The overwhelming probability is that you have nothing at all to worry about. You are worried about the effects of reversed duty cycles from bad NOAC based clones. The RetroN5 is an Android based emulation box. The NES emulator the RetroN5 runs is almost certain to be based on the Android version of FCEUX, just like the Ouya. I would be incredibly surprised if this wasn't the case.Originally Posted by NESter
check out my classic gaming review site: http://satoshimatrix.wordpress.com/
The price difference might well be enough to where someone who only wants to play NES games would still go with the R5. Is there a price quote for the hdmi NES yet? Well over $100 I would imagine.
I hope you're right. There are probably some uber-2A03-geeks that would say even FCEUX falls short of hardware accuracy, but it's always sounded perfect to me. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have confirmation from someone who's played around with the Retron, eh?
Last year after repeated requests bunny said that 'hopefully' the hdmi nes will be $150 or less. Things change and that was like last Fall so I have no idea if that changed since. $150 for a 'new' FPGA NES with that scoreboard thing and 4 controller ports isn't such a bad thing, but to the average consumer if both sat on a shelf side by side 'looks' aside the Retron would win out being maybe $50 less and running more than just NES stuff. One thing people fail to realize is these are gaming boards or at NA collecting then gamer boards and reality is different for them than the retail guy who doesn't give a crap.
Back on topic again, even though the derail was partially my fault.
Due to Mapper hell, there are a great number of modern NES homebrews as well as obscure one-off unlicensed, famicom, and pirate games that will not work with Retron5, especially RetroUSB's newer "UNROM" games that use flash. Even if the Retron5 is updated to detect common mappers for unknown games through heuristics, it still won't be able to dump games that aren't compatible with or have added functionality compared to existing iNES mappers. I can assure you that both consoles are on my radar. Combining save states with cheats, at least for me there's a lot of otherwise inaccessible NES games (for instance the entire Megaman series b/c I can't play them worth sh!t) that will be playable with enhancements on the Retron. I may even repurchase Megaman 2. I'm pretty sure I could lick this game and others with just infinite health + save states.
Brian's HDMI NES will be a cycle perfect NES clone with 100% compatibility with all current and future games. If someone finds a bug, rest assured Brian cares enough about quality that he will patch it via firmware update. I imagine Hyperkin may not be bothered to add mapper support for some obscure famicom or homebrew mapper that only half a dozen gamers worldwide give a flying flip about. Brian will as he specifically caters to the hardcore NES crowd.
I'm guessing $150-$160 for the HDMI NES. Brian did quote $150, but the profit margin depends on how many he sells. If he sells only a hundred or so, he'll go broke; if he sells ten thousand or more, he'll have an early retirement. Also, more HDMI emulation clones will likely follow in the coming years, so chances are someday if production ceases, the HDMI NES will be far more valuable than the Retron5 (& up) as a collector's item. Of course that's not why I'm buying it as I intend to use it. Scoreboard is just the icing on the cake. Even if I'm not a competitive gamer, I can still look at the scoreboard and say, "I'm in the top 50% of scores, so I'm not quite as bad as I thought." I hope the HDMI NES is successful because that will open the door for more people to produce FPGA clones for other systems. Brian already has stated that he's not interested in doing the SNES or N64. IMHO, the N64 is in dire need of an HDMI facelift, more than any other console, except perhaps the Atari VCS (which looks like ass if it even displays at all on modern HD sets). Back to the point, I was blown away by how beautiful the graphics were when I emulated Mario 64 for the first time at 1280x1024 and could see every single brick in Peach's Castle. Assuming FPGA chips continue to become faster and cheaper, an HDMI N64 would be a God-send. 100Mhz+ FPGAs are probably right around the corner. N64 FPGA would totally be doable with an external RAM chip, especially with DIP switch settings for massive overclocking built right into the console. Combine that with built save states and a Game Shark / debugger that won't crash and brick itself. I'd pay $200 easy for such a console. Also Hyperkin is planning an announcement at e3 regarding the N64 system. I hope and pray it's a new clone console or preferably a new add-on dongle for the Retron5. Even if it's only 720p, it would look light years better than the blurry graphics in the original hardware. Just look how gorgeous the N64 Virtual Console games were on Wii at 480p. It gave me upgraded graphics and a far more comfortable controller to boot. I'd gladly pay for such an experience with retro carts on new hardware.
Last edited by stardust4ever; 03-23-2014 at 06:05 PM.
I have stated before the sound and video of the R5 is its best attributes. I am sure there are some RGB/HDMI mods that look really good, but this is the best I have seen some of these classics look on modern TVs. This is of course only an opinion, I am not as anal about sound as others, but from my experience and everyone here at SAG that has used it was that it looks and sounds good.
The fact that it's an emulator, the waves will be shaped properly for the most part with no glaring omissions, however sound will probably be sampled at 44100Hz or 48000Hz or some other rate, rather the NES's native 1.79Mhz digital clock pulses which are meticulously shaped into an analog waveform by resistor ladders and analog low-pass filters. This won't matter since humans cannot hear sounds above 18-20kHz and the sample rate will be adequate to reproduce the full audible range. Also, the waveforms on the original systems usually have some form of analog distortion. The squares and Rectangles aren't perfect waveforms when viewed on an oscilloscope. NES triangle waves have certain harmonics created by high frequency ripples, that may not be accurately reproduced if the the emulator waveforms are too perfect. This often means emulators can generate a cleaner sounding tone with less distortion compared to the original system. There is also no analog noise floor or AC line buzz since there are no analog circuits and everything is reproduced digitally. That's definitely the case with the official Wii VC emulators since some of the unintentional harmonics (due to high frequency distortion) and low level noise associated with the original system are missing. It is often difficult to emulate the exact analog distortion and noise patterns often associated with vintage systems. Whether a cleaner noise free sound is desirable or not is up to the gamer's personal preference, but I believe most casual users would probably prefer a cleaner sound, just as composite video or RF artifacts are undesirable on HD video displays. I know my Model 1 Genesis sounds a bit grungy (it sounds as if it's entire audio output were passed through a hard rock guitar pedal), especially through the RF connection, so I would welcome a cleaner less distorted sound than the stock Genesis console. I would imagine having cleaner A/V than the original systems in question is part of the appeal of playing them on an HD console. To sum it up, the sound and video on an HD emulator will not be identical to the original console; they will look and sound better. Personally, I don't consider the elimination of A/V noise and distortion to be a bug. If you want an exact reproduction, buy one of those expensive HD upscalers to use with the original analog 240p hardware instead.
Last edited by stardust4ever; 03-23-2014 at 08:35 PM.
The "bricks," the "bricks," always with the bricks.
Yes, being able to play current gen console games on a PC in high definition was pretty mind-blowing in 1999. 3D gaming was still fairly new at the time. Nobody gives a flip in 2014 but firing up M64 in the HLE emulator for the first time 15 years ago and watching the opening sequence with the flying Likatu cam in HD was absolutely breathtaking to say the least.The "bricks," the "bricks," always with the bricks.
Last edited by stardust4ever; 03-23-2014 at 09:17 PM.
Stardust got you there as it really was stunning as was wave race.
A little late coming back, but I did get a confirmation from Hyperkin a week or so ago: "To answer your question, the RetroN 5 will be able to play Japanese Mega Drive cartridges."
Since it dumps roms, I'm wondering if it will fix this problem...
On the original snes, my Star Fox has some video issues. The game plays fine, but there are clear purple line blurs on the screen while it's happening. If the R5 just dumps the rom, would that eliminate this problem?
Sweet. Thanks for putting my fears to rest!
Interesting. You seem to know an awful lot about the NES' sound hardware. Do you know of any emulators that have tried to reproduce the AC line buzz or analog noise? I don't think its something I'd ever miss, but you're right that its definitely part of the original experience.
There were N64 emus that could even make it that far into the game without crashing in 1999? Incredible, even more so if you were able to play the whole game. 15 years on and N64 emulation is still not at the same level as NES or SNES. I just don't mess with it, because there doesn't seem to be any one emulator and plugin set that can run any commercial ROM, and that's ridiculous considering this console almost two decades old now. I can't even run Conker's BFD on my should-be-more-than-adequate PC without encountering framerate issues or missing/late texture updates.
Since it's an emulator sending a high quality video signal to your TV, there shouldn't be any artifacts or screen interference that isn't already part of the game.
Last edited by NESter; 03-24-2014 at 03:01 PM.
@NESster: The PC I was using I had custom built in 1999. I had upgraded from 128Mb to 256Mb of RAM, but other than that it was 100% 1999 parts. 400Mhz Celeron and an AGP ATI All-In-Wonder with 16Mb of vedeo RAM. It may have been 2000 or 2001 or later when I ran the Emulator but the N64 was definitely in it's Twilight years at the time. The emulator still ran at full peed despite my outdated PC. I did not own an N64 at the time but remembered my buddies played it a lot in High School. Anyway the only ROMs I remembered getting to work on it were Mario64 and MarioKart. I don't remember the name of the EMU but it had an auto-configuration for the Adaptoid in it. Both games had a variety of graphical isses but they were playable using a real controller with the Adaptoid.
As for the NES sound, I don't know how close the Retron5 will be to the original. As long as the rectangles, triangles, and other channels are proportional and play at the correct pitch and volume, I'm good. The analog noise floor is something no emulator emulates correctly, but it's only noticable during silent moments with the volume turned up on the original NES. Wii's Virtual Console omits the high frequency ripples in the NES triangle waves but most other emulators I've used reproduce this effect to varying degrees. Even stock the NES sound was surprizing clean for an 8-bit console, definitely less noisy than the gut-wrenching aidio/visual from the TIA chip on the Atari 2600/7800, and NES is even clearer sound than the Sega Genesis Model 1 (Genesis model 1 gets the cleanest sound output from the 1/8" minijack set to volume 5 and outputted directly to a HiFi sound system - the DIN jack mono A/V and RF sound is somewhat distorted with the RF being the worse of the two). I actually prefer the raw chip synths of the Genesis over MIDI synths of the SNES but it depends on the musical style. SNES is far better for orchestral sound but that is another topic completely. 1st party games seemed to bring out the best out of the soundchips of both 16-bit systems. Zelda, SMRPG, Yoshi's Island, as well all the Sonics have some of the best music IMO on their respective 16-bit platforms.
Another issue I'd like to bring up regarding video is that many games had graphical artifacts native to their own hardware. I remember when SMB3 came out on Virtual Console people complained the game had buggy graphical artifacts on the edge of the screen which did not appear back in the day on their original hardware. Fact is, it did but overscan covered it up. SMB3 featured diagonal scrolling despite the fact the NES was only designed with horizontal or vertical scrolling in mind, not both. Every screen is mirrored either horizontally or vertically in the PPU RAM and a vertical offset is specified every frame while a horizontal offset can be specified every scanline. This was used in some advanced games for faux parallax scrolling effects, but in SMB3 levels where the stage was taller than one screen and permitted diagonal scrolling, a single tile of BGM graphics would wrap around between the right and left hand edges of the screen causing between 1-7 pixels of sprite tearing on the far left edge. Vintage CRTs typically hid the artifacts in their overscan regions, so the artifacts were output by the NES hardware but not displayed on most screens. Modern HDTVs display these edge artifacts in Wii VC emulator and will also display them the Retron5. Once again casual gamers and people who don't know any better are gonna gripe about these graphical glitches/artifacts in the games when played back on the Wii VC or the Retron5, despite the fact they have always been there, even on original hardware. Just like on a real N64, you can see through the walls when the cam gets stuck behind them, an emulator will do the same thing. Any game that truly pushed beyond the boundaries of any hardware platform is going to have some sort of artifacts or frame rate or other limitations. If an emulator reflects this it is not bad or glitchy emulation, but accurate emulation. Any emulators that attempt to patch up these native artifacts in a particular game are only gonna break something in a different game. And I certainly hope we are beyond the dark ages of inaccurate emulators, which rather than attempt to improve overall accuracy, would routinely release game specific patches to get problem games to work. That's so 1990s... Anyone actually still use Nesticle or UltraHLE? Didn't think so!
Last edited by stardust4ever; 03-24-2014 at 05:19 PM.
UltraHLE came out in 1999 and it was mind blowing out of nowhere at the time. I was on IRC at the time neck deep into the whole emulation thing on the NES more than I'd want to admit with things, and when it dropped people flipped out. People split into two camps of warez that shit, and the others who would ban people on sight for asking for N64 games (which is ultimately what happened for a good stretch) as it was straight up warez and Nintendo was and always have been dicks about piracy. The unique thing with this is that it's a high level emulation program, it doesn't shoot for accuracy in the least bit and uses any cheat in the book to halfassedly get things going at amazing speeds on hardware that should just suck hard with it and in general not function at all. In that year I was rolling with a Celeron 466 machine with not that much ram and a middle of the road video card and I could play Mario, Wave Race, Zelda, Bomberman and some others in high resolution (640x480) visuals and the audio was pretty damn stable and sounding right too.
It's a cheat though when you go that way you throw a lot under the bus with assumptions on how stuff works and you throw variables at the wall and see what sticks or not on what functions. It only had that one release yet a community popped up that kept updating the initialization files for it as it allowed more and more games that didn't work in the stock release to work and in some cases be fully playable.
You can read up on the technical info of it at the original emulators release site which is amazingly still online.
http://www.emuunlim.com/UltraHLE/main.htm
So what's the word? I haven't posted here in over a week, so I'm a little behind. Is there any word of an official release date, since we're so close to April now?
Yep, that's probably what I had. My top of the line ATI video card was no doubt what allowed me to play it at 1280x1024 without slowing to a crawl.
Sounds about right for 1999, the year I graduated high school and moved off to college!January 29th 1999
Epsilon and RealityMan proudly bring to you what will no
doubt be one of the emulation releases of 1999....
UltraHLE - The worlds first Nintendo 64 Emulator
with support for real commercial games.
The goal of UltraHLE is not to run as many titles as possible.
It is to run the best titles as well as possible. Now you can
play some of the biggest titles released for the Nintendo 64.....
...... Super Mario 64 ......
...... Mario Kart ......
...... Zelda: Ocarina of Time ......
...... and many more ......
Check the Compatibility List for your favorite title and also take
a look at the download page for system requirements.
UltraHLE makes full use of Glide enabled graphics card to
give you smooth, clear and sharp graphics and with a minimum
requirement of a Pentium II running at 233Mhz with 32 Mb Ram,
many of you will be able to enjoy using this emulator.
And when we say smooth, we mean it. On a Pentium II 350Mhz
you can get _30fps_ in Super Mario and Mario Kart most of the
time, even when sound is disabled.
Now, thats realtime performance......
Back on topic, I heard some ranting online that there was another delay, but here's hoping that it's just disgruntled fanboys blowing smoke outta their butts.
I'm not cancelling my preorder with Stone Age Game anytime soon (especially since I redeemed a fat coupon code), but as the old saying goes, "Third strike you're out!" If Hyperkin delays this again, they've really "screwed the pooch" with a lot of gamers, so to speak.
Pretty much my reaction to this, replace "OP" with "Hyperkin:"
That said, I will buy one of these ASAP.
Yep, that's probably what I had. My top of the line ATI video card was no doubt what allowed me to play it at 1280x1024 without slowing to a crawl.
Sounds about right for 1999, the year I graduated high school and moved off to college!You guys are really blowing my mind with all of this. I remember struggling with all
the alleged N64 emulators that we're floating around the web in 97, and early 98, which was probably before I had a real N64, and I couldn't get Super
Mario 64.v64 to boot no matter what. Since 64 emulation is still far from perfect, I assumed all these years that the most popular games weren't playable till sometime in the early 2000s, or that at least you'd have needed a superpowered PC to play Ocarina of Time. In 1999 emulators like Genecyst and ZSNES were still impressive, so Ultra HLE must have been mind-blowing indeed!
I don't remember Bloodlust releasing patches for specific games, but I think the team behind Dolphin does that. At least, certain revisions seem to work better with certain Wii games than others.That's so 1990s... Anyone actually still use Nesticle or UltraHLE? Didn't think so!
Actually, I'd kill for Sardu (or whoever) to release a new version of Nesticle.
It'd probably have to be recoded from the ground up, but it was always the most emulator to use because of its "view graphics table"
function. You could actually edit the graphics mid-gameplay and save to the ROM
(assuming there was a VROM for the emu to write to)! Sardu was a genius.
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