RetroN5: Hands on first look

[stardust4ever]

Not to be a bastard by jumping on the "that's inconsistent bandwagon," but yeah... Apart from clicking a video game's channel/square/whatever on the Wii home screen rather than scrolling through a list of game names on a Wiibrew emulator, how is there any difference? I actually prefer Wiibrew as it affords me more options with most emulators than is available with the official Wii emulation: multiple save states, filters, remapping buttons, etc.

My reason for supporting the Virtual Console is a simple one. It let's Nintendo know that there is a market for classic games. If nobody bought VC titles, nobody bought the classic remakes, etc, then it would tell Nintendo that revisits to old games are not viable. By installing Wiibrew on the Wii and running pirated ROMs, you are undermining the very service that Nitnendo is trying to provide. I happy to rebuy VC games that I already own and very often I do play them using the service. Are there some elements that need improvement? Yes. But circumventing the eShop and pirating the games instead of purchasing them through appropriate channels only shows Nintendo that people are not interested in playing old games. Piracy is not a victimless crime!!!

Stardust I remember now that cart, didn't put it together it was you with the roach shit and wreck Panic Restaurant cart as that was an epic cleaning and repair job. Personally I'm uncertain what I would have done on it, potentially given to the extent you went to repair it I'd almost say it wasn't worth mentioning. You used a 100% identical board and as noted by another each cart could be assembled (flux and all) just a little different and if you did it so pro you'd have to tell someone and that they might not be able to figure it out without a microscope and chemical analysis of the age of your flux, it's pretty pointless -- it's all original parts. Hell if you had replaced the label but unlocked the last bit of the mystery of copying NES labels right, I'd have been happy just fine with that too being like for like. As noted in this thread about being part of the car part community and them dealing with it in the 90s, it's something you just have to accept, learn to deal with, and move along. It's not the end of the world, it has a place in the sliding scale of quality versus what someone will pay.

The label was 100% legit. There was a bit of gum left behind by the rental sticker but other than that the roach shit and the "PVT" marks cleaned off fairly well. Truth is, I didn't want to sell it to someone at retail price, then at some point later have them read the old "Unminty Panic Restaurant" thread, and been like "ew, gross," or "it's been tampered with so it's not 100% legit," and then demand their money back. Some collectors are totally anal about the condition of their carts so I wanted full disclosure, even it meant accepting a small cut in price. It still sold for 75% of the going retail price so all-in-all I felt I did good sending it to a good home. And we all know that cart would have found it's way to the landfill had I not rescued it.

If you want an SDTV solution to the RetroN5, buy Retro-Bit's upcoming Super Retro Trio. It'll support Composite and S-Video, and play NES, SNES, Genesis and through the Super Retro Advance Adapter, GBA games. It too will have original controller ports, and through reverse engineered hardware, will run almost everything the Retron5 will.

It should be available in May according to my Retro-Bit contact.

Expect a full hardware review as soon as I receive my review unit.

I'll be looking forward to your Super Trio review. If the SOACs in this console indeed have better compatability and less artifacts than previous clones (no swapped duty cycles in NES rectangle, ability to play funky chipped games) I may consider picking this up as well since it will likely work with homebrew mappers and other stuff the Retron5 has difficulty with. If it's the same old chinese engineering that the Retron3 used, I'll probably pass.

All I can say is that I hope there will always be people who think like stardust does, so when comes time to shed my collection of hundreds and hundreds of physical games, I can at least break even if not make a small profit.

Satoshi, you don't want more people like me in the hobby, you want collectors/hoarders whose #1 mission in life is to "collect one of everything." These people will stop at nothing to make sure they own every single game, no matter how rare, obscure, even if the gameplay is a turd. I let go of games I have no interest in playing. If it's worth more to someone else than it is to me, even if the gameplay is good (Panic Restaurant, Bonk's) I'll let it go for a price. No single game cart or disc is worth more than $100 to me, flash carts excluded. If it's worth that much to someone else, I'll let go of it. The retro gaming hobby used to be for for people who wanted a cheap game system who couldn't afford nicer more current stuff. Now it's become a hoarding situation for many with deeper pocketbooks than I'll ever see.

And for the vinyl record analogy, no, you don't need a $1000+ turntable for the music to sound good, and you don't need to spend $100/ft on speaker cable either. Cheap heavy duty 14-guage wire from a hardware store for speaker hookups, and shielded RCA for the inputs is plenty good enough for most installations. Save your money on hookups and spend it on a good amp and good speakers. I've got a $200 Audio Technica turntable LP-120 with direct drive and a tonearm with adjustable tracking force, anti-skate control, and built-in preamp with optional bypass. That's plenty good enough and properly adjusted it sounds great. However I would definitely recommend staying away from those cheepo USB turntables the big box stores sell. The frequency response is typically horrid, and they have bad, scratchy needles which will slowly ruin otherwise pristine records.

As for the wine tasting bit, I've tasted some expensive and cheap wines. Rex Goliath at $5.95 a bottle tasted great, while some other "premium" wines tasted nasty IMO. Unless you've got deep pockets, you're not going to waste your money on the expensive stuff. Oftentimes fine vinyards can't sell all their product and would rather let it go to waste than lower the price (which would in turn hurt their reputation among elite wine connoisseurs). So instead of throwing it out, they sell it to other companies who repackage it under a different label. Lost Vinyards, Lucky Duck, and a few others come to mind, typically around $4 per bottle. Some of them taste fabulous, others not so much. My 2cent.