RetroN 5 is officially a thing, apparently

[Rickstilwell1]

You're getting the Hyperkin Retron5 confused with RetroBit's Super Retro Trio.

The Retorn5 will do GB/GBC/GBA through it's own dedicated slot. It's Retrobit's clone that will seemingly do GBA games through the SNES slot. But it's unknown at this point exactly how that will work. There's been absolutely nothing said about The Super Retro Trio supporting GB or GBC games, nor have they said anything about it working with the original SNES hardware. It might be something that only the Retro Trio uses.

If I had to guess? The GBA adapter RetroBit announced will not work with GB/GBC, only GBA. It will work like the RetroPort that comes with the RetroDuo Portable does - supply video feed only though the clone and not to the original SNES hardware. This will mean the adapter will be useless on anything but the Retro Trio clone.

Of course, that too is speculation. Nothing has been said or shown yet.

No, I wasn't talking about the Retrobit clone, I was talking about the legit Super Game Boy made by Nintendo. It works on all SNES clones already. So all you need BC in the GBA slot for on the Retron 5 really is GBC games that the SGB doesn't work with, unless you don't already have a SGB.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Unless Hyperkin does something crazy, I think it's safe to assume the Retron5 will be running a reverse engineered emulation of the GBA's bios which contains the old GBC kernel. This will mean that the Retron5 will detect GBC or GB games in GBC mode, making GBC games play completely correctly, and GB games to use a fixed pallet.

Unless they pull some emulation magic (they might!) Super GameBoy enhanced games won't play on the Retorn5. Only the GBC mode. Here's the difference I mean with Kirby's Dreamland 2.

Here's SGB mode:


and here's various GBC modes.

[Jimmy Yakapucci]

I probably have one of the least common reasons for owning one of the multi-systems. I believe that the one that I have now is the Retron3. I don't really use it much for playing games for extended periods, but it is a great tool for testing out games after buying stuff and yard sales/flea markets. It allows me to test games for 3 different systems without having a bunch of stuff hooked up.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

the flaw in that thinking is that the Retorn3 isn't 100% compatible with every game. So you could buy a game, then it doesn't work on the Retron3, and think there's something wrong with your game.

[Manga4life]

Now, if only the Retron5 had a way to de-Jap the games so we could play them with American (or even someone American) lettering than that would be a massive reason to buy the system. I've always wanted to play Japanese games but I didn't like the idea of doing so in Japanese, maybe a console will come out with the technology to do this someday.......?

[Polygon]

That's an interesting notion... a built in translator. It would be cool, but I don't see that ever happening.

[Jimmy Yakapucci]

the flaw in that thinking is that the Retorn3 isn't 100% compatible with every game. So you could buy a game, then it doesn't work on the Retron3, and think there's something wrong with your game.

True, but the list of games that don't work is pretty much a known issue. Also, I always double check ones that don't work on another system whether I am testing on original hardware or the Retron3.

[Akito01]

True, but the list of games that don't work is pretty much a known issue. Also, I always double check ones that don't work on another system whether I am testing on original hardware or the Retron3.

And to add to that, at least in my case, my original NES has become increasingly cranky, despite having cleaned the contacts and installed a new pin connector from the Nintendo Repair Shop. While my RetroN3 v2 may not play back NES sound 100% correctly, it does at least play all my NES carts on the first try. If I were going by my NES entirely, I'd be convinced that my recently acquired copy of Contra was a dud, but it works perfectly fine on both my FC Mobile 2 and RetroN3.

I guess this is another argument in favor of clones; stuff breaks down over time. My NES is the same unit I've had since the end of high school, and I like to think I've taken care of it well, but stuff just happens over time no matter what you do or what steps you take. I'd bum me out not to have a player for the collection of NES carts I have kicking around.

[TheRetroVideoGameAddict]

Hmmmm,

I'm a fan of original hardware and will continue to use my original NES hardware, but this is kind of a neat idea since it offers save states and GBA support. I guess I'll be checking this thing out when it hits shelves, I really like the idea of clone consoles and how they're combining things, sure they are never 100% compatible with the games but at least someone is out there trying to keep the medium going from a hardware perspective. So yeah, take my money.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Now, if only the Retron5 had a way to de-Jap the games so we could play them with American (or even someone American) lettering than that would be a massive reason to buy the system. I've always wanted to play Japanese games but I didn't like the idea of doing so in Japanese, maybe a console will come out with the technology to do this someday.......?

You're talking pure fantasy. The "technology" to do something like this is fan translators and skilled programmers. When it comes to retro games, translation projects are massive undertakings. It's not a simple matter of translating raw text. Often icons are written with kanji.

For example, a icon for a text box might be two characters long and read 女子. In english, that means Little girl. How do you reduce little girl to two characters? Beyond physical space, you also have run into the issue of space in RAM. Because Japanese is based on sounds and not letters, you can express entire ideas in far fewer characters, and the strings that make up lines of dialogue are therefore far shorter. This is why RPGs especially are a nightmare. The famous Final Fantasy III (SNES) had to have its script reduced by a third so it could fit. The Japanese Final Fantasy VI contains far more dialogue.

Depending on compression, a great many of the classic 8 and 16 bit Japanese games out there just do not have the capacity for the lengthy English script without being rewritten as basically new games.

And then even if you do end up with a translation, you need to adapt it to work in English. Most Japanese games use Japanese cultural references and names, and have phrases seldom used in English. For example, the Japanese way of saying "let's go to the park" would be more akin to "won't we go to the park" or "shall we not go to the park". how you translate this makes a difference in capturing the reader's attention. Do you translate something as is, add your own cultural jokes, [Working Designs and the Lunar games] or do you just add whatever you want like DeJap did with their Tales of Phantasia translation:




Sorry to burst your bubble, but "auto translations" are absolutely impossible.

[Cryog]

Hyperkin RetroN5 Demo at Giant Robot Game Night - Outdoor Projector Gameplay

http://digthatbox.com/ - This evening we got a sneak peak at the new Hyperkin Retro N5 game console. This exciting new device supports cartridges from five different game consoles! Wow! It also has a robust, feature packed GUI that goes well beyond anything we've seen on previous retro consoles. Of course since the device is set for debut at the E3 Expo in June, the console itself was concealed inside a mysterious black box. However, gamers from across LA got their chance to sample a number of games, the most popular being Street Fighter II, which drew quite a crowd of onlookers. We're very excited about the final release of the Hyperkin Retro N5 and we look forward to bringing you more news on this console in the coming weeks.

Thanks to Hyperkin and everyone at Giant Robot for hosting this great event!





For more videos: https://www.youtube.com/DigThatBoxRETRO

[Ed Oscuro]

You're talking pure fantasy. The "technology" to do something like this is fan translators and skilled programmers.

Have you seen the way AGTH works?

NES games are far more primitive than Windows games which generally have reliable methods of hooking into text-related Windows calls. However, there's also not a lot of data in a NES game. With another screen set up to the side, or maybe windowing, it might be possible to intercept characters, maybe even have the user pick out areas of memory if they are reused often for text-related functions.

However there would be another problem - many games using hirigana, which I don't know how a translator would handle, and of course the fact that many characters use graphics instead of some kind of accepted codes for Japanese characters. Using the code the game internally uses to represent a character might be worthless, and of course the graphic would need to be OCR'd or otherwise matched up against a reference.

Doesn't seem impossible, but still more difficult than even translating regular games. However, given that there's not a lot going on with the NES in terms of data, it should be a reasonable place to start.

[Ed Oscuro]

Expanding on the above a bit -

Japanese is based on sounds and not letters,

This is contradicting what you mention earlier - kanji. Meanings are conveyed in text in a relatively precise form with the use of kanji. Understanding spoken Japanese requires analyzing and understanding context, but the bare sounds are still understood to represent a definite thing - the sounds are just the way of saying them. Aside from cases where words are only written using the syllabary (kana), and ignoring the importance of context for a moment, conveying a specific meaning requires kanji. So saying the "sounds" are what Japanese is based off is as incomplete a description as saying that English is based on sounds, or that math is based on integers. This description is helpful as a component of what Japanese is about; the same sounds can represent different meanings.

It's preferable to write Japanese using kanji characters, and today all computing devices (absent perhaps some really primitive embedded systems) have enough capability to do it this way. However, in the past there were three main methods:

1.) Using standard codes to represent phonetic characters (and even so there are many types, and many systems are incomplete, i.e. half-width kana, which only gives a phonetic system, and no characters with precise meanings); with luck this can be translated, but the tendency of Japanese written phonetically to be very context-based makes translation a bit more difficult - of course, online translation should be getting better at this kind of thing.
2.) Using a code to represent phonetic characters and some of the most common kanji (some older computers), to be displayed from ROM - an expensive solution; kanji ROMs in MSX2 machines vary from 128KB to at least 256KB like in my Sony HB-F1XDJ or the XV; supplying even 16KB of ROM in the Famicom would have been absolutely prohibitive in cost, and would have required a motherboard size closer to a workstation, if not larger. (Look at the size of ROM boards on old games like NARC.) Again, though, there is at least a standard to work from.
3.) Using a code chosen by the programmers to represent a graphics character which looks like a character - again, the size limitations make kana the most obvious choice; depending on the graphics space available on the game ROM, a few kanji might be supplied, mapped in the same way. The programmer might use a standard code which can be picked out with ease with a translator, but then again they might not. They might also use a hybrid of a standard code, and something non-standard to map in the few kanji used. It would be best in this case to work from the characters in ROM or even pull them directly off the screen.

#3 is the option most console games use.

you can express entire ideas in far fewer characters, and the strings that make up lines of dialogue are therefore far shorter. This is why RPGs especially are a nightmare.

Again, see AGTH above. If you limit yourself to on-screen text replacement, at the same resolution, and even in the same amount of RAM or ROM, well, it could be a problem. However, a window to the side, or tricks with hiding layers and a toggled high-resolution overlay generated by the computer could do well. As soon as you forget about the in-ROM translation method - which is unavoidable when running on the original hardware - more options become available.

Depending on compression, a great many of the classic 8 and 16 bit Japanese games out there just do not have the capacity for the lengthy English script without being rewritten as basically new games.

Agreed, which is all the more reason not to think about this in artificially limited terms.

It will be a great long while before we have computers smart enough to translate and present old game ROMs "in real time." I don't think it requires AI and it might even be possible to run a short tool over a ROM to spit out a translated script - and in some cases maybe a really clever program might even be able to fit translation into the ROM itself, as the traditional ROM translations have tried to do. But this is really asking too much.

It should be mentioned that a lot of Japanese game text is less dense than assumed, because early games typically do not have kanji at all, or use it very sparingly. Although this means that words must be figured out by context, it also means that words are written out in a way closer to English - character-by-character, rather than just having a kanji which takes the place of multiple syllables.

[ApolloBoy]

http://digthatbox.com/ - This evening we got a sneak peak at the new Hyperkin Retro N5 game console. This exciting new device supports cartridges from five different game consoles! Wow! It also has a robust, feature packed GUI that goes well beyond anything we've seen on previous retro consoles. Of course since the device is set for debut at the E3 Expo in June, the console itself was concealed inside a mysterious black box. However, gamers from across LA got their chance to sample a number of games, the most popular being Street Fighter II, which drew quite a crowd of onlookers. We're very excited about the final release of the Hyperkin Retro N5 and we look forward to bringing you more news on this console in the coming weeks.

You're posting a forum, no need to sound like a press release.

[Cryog]

I only copy/paste the info of this videos.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Have you seen the way AGTH works? etc.

Well that's an interesting starting point for sure, but far from flawless and complete. It would still take dozens of hours of translation work plus programming time. My point was there is no auto-solution. I'm well aware of the problems when hiragana, katakana and sometimes kanji get mixed up. Most Famicom and even Super Famicom games use only hiragana and katakana without any kanji, and while that does help, spacing and such for English characters is still a major issue.

Also, compression - apparently, the reason the great Famicom RPG Lagrange Point hasn't been fully translated yet is because the translator has simply run out of space to add the English text because of how the game is compressed. I'm really hoping something will be figured out as it is one of the better RPGs on the Famicom, but it just goes to further emphasis my point on the difficulty of translation and how absurd it is that Hyperkin could add in something to automatically translate Japanese games. Maybe someday, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

[MarioMania]

Can the Retron5 play

Castlevania 3 - NES
Virtua Racing - Genesis
Power Base Converter - Genesis
NES EverDrive ..PowerPak??

[treismac]

Can the Retron5 play

Castlevania 3 - NES
Akumajō Densetsu - Famicom
Virtua Racing - Genesis
Power Base Converter - Genesis
NES EverDrive ..PowerPak??

There. Fixed your list for you.

[Tanooki]

Fixed list or not it's a valid concern but I think the Famicom Konami VRC4/6 games like Gradius II and Castlevania 3 with their added audio would be nice to know if that picks up as well.

I'm holding out to see the compatibility as I have no issue with sub $100 price if it all runs great.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

Hyperkin has already said the Retron5 will be firmware upgradeable, so even if there ARE compatibility issues at launch, this is the only clone in existence that has the possibility of those issues being resolved without you having to go buy another one when they do a motherboard revision. If I had to hazard a guess, I think they'll probably get MMC5 games like Castlevania 3 working, but Akumajou Densetsu and other Famicom support will have less R&D.