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Posted: Mar 31 2017 02:12 pm

Let's see if the world of sydlexia is still alive. So my original NES crapped out. Only lasted 28 years! I was thinking of getting a cheap retron system to play it cheap of course. I see mixed reviews for various systems out there. Any of you guys have any good ones, or recommend any good ones? Or should I just save my money and get an authentic refurbished or something?

Posted: Mar 31 2017 06:04 pm

Most of the cheaper ones are literally just emulators on chips. They have all manner of quality issues, especially with Castlevania III being unplayable, but they do let you keep using your NES cartridges. The actual good ones like Analogue Nt reproduce the hardware at the circuit level using ASICs and FPGAs and other exotic tech that costs several times what the NES itself cost, but they also have native HDMI support. That's enthusiast level stuff, but even then, I personally wouldn't recommend the cheaper Retron systems and similar stuff because you're really just better off using emulators instead of putting up with their flawed implementations and trashy controllers, unless you absolutely have to play on a television.

Posted: Apr 04 2017 01:56 am

I have a Retron that plays NES and SNES games and while the SNES emulation is perfect, the sound quality of the NES emulation is faulty to the point where an entire sound channel is often missing. This might sound like a minor detail to be hung up on, but when you're an NES music enthusiast like I am, it can be really grating to have to hear a game's soundtrack without the rhythm section or percussion.

Posted: Apr 12 2017 08:08 pm

Does it not power on, or just not load games properly. If it's the latter, you might try getting a replacement 72-pin connector and clipping the lockout chip.

If it's totally dead, and you care about sound quality, you should get a legit NES. Pretty much all the clone systems have sound quality issues, but most of the newer ones should play almost all of the games, Castlevania III included. And they'll play Japanese (sometimes PAL) games, too. I got a RetroDuo a while ago and it feels cheaply made but it's still working fine.

Posted: Apr 21 2017 10:54 am

Yeah thanks guys. I replaced my 72 pin connector about 6 years back and got more time out of it. Now it's pretty much not playing anything. Seems to be totally dead.

I was thinking of maybe investing in the retron 5, mostly because it also plays GBA games supposedly and there's some of those I'd like to try. Anybody have one of those? I never had good luck with emulation, but then again my computer is old as shit and I always lose my saves. I may get a newer computer if I decide it's worth it. Either way I may have to drop some $.

Posted: Apr 21 2017 11:31 am

Most mid-range laptops these days are fairly substantial. So one of those plus a gamepad shouldn't require beaucoup bucks, especially if you're sticking with NES/SNES/N64 emulation. That era should run just fine without a dedicated graphics card. Not sure what you mean by "lose my saves" in terms of "my hard drive screws up" versus "I literally can't find the files" but maybe also consider a basic backup hard drive.

Posted: Apr 23 2017 04:16 pm

slapolakinkaido wrote:

I never had good luck with emulation, but then again my computer is old as shit...

Is it running DOS ? Laughing

I remember using NESticle on Win98 and having a stack of floppy disks with NES roms on them. Right now I have a laptop with 2GHz dual-core Athlon and 3GB RAM with garbage on-board GPU that can run Gamecube games 'fairly' reliably. Everything prior runs fine, so even a dirt-cheap computer can run all the old stuff.

The only problem with emulators is that they're hacked together to make as many games as possible run as smooth as possible, so games that used hardware tricks to achieve things won't work correctly in emulation. That kind of thing is most apparent in Saturn games. And some NES emulators won't have certain mappers and you have to find one that emulates the specific one you need for certain games. This site has a list (outdated) of what emulators have what mappers. It's been a few years since I played a game that used esoteric mappers, so FCEU or Nestopia might actually cover most of them now.

Here is a good list of mostly-up-to-date emulators.