RetroN5: Hands on first look

[PizzaKat]

Think of the Kool AId Man bursting out of a wall. "Oh ya" cept Oh is pronounced ewww or Ooooo

[kainemaxwell]

So this or an Ouya?

[Satoshi_Matrix]

So this or an Ouya?

That is the golden question isn't it?

On paper, the Ouya outclasses the RetroN5 across the board. Far more powerful machine capable of doing far more and also without spending another additional dime on games. Open source, supported by many developers, non native android apps easily sideloadable, and the size of a rubix cube. Also, the RetorN5 is rumored to be 720p vs 1080p


On the other hand, the RetroN5 is cooler in concept and I have to admit I like the idea of a machine that is capable of playing my retro games on an HDTV and produce HD visuals. I'm just not thrilled that it does so by dumping the carts to roms and then just loading those, essentially making it just a larger more convoluted Ouya. Also, according the OP who [removed by request] everything negative he had to say, it takes upwards of five minutes to dump an 8MB GBA game to make it playable on the RetroN5. If that needs to be done every friggin time, then the Ouya has a massive advantage right there.

Ultimately though, I can't say right now that the Ouya is better than the RetroN5, as I only have what I've been told to go on and haven't yet been able to determine for myself if the RetroN5 is any good or not. All I know is what has been leaked, and given that, the Ouya looks like the better of the two.

You're preaching to the choir, Satoshi. I own one and I agree with you that the Ouya is an emulation dream come true (apart from no AV output, of course). Once I read that emulators for the TG-16 & C64 were available for the Ouya, the decision to buy one was cinched. Between my Ouya, soft modded Wii, and PC all of my emulation needs are, more or less, met. I just think it would be awesome to have a clone that plays both cartridges and roms, and I'm not sure as to how Hyperkin's neck would be on the legal chopping block if it could. Clones already play old Nintendo cartridges and the Ouya plays roms and the Big N's lawyers haven't sued (that I know of) any clone manufacturer or Ouya into oblivion yet.

The Ouya gets away with it given that their emulators are made by independant programmers and also don't charge for them. If Nintendo went after Ouya, the most that they could do would be to take down the N64/GBC/GBA/NDS emulators from the store, not shut down the Ouya. They aren't providing any roms at all, and they even tell you to go download public domain homebrew and not commercial roms.

I don't want to get way way off topic here, but I assume you bean the pce.emu? Have you successfully gotten any TG-16 games to work? Every single rom I try fails. I can play Japanese PC Engine roms, but none of the English releases. Do you have any tips to help?

[treismac]

So this or an Ouya?

The RetroN5 can play games for the NES, SNES, Genesis and their Japanese counterparts plus the Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance. The Ouya can play all of those PLUS games for the Neo Geo, M.A.M.E., Atari 2600, Turbografx-16 (w/ CD game support), Commodore 64, and more. There are other factors to consider, of course, but the ability to play these extra systems I listed plus Ouya's own games is a huge edge that the Ouya has over the RetroN5.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I just want to make it clear that again, I'll be buying a RetroN5 to fully review for you guys. Unlike Retro-Bit, I have no official partership with Hyperkin and have to pay out of pocket for any reviews of their products. Still, this is a case where the interest in the retro gaming community is too strong to ignore. Still, expect a fair and unbiased review. I'm not a big fan of Hyperkin's past product line, but I'm not going to let that influence my assessment of the RetroN5.

[Tanooki]

Other than the v2 of the Supaboy I've got total contempt for their clone consoles, retrobit too, they're junky and fall short. But something about this claiming 100%, GBA being put on it, HDMI that's responsive to old fast twitch 2D games, and the rest makes me take notice. I won't rush out like you, but if I see good things from other owners I'd be in.

[IrishNinja]

looking forward to your review, Satoshi. still, no updates on a release date here?

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I haven't released any press releases from my Hyperkin contact, so no, there is no release date yet.

However, my Retro-Bit contact has told me that the Super Retro Trio is expected to launch mid-to-late March 2014, so if I had to hazard a guess, the RetroN5 won't be too far behind unless Hyperkin wants to give Retro-Bit a good chuck of their potential business.

Of course, I'll be doing a through rundown of the Super Retro Trio and talking about it in great depth in a full review you guys can look forward to.