RETRON 5 by HYPERKIN

[Velvet Revolver]

I stopped by an old store today to check it out and they are selling this unit for $200 canadian dog hairs. is this system any good?

http://hyperkin.com/Retron5/

1 console 10 systems 1000s of classics though i count 9 systems

Quote

The RetroN 5 has 5 cartridge ports supporting NES, Famicom, SNES, Super Famicom, Genesis, Mega Drive, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. The RetroN 5 has an HDMI port with a maximum output resolution of 720p and supports up to 60 frames per second. Digital enhancement features are available for all game formats. PAL and NTSC versions of games are supported for HD upconversion and filters, even on NTSC televisions.

Side mounted SNES, NES, and Genesis controller slots allow for play with your original controllers.For those who want to go wireless, the bundled wireless controller has a range of over 25 feet. RetroN 5 offers the versatility to play the way you want. The rear SD card slot gives you the ability to expand your save memory and save screenshots. Screenshots are saved as JPEG images for easy sharing from your computer to popular social media sites. Finally, share that high score, epic platform jump, or secret warp zone.

 

[manikyath]

i heard something about that thing, off the top of my head this is what i recall:

- the controller it ships with is dogshit

- the slots for your games are a bit.. rough.

- the software.. is a whole topic onto itself:

 

- it's basicly a skinned android

- the emulators are not a single line of their own hand, it's in essence all *stolen* software (even if it can be gotten for free there are licenses involved, which gets messy if you put it on a box you're selling for real rupees)

- it is still in legal complexity with nintendo, in the same way those other emulators are.

 

 

and best of all... for that price you can do the exact same thing yourself without sponsoring a company that wants to make a quick buck off of other people's work. (that being nintendo for the games, the people who made the emulators, and the people who reverse engineered the cardridge stuff, all of which most likely wont get a cent of your money.)

[Velvet Revolver]

from what i gathered the machine is legit and you are 'suppose' use legit game modules, and yes the guy said the controller it comes with is shit. i dont know if this is true or not but the employee also said the copyrights have lapsed thats why they can do it.

 

i will look into doing the exact same thing myself.

[demonix00]

16 minutes ago, manikyath said:

- the slots for your games are a bit.. rough.

That depends on if the unit being sold is either an original with the death grip cartridge slots, or an updated model with the changes made to the EU version (if they even bothered changing the cartridge slot connectors on the US model after the EU model was released).

[manikyath]

16 minutes ago, Velvet Revolver said:

the copyrights have lapsed thats why they can do it.

the copyrights of the games, yes most likely, the copyrights of the software under the hood... i sense this is a case of "small dev doesnt have the resources to come after me so i can use it for free"

[Velvet Revolver]

bankrupt companies maybe

who knows

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Velvet Revolver said:

bankrupt companies maybe

who knows

no, it's more so that the emulation software used is most likely being written by some neckbeard in his mom's basement, with very little resources beyond their own time.

 

it's also that most of this software is available under a very permittive license for stuff like opensource projects and images for a raspberry pi and the like... but the moment payment comes into the game, things change a lot, and retron can claim the money is for the hardware, and the software is "delivered with it for free" or whatever they make of it, it's simply a problematic world to step into and honestly i'd be fine with the retron 5 if it was a decent pice of hardware... but it isnt.

 

basicly the only thing they did that they didnt at least have an example for is the controller, and i'm sure i saw some youtuber apply a baseball bat to that.

 

if you want a solution like this, get a raspberry pi, get the "retropie" image, and get the card readers and/or controller port to usb devices you want. chances are you'll still end up cheaper, and i'd even dare to say it'll be more user friendly, and GOD does retropie support a lot of things, i've played crash team racing (playstation) with a freaking wiimote.

[Velvet Revolver]

4 minutes ago, manikyath said:

if you want a solution like this, get a raspberry pi, get the "retropie" image, and get the card readers and/or controller port to usb devices you want. chances are you'll still end up cheaper, and i'd even dare to say it'll be more user friendly, and GOD does retropie support a lot of things, i've played crash team racing (playstation) with a freaking wiimote.

whats the damage on that?

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Velvet Revolver said:

whats the damage on that?

well, in my local pricing, a pi is around €50, toss in a €10 sdcard, a €10 power supply, and from then on you're pretty much down to the peripherals. retropie *is* made in mind of using ROMs for your games, but i'm sure solutions exist

 

and for that price.. you get out of the box support for this impressive list of devices.

 

and appareantly they started supporting installing on ubuntu on an x86 machine as well so if you have an old computer on a shelf, you're basicly set for free