Handheld Emulation Device Thread

[neogunhero]

This is a thread for handheld emulation devices only. No Steam Deck or other handheld PC talk unless you're talking about using it for emulation!

Figured this topic deserves it's own thread away from the monthly general PC gaming threads.

 

[Alm]

I don't know if emulation talk is frowned upon here. Saying that, I have an Ayn odin 2 portal that should arrive Friday. Looking forward to that.

 

[Pifanjr]

I don't know if emulation talk is frowned upon here. Saying that, I have an Ayn odin 2 portal that should arrive Friday. Looking forward to that.

I suppose that depends on what you're emulating. I don't think anyone here minds talking about DOSBox. Emulating consoles or other non-PC handhelds doesn't really fit on a PCGamer forum, but I'm not sure the mods are that strict.

 

[Alm]

I just remember this rule:

"Promoting or describing any illegal or illicit activity is prohibited. We will not allow the discussion of cracking encryption, piracy, or any other illegal conduct in our forums."

I guess you are right though, that there are legal uses from emulation hardware that can be discussed.

 

[neogunhero]

I've been using my Anbernic RG28XX a lot lately. Flashed MuOS onto it, discared the SD card it came with in place for a better one, and have been getting some games onto it. I did like how it came with lots of games stock, but now I can better curate my library to just games I want to play.

So far my main go-to games have been Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, Tekken 3, Zelda: Minish Cap and Mario Kart GBA. These games are very quick to pick up and play for short bursts, which is about all I can do with this thing. Unfortunately, it's just too small to play for long periods of time. I really love it, but I wish I had gotten a large sized one with better ergonomics. However, I got this pretty much brand new second-hand for $40, where as during the summer sale they had, a brand new one would still have been close to $75 with shipping and tax, so I can't complain too much.

Another thing I wish I had as a joystick to play N64 and Dreamcast games. I'll upgrade to a better device eventually, but for now this is a good PS1 and GBA device for me.

 

[neogunhero]

I just remember this rule:

"Promoting or describing any illegal or illicit activity is prohibited. We will not allow the discussion of cracking encryption, piracy, or any other illegal conduct in our forums."

I guess you are right though, that there are legal uses from emulation hardware that can be discussed.

Should I take this thread down then?

 

[neogunhero]

I suppose that depends on what you're emulating. I don't think anyone here minds talking about DOSBox. Emulating consoles or other non-PC handhelds doesn't really fit on a PCGamer forum, but I'm not sure the mods are that strict.

I know there are quite a few people on this forum that are into these handheld devices, and in a way I suppose they are handheld PCs to some extent, but that's pushing it. Also, they can be used to play many non-PC games, so that doesn't fit in the forum much as well either. Perhaps this thread needs to be nuked because downloading ROMs without owning original copies is definately a type of piracy, regardless of how little or big of a crime it is.

Then again, all ROMs I've downloaded were through the Internet Archive. Does that somehow skirt around the law? I'm not sure.

 

[Frindis]

As long as nobody talks about pirated games and the like, it should be fine. Internet Archive is in the gray area, same with EXoDOS if you do not own the games or they are abandonware and have not been relreleased again on GOG or similar platforms. Talking about the device itself is fine as long as it is not a device that comes with pirated games on it.

 

[kalton]

I've been using the RG35XX H lately and it's been great for GBA and PS1 stuff. Small enough to carry around but yeah, not the best for long sessions—hands cramp up after a while. Thinking about switching to a device with better ergonomics, maybe the Odin Lite or something similar.


I flashed GarlicOS on mine and it's been smooth so far. Might try MuOS next just to see the difference. Also curious—has anyone managed to get N64 running decently on these lower-end devices? Performance has been hit or miss for me.

 

[neogunhero]

I've been using the RG35XX H lately and it's been great for GBA and PS1 stuff. Small enough to carry around but yeah, not the best for long sessions—hands cramp up after a while. Thinking about switching to a device with better ergonomics, maybe the Odin Lite or something similar.


I flashed GarlicOS on mine and it's been smooth so far. Might try MuOS next just to see the difference. Also curious—has anyone managed to get N64 running decently on these lower-end devices? Performance has been hit or miss for me.

I’be been having a hard time figuring out which OS to use. I went with MuOS just because it was on the first well written guide I found and the installation was very easy. I think on a device like mine without WiFi and Bluetooth support, I should switch to something like MinUI. It seems more catered towards offline devices like mine, so it may be even faster. MuOS is definitely faster than stock but it’s loading lots of extra features I can’t access. I also don’t care about not having boxart for my games.

I need to find out which old PC games work well with controllers like this. Some obvious answers would be games like Commander Keen and Jazz Jackrabbit, but I wonder what else from that era had controller support.

 

[neogunhero]

Spent two whole hours last night trying to get MinUI onto the device but failed spectacularly. I'll briefly describe the troubles I went through.

MinUI readme says that the stock SD card it comes with is overly exaggerated as being bad, it says that it is good to install the OS on, then use slot 2 with a better SD card to hold the emulators and game files. I flashed the stock SD card using Raspberry Pi Imager, which worked when installing MuOS, but somehow formatted the card in a way Windows couldn't read.

I jumped to Copilot for help. Copilot walked me through some cmd prompts to try, and when that wasn't working, it suggested me to try the official SD Association imager software. I downloaded that, ran it, just to find out it doesn't support formatting SD cards that are above 32GB to fat32. What the hell... so then Copilot suggested another program, GUI Imager or something like that, which worked like a complete charm.

From there, I then found out that MinUI requires to be installed OVER the stock Anbernic OS... after I had went through all this trouble of flashing the card. So, I redownloaded a copy of it, used Rufus to create it into a bootable drive, made sure it worked, then proceeded to try to install MinUI.

I followed the steps in the readme closely. I thought I did everything right. Certain files go into the stock SD card, the rest goes into the second card. Nothing. It didn't turn on. I should have followed a video tutorial, but at that point it was almost two hours of me messing with it. I was done. I reinstalled MuOS which takes no effort at all and got it up and running again.

I did look into Knulli, but I don't like how I can't drag and drop files from Windows directly on the SD card. Everything I read said it requires third party programs to put files onto it... no thank you. I much prefer to just pop the card into my PC and manage it from there, no extra software required. I'm not 100% sure if that is the case, but at least one tutorial I read on it said it requires some different software to manage it via Windows.

 

[neogunhero]

Just want to clarify something with this thread since I just reported a post linking to a ROM collection website: as others have posted towards the start of this thread, it is against the rules to talk about or encourage piracy in any form. ROMs are piracy if you do not own an original copy of the game, just because they are easy to get does not make it legal. It is a very grey area topic, so moving forward I'm not going to be discussing which ROMs to use, where to get them, or teaching others how to do it.

The purpose of this thread is mainly about the devices themselves, modifying and customizing it, and similar topics. I believe a lot of it is in the spirit of PC gaming, since these devices almost exclusively run Linux, and lots of configuration via a PC is required as well. Plus, modifying and customizing your hardware is a PC gamers bread and butter.

I most likely won't post too much here, but I wanted to make this message for future reference. This isn't a thread about where to get ROMs, how to install them, where to find free games, no that is not this threads purpose. Emulation is great and perfectly legal if you do it correctly, but to avoid discussing off-limits topics here, this is strictly about the hardware and software used to run the devices.

 

[neogunhero]

Flip-flopping between MuOS, MinUI, Knulli, and the stock OS, I've found MuOS to be the best out of the box. It may not be the best in terms of functionality, but it's the easiest to configure and works pretty much straight away in my opinion. It loads very quickly, settings menus are easy to use, RetroArch is amazing and super simple to configure, and file management on PC is as simple and dragging and dropping what you want to put on the device.

I have not tried a dual-SD set up with MuOS however. Some OS's require you to use both for the installation, with MuOS you can install it all on one SD, then somehow you're able to configure the second one at a later point for additional storage. Need to figure how to do that but I haven't filled up the first card yet. Not having a joystick on the RG28XX means I can't play N64 or Dreamcast games, so that helps reduce the storage usage without those games.

I did find that the stock PS1 core, PCSX ReARMed, to be unfavorable in many situations. Although it does give more in-game options than my new preferred core DuckStation, the many issues like missing music audio, incompatible BIOS and others made me switch. DuckStation was a LOT more complicated to set up and configure, the end result was much preferable.