My journey into the world of emulators has begun once again with the new Retroid Pocket 3+. The new emulation device scene that has popped up over the past couple years has really been interesting. Basically someone in China realized they had a bunch of smartphone spare parts and figure it out something to do with them. I've been dabbling in it off and on for over a decade now, so I thought it was time to see what all the fuss is about.
The first observation I have is that at this point in time, the updated systems are coming out fast and furious. Back in August I thought about picking one up. The Retroid Pocket 3 was just about to be released, and the Retroid Pocket 2+ had a nice little discount on it.
Just a few weeks later though, they announced the 3+ was going to come out, and it was a far superior device with a lot more power and a hard drive about four times bigger. This apparently pissed a whole bunch of people off who had just bought the standard 3. There's even one big reviewer of these systems out there who while giving the 3+ a nice review adamantly said no one should buy it because of how quickly the turnaround was.
That seems to be the norm right now though. These handheld emulators are going to see minimum to updates a year for the immediate future. It won't last too long I don't think, but it looks like the developers are finding ways to easily refine the setups and they're getting access to better and better cards.
Anyway, I'll be setting this up for another day or so, but I'm going to try and give some regular updates just in case anyone might be interested in picking one of these up for their kids or younger family members.
The first observation I have is that at this point in time, the updated systems are coming out fast and furious. Back in August I thought about picking one up. The Retroid Pocket 3 was just about to be released, and the Retroid Pocket 2+ had a nice little discount on it.
Just a few weeks later though, they announced the 3+ was going to come out, and it was a far superior device with a lot more power and a hard drive about four times bigger. This apparently pissed a whole bunch of people off who had just bought the standard 3. There's even one big reviewer of these systems out there who while giving the 3+ a nice review adamantly said no one should buy it because of how quickly the turnaround was.
That seems to be the norm right now though. These handheld emulators are going to see minimum to updates a year for the immediate future. It won't last too long I don't think, but it looks like the developers are finding ways to easily refine the setups and they're getting access to better and better cards.
Anyway, I'll be setting this up for another day or so, but I'm going to try and give some regular updates just in case anyone might be interested in picking one of these up for their kids or younger family members.
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It's also very likely that this is someone who is adjusting and customizing settings and frame rates for each game on an individual basis, which I believe is necessary to get optimal performance out of some of the more powerful emulators (PS2 and GameCube for instance). I haven't fooled around with those things too much. If it doesn't work out of the box, usually I just put it aside and play something that does work without having to go through optimization.
I ended up testing out Fantasy Life, and even without any optimization adjustments, it ran pretty well. It's obviously not ideal, as both screens get condensed onto a screen that's about the size of your smartphone. However you can arrange the screens to lay side by side and that's not a bad alternative, particularly since the vast majority of 3DS games use the second screen for inventory management or maps.
After being excited for about 10 minutes I started to remember something rather unfortunate... I really don't like a lot of 3DS games. I always thought the system was a little half-assed, and really it was since a lot of resources were dedicated for 3-D features I guess. Anyway, I'm going to mess with a few games just to see how they play, but I doubt I'll really get that much use out of it. Still, I suppose it's nice to have another small batch of options to play.
Speaking of 3DS, we need some of those game on Switch online. I'm especially thinking of Luigi's Mansion 2. Like Rob said, the second screen is usually inventory/map screens anyway.
zero chance of that happening. They're releasing a remaster on Switch next year.
I'mmcool with that. I had not read about the remaster.
It's a neat little system. Obviously Gameboy shaped, but not as long. Despite its small size, it's actually pretty comfortable in my hands, so I think in smaller ones it'll be perfect. It plays all of the 8 and 16 bit consoles, PS1, and All of the handhelds up through Game Boy advance. I picked it up for only 35, so it seemed pretty much like a no-brainer. The only other expense is a microSD card.
So now the question is what games do I put on it for her. She likes pokémon, so I'm going to put a bunch of those on there, as well as some of the fan-made GBA pokémon games that are actually extremely impressive if you're into that series. I'll probably throw a harvest moon game or two on there as well since her mom liked those when she was younger. I'll probably put Yoshi and Mario games on there as well.
Anyway, those of you with some younger kids, give me an idea what 8-year-olds like.
That would be great for Tetris, Dr Mario, and Puyo Puyo.