RetroN5: Hands on first look

[stardust4ever]

I find it (just a bit) strange that more than a few retro gamers on forums are weighing the RetroN5 against Bunnyboy's hdmi NES. One plays NES and Famicom games and the other plays those plus a few other systems. If all you want is the ability to rock NES games hdmi ( yeah, I know, it has the hi score feature too), grab the hdmi NES. If you want to play/emulate other games for other systems too (and other repective features), go R5. While they're similar, they are distinct enough to merit the consideration of separate purchases.

Anyway...

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.

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.

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.