A little while back, I bought a (Original) PocketGo from Amazon, and while it was OK for GameBoy/Color games, it struggled with accuracy and speed when it came to 16-bit consoles. It was also Too Fucking Small. There’s a successor to the PocketGo, the V2, which added an analog stick, beefed up the internals, et cetera, but it apparently has issues with the D-pad dropping inputs (there’s a new version coming out, though). Inside, it seems to match up with the RG350, except the RG350 has two analog sticks vs one.
It seems like the RG350 is the current popular choice for handheld emulation machines right now. It costs a bit more than the PocketGo V2, despite being older, but has an extra analog stick and an apparently better D-pad. Emulation accuracy is supposed to also be better because of consistent community support?
I feel like these things are definitely getting less ugly, but why don’t they make these things look like WonderSwans or NeoGeo Pockets?
i wish someone would make an emu machine in the form factor of the wonderswan exclusively for playing vertically oriented arcade games.
also, if you want to spend lots of money, there’s stuff like the gpd xd and gpd win, that can emulate as far as the psp and dreamcast. and i think there’s some just-released/coming soon machines that can do ps2. but of course, those are for real uncle moneybagses.
Yeah, that’s the slightly suped up RG350M. It just doesn’t seem like it’s worth paying an extra $50 for a metal case, a slightly better screen, and a repositioning of the analog sticks. If it were a bit cheaper, I’d probably consider it. The PocketGo V2 is also doing the updated casing, too, I want to say they’re doing an aluminum case.
what would be rad is if one of these chinese manufacturers just built a board (i guess raspberry pi is this?) and then sold various little casing kits specifically for it so people can have the form factor they desire. You could have NeoGeo Pocket case kits, WonderSwan case kits, et cetera. Like, it’d be nice to have the power of the RG350, but be able to shove it into a NGPC/modified NGPC shell.
all right, trump finally paid me, so i bought the superdry-looking orange and black RG350. we’ll see next week how well it can handle games. i was trying to play demikids for the gba on my OG pocketgo a while back, but the game kept glitching out so i couldn’t proceed past the first like, ten minutes. save states for the gamegear emulator on the pocketgo were goofy, too.
if anybody is interested, you can get an rg350 on ebay for $89.99 (was $97 with tax), which is more than it’s selling for on RetroMimi ($75), but it’s in the U.S., so you’ll get it within a week vs two weeks.
lol reeks of “this company paid me to change my mind”. especially when he goes, “i said an egpu for this thing was ridiculous. btw, i just spent $500 on a egpu”.
An early version of this had only preinstalled roms, I’m not totally clear on whether the latest one fixed that, and the lack of shoulder buttons is megadumb, but…look at it.
Eighty dollars and it allegedly plays Dreamcast games pretty smoothly.
Trying to figure out which would be more uncomfortable – playing on an actual Dreamcast controller, or this weirdo plastic brick.
The buttons are made of high-quality materials, and it is close to the original GBA feel, and the button life is increased by three times.
OK, so they had the GBA in mind, then why didn’t they base it on one of the GBA designs instead of basing it on the DMG? I’m looking at Powkiddy’s catalogue, and they seem to make really baffling choices when it comes to what shell they’re going to shove hardware into.
Like, why not put the A19 into this giant Xbox controller, instead (the COOL BABY!)? I bet it feels a whole lot better to play post-16-bit generation games on it.
Seems like it’d be pretty rad (again, form factor is kind of shitty – there’s a lot of empty space), but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any community for it. Though, if it’s running on Android, then I presume you can just run Android emulators on it and it’ll at least be better than running equivalent emulators on a PSP, anyway.
The location of the buttons, analog sticks, and d-pad are all terrible on the RG350. The analog stick is too close to ABXY buttons, and actually, they should probably swap places, the ABXY buttons are too high up, and could stand to be level with the d-pad. Otherwise, it’s run Silhouette Mirage and Gran Turismo with no issues so far.
Also, the buttons are “clicky” and loud, and I don’t like that, but I can’t shit on it because the New 2DS XL also has shitty, clicky buttons, so that’s apparently just the standard. I don’t know, I really like it when buttons have a sort of buttery-smooth feel when you press in and are silent. i also don’t want people to hear me press the buttons.
ALSO, the volume resets back to MAX every fucking time I boot up the system (i’m guessing this can be fix in the sound settings, i haven’t tried). I loved having the SPAZ logo shriek at me while I scramble to figure out where the fuck the volume control is (it’s on the bottom). i like that the power button is on the bottom, though. the psp go’s bullshit power slider is on the side where you grip, and i’d frequently accidentally shut off the system, especially in fighting games.
this is the only video i could find with the loud SPAZ logo in it.
