RetroN5: Hands on first look

[Ozzy_98]

I heard the system eats your saves and can damage the internal battery. It's so bad the games now carry warnings. What, you thought I was talking RetroN? No, nes. That's why we have a hold reset button message on newer Zelda carts and not older ones. People complaining about same shit, just different decades.

Expecting it to do something that's listed on the box, the manual, and the software frontend itself and then it not working is a disappointment. Having it damage my carts by permanently deleting my saves is a crock of shit. Expecting it to not permanently delete my 30 year old save data without warning, even after multiple updates, is not an outlandish expectation. Because of this I'm now leery about putting any cart with SRAM in it regardless of updates or not.

When did you last change your batteries ? And did you back up your saves? If the batteries are still the originals, who knows when they'll go, I first had nes ones start dying 10 years ago, so they're a time bomb waiting to go off. If you've backed up your saves, then your argument is all about a minor inconvenience.


I'm not sure where the "always power to the cart slot" came from, but it'd be childs play for it to detect a cart is inserted and then apply power, so I'd bet if it is always powered on, that's how they do it.

This isn't an emulation box, we have those already. This box is for people who want to play their gen carts with a snes controller on an HD TV without a PC and controller adapters or own a quality scaler. To me, it's a neat item, but I have no use for it. If the wireless controllers were designed better than maybe I'd be interested, but they suck so I'm sticking to a PC running a custom MameWAH setup.

I don't get why some people are so down-right angry about the system though. Shouldn't they be bashing $500 nes systems stuck in ugly aluminum blocks? Or at least bash it for not playing Atari games.

[RPG_Fanatic]

My Retron 5 just came in the mail today and it did wipe out all of my game saves on my SNES and Genesis games which kind of sucks but I guess it just makes me start over. But I do like the system, the games do look really nice on my HDTV which is the only TV I have in my game room.

[Gameguy]

It's the phenomenon of retro gamer psychosis that tells them phsycial media = better experience than pure emulation. Why the retro gamer says "Virtual Console? I'd rather play on my CRT and original system and cart". It isn't rational, but that doesn't matter at all. Even being self aware of the psychosis doesn't diminish it's power. The Retron5 also has the secondary benefit of making collections of carts relevant in a world filled with things like the Nintendo Virtual Console/e-shop and the Ouya. You might conclude "that's stupid", but you'd be be totally missing the point.

I personally like physical cartridges and discs, but I prefer to play games on authentic hardware whenever possible. That way you get a completely authentic experience with how the games play, you don't have to worry about incompatibility issues or improper speeds or sounds. I've seen people post videos of Genesis games on youtube with everyone in the comments complaining about how horrible the music is. Only I've played the same games on my console and the music was nowhere near that bad, it was a problem with the emulation. Only few people would realize this was the problem with it, instead they assume the music was just poor quality because it was the Sega Genesis instead of the SNES.

The whole problem I have with physical carts with this Retron5 is that the console plays games through emulation. Emulation is emulation, you don't need a physical cartridge to play a game through emulation. A physical cartridge in this case doesn't make the game play any better.

You...must not have properly read my post. The reason Hyperkin isn't doing that is because it's all about piracy. I agree with you that if the Retron5 had direct rom support that would aid the ease of use of the system and would be a nice little bonus feature. But no, you're completely wrong to think that only people who wouldn't do CFW are those who prefer to keep things legit or those who don't know how anything works. I specifically cited myself as an example of someone who has an intimate knowledge of the Retron5 yet wouldn't want CFW for a long time, and even gave you a clear reason why. I'm not alone in that either.

I meant that piracy wasn't the reason why I would specifically be wanting direct ROM support, for me it's more of an issue concerning ease of use. Of course people would be using that feature for piracy, that's just not the main reason why I would consider that feature useful.

Compared to what alternatives? The Ouya? The attachment to the physical carts. The original hardware? HDMI and savestates and the ability to use non-native controllers like the Genesis controller on the GBA.

Not just the Ouya or original hardware. There's also PCs for emulation, which you can output HDMI and use controllers with various adapters, savestates, cheats, and other add ons. Any adapters should cost less than $140. Or you can use modded consoles to play emulated games as well.

Personally, I've never bothered to use savestates when I did use emulation, same with cheat codes beyond the odd time messing around. If this Retron5 could record video of playthroughs I could see this beneficial to youtubers, but instead it just captures screenshots. These emulator enhanced features aren't things I ever used.

This is why I've been careful not to make any comments that would require an opinion based on personal assessment, such as quality of the controller and things like that. Everything I've said about the RetroN5 is based on documented facts, not opinions of others or my own.

My main reasoning was that documented facts aren't always correct. I had a new boxed pair of cheap computer speakers, the specifications on the box stated that they were rated at 200 watts. There is no way that these basic computer speakers were 200 watts when they just use a basic 3.5mm plug(they're really cheap/flimsy computer speakers). You can't be sure that whatever is documented is actually true without verifying it first hand.

Stardust is an idiot who we all grew tired of with his neverending exhausting comments of stupidity. For months I've taken the time to answer his comments politely even when others clearly grew tired of him, but his latest posts about the RetroN5 were nothing more than lies to slander the thing, and that's what I won't tolerate and the reason I finally decided to block his idiotic comments from even appearing.

If we "chased" him off DP, then good riddance, but let's be clear: if he did leave, he left on his own accord and the only one to blame for him being "chased" from here is himself. In the end he turned out to be no better than MyTurnToPlay, one of the biggest trolls I've ever seen on any forum.

I must not have noticed all that, to me he didn't seem that bad(until the last few posts, which still weren't the worst I've seen here). He wasn't as bad as MyTurnToPlay, nowhere near that bad. In one post he mentioned he was glad he cancelled his preorder after hearing about some of the issues people were having with it right after launch, and you went off on him for it. That didn't sound like a troll post to me, no more than any other post sharing an opinion on the forum.

No, they didn't. They merely said 100% compatibility was their goal and that firmware updates were the means of achieving that.

Almost wish they had never said that. It instantly was interpreted as a promise of 100% compatibility by quite a few people.

They never once stated they were eventually going to be 100% running it all, they were shooting to get as close to that as possible and it's getting quite close. Camerica games are working on my build too like Micro Machines as well.

Well, in my view, if people interpreted that as a promise of 100% compatibility, then that's their own stupidity. Game companies choose their words very carefully when making announcements like that, just as politicians do. A political candidate that says their goal is to create job growth doesn't mean that they will vs a political candidate that says they will create job growth. The subtle difference means a whole lot.

They pretty much did promise 100% compatibility. I'll post their "product features" as listed from their website.

◦Multiple System Compatibility: The RetroN 5 allows you to play your favorite NES, SNES, Super Famicom, Genesis, Mega Drive, Famicom, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and GBA cartridges on one system. You can also play Master System games with the use of the Power Base Converter.*
◦Graphical User Interface (GUI): A brand new GUI Menu that gives access to features and the ability to customize your entire gaming experience on the screen.
◦HDMI Output: The HDMI output will upconvert the signal to your HDTV with a maximum output resolution of 720p.
◦Save/Load States: Save or load your games at any point during gameplay, with 10 save slots for each game.
◦Video Enhancement: Customize your video settings with the variety of different filter and shader effects, including scanlines.
◦Audio Enhancement: Utilizing Audio Interpolation, the RetroN 5 will produce a smoother, crisper sound output.
◦Cheats: Pre-built cheats that can be accessed at any point during gameplay for most games.
◦Bluetooth Wireless Controller: Utilizing Bluetooth technology, this controller has a range of up to 30 feet and features a microswitch directional pad, two programmable macro buttons, and a Home button for quick-in game access to features.
◦Original Controller Ports: 2 original controller ports (6 total) for each platform
◦100% Compatibility: The RetroN 5 will play both PAL and NTSC cartridges. CIC lockout chips and FX chips are no longer going to be an issue, as we aim to achieve 100% compatibility with all cartridges.
*Power Base Converter sold separately.

100% Compatibility is listed exactly the same way as HDMI Output or Bluetooth Wireless Controller, there's no asterisk or fine print saying it's a future goal or ambition if they can get around to it. Maybe they just wrote it poorly. There is an asterisk mentioning there's no Power Base Converter included. It does say "aim to achieve" but you can't blame people interpreting that as a promise. There's no "through firmware updates" at the end of that sentence, and the beginning doesn't list "High Compatibility". 100% Compatibility is listed as an included feature.

[GarrettCRW]

The RetroN5 dumps the cartridge to ROM before running it to allow it access to savestates, virtual sram and non-native controller inputs. That is the need for it, as you put it.

FDS support does not work. It results in error 01 - no disk detected. This is because the dumped FDS bios does not interact with the FDS itself as it would on the real hardware.

I'm pretty sure that you don't need the console to download ROMs in order to use non-native controllers or savestates, and obviously the handling of SRAM on the system was flawed as originally intended, as the thing has been deleting game saves off carts. The result is that a popular (if finicky) add-on to the Famicom is broken, and may remain as such. That's a pretty big pile of fail.

[Leo_A]

This totally reminded me of the original Xbox having a 10GB harddrive, with the only things users could do with that massive amount of console storage at the time being moving save files (again, at most, a few megabytes) or rip audio CDs. The bulk of that storage was inaccessible to the end user.

It was 8 gigs, wasn't it?

But don't forget about all the DLC and the patches that the original Xbox got (not to mention Xbox Live Arcade with 20 or so games like Ms. Pac-Man). Never been sure on my original Xbox just how close I am to filling it up since it doesn't provide that detail (It just says something like 50,000+ blocks available as I recall and I've never gotten it under whatever the threshold was for it to start diminishing).

But I bet between all the patches for games like RalliSport Challenge 2 (At a time when they tended to be more than just bug fixes and often included free extra content and new features), the DLC expansions like Project Gotham Racing 2's booster packs with new cities and cars, Halo 2's map packs, Links 2004's golf courses, and whatever else I downloaded, that I at least filled up 4 or 5 gigs on my HDD with DLC. Then add several hundred MB's for game saves for my large collection and a gig or two of music that I've ripped to it, and I bet I'm closing in on running out of space.

[Tanooki]

My Retron 5 just came in the mail today and it did wipe out all of my game saves on my SNES and Genesis games which kind of sucks but I guess it just makes me start over. But I do like the system, the games do look really nice on my HDTV which is the only TV I have in my game room.

Seriously if you have 1.31 firmware on there and this happened to everything, you got to write the Retron Tech. He's currently trying to completely squash this issue as it's random and needs more data from people to support tracking it down.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005440995949 <-tech contact info

[Az]

I found (at least on the few games I tried) Genesis games that require the mode button to be held down on a 6 button controller don't require that. They'll work like normal even even if you don't hold it down.

SMS games that require a SMS controller to work on a Genesis no longer require that, at least from what I tried. They all worked with a 6 button pad.

For SMS games with FM sound will boot with PSG sound if the system detects it as an unknown cart.

I noticed today that strangely enough it will not let you assign the mode button on a 6 button Genesis pad to do anything as a OS hotkey, say for example mode+start returning you to the main menu. You also can't assign the mode button to do anything in another system. I was looking forward to using that pad on SNES games, but I won't be able to play anything that requires the select button because there's nothing available to assign it to, and the OS won't let you remap the SNES start and select buttons.

Then I looked and saw that the NES and GBA side are set up the same way because you cannot remap the select button to anything on a Genesis pad. I'm hard pressed to think of any SNES games but I can think of several NES and GBA games that use select quite a bit.

I'm not sure where the "always power to the cart slot" came from

It came from my multi-meter. All cart slots have full power at all times. Turn your Genesis on with no cartridge in, jam a cart in and play for a few minutes, rip it out, jam another one in and hit reset. Electrically you're doing the same thing to your carts when playing on a RetroN5.

I heard the system eats your saves and can damage the internal battery. It's so bad the games now carry warnings..[] People complaining about same shit, just different decades.

Unfortunately Hyperkin couldn't be bothered to spring for the stickers. Or warning anyone.

When did you last change your batteries ? And did you back up your saves? If the batteries are still the originals, who knows when they'll go...[] If you've backed up your saves, then your argument is all about a minor inconvenience.

I never backed up the SMS saves because I know of no device that exists which does such a thing. Some games had never had their batteries changed. What relevance does that have to the console not working as advertised or intended by deleting them without warning? My computer's HDD will eventually die but that doesn't make it OK for my wife to waltz in and format it. If she did, she's being a dick, regardless of whether or not I have my important data backed up. If my saves are deleted because I don't follow Nintendo's suggestion to hold the reset button in when turning my NES off or if I was too lazy to change a 30 year old coin cell battery then the blame falls squarely on me. Saves being deleted by inserting the cart into a system that claims it's compatible (and will even back up said saves for safekeeping) is not my fault.

[Tanooki]

Hey AZ two things...
1) I forwarded your concern to the tech about the MODE button being omitted and also if it would be possible to remap select and start. I do agree having to go for select sucks since you have to take your thumb off the d-pad to do so.
2) Are you in on the beta testing of this thing? If you like I could send you the latest. I saw you mentioned SMS and there's a lot of fixes for it including adding SMS game pad support.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

because I doubt a tiny company like Hyperkin programmed their own Android-based emulators for over a half dozen consoles from scratch I'm self delusional, yet you have either a crystal ball or an inside line to the company where you know for a fact what problems will be addressed by future updates?

I'm simply saying that Hyperkin has already taken several steps to fix all sorts of problems with the RetroN5 and continues to do so. Simply projecting what from where they are now, firmweare updates will continue to fix problems. This is why I feel that eventually these sram concerns will be a thing of the past.

everything they did was based off public resources from other emulators that are open to use such ways to random bits of shared public information on nesdev and other places that cover all the tech junk. I know they went over the fceu open source mapper stuffs as I handed that to the tech a couple nights ago and in return the Supervision 115in1 now is kind of up and running but needs work. That fceu source pile has a crap load of mappers for bootlegs and multicarts from asia.

This is what I suspected. The emulation of the Retron5 is based on open source code, but the actual construction of the emulators was done by Hyperkin, making the emulators their own, unique for anything else on Android even if the foundations are the same.


[QUOTE=Tanooki;2003477]
The "UNKNOWN CART" language is a general term and kind of misleading as it's a catch all. Sometimes if you don't have a good seat on the cart or it's dirty you can get unknown cart. When it legit isn't working because there is no CRC32 on file for it, you'll get that. Also now with the test builds it will say this too if the game has to be picked up from the auto-mapper routine for mapper0-4 on NES games. That's the reason that message pops up, and it could be better saying why it's unknown like 'failed to read game' and 'game not in database' would be more helpful from a buyer side of things.

The SRAM issue is fixed, and the FLASH save is fixed too, EEPROM is 1/2 working but they're still needing to fix the write save from retron->cart for EEPROM games on GBA. I was told the SRAM saves for other games from NES through SNES and GB/GBC are working fine now unless there's some random bizarre bug that got by or on a particular game.[/quoted]

Aimed at Az, but good to know.

[QUOTE=Tanooki;2003477]
Downloading is slow to the system, but not for long. The lead tech has a routine being worked up. The largest GBA game can take over a minute to load up (Kingdom Hearts is one.) But they found a way to load the essential parts of the ROM to get it to boot and while it's going through starting screens on the game it will be continually loading the game in the background to the R5. This supposedly will allow the games to load up in a fraction of the time.

So in other words, this is exactly like playing Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal in Pokemon Stadium 2 on the N64 back in the day.

anything is possible.

I suppose, but it's not likely you'll find Akumajou Densetsu for less than its market value. That's all I'm saying. Some things are worth paying more than you would initially think for though.

Again if anyone wants the latest test build that'll back up what I'm saying about the fixes I'm allowed to pass it on, he just wants anything piratey reported to him with the CRC32 numbers off the diagnostics panel that's enabled in return.

I definitely do want in on beta testing. As I've said before, I have a massive collection of games for all systems including many bootlegs, repros and oddities. Whenever it is Hyperkin actually sends me what I ordered, I want in.

I personally like physical cartridges and discs, but I prefer to play games on authentic hardware whenever possible. That way you get a completely authentic experience with how the games play, you don't have to worry about incompatibility issues or improper speeds or sounds. I've seen people post videos of Genesis games on youtube with everyone in the comments complaining about how horrible the music is. Only I've played the same games on my console and the music was nowhere near that bad, it was a problem with the emulation. Only few people would realize this was the problem with it, instead they assume the music was just poor quality because it was the Sega Genesis instead of the SNES.

The whole problem I have with physical carts with this Retron5 is that the console plays games through emulation. Emulation is emulation, you don't need a physical cartridge to play a game through emulation. A physical cartridge in this case doesn't make the game play any better.

This is another psychosis that you bring up. Come hell or high water, some people refuse to accept any sort of clone regardless of any other factor. I know people who will never want the RetroN5 no matter how good the compatibility and emulation is simply on the basis that it isn't the original hardware. Just like the physical vs intangible debate, it's all in ones head at that point, and hey, that's fine. The RetroN5 is not for everyone just as the original hardware is not for everyone.

My main reasoning was that documented facts aren't always correct. I had a new boxed pair of cheap computer speakers, the specifications on the box stated that they were rated at 200 watts. There is no way that these basic computer speakers were 200 watts when they just use a basic 3.5mm plug(they're really cheap/flimsy computer speakers). You can't be sure that whatever is documented is actually true without verifying it first hand.

When I say "documented facts" I mean things that have been verified and confirmed by other people already, and there is no possibly way to dispute those facts. I'm not assuming anything.

[QUOTE=Gameguy;2003496]
I must not have noticed all that, to me he didn't seem that bad(until the last few posts, which still weren't the worst I've seen here). He wasn't as bad as MyTurnToPlay, nowhere near that bad. In one post he mentioned he was glad he cancelled his preorder after hearing about some of the issues people were having with it right after launch, and you went off on him for it. That didn't sound like a troll post to me, no more than any other post sharing an opinion on the forum.


Uh.... for the record, I've gone back and found his post and my post. This is what he said:


Screw it. I just sent a message to Stone Age Gamer to cancel my Retron5 preorder. I've decided homebrews are more important to me than save states...


and here's my direct reply "going off on him":

Even though you were going to get a free controller? Well alright dude, that's your choice.

I'm still looking forward to mine when it arrives so I can tear into it. There are a lot of unanswered questions I still have, like exactly what the hardware is powering the RetroN5. Even if I don't use it much, I suspect there could be hacking potential to turn it into a pseudo Ouya.

Besides, I need to definitively answer the question of which emulation is superior - that of the Retron5 or that of the Ouya.


But maybe that post isn't what you're talking about. Maybe its the one where he said the Retron5 was in "firmware hell".

I responded,:

Uh. "firmware update hell"? Would you rather.....they not frequently correct bugs and fix reported problems? It kinda seems like you're saying the equivalent to "Oh no! They're making the product better every couple of days! How awful!"

He went on to say:

Worse still, as of right now, new updates are coming to Retron5 every couple days, and since the updates are not automatic like with consoles, they require shuffling the SD card back and forth between the PC. That is super annoying, and so much stuff is still broken despite fixing many of the day one issues, that I would rather not invest in this piece of tech until they get the bugs ironed out.

And in a truly Microsoft-like fashion, every time Hyperkin patches a fix for one thing, two other things get broken.

There is no truth whatsoever to this statement. When I and others pointed this out, that's when he turned tail and ran. He wasn't a vicious troll like MyTurnToPlay I'll give him that, but a troll is a troll.

They pretty much did promise 100% compatibility. I'll post their "product features" as listed from their website.

100% Compatibility is listed exactly the same way as HDMI Output or Bluetooth Wireless Controller, there's no asterisk or fine print saying it's a future goal or ambition if they can get around to it. Maybe they just wrote it poorly. There is an asterisk mentioning there's no Power Base Converter included. It does say "aim to achieve" but you can't blame people interpreting that as a promise. There's no "through firmware updates" at the end of that sentence, and the beginning doesn't list "High Compatibility". 100% Compatibility is listed as an included feature.

You're right, that is poorly worded. Tanooki maybe you can tell Hyperkin that they need to fix that to be less misleading. The last bulletpoint should read something like:

◦We aim for 100% Compatibility*: The RetroN 5 will play both PAL and NTSC cartridges. CIC lockout chips and FX chips are no longer going to be an issue, as we aim to achieve 100% compatibility with all cartridges.*Future compatibility added through firmware updates.

Something like that.

It was 8 gigs, wasn't it?

But don't forget about all the DLC and the patches that the original Xbox got (not to mention Xbox Live Arcade with 20 or so games like Ms. Pac-Man). Never been sure on my original Xbox just how close I am to filling it up since it doesn't provide that detail (It just says something like 50,000+ blocks available as I recall and I've never gotten it under whatever the threshold was for it to start diminishing).

But I bet between all the patches for games like RalliSport Challenge 2 (At a time when they tended to be more than just bug fixes and often included free extra content and new features), the DLC expansions like Project Gotham Racing 2's booster packs with new cities and cars, Halo 2's map packs, Links 2004's golf courses, and whatever else I downloaded, that I at least filled up 4 or 5 gigs on my HDD with DLC. Then add several hundred MB's for game saves for my large collection and a gig or two of music that I've ripped to it, and I bet I'm closing in on running out of space.

It was 10 GB formatted to 8 GB on launch models, and then 10 GB on the others. you've overestimating the size and importance of DLC, XBLA and patches and such on the original Xbox. There was very little of that, and of what there was, there was again only ~several hundred MB worth of that kind of thing for most games. There were a handful of exceptions, but my point wasn't that Microsoft didn't ever use the harddrive for anything, its that the didn't allow the end user to do anything much with it until custom firmware came and changed everything. This is exactly how the 1.2GB storage of the Retron5 is.

[Ozzy_98]

What relevance does that have to the console not working as advertised or intended by deleting them without warning? My computer's HDD will eventually die but that doesn't make it OK for my wife to waltz in and format it. If she did, she's being a dick, regardless of whether or not I have my important data backed up. If my saves are deleted because I don't follow Nintendo's suggestion to hold the reset button in when turning my NES off or if I was too lazy to change a 30 year old coin cell battery then the blame falls squarely on me. Saves being deleted by inserting the cart into a system that claims it's compatible (and will even back up said saves for safekeeping) is not my fault.

Because the nes was doing the exact same thing. If anything, randomly deleting your saves would make it more like playing on the original hardware. But that's besides the point, I'm saying you're complain about the saves like it's something major, but have you taken steps to prevent it? You make it sound like this system is the spawn of the devil that killed your mother and knocked up your father. Lots and lots and lots of things you buy have issues at first, but it doesn't mean it's false advertisement.

Did people act this way when Nes-on-a-chips first came out and didn't work with all games?

[Tanooki]

Firmware 1.4 just came out hours ago today. This is the build I've been messing with minus the multicart/pirate tooling they've been doing the last couple days I imagine. I'd update it to check against mine, but I need the diagnostics panel to report CRCs on my carts.

That firmware should put to bed almost every legitimate case of complaining about games not working. It's at retron5.com but a direct link is here: http://retron5.in/node/6

Here's a full list of all the updates to this release and the past too. http://retron5.in/node/5 As you can see a lot has been done to add features, controllers and other junk on top of a heap of fixes. Also the excellent auto-detection scheme for mapper0-4 is in place here and early stuff I'm seeing from a few comments is that a lot of broken stuff isn't broken anymore. If you have the system, put this on there and enjoy it finally for what many felt it should be out of the box weeks ago.

[Az]

I'm saying you're complain about the saves like it's something major, but have you taken steps to prevent it??

Inconvenience or being something major is relative. To me, losing my own game saves is a big deal, to others it's probably nothing. To me, a stranger's house burning down on the other side if down is completely irrelevant, to him it's a big deal.

Ignore for a moment the whole fact that a selling point of this console is that it will back up your saves for safe keeping. What could I have done to prevent this console from deleting my saves? Ignore everything written on the box, manual, and frontend and assume it will delete my saves? Don't play anything with SRAM on it until I've trawled through Internet forums and verified that another user running the exact same firmware and has the exact same game revision has played it without issue? That's insane. If I buy a new VCR and it eats the first tape I put in it, it's a shitty VCR, and it's not somehow my fault for assuming the VCR would work as it should.

You make it sound like this system is the spawn of the devil that killed your mother and knocked up your father.

Therein lines the issue. There's a big difference between stating a fact (game X doesn't work) and an opinion (the console sucks because game X doesn't work). The only opinion I've leveled that has anything to do with the console itself is that I thought the firmware update process could be easier. Nowhere have I said the console was garbage, I wasted my money, I regret purchasing it, others shouldn't buy it, you're stupid if you buy it... nothing. Big difference between, "lost my game saves, don't lose yours" versus "lost my game saves, don't buy this POS".

Every issue that I've spoke about was not to hear my own lips flap but because I had never read or heard anyone mention it before. When an unopinionated fact is stated that could be viewed as derogatory against the console (X doesn't work, Y's incompatible, Z happens when it's not supposed do) some people seem to be interpreting that as a personal affront against them and rush to defend or minimize the issue. Are we not free to objectively discuss what does or doesn't work?

If I were to pop in right now and say, "I found Master Fighter III is incompatible" it seems people are unable to just say, "Hmm... I didn't know that." Instead there's a rush to either apologize with "OMG It'll be fixed in the future! They're working 24/7!", minimize it "Who owns that game anyway?!?", or outright dismiss it "How dare you expect that to work!!!"

[PizzaKat]

Inconvenience or being something major is relative. To me, losing my own game saves is a big deal, to others it's probably nothing. To me, a stranger's house burning down on the other side if down is completely irrelevant, to him it's a big deal.

Ignore for a moment the whole fact that a selling point of this console is that it will back up your saves for safe keeping. What could I have done to prevent this console from deleting my saves? Ignore everything written on the box, manual, and frontend and assume it will delete my saves? Don't play anything with SRAM on it until I've trawled through Internet forums and verified that another user running the exact same firmware and has the exact same game revision has played it without issue? That's insane. If I buy a new VCR and it eats the first tape I put in it, it's a shitty VCR, and it's not somehow my fault for assuming the VCR would work as it should.



Therein lines the issue. There's a big difference between stating a fact (game X doesn't work) and an opinion (the console sucks because game X doesn't work). The only opinion I've leveled that has anything to do with the console itself is that I thought the firmware update process could be easier. Nowhere have I said the console was garbage, I wasted my money, I regret purchasing it, others shouldn't buy it, you're stupid if you buy it... nothing. Big difference between, "lost my game saves, don't lose yours" versus "lost my game saves, don't buy this POS".

Every issue that I've spoke about was not to hear my own lips flap but because I had never read or heard anyone mention it before. When an unopinionated fact is stated that could be viewed as derogatory against the console (X doesn't work, Y's incompatible, Z happens when it's not supposed do) some people seem to be interpreting that as a personal affront against them and rush to defend or minimize the issue. Are we not free to objectively discuss what does or doesn't work?

If I were to pop in right now and say, "I found Master Fighter III is incompatible" it seems people are unable to just say, "Hmm... I didn't know that." Instead there's a rush to either apologize with "OMG It'll be fixed in the future! They're working 24/7!", minimize it "Who owns that game anyway?!?", or outright dismiss it "How dare you expect that to work!!!"

lol well said.

[Tanooki]

News flash, there are no ways to prevent the loss of game saves in previous versions of the firmware on the R5 other than NOT using those games in the system, or at the least, never writing save data back to the cartridge and just keeping the data on the system itself. The damn hot mess is a HUGE inconvenience and cost me a lot of hours of work and re-done work on FF6A and it tanked my 1987 era Zelda save file too which sucks. Somehow it's now a 4 heart 000 LINK record with no progress.

This is just too much drama and making more out of what AZ there is saying. He is right, the firmware process is one step too much. You should just be able to download them right off the website and pop the SD card in your box once, that's it. I get not having wifi or a jack on it as that's more cash and hassle. There's enough R5 trolls around spitting out pure fantasy to get attention and AZ isn't one of them.

I actually asked the tech about that one, and it appears the main webmaster of Hyperkin welcomes their abusive mouths or at least freedom of speech as the tech like myself would ban the people who keep trolling all the positive posts on there as it is a select bunch of pinheads stirring the pot. The thing is the bitching crossed way passed just being out of control on that facebook site and a few other popped up places around for communal trolling.

The R5 isn't perfect, 1.0-1.31 were having enough issues and incrimentally improved but still wasn't really acceptable if you need it more or less all to work. 1.4 is really the first step into making things right. It's at the point now singular games and quirky junk can finally be ferreted out and things can be added to make the overall usage a better thing and that's why I like this new update because they will always when they get new batches of systems in from overseas start uploading the newest app/firmware files before they go out so less people will have to suffer and may not even need to update the firmware depending on things.

[Ozzy_98]

Az, first please don't think that I'm defending the box or that I even like it. I've been bashing it for a long time. It's an emulator box that makes you dump your own roms. EVERY. TIME. YOU. PLAY. But hey, we give you free wireless controllers. Shaped like a brick. It's biggest appeal is to people who wrongly claim emulators are not as good as consoles, but can't actually point out games they have issues with on emulators, because they haven't used them since nestical. Or never figured them out and just decided they suck. So I dislike the ugly console with the high-end price tag, when 90% of it's functionality I have with my phone + hdmi adapter + controller.

It just seems like you're venomously attacking this thing, like it should have been perfect from the gate and any issues is a major sin where they should be burnt at the stake. If that's not how you're meaning it to sound, then I think everyone needs to take a step back. Anytime you get a new piece of hardware, or software, you really should test it out. If your RetronN ate more than 2-3 saves, then you're a dipshit; should have stopped at 1, maybe 2 to test if it was a glitch. Just look at how many PC games can mess up your systems. Pool of Radiance: RoMD for example, when it uninstalled, took windows with it. You take a chance with any clone system, or even using games in dirty systems. It sounds like you're stating the "lost my game saves, don't buy this POS".

That's insane. If I buy a new VCR and it eats the first tape I put in it, it's a shitty VCR, and it's not somehow my fault for assuming the VCR would work as it should.

Was the tape stretched? Maybe the rollers on the tape were sticky from not being used. You can not blame the VCR for eating the first tape, that's bad troubleshooting.

If I were to pop in right now and say, "I found Master Fighter III is incompatible" it seems people are unable to just say, "Hmm... I didn't know that." Instead there's a rush to either apologize with "OMG It'll be fixed in the future! They're working 24/7!", minimize it "Who owns that game anyway?!?", or outright dismiss it "How dare you expect that to work!!!"

That's not how I'd see it. From what I'm seeing, you would say "The manual says 100% compatibility. Should I ignore what the manual says and assume all my games will work on it??!" So what people are arguing with you about is stuff you may not be trying to say. I really think people are miss reading everyone's posts and stances on this thing.

BTW, if the cart ports ARE powered on all the time, it shouldn't hurt the ROMs, and the mappers I would think are too simple to be damaged by it. Only thing I would think that would be damaged would be SRAM.

[Leo_A]

This totally reminded me of the original Xbox having a 10GB harddrive, with the only things users could do with that massive amount of console storage at the time being moving save files (again, at most, a few megabytes) or rip audio CDs. The bulk of that storage was inaccessible to the end user.

It was 8 gigs, wasn't it?

But don't forget about all the DLC and the patches that the original Xbox got (not to mention Xbox Live Arcade with 20 or so games like Ms. Pac-Man).

It was 10 GB formatted to 8 GB on launch models, and then 10 GB on the others. you've overestimating the size and importance of DLC,

Actually, I believe that most got 8 gig HDD's with 10 gig HDD's introduced late in production when they became cheaper that were formatted for only 8 gigs. Not that it matters one way or another, but that's how I remember it at least.

I wasn't saying anything about its importance (Although it was for me such as for several hundred MB's of expansion content for PGR2), just that it was there.

[Gameguy]

This is another psychosis that you bring up. Come hell or high water, some people refuse to accept any sort of clone regardless of any other factor. I know people who will never want the RetroN5 no matter how good the compatibility and emulation is simply on the basis that it isn't the original hardware. Just like the physical vs intangible debate, it's all in ones head at that point, and hey, that's fine. The RetroN5 is not for everyone just as the original hardware is not for everyone.

For me, I already have original hardware which is still reliable so I wouldn't need to buy another clone. Plus most of my systems I've found for $10 or less, or $30 at the most. I don't see a need to buy clone systems for actual use, and not for that much money. I don't have any HD television sets so the HDMI output isn't useful, I'd rather hook up my systems to a standard CRT and keep on using light gun games. Plus, I collect games. I still want original cartridges and hardware, it's my hobby so I want originals.

Emulation can be useful, if you can take an entire library of games with you on a portable system without needing a backpack full of cartridges, it's a big benefit. Or just playing a bunch of games over at a friends' house without having to bring everything you own with you. I just don't see as big of a benefit as this with the Retron5. Especially with this having to dump games every time you want to play them, why you can't just keep the games stored on your console with such a large amount of internal storage included I don't understand. It just adds load times to cartridge games which I can see getting annoying pretty fast.

But maybe that post isn't what you're talking about. Maybe its the one where he said the Retron5 was in "firmware hell".

I'll just post what I was referring to below.

This arrived today, haven't updated anything so it's whatever stock firmware it shipped with.

Every cart on every system is listed as "unknown cart", out of about 30 games tested so far on every cart slot. GBA games take an extremely long time to dump compared to other systems.

The Famicom port doesn't recognize anything, by anything I mean it doesn't even detect a cartridge is inserted. Grabbed 10 random Famicom carts and the system didn't even tell I had anything inserted. The best thing I ever managed to get was a cart slot power error "have you inserted a SNES cart backwards?" message on a Power Rangers game. At this point I'm convinced the system is destined to be returned to Hyperkin or Newegg for warranty work. Has anyone else's system acted like this? I don't see a firmware update doing anything to remedy this particular problem.

Unlicensed MD games without the TMSS routine work, but unlicensed games with copy protection don't work, so I guess their emulator doesn't have these routines programmed in.

The manual doesn't explicitly state it so are they saying it's OK to hotswap carts? I don't see how this could be a healthy practice especially for games with battery backup.

It's posts like these that make me glad I cancelled my preorder when I did. I feel for anyone who gets stuck with a "lemon." Hopefully whomever you ordered from will accept returns.

Your comments are as exhausting as ever, stardust.

He was saying he was glad he cancelled his preorder after hearing the various problems other people were experiencing(in reply to someone else), and that's what you said to him. Originally he cancelled his preorder after hearing the cost would be increased by 40% after it was already paid for, most people would understandably be upset for an increase like that(after it's been paid for). You were just surprised he would want to cancel his order since he was offered a free controller as compensation. I would be upset the same way so I don't get your surprised reaction, as if he was just complaining about the price increase for no reason.

Really the negative views prior to release expressed by him and other people in this thread aren't that extreme, just think back to all the negative opinions people had with the 3DS coming out, or the Wii, or the Wii U, or any number of newer consoles. Plenty of people said the same types of things, his views with the problems or potential issues with this aren't any more extreme.

With that comment about the firmware updates creating two problems for every one it fixed, I'm interpreting that more like everytime a problem gets fixed through firmware updates, two more problems or incompatibilities get discovered and brought to light. It may be a slight exaggeration in response to the constant firmware updates, but I'm not taking that comment as though it's a slanderous lie.

You're right, that is poorly worded. Tanooki maybe you can tell Hyperkin that they need to fix that to be less misleading. The last bulletpoint should read something like:

◦We aim for 100% Compatibility*: The RetroN 5 will play both PAL and NTSC cartridges. CIC lockout chips and FX chips are no longer going to be an issue, as we aim to achieve 100% compatibility with all cartridges.*Future compatibility added through firmware updates.

Something like that.

It would help if it was changed as you've suggested. It's not just because of the main site, several reviewers made note of this in their reviews(I'm sure because it was listed there) so plenty of customers expected it to be true at time of purchase. It's a bit late to change it now without any more complaints about it, people already preordered and bought the unit because of these expectations. Same with expecting the save features to work properly out of the box.

Because the nes was doing the exact same thing. If anything, randomly deleting your saves would make it more like playing on the original hardware.

I don't remember losing any saves using original hardware, besides a few Gameboy games I removed from the system without turning off at all first. I keep my carts and consoles clean and don't have problems with them. These consoles are mostly over 20 years old by now as well.

News flash, there are no ways to prevent the loss of game saves in previous versions of the firmware on the R5 other than NOT using those games in the system, or at the least, never writing save data back to the cartridge and just keeping the data on the system itself.

The R5 isn't perfect, 1.0-1.31 were having enough issues and incrimentally improved but still wasn't really acceptable if you need it more or less all to work. 1.4 is really the first step into making things right.

Yet they released it anyway with that early firmware. I'll just post what I posted when I first got back into this thread.

So the system was released unfinished? Just trying to confirm the overall situation with this thing as a whole.

I'm going with yes. It's sounding like the console is improving compared to how it was at release, but it really should have been this way before it made it's way to customers. Not just with overall game compatibility, but with the whole saving issues.

Was the tape stretched? Maybe the rollers on the tape were sticky from not being used. You can not blame the VCR for eating the first tape, that's bad troubleshooting.

You can if the tape was known to be working properly when used in other VCRs. I'm going to be assuming his games were known to be working properly with other consoles. And usually when VCRs eat tapes, it is because of the VCR rather than the tapes. When belts start to go bad tapes start to get eaten. Or when other parts like gears break in newer VCRs(poor quality VCRs have poor quality parts). Plus when tapes are sticky they usually don't play at all, the VCR just stops as if it got to the end of the spool.

BTW, if the cart ports ARE powered on all the time, it shouldn't hurt the ROMs, and the mappers I would think are too simple to be damaged by it. Only thing I would think that would be damaged would be SRAM.

There is a chance the ROM chips could be damaged when plugged into a system already powered on, it's a slight chance but it can still happen. It's the same with static electricity and handling computer parts.

[Tanooki]

They had no choice but to release it with the firmware it had, so no, it wasn't unfinished. To expect a tiny company like that to buy up probably like 10000 video games over different regions for 10 systems and test that all out up front is just comedy gold. They did what they could with the resources at hand and why is this double standard not slapped on almost all the video game makers on modern systems who shove out guineapigware and slap patches out after the fact when people bitch? It's the same thing, completed system, buggy software.

[Ozzy_98]

I don't remember losing any saves using original hardware, besides a few Gameboy games I removed from the system without turning off at all first. I keep my carts and consoles clean and don't have problems with them. These consoles are mostly over 20 years old by now as well.

Only nes titles were affected, and it is still pretty rare. But sell a million copies of Zelda and everyone reseting without power, and you'll get a whole lot of complaints about it. That's why later Zelda carts had the warning about holding reset, but the first ones didn't. My understanding of the issue is when the power fades on the nes, the CPU in a nut shell goes berserk and can do all sorts of random writes, and has a chance to corrupt a save. The larger the save data, more chance of it being hit. You also have to worry about the memory mapper doing the same thing, since it's the gateway to the SRAM. I've played Zelda a LOT on nes, so I've had this happen more than it should have, most of the time you're safe not holding the reset. But take your save games, and try power cycling the nes 100 times without the reset button held. Chances are fairly good the saves are gone or damaged.

I'm going with yes. It's sounding like the console is improving compared to how it was at release, but it really should have been this way before it made it's way to customers. Not just with overall game compatibility, but with the whole saving issues.

They didn't see the saves erased in their testing else it wouldn't have been released.

You can if the tape was known to be working properly when used in other VCRs.

I work with a lot of networking devices, and we have items called SFPs, they plug into a router or firewall, then you plug the cable into it. So you can have one port on a device that can take single-mode fiber, multi-mode, or copper wires. SFPs are (Generally) compatible between vendors. We have one SFP for Gig/Multimode that works fine in 3 out of 4 devices (A Cisco, a Juniper, and one out of two Fortigates). We have another brand SFP that works in all four. Is the first SFP to blame? Or the Fortigate that doesn't like the SFP the bad device that didn't follow spec? I've seen techs burnt way too many times by the "Well it works here, so my card is good and the router is bad" thought process.

I'll freely admit cause of my background I'm a bit biased, but you shouldn't be trusting your data (saves) to new, 3rd party devices without testing it first. This applies to anything, be it a Retron5, game axe, yobo junk, or even a "new" nes that for all you know has a short in it. Most people are not in that mind set though, so don't over think my comments.

Plus when tapes are sticky they usually don't play at all, the VCR just stops as if it got to the end of the spool.

Depends on how think the tape is, and if it's already been stretched. I've had a few tapes snap over the years.

There is a chance the ROM chips could be damaged when plugged into a system already powered on, it's a slight chance but it can still happen. It's the same with static electricity and handling computer parts.

We're agreeing here, but for ROM chips it's very slight. The nes voltage will be at max 9 volts, while static is many times stronger. ROM chips are much more resistant to static than a CPU, SRAM, PROMs, and the like, cause there's not much in them to overload. SRAM I would think is most susceptible.

[Gameguy]

They had no choice but to release it with the firmware it had, so no, it wasn't unfinished. To expect a tiny company like that to buy up probably like 10000 video games over different regions for 10 systems and test that all out up front is just comedy gold. They did what they could with the resources at hand and why is this double standard not slapped on almost all the video game makers on modern systems who shove out guineapigware and slap patches out after the fact when people bitch? It's the same thing, completed system, buggy software.

I'm going to focus more on the saving issues for now rather than the compatibility issues, I'll address this below. I do feel the same way with patches for current gen games, I complain just as much about them. It's why I like watching Two Best Friends Play, I remember them choosing to play a game without updating it to give the "intended experience" as the developers chose to release the game.

They didn't see the saves erased in their testing else it wouldn't have been released.

I mostly meant the feature to write saves back to the cartridges, at launch this just didn't work. At least the various reviews I've seen or read from launch say that none of the games could have the saves transferred back properly, either not at all or corrupted, or erasing other saves in the process. Don't tell me they never had a single saving game available to them to try this feature out.

Strangely, this feature wasn't even mentioned on their website under features. Yet 100% compatibility is listed as a feature. Weird how they prioritize what features they choose to list. They mention savestates but nothing about transferring saves from or to cartridges at all.

I work with a lot of networking devices, and we have items called SFPs, they plug into a router or firewall, then you plug the cable into it. So you can have one port on a device that can take single-mode fiber, multi-mode, or copper wires. SFPs are (Generally) compatible between vendors. We have one SFP for Gig/Multimode that works fine in 3 out of 4 devices (A Cisco, a Juniper, and one out of two Fortigates). We have another brand SFP that works in all four. Is the first SFP to blame? Or the Fortigate that doesn't like the SFP the bad device that didn't follow spec? I've seen techs burnt way too many times by the "Well it works here, so my card is good and the router is bad" thought process.

I'll freely admit cause of my background I'm a bit biased, but you shouldn't be trusting your data (saves) to new, 3rd party devices without testing it first. This applies to anything, be it a Retron5, game axe, yobo junk, or even a "new" nes that for all you know has a short in it. Most people are not in that mind set though, so don't over think my comments.

It's a bit different with VHS tapes and game cartridges as those are standardized formats, there shouldn't be any compatibility issues. There are more issues with dual layer DVDs and compatibilities with early players than with VHS tapes and players. With sticky tapes, the stickiness prevents the tape from physically moving through the machine, most machines would just stop and eject the tape when it can't advance. The games are all designed to be compatible with original standard console hardware, if a clone or emulator is designed properly it should match the original hardware with compatibility.

The issues you've mentioned caused by an NES console with a short in it would count as a defective console, I'm not sure if you'd want to count the clone systems having the same issues due to the same reason(they're all defective). I do have the same mindset though, to be cautious of any 3rd party device rather than assuming it would just be fine. It's another reason why I just tend to avoid most of them.

Depends on how think the tape is, and if it's already been stretched. I've had a few tapes snap over the years.

Personally I check tapes before I play them, if a tape is starting to mold or is damaged, crinkled, or badly worn I won't attempt to play it. Not unless it's rare or one of a kind and needs to be preserved, though this hasn't actually come up for me yet. Playing damaged tapes can dirty up or damage the video heads so it's not worth the risk. Cheaply made tapes tend to have the problems with breaking down or oxide coming off. I've played several tapes manufactured around 1980 that still play fine so it's not necessarily an age issue, it could be storage issues, as well as some manufacturers made tapes much better than others. If a tape plays through properly in one VCR, it should still play properly in another VCR unless the machine is defective in some way.

Main point is I'm the same way with games, if a game is dirty or has corroded contacts I won't try it out in a console. I'll make sure to clean it first and test it out in a known working console to verify that it's working. If I can't get a game to boot I'll try it in another console before considering it as defective. I'll only use a known working game when testing out a newly acquired console. I'm sure it's the same with how Az tests things, he seems like he's not new to consoles and knows what he's doing.