RetroN5: Hands on first look

[stardust4ever]

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!

Irregardless of what anybody thinks about the N64 low resolution polygons and textures, they still look good in HD, even today...

If the alluded N64 announcement by Hyperkin has anything to do with a Retron5 add-on, I will be one happy camper!

Hyperkin, if you're reading this, here's some inspiration for you:

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.

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.

Ah, yes, some of the earliest ROM hacking was done with Nesticle. I remember DOS-based Genecyst and ZSNES too. They'd probably still run under DOXbox in Windows 8. What's funny was one particular version of the Genecyst EXE was exactly 666,666 bytes, and the cursor had blood dripping off it.

[Niku-Sama]

zsnes was my fave, they made a windows version but I never liked it much, dos version was so much better

[NESter]

Irregardless of what anybody thinks about the N64 low resolution polygons and textures, they still look good in HD, even today...

If the alluded N64 announcement by Hyperkin has anything to do with a Retron5 add-on, I will be one happy camper!

If Hyperkin is smart, they'll have included an expansion port somewhere on the system.

Ah yes, some of the earliest ROM hacking was done with Nesticle. I remember DOS-based Genecyst and ZSNES too. They'd probably still run under DOXbox in Windows 8. What's funny was one particular version of the Genecyst EXE was exactly 666,666 bytes, and the cursor had blood dripping off it.

666,666 bytes? I'm sure that was intentional on Bloodlust's part. And yeah, most early ROM hacking was done with Nesticle. Programs like Tile Layer Pro were useful if you needed to copy a sprite and paste it somewhere else, and later apps that let you import your own NES-friendly graphics into the game were definitely cool, but in
my mind NES ROM hacking never got easier and more instantly gratifying than with Nesticle.

Instead of being forced to face this



and either re-arrange it, or edit it by trial and error, guessing blindly which parts of the logo you were working on, you could easily locate whichever tile needed editing in Nesticle simply by poking "holes" in them one by one until something on the screen changed. Any tile set could be edited as long as it was currently in memory, and although it was still a trial and error process, it was far less time consuming, particularly in games with complex, disorganized graphics tables. The only weaknesses were the game you wanted to hack had to have a VROM, and you couldn't copy and paste tile data. The latter is something that would definitely be needed if anyone ever decided to integrate CHR editing in an emulator.

Man, now I'm feeling nostalgic for all the funny and weird ROM hacks we used to play in the old days of the NES scene. Stuff like Atario Bros., and the Carnage series. Anyone else think back fondly on those days, or were a part of that scene?

zsnes was my fave, they made a windows version but I never liked it much, dos version was so much better

Yeah, not only was the DOS version of ZSNES cooler looking, it's still more stable too. As a whole I find old DOS programs are incredibly stable. Even in DOSBox I don't think I can remember ever having a program crash on me.

[Tanooki]

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.

Believe it or not he's kind of a really horrible person, or at least was back in the 00s. Around the time he quit working on that immaturely themed emulator he got hired by Electronic Arts and worked on a few projects. I was around him at an E3 early in that decade in the Nintendo booth and that guy is one walking egomaniac and not all that bright either. He can code sure, but it was discovered back in the 90s that he didn't actually code the emulator but stole the code from another pay emulator and then tweaked it and threw his lame front end on it to take credit for the work. Once he got found out by hackers/coders looking over the program he got super butthurt over it, went into denial mode and closed up shop. The guy who stole from Marat invented iNES and the .NES format and that wouldn't surprise me if it were still supported since he can get a few bucks off it if he's lucky.

[NESter]

Believe it or not he's kind of a really horrible person, or at least was back in the 00s.

I can believe that. As much I loved Genecyst and Nesticle, even as as teenager I thought that only an immature person could come up with names like "Nesticle" and "Genecyst" for their emulators, and have a company mascot (shown in the "About" screen in certain releases of Nesticle) called "Shitman".

Around the time he quit working on that immaturely themed emulator he got hired by Electronic Arts and worked on a few projects. I was around him at an E3 early in that decade in the Nintendo booth and that guy is one walking egomaniac and not all that bright either. He can code sure, but it was discovered back in the 90s that he didn't actually code the emulator but stole the code from another pay emulator and then tweaked it and threw his lame front end on it to take credit for the work. Once he got found out by hackers/coders looking over the program he got super butthurt over it, went into denial mode and closed up shop. The guy who stole from Marat invented iNES and the .NES format and that wouldn't surprise me if it were still supported since he can get a few bucks off it if he's lucky.

I don't know...he may be an a-hole but of all the things to hold against Sardu, I don't think stealing from Marat Fayzullin should be one of them. True that the guy invented the NES format, but 1) he was charging people to use his emulator at a time when the legality of such an action was a very gray area. In fact, the makers of Bleem! were forced to discontinue their product just a few years later, so isn't Marat lucky to have made any money from all his work instead of being sued or issued a Cease and Desist by Nintendo? 2) ....someone was bound to steal from him eventually. Nesticle really popularized NES emulation and made it accessible to your average person who couldn't afford to give Marat $40 just to see if they could run Zelda II on their PC. I don't mean to sound ungrateful or to understate his contributions to NES emulation; he and the Japanese guy behind Pasofami really are the ones that started it all. But I'm glad Sardu brought NES emulation to the masses, even if he did steal some code from Marat. And I don't know how much of it could have been Marat's because, for one thing, IIRC Nesticle was being updated much more regularly than iNES, with compatibility issues being fixed with every new release, and also, I think the release of Genecyst showed that Sardu could definitely code an emulator from scratch (were there any Genesis emulators before his? I could be wrong, but I think he was first).

EDIT: And, according to Zophar of Zophar's Domain, that's not how it went down at all. Nesticle was accused of being an iNES rip-off, but read the article if you want to know what is more likely to be the true story of why Nesticle was discontinued. I mean, if you can't trust the guy who founded the premiere emu site to give it to you straight, who can you? At least, I don't know what Zophar would gain by not honestly reporting the details of what happened between Mindrape and Sardu.

[stardust4ever]

^^Nice backstory Nester! Yeah emulation has always been gray area, but outside of officially sanctioned emulation (Wii Virtual Console for instance), charging for an emulator to play pirated (or homebrew) ROMs just seems like a dick move, espevially during a time period when legal homebrew or PD ROMs were non-existant. I stil need to read up on the history of the iNES format a bit. Sure it's outdated and has a few quirks, but it works and there are still a few unallocated mappers available for future use. A number of people tried to push the Unif or whatever it was called format which used board descriptions instead of headers and had other additional features that iNES did not support, but all hope for a more unified format appears to have died out. It would also have been much more difficult to support on flash carts due to the variable header size. At any rate I believe iNES is here to stay for some time yet. And I wasn't trying to diss Nesticle but it does serve an important place in history for better or worse.

Homebrews, hacks, repros, ect, and even the Upcoming Retron5 would have been impossible without software like Nesticle laying the groundwork for future retro development. Cheers...

[Tanooki]

NESter I'm not holding it against Sardu -- it was factually proven that he took an older version of iNES at the time where the source was leaked online (ie: stolen) and then used it to copycat all that into Nesticle. From there he added his crappy front end with all the immature potty humor to it, added his other little filters and tweaks and pretended it was his. Once he got caught, the whining went into overdrive trying to deny it and when backed into a corner, he quit.

So yes, he's a thieving asshole.

Marat charging for iNES sucked, I won't argue that, but I will argue that it was legal. The nerd if anything knew his processors and coded for stuff so he created that entirely on his own. Emulators aren't illegal unless you use stolen documentation from whatever you're emulating to create it. If you legally reverse engineer it, you're fine, and that's what he did so he had every right to charge for it as a 'tool' which is what it was. bleem! got busted as they were using Sony tech in there and they found out and ate them alive over it, later the company slightly revive itself on the Dreamcast with a couple of single PS1 game running emulator on a disc releases (boot bleem, then pop in PS1 game) but at that point they did their own stuff so it was fine but no one cared so it failed anyway. Sardu did bring more NES emulation to the masses as his stolen code was popped over into DOS mode and he cleaned up Marat's shitty audio core so he had a solid emulator for DOS that ran fast, but it was theft in the end and he got what he had coming. The core of the original releases of Nesticle were just iNES with a coat of paint over it, the reason why nesticle kept releasing was that he stole the source, got it up and running, ironed out some bugs and then started tweaking as he learned things going forward off Marats work. It's kind of like the bleem thing I noted, he stole other peoples work to get a start, but then did his own thing after but in the end once caught few cared anymore and moved elsewhere and he just closed up and quit (like bleem!)

I know of Zophar's Domain, I used to know Zophar who doesn't even run it anymore and worked with his biggest competitor Dave of Dave's Video Gaming Classics at the time (which was the #1 site in size/hits to ZD which was #2). Him and Sardu were online buddies so I take that story with a grain of salt. Long ago in those circles I went by VmprHntrD on irc efnet in #emu. Members of that area were pretty pissed at that guy and went about crushing the guy publicly embarrassing him over the theft despite no one in there liking Marat or his pay emulation tactics (as many would steal it, then distribute it when it got updated -- hypocrisy is fun isn't it?) I guess the difference is Marat was a dick up front, Sardu lied and continued to until he got hung out to dry then ran for it. Zophar is actually lying with truths mixed in to defend his friend on his public forum he had there on that site and he didn't get along with MindRape, which I knew and considered an online associate at the time in the 90s. He was right MindRape didn't like Sardu, but it was entirely about embarrassing someone he hated and when he found out the dude was a thief so he got pleasure out of making an ass out of him about the stolen code. I got into emulation in late 1995, eventually was one of the ops for #emu for a good many years as well as partnered up with some release groups among other things and even if you check gamefaqs you'll find under that nick I have the .NES header format doc up there too in the NES system faq section.

[stardust4ever]

I know of Zophar's Domain, I used to know Zophar who doesn't even run it anymore...

I guess that explains why the resources on the website haven't been updated in years.

As for Nesticle,

[Drclaw411]

Power Base Mini is back in stock at Stone Age Gamer

[stardust4ever]

Power Base Mini is back in stock at Stone Age Gamer

Which is great news, but mine is currently bundled with me Retron5 preorder, so I have the option to wait or by a spare and attempt to resell it later. I'll prolly just wait...

[Zap!]

So they've released a pic of the box, but no release day, despite April being four days away...

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I suspect it will be released towards the end of the month or the beginning of May. Same with Retro-Bit's Super Retro Trio.

[c0ldb33r]

God almighty those controllers look terrible

[stardust4ever]

So they've released a pic of the box, but no release day, despite April being four days away...

What gives? I thought I was getting a gray console with purple trim (like the SNES, sort of). Is it me or does the console on the box look a bit too white?

[StoneAgeGamer]

God almighty those controllers look terrible

The controllers are not terrible, they are actually pretty good, but that's just my opinion. For most casual players my guess is that they will work just fine. Sure plenty of people won't like them just because they are different, but after playing with them for awhile you get used to the differences. I could play most games just as good on the wireless controller as a could with original controllers.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

God almighty those controllers look terrible

[c0ldb33r]

The controllers are not terrible, they are actually pretty good, but that's just my opinion. For most casual players my guess is that they will work just fine. Sure plenty of people won't like them just because they are different, but after playing with them for awhile you get used to the differences. I could play most games just as good on the wireless controller as a could with original controllers.

Fair enough. I should have been more clear with my answer.

I should have said that they look like they'd be terrible. If they're actually good, then I'm very happy to hear that. I like the idea of not having to keep switching out the original controllers when I want to change systems.

I searched the thread and didn't see the answer, and searched google and didn't see an answer.

Will this puppy work with everdrive/powerpak?

I'm hoping for a retron 6 that includes PC Engine support

[BlastProcessing402]

I searched the thread and didn't see the answer, and searched google and didn't see an answer.

Will this puppy work with everdrive/powerpak?

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe not, as this is not a system on a chip or clone hardware or anything of that sort but rather playing games by emulator. It's not playing directly off the carts but dumping them into memory first, so if anything you'd probably just see the the flash cart's menus, if that much, and never be able to load a game.

[Tanooki]

Stock they shouldn't work. Hyperkin is emulating and it will support any legitimate 'period' game but they will take submissions from homebrew makers and the sort to have their stuff supported. I'm not sure they ever said if they'd allow them or not, but I'd think not since there's a clear piracy angle going on there with it. Crudely put Retron5 acts like a common NES emulator using the iNES header format to see what it needs to do to fire up the game properly and everdrives don't have headers, they're empty shells basically set up to boot other peoples stuff. I know bunny said his powerpak wouldn't work and I doubt he'd want it or any of his custom retrozone stuff going since he's got that hdmi nes to sell whenever it pops up.

[Drclaw411]

Stock they shouldn't work. Hyperkin is emulating and it will support any legitimate 'period' game but they will take submissions from homebrew makers and the sort to have their stuff supported. I'm not sure they ever said if they'd allow them or not, but I'd think not since there's a clear piracy angle going on there with it. Crudely put Retron5 acts like a common NES emulator using the iNES header format to see what it needs to do to fire up the game properly and everdrives don't have headers, they're empty shells basically set up to boot other peoples stuff. I know bunny said his powerpak wouldn't work and I doubt he'd want it or any of his custom retrozone stuff going since he's got that hdmi nes to sell whenever it pops up.

Not sure where the submission thing is coming from. I'm fairly positive that I've read from people who are beta testing the system that most homebrews and hacks have been working, although not 100% of them.