RetroN5: Hands on first look

[Leo_A]

For those who missed it, OP basically stated that he's mostly unhappy with the fact that an android based emulation machine.....is an android based emulation machine. Brilliant.

He never said anything about Android though. He said something about an FPGA which puzzled me since they'd have to have pretty expensive hardware here for such technology to replicate these systems and I thought the driving force behind this was cost reduction by utilizing off the shelf hardware like the Android chipset.

As far as I'm aware, we're still just assuming at this point that this is Android based.

OP claims NES and SNES games dump quickly, but GBA games can take several minutes. I asked if this reoccurs, but never got a response.

He actually did answer you. He said it doesn't reoccur if you leave the game in the system. But if you switch cartridges, that rom image is erased the next time you write a new game to the onboard memory.

I suspect Flashcarts like the Everdrives and Powerpaks probably won't work on the RetroN5 either. Take that, everyone who planned on buying this solely for use with Flashcarts.

I'm glad someone is happy about this even if it's a bizarre stance to take.

My feeling on the matter is that people who plan on buying a RetroN5 solely to play flashcarts are better off with an Ouya - another $99 android based console that will do the same things as the RetroN5, and it would save them the cost of buying the flashcarts + SD/CF cards on top of that. One of the big reasons for the flashcarts over emulation is that you can play the games on the real hardware, but since the RetroN5 is emulation based anyway, the flashcarts advantages over emulators is negated.

I'm hoping this will be hacked. A $100 self contained emulation box able to load rom images and interface with original controllers out of the box would be nice. I want to play original cartridges with a nice picture on a HDTV, but the more useful functionality there is, the better as I see it.

I never saw the need to so narrowly define the "purpose" of the Retron 5 as some have done. The more this does above and beyond what can be achieved with original hardware, like allowing me to use a Sega Genesis arcade stick with NES games and remap my buttons as I desire, the better.

The reason I'm buying this is to accomplish what I can't with original hardware. If this didn't have things like HD output, frankly, I'd just have a passing interest since I have the original hardware here and already setup. It's those extra features that are the reason I'm here for. The less of those it has, the less my interest is.

But for everyone despairing about the RetorN5 due to this, keep in mind that it's possible Hyperkin could perhaps create a placeholder in their database for these flashcarts that would enable them to work on the RetroN5.

A placeholder?

If this dumps roms, the Retron 5 not having a database entry for something like the Super Everdrive is the least of its worries. And the best we could hope for, as I see it, would be having it work like StoneAgeGamer said with it serving as a pre-defined game.