Retro handheld emulator consoles

[665b1abdee41csarge945]

My Odin Base just arrived. I will give a review of it after a week or so, unless I forget

[665b1abdee5eevoodoo47]

oh nice - yeah, go ahead, I'm fairly interested. apart from the active cooling, this does sound like the perfect emulator handheld console - assuming you did not overpay, the price seems to sit fairly high right now (I'm actually considering the Lite for a relative as a moved-into-your-own-house gift, its price should sit right under 200$, it has passive cooling and should still do very good Dreamcast and PS2 emulation).

[665b1abdee6e1voodoo47]

@sarge945 review now.

[665b1abdeebd3sarge945]

My apologies, have been super busy with work so haven't had the most time to play with it.

Here's my experience with it so far:

Ergonomics and Build Quality:

overall the handheld feels pretty decent. The device doesn't wabble and bend like a lot of cheap handheld, it's solidly heavy, and has a very nice screen. The buttons are clicky and have good travel, don't get stuck, etc.

I got the full package including a dock, protective plastic shell, and carrying case. The dock is quite nice, and includes a lot of extra inputs, fast charging etc.

The carrying case is also perfectly acceptable, it's not falling apart at the seams, and doesn't stink with that horrible smell that a lot of cheap carrying cases etc smell of.

The worst aspect is probably the protective shell. It uses a very flimsy hinge mechanism, that I feel could come apart at any time and cause the device to fall out, not making it very protective. Worse, the dock isn't thick enough to accommodate the device with the shell, so you'll have to be constantly taking it out of the shell to charge it (if you're not just using a standard USB C cable, they work totally fine wth the shell, it's just the dock). Because the shell has very cheap plastic that clicks together, I'm pretty likely to break it just by clicking it open and taking the device out too many times. It would likely break after a single drop, but would likely protect the device as well in such a case, so I guess it's technically fit for purpose, but I have to say the protective shell is a huge step down from the rest of the device in terms of build quality and design.

As for ergonomics, the buttons are clicky and feel nice to use. The joysticks are the standard "joycon style" sunk ones. They work but I don't particularly like them. I haven't noticed any drift, but it's not like I've been using this thing nonstop for a year, so I might have to update this after a while if I start to notice drift. That seems to be mostly a Nintendo problem, though, since Nintendo products are usually garbage.

I can't really comment on the dpad. I'm not an expert on dpads. I don't play lots of platformers or dpad heavy games. I know it can't be too bad because it's not a mushy mess like the one on the Xbox 360 controller, but it might not be the most fine-tuned, expert level dpad either.

Performance:

I got the "standard" model, I can't talk about the Pro or Lite. So far I've played dos games, some Nintendo 64 games, and a few other titbits (like Quake). So far everything runs good. I've noticed some slowdown with certain N64 games like Perfect Dark, but I'm not sure if that's a problem with the device or with the emulator accurately recreating the horrible choppy "original" console experience.

Overall though I'm happy with the performance. I know certain games can sometimes run like crap under dosbox on various devices, but in this case all the games i tried - Doom, the lost Vikings and commander keen - all worked perfectly fine.

Software:
This is both the weakest and strongest part of the device.

Strengths: it has a nice custom launcher so you can hide the native android interface quite easily. This is good if you want a nice "handheld console" feeling, while still being able to jump back to the basic android UI easily for maintenance tasks or installing stuff, etc.

They also have software to translate screen regions to controller inputs, for games that don't have controller support. I haven't used it so I can't comment on it.

The weakest part of this device is navigating with the controllers. It doesn't work in most apps and is very inconsistent. It does have a touch screen, so you can put your gross grubby hands all over the screen, but it feels like a step back when doing things like changing android settings.

The strongest part is that it runs RetroArch, which supports it's controller completely. So you can basically rebind everything for most games on a per game basis. Using the Quake core, I was able to play Quake with what is essentially a "modern" dual-stick control scheme. Although this is admittedly still not perfect. Many games obviously still give keyboard or specific controller glyphs, and sometimes RetroArch would have some strange input problems. It also doesn't support the reverse buttons on the device, which I don't use anyway.

I haven't used the device for standard Android gaming because most android gaming is very very much not worth wasting time on, although I'm open to some good suggestions for Android native games to try.

Final Thoughts:
Reasonable battery life (I got 4 or so hours playing Quake), decent build quality and an overall good experience is worth it, if you're willing to wrestle with android settings and RetroArch oddities from time to time. I had to completely set up my controller configs for every game the first time, nothing just worked out of the box. But I consider it worth the price, despite the issues, because they are mostly minor problems and can be solved pretty quickly upfront, then you're free to enjoy whatever game.

It's a pretty good device.

[665b1abdeed0csarge945]

voodoo47 can you recommend some Dreamcast/PS2 games? I can give you a performance review for each of them.

I didn't really grow up with many consoles so I missed most of the "must plays" of each generation. While I don't feel I'm missing much, surely there's some good in there.

[665b1abdeee31voodoo47]

sounds good - thanks (even the smell test, heh). if you mean games that can really push the console/emulator, then iirc, Shadow of The Colossus on ps2, and Shenmue2 on Dreamcast would be good examples.

[665b1abdeefd4voodoo47]

this one flew under my radar - the Saturn now has an ultimate plug and play (everything) solution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueLPPKb2fQQ

[665b1abdef14aicemann]

Love Game Sack . Very comprehensive show and some good humour. Long videos too.