Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm looking for something that can mainly run SNES games. Are there any like, 'devices' currently on the market with controls built in that are worthy of my spenny? I don't really want to buy a tablet that needs rooting etc I would rather something that's easier to put roms on and is all complete as one unit (IE controls and so on).

I've seen one called a JXD S7800B or something, are there any alternatives?

I'm really not well versed in handheld gaming.

Edit. I'd also like to run Neo Geo stuff. Sod's law I go to buy a Neo Geo X and they're not available for £130 any more

SNES emulation via homebrew is pretty solid on the New 3DS, although not all games will work (mainly those with special chips in the cartridge).

They also literally just launched official support for SNES virtual console on the New 3DS.

Games look great because the 240p display means you can display them at native resolution and it fills the display (minus black bars at the sides).

If you're willing to pay actual money to plays SNES games in this day and age then you're mad. I especially love the fact that if you've bought them for the WiiU you need to buy them again for the 3DS. That's making gouging into an art form.

This is probably your best bet:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipad

Tegra 3 chipset so decent performance and takes SD cards so you can load it up with ROMs. There are plenty of mature emulators for all retro consoles for Android and you're getting a decent tablet into the bargain. The only thing you'd need to research is compatibility with however they've implemented the controller to make sure your choice of emulator supports it but I imagine you'll be able to find that out pretty easily.

3DS obviously has the advantage of access to the pretty fantastic 3DS/DS library, and approximate 1:1 pixel parity with how the games were originally intended to be displayed at.

I've also never used a handheld with better dpad/buttons than a Nintendo one.

It's good to see we're sticking to the tried and true tradition of offering solutions that don't fit the requirements. The 3DS doesn't do Neo Geo games and would require some form of 'rooting' to be able to do emulation (over and above the tiny and expensive officially available selection). And being able to play DS games wasn't an actual requirement at all.

3DS does Neo Geo games too.

And yes you would need to set up homebrew on it. It's not that hard. The end result would be (in my opinion) the best solution for playing SNES and NeoGeo roms on a gaming handheld. Especially for the price. 3DS/DS games are a nice bonus, but even just for the purpose of emulation it is a great choice.

Sorry, yeah, if you went down the homebrew route it would of course do NeoGeo as well, I don't know why I claimed otherwise there. I think in my head I was conflating the official route, which would be Nintendo only presumably, vs the emulation which would open it up for everything. Presumably though if you did go down the homebrew route you'd need to keep hacking it every time Nintendo released a new OS version, or just be unable to play newer 3DS games that required the later OS version.

Up until now the procedure for updating your hacked firmware ("Emunand") is just wait a couple of days for the updated hacked version and just follow the typical update process.

No idea if it will remain that simple long into the future though.

I believe they call it TOSET but I have a TOSET (if that's what it's called) of SNES roms.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00W ... 1_3&sr=8-3

That's what I'm looking at. 5" is more than enough it needs to be portable I just wondered if any one knows of any alternative. I did see another device costing £135 but when I did some digging it's running on some flavour of Linux and didn't mention what emulators it runs.

The bugger is it doesn't qualify for Prime, as I'm going away Monday.

Edit. It's TOSEC.

The specs on the Amazon page say it's got a seven inch screen?

Also your thing there is running Android, which is technically a flavour of Linux but I think you're over complicating it. It's also running a Rockchip chipset which I wouldn't expect to be as capable as the Tegra but the cost looks to be about the same. I'm really unconvinced by it next to the Wikipad.

ETA: apologies, I see now that your 'flavour of Linux' comment related to another device and not the one you're currently looking at. I'm posting while navigating the airport so possibly not paying as much attention as I could be.

My colleague has one of these, and he says it's pretty awesome.

http://www.funstock.co.uk/jxd-s7800b-an ... ing-tablet

Ah, I see you're already looking at a similar one.

THe buttons on the right are labelled in a way that displeases me.

Cool thanks dude. It looks ideal tbh. I just thought there would be more choice, but I guess many just use an actual tablet. I did look into that idea, it's just the rooting side of things. I may get a cheapish 7" and one of those controllers that makes it look like a rev 1 Shield (Shield would be epic but £300 - erm, no).

So any reccs on a cheapish tablet that can be easily rooted?

These things are all tablets, they just have physical controllers added. The Wikipads controller even detaches leaving you with literally just a tablet.

Out of curiosity, why do you keep mentioning rooting? You realise that's not required to just shove some games and emulators onto an Android device right?

These things are all tablets, they just have physical controllers added. The Wikipads controller even detaches leaving you with literally just a tablet.

Out of curiosity, why do you keep mentioning rooting? You realise that's not required to just shove some games and emulators onto an Android device right?

Rooty root root

Bloody hell I didn't notice that ! that's huge ! I just looked at the pic and assumed it was like 5" like the other one I've looked at.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00S ... 11&sr=8-11

Might be better then.

/new posts.

I thought you had to root a device to get the emulator and roms on there?

Yeah I'm aware they're just android devices with controllers on but they are pre rooted and I thought that was necessary to run emus and roms?

It's not required to duck around with that at all. Just download emulator and put games on.

Why? Emulators are just apps and ROMS are just files; Android doesn't give a shit what you do with your stuff any more than Windows does. You've totally picked up the wrong end of a stick somewhere here.

And just to underline my point I've sat with my Nexus 10 connected to the TV and with a 360 controller plugged into the tablet playing Super Metroid on an emulator. All on the stock OS with no dicking around.

Well that's fucking cool. That explains why there are so few devices available !

To that ends I've placed an order for delivery tomorrow. I got one of these for £39.99*



And I found one of these in the Amazon Warehouse "like new" for £45. Razer Serval**



So £85 all in.

* I will highly likely replace this with a better unit if it "catches on" so to speak and I actually use it.
** There were far cheaper options available but £45 for a £75 controller wasn't too bad and there are rumours you can use it on PC too.

I don't know if you're interested in using the clip thing but I doubt it'll take a seven inch tablet, and wouldn't be comfortably useable even if it did I don't think. I can't find any official details on the size it goes up to though to be fair. And if you don't care about that aspect then obviously you can just ignore this entirely.

The cheapest way would just be to plug in the wired Xbox pad that I presume you've got lying around, you'd only need a cheap USB OTG adaptor for that. Obviously it's nicer to be free of the cables but for the sake of seeing whether you'll actually get much use out of this setup as you said it might be worth going cheap and easy for the moment?

Even if the tablet fits I doubt I would use it that way. The arm thing comes off. I do have a wired 360 controller (gone a lovely yellow) and a Xbone wired controller. I *think* I may have one of them USB things somewhere. It came with a tablet I had years ago. Razer don't mention the size it takes but it does say tablet.

Now I need to find some emulators, so RMD if you know any for -

Neo Geo (arcade roms I *think*) grabbing those now.
NES
SNES
And lastly, my fave, NEC PC Engine.

Well it arrived today and barring a few small hiccups it works wonderfully. For some reason my collection of Neo Geo roms were very hit and miss so I found another set that do work. I've also got the PC engine all up and running and the SNES, as well as a nice bonus, Nintendo DS. The New Super Mario Bros works a treat.

Controller arrives tomorrow.

Who had "Myp recommends an Android device" on the 2016 bingo card? Anyone? No-one? Aw, shucks.

*shrugs* it did look a cool little device. I wouldn't have one myself, obviously.

FFS. So earlier I heard that if you had an OTG you could use the Xbone controller. When I figured out what an OTG was (that little dongle that goes from micro USB to regular USB) I connected up the controller and tried to run an app that maps it. No dice. Apparently you must root the device so that it can work (something to do with IDs). I tried a generic rooting app that I used on an old tablet before but it refused to root.

Then, after about ten hours I find out that the 360 controller works like, without anything.

Doh.

I also found out why the USB stick was dropping. The OTG I had was fucked. Thankfully (and I have absolutely no idea why) I had another one.

So I now have the 360 controller working beautifully. It even controls Android, so I can launch and set everything without even touching the tablet. Hurrah !

Apologies - i've not been around all week but if you have questions I can probably answer them for you

So I think from this you've decided just to use the 360 pad with your existing android device which is fine - I have the JXD linked above (7800b) which is fine but actually its more for N64 / PS1 titles - and as someone else mentioned its massive which is both a good and a bad thing - it is also reasonably flimsy plastic so not the type of thing to throw around without a case (i keep mine in a carry case for the Wii-U remote)

I would also have suggested the GPD XD which is a similar powered machine in a 3DS shell

http://www.funstockretro.co.uk/gpd-xd-r ... ng-gamepad

(a little expensive there - expect to pay around £120 or so)

Thanks dude.

I'm going to give the wireless controller a go tonight because I quite fancy that over the 360 pad. I've heard the button travel on them can be annoying though (the Serval) so if it's poo I'll just return it. Physically the tablet I bought is pretty fast. It has a quad core arm running at 1.3ghz IIRC and I accidentally left DraStic DS running on it last night and then ran another emulator on top and it was still OK. Even the more heavy titles like KOF 2004 seem to run very well

The only thing that really isn't fantastic is the screen. Obviously due to the price there will be some cuts, and the digitizer itself is made of acrylic not glass. So I would imagine it will scratch pretty badly over time, but the fitted screen protector obscured the pic so I had to remove it.

The other thing to look at especially for SNES is one of these

http://www.gearbest.com/video-game/pp_2 ... wwodWqgDAQ

Now you can get a straight wired SNES controller but this is bluetooth so you can use it on PC / MAC / Android / IOS - the build quality is really good and so is the presentation (i'll see if i can find an unboxing video) - costs around £20

** edit **

TBH (and I will probably be lynched for this) I don't really miss the SNES controller. If I can use the 360 controller on SNES games I would.

Whilst quite revolutionary for its time the SNES controller to me has not aged well. I've got a wired one in the drawer I bought a couple of years back and I think I used it once before switching back to the 360 controller.

I've got a USB N64 controller too that again I just didn't use..

BTW that brings me onto N64. Is there a decent Android N64 emu that will run a decent clip? I've got SM64 DS but wouldn't mind having a few N64 titles.

Fair enough - I loved the original SNES controller and it feels better to play with that rather than a 360 pad but thats much more a personal preference

For N64 I'm pretty sure i just used Mupen (free) and it played most stuff reasonably well

I'm sure if I got one and sat down and used it for long enough I would eventually love it again Having not used one for so long though it just felt really alien and weird.

Problem is if I get one of those I would then want an N64 one and I would eventually end up with an SNK stick haha. I don't think any one ever made a retro controller for the PC Engine. Was a funny thing.

Controller got. It's quite useless for fighting games, even on the Dpad. Mind you, I didn't want it to wind myself up (fighting games really do know how to boil my piss lol).

For platform games it's absolutely excellent. The analogue stick is stiff enough to be really good for quick movements from one side to the other, so reaction times are good. There is a tiny bit of travel in the buttons but when you do press them down they make a satisfying click like a mouse does. I like that. The beauty of course is that it's Bluetooth so completely wireless. Down sides to that are it uses regular AA batteries and not rechargables, which at £75 should be a criminal offence.

It's also slightly less compatible out of the box than the 360 controller on the OTG. Using the Neo Geo emulator meant I had to basically map everything which I wasn't really expecting given that the 360 controller worked straight away.

It's also very nice and light, unlike the 360 controller.

I will probably keep it, because it frees up the micro USB socket on the tablet which I can then use for storage/aux power (I do fancy one of those rechargeable power bricks).

If only these existed.

Well yeah but at £75 you shouldn't really be expected to buy anything else. You can get a Xbone controller with receiver (wireless with charge pack) for about that.

Mind you not sure why I expected any different, it is Razer after all.

It's worth noting that there are other well priced Android controllers on the market:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bluetooth-Contr ... controller

You seem to have just checked money at the first hardware set you came across here.

I bought it because I got it for £45. I would never pay £75 for a game controller.

It also works on PC and Mac too, making the price slightly less painful

The fact that it's cheaper than its RRP doesn't mean it's worth the price of course.

This is true. I think it's worth £45. It's as close to being a 360/One controller as it can be without actually being a 360/One controller really.

I'll probably sort some rechargeable batteries for it soon. I'd have spent £20 on a Xbone receiver and then another £15 or what not for the charge and go kit (or whatever it's called) so the Serval is like the catch all.

Not sure how nicely it plays with Windows and I have no time to test it now as I'm packing.

Will try that next week

Well, either way, you seem to have got where you needed to be with the game emulation so enjoy wherever it is you're going with it.

Have been using this for the past couple of days now. It's brilliant. Originally I wanted it as some sort of portable SNES but as soon as I started loading up Neo Geo roms I've played nothing else other than The New Super Mario Bros. I'd forgotten about all of my favourite games on the Neo. Most namely Top Players Golf, Baseball Stars II and Windjammers. Emulation is perfect and with the stick mapped as the main controller it's just fantastic.

I'm amazed at how far Android and tablets have come over the time since I had one last (original Ipad).

Battery life when gaming isn't great, but easily lasts longer than an hour which I feel is long enough before taking a break any way.