looks, it is a multi-emulator box, so games are prolly going to feel like twice tossed dog shit playing on it. They will prolly look the part too as I would not trust the creators to get that part right either. Certainly dont expect the analog video out to put out 240p and the HDMI out's scaling is more than likely going to melt the face of anyone who frequent these forums.

But such is the price of convenience. Set expectations on low.

[blizzz]

It should be possible to install Retroarch on it. I don't know much about the Android version, but maybe we will get support for shaders like on the PC version. But that thing is absolutely hideous, so I don't think many people will buy it. Low sales = low support from "homebrew" devs :/

[Ed Oscuro]

Who cares about the looks, it is a multi-emulator box, so games are prolly going to feel like twice tossed dog shit playing on it. They will prolly look the part too as I would not trust the creators to get that part right either.

As the screenshots of horribly treated Ryu's SF2 aspect ratio demonstrated in the previous thread, I think you might be right. I hope not, but you never know.

[Holograph]

There is no beauty, give me 20 year old hardware any day.

It beats the heck out of a Genesis model 2 w/ CD and 32x . (Though at least the Genesis model 1 w/ its CD addon looked fairly good, though supposedly less reliable... And then there're the X'eye and the CDX, the former of which is good looking)

That said, I don't want one of these at all. I'll take the original/natively-compatible hardware as well. But not all original hardware is better looking.

[kamiboy]

As the screenshots of horribly treated Ryu's SF2 aspect ratio demonstrated in the previous thread, I think you might be right. I hope not, but you never know.

Oh, I am sure that it will be more than serviceable enough to satiate the casual demands of their target audience. The enthusiast gamers however are more than likely going to want to stick to the original hardware.

[brownvim]

What kind of processor will it have? Any better than the high end smart phones/tablets we have now?

I read about retroarch running a lot better on the new iPads when it came to N64/PS1 games.

The convenience of having all the controller ports and games in one unit is great.

I would buy it if I could install a Hardrive for all the roms and put on a frontend like HyperSpin.

[ninn]

I would buy it if I could install a Hardrive

There are slots for 5 harddrives ...

[brownvim]

It comes in all black http://youtu.be/p8s-QsuE_RI

[eightbitminiboss]

What kind of processor will it have? Any better than the high end smart phones/tablets we have now?

I read about retroarch running a lot better on the new iPads when it came to N64/PS1 games.

The convenience of having all the controller ports and games in one unit is great.

I would buy it if I could install a Hardrive for all the roms and put on a frontend like HyperSpin.

Nothing official other than confirming it's an ARM SoC.

[EmperorZelos]

Who cares about the looks, it is a multi-emulator box

thats the fucking problem, it's an EMULATOR not real shit

[brownvim]

Sadly emulation just doesn't feel right for me, but the convenience is great

[lettuce]

Sadly emulation just doesn't feel right for me, but the convenience is great

But would you notice though....i mean for example had 2 displays and 2 pads one was a real snes through an XRGB-mini and the other the Retron 5. If the emulation is anywhere near as good as the PC i very much doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference

[emphatic]

But would you notice though....i mean for example had 2 displays and 2 pads one was a real snes through an XRGB-mini and the other the Retron 5. If the emulation is anywhere near as good as the PC i very much doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference

Less lag on the Retron 5?

[kamiboy]

But would you notice though....i mean for example had 2 displays and 2 pads one was a real snes through an XRGB-mini and the other the Retron 5. If the emulation is anywhere near as good as the PC i very much doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference

I wouldn't notice because I mostly play games that I've never tried before. However, with emulation there would always be that annoying spot of doubt in the back of my mind whenever I experience something that looks, plays or sounds a bit funny. On anything but the original hardware on a CRT I would question whether that is supposed to look, play or sound like that or it is just the fault of the setup.

[Fudoh]

all pros and cons aside, for the target audience the Retron 5 still seems as good as it gets. And for myself I still have high hopes when it comes to GBA playback. Everything else is just too complicated and expensive and still far from perfect.

And for the largest part I think that Emulation is still better than cheap SoC implementations - especially when it comes to music and sound emulation. Most emus are easily good enough for nearly everybody, while sound on most (if not all) Mega Drive SoCs was pretty bad so far.

[brownvim]

Sadly emulation just doesn't feel right for me, but the convenience is great

But would you notice though....i mean for example had 2 displays and 2 pads one was a real SNES through an XRGB-mini and the other the Retron 5. If the emulation is anywhere near as good as the PC I very much doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference

Well the XRGB-Mini lags at least a frame all the time. Emulation would lag maybe a frame? Plus if your not playing on a really fast monitor, a HDTV would lag atleast 1-2 frames in the best of cases.

I would personally feel the lag on the emulated one, I play Street Fighter alot and when I press a button I feel like i'm waiting to see the process of it on screen (i'm talking a fraction of a second). I would notice getting hit when I normally shouldn't. The game would feel a little off. With CRT or on my XRGB-3 it feels instant, I get that immersive feeling back. I have even felt it in Mario with his jumps and that's from a beefy PC with emulation and a wired Xbox pad.

I would say i'm the minority who would feel it. For most people its fine and for alot of games it would be fine for me like RPGs etc. I think emulation is great now, alot of systems run really really good, just havent got the lag sorted, which would make it excellent.

[Xyga]

I would say i'm the minority who would feel it. For most people its fine ...

I think most people would actually be able to feel the difference between, say, 0 and 2-3 frames.
That is if you make them experience an immediate comparison with two setups side-by-side.
I did that with some buddies and got some of them addicted to low-lag (mwahaha!)

Same with badly compressed music and good/uncompressed, and a number or other media 'reproduction' technologies.
When done right it's a better experience most people can appreciate, they just forgot how it used to be and don't have enough opportunities to compare.

[brownvim]

I would say i'm the minority who would feel it. For most people its fine ...

I think most people would actually be able to feel the difference between, say, 0 and 2-3 frames.
That is if you make them experience an immediate comparison with two setups side-by-side.
I did that with some buddies and got some of them addicted to low-lag (mwahaha!)

Same with badly compressed music and good/uncompressed, and a number or other media 'reproduction' technologies.
When done right it's a better experience most people can appreciate, they just forgot how it used to be and don't have enough opportunities to compare.

Yeah your right, side by side people would notice.

Haha love that you did that to your mates, perfect way to demonstrate it, people do forget.

[Voultar]

Sacrificing authenticity for convenience simply isn't worth it, to me.

[Krooze L-Roy]

If a person lacks space, why would they want a bunch of carts sitting around? If they lack money, how do they expect to buy said carts? Old games (at least old games for Nintendo systems) are friggin expensive. If you're willing to go halfway to emulation, you may as well go all the way. It's not like it's difficult to connect your PC to your TV these days.

Still, with as many good games as I've got for the undependable-as-shit Xbox 360, it's heartening to think that maybe there will be clones for it in 20-30 years, when a working unit becomes impossible to find.

[kamiboy]

For 8/16-bit action-platformers like Mega Man 2-3 frames of lag is a pretty big handicap, but as long as such games are designed to be fair and well behaved you can learn to compensate. But I'd say games that are unfairly designed and who have tendency to be erratic like Ninja Gaiden and famicom Mighty Bombjack are prolly going to be nigh unplayable in the later stages.