I’ll stick to original hardware + SD adapters and a Wii for save states for now but if the prices ever come down or they’ll add some harder to acquire stuff like 3DO or CD-i or gasp LaserActive I’ll probably not be able to talk myself out of it.
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DE-10Nano getting a price increase in Janurary.
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terasic has de-10 nanos in stock that ship at the end of the year. no idea how bad shipping is, tho
there’s also the aliexpress seller retrocastle, they have all-in-one builds and are the one well-reviewed MiSTer seller on aliexpress - lots of positive testimonials and recommends in the MiSTer discord
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also courtesy that discord, been tracking the sega saturn development. the MiSTer core is really starting to come together now, i have no idea how srg320 is managing to continue development on this core while hunkering down in luhansk ukraine but apparently that’s what is happening
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Analogue Pocket came in the mail the other day - setting up the FPGA stuff on it was super easy once i was able to decipher the weird and kind of inaccurate/inarticulate instructions that are copied and pasted on every site explaining how to do it
but yeah, i set up the GB, GBC, and GBA cores and they all work really well. it’ll be nice if they eventually add support for the different Pocket filters, but the default display does look very nice.
going through the GBA library again, i’m reminded that there is something about the GBA aesthetic that i find vaguely repellant. it’s like…smooshy, idk. but when it works, it works! currently pouring most of my time into Yggdra Union to see if i’ve gotten any better at old Sting games.
the Pocket itself is definitely the best-quality handheld i’ve had, but the placement of the shoulder buttons is gross, and the overall feel of the thing is “i don’t want to take this out of my home and risk any kind of damage,” which makes it feel like a boutiquey conversation piece even more than usual with Analogue products. a handheld that i’m reluctant to take outside is not really ideal imo
but that said, looking forward to my amtrak trip this weekend a bit more, now.
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It kind of reminds me of the Saturn? Sprite stretching and squashing for days but an even more rigidly-enforced pixel grid, and the lingering sense that devs are gonna try 3d when the platform is screaming at them not to. Even the sound output is about high-bitrate samples (relative to the SNES games it looks like), rendered without care
I think the hardware feels the most like itself when that dirty aesthetic is leaned into like the Sting projects or Golden Sun’s mad summons, but it was really good at simple tasteful pixel projects.
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yeah i think this nails it, though i’d say i think the Saturn’s aesthetic works for me even when it doesn’t. the GBA often feels like it’s punching both above and below its weight
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starting to think the Analogue Pocket rules but also sucks
like i’m wondering how much they tested this product for usability, because it seems designed specifically and only for people who want to play a Game Boy while sitting down, hunched over. for me, my usual and ideal way of playing a handheld is lying down, either on my stomach or on my back, when i’m home. if i was on the subway, sure, i’d be sitting.
anyway, the point is that the balance of the Pocket doesn’t really account for positions that are not specifically “sitting down, hunched over,” and wrist fatigue is real.
second, for the second time now, i have caused a game to crash because of the placement and layout of the cartridge slot. the cartridges are so loosely connected to the Pocket that even the slightest jostle will end your game. this happened to me once, briefly the other day, and again, yesterday, after i’d poured an hour and a half into Yggdra Union during a point where i wasn’t able to save at all, and then lost it all.
there are save states, sure, and i guess i’ll abuse those liberally, now. but like…how did they not see this as an issue? there is nothing covering the cartridges, it’s extremely easy to touch them by accident. what the fuck.
i assume it’s because they had to try to accommodate all different cartridge shapes…? but…all non-GB-related games use adapters so…that can’t be it?
i sincerely don’t understand the design choice - it blows.
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I think the AP has over the chinese handhelds is the absurdly nice screen. Outside of that like…everything the pocket can do has been a done deal in emulation for years.
But thanks for your review isfet. Definitely happy with my RG351V and eyeing an upgrade (no I am not I don’t have time/energy for anything.)
Anyways I reviewed the mister in 2022: The MiSTer FPGA Project in 2022 A Review – Hinge Problems
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Slapfight core is out!
Play it until you understand Slapfight!
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Losing my mind trying to get the Saturn core to work. Even getting Spectrum games to boot was easier than this, and that was a nightmare.
I’ve got boot.rom files in every damn folder I can think of, and the core can’t find it.
Truly, the world does not want me to see the splendors of Clockwork Knight, Bug!, and Bug Too!
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Universe is trying to save your life.
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Tiger Heli is now on the Mister! Try and beat the first stage coward!
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having spent more time with the Pocket in the past week, i think i can recommend it, but with the caveat that the cartridge slot isn’t very good. if you plan to just use the SD card with ROMs etc., i don’t think there’s any reason to not get it. and, frankly, i think the issue with carts is mostly GBA related, from what i’ve seen (they seem to have a more-shallow connection to the pins).
so i loaded up more openfpga stuff onto the Pocket since i returned home in the form of Game Gear, NES/FDS, and Genesis. Genesis and NES seem really solid (though some hacks, like with the Analogue NT, still don’t work on real hardware/fpga). the biggest bugs/issues cropped up with the Game Gear.
now, i tested out some real GG carts when i got up to my mom’s place - all of them worked fine except for my Euro copy of Sonic Drift 2 - can’t figure out why, though. the next thing i noticed re: specifically GG fpga is that some ROMs will not load at all if there is a cart in the cartridge slot. when i took out the GBA cart i had stuck in there, suddenly a bunch of games started loading and working properly. almost none of the translated rom hacks loaded correctly, though, and Sonic Blast won’t load (maybe it’s the ROM, idk).
having all this stuff on a handheld with such a nice screen is definitely a lot of fun, but i’m curious to see how everything shapes up over the next few years. it feels like only the surface is being scratched right now. also, i guess i’m gonna join jotego’s patreon finally to get his Pocket files
also, i grabbed a Game Boy Camera from a retro game shop that’s located pretty close to where my mom lives these days (NY capital region folks, if you uh…read this, check out Forgotten Freshness). some of (a small, specific percentage) their stuff is eBay priced but they’re honestly the best retro game shop i’ve come across in the whole of NY state; always getting new stuff, great curation, and nice guys who run the shop and are always clearly working on/repairing stuff in the front of the store whenever you come in.
the GB Camera is neat and while i didn’t care about photography as a kid, it’s fun to play with as an adult. the interface is more robust than i was expecting, too.
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Dec Build Saturn Showcase
Review of Mister in 2022.
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finally set up the Analogue Pocket Dock today as more than just a glorified charger and hooked it up to my TV. i thought, initially, that it worked with the Analogue DAC so i could play Super Game Boy games on a CRT, but no dice - apparently this is coming in a later update, which is a little disappointing. Game Boy games look weird on a 4k TV imo, though there is something novel about how the sprites look when they’re this big - kind of reminds me of seeing pixel art done with oil paint, idk.
the dock essentially mimics how the Switch works, but it is…still pretty buggy. i think it works well enough with the handhelds supported at launch, but some of the other cores were triggering some kind of sound glitch where the sound just altogether mutes. that kind of sucks! though i suppose if i’m going to be playing arcade stuff, i’d be better off using my MiSTer anyhow. mostly, i was thinking it could be something good to bring to the meetup, but as of now, it’s a bust.
the Pocket seems like it’s still very much a work in progress, which is both exciting, but also frustrating at times. i’m using it a lot, and really enjoying my time with it, but these little things, when you push at the boundaries, make the overall experience feel a little less refined than other Analogue stuff.
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Anyone have a mister case they’d recommend? The ones at misteraddons are sold out (and $$$), thingverse has a few but none quite match the hardware I have, ebay is a nightmare, and I thought etsy might have something but their search results are so polluted it’s too much to wade though.
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I’m still waiting for the misteraddons fellow to push through this project he teased a few years back, looks like a solid console form and integrated support for the native controller adapters. Sounds like it’s hitting testing in prep for a manufacturing batch.
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