NE146

March 9

Hey I missed this thread. I've always liked the Gamecube.. but it sucks because last I tried mine, it seemed the disk drive was dying where it wouldn't spin at all until the GC had "warmed up" or something. Basically it will work after being on about 10-15 minutes or so, but it obviously isn't long for the world.

Anyway I was pretty annoyed about it, wondering what type of alternate (ODE) or repairs could possibly be done to play the games. But! Then someone mentioned "Just use your Wii??". I totally forgot the Wii can play GC disks lol So now the GC repair idea has kind of been put on the backburner :lol:

February 26

On 2/20/2023 at 1:52 PM, Tanooki said:

I get it has been re-issued since, but so what... I was on the original translation team doing largely test and some checking too for Final Fantasy 5 around 1997 into 1998 with the old original work SOM2Freak did.

https://www.romhacking.net/translations/353/

Cool man. I'm actually playing through a translated (with some QoL additions) Final Fantasy 5 for the FIRST time ever, despite being a huge huge fan of FF1, FF2(US), and FF3(US).. until FF7 turned me into not liking the series anymore :lol:

I decided to go with the SNES version rather than the later remakes since that is what I'd imagine I'd have gone for after FF2(US)/FF4 typically. The Pocket has made it possible for me since sitting in front of a TV to play doesn't happen often and I'm much more likely to pay attention when doing certain bio-break activities *ahem*. Anyway, been playing it for months.. a few minutes a day at a time and so far I'm 30 hours in. Loving the translation action.

February 19

Yeah it's funny because I primarily play handheld these days, and these days that means the Analogue Pocket over any other format, simply because it has nearly everything in there already I almost rarely play on the TV/consoles anymore. HOWEVER... there are infrequent times I do want to play on the TV (especially with RPGs.. like SNES Final Fantasy V which I'm playing through right now) and to do that I have to copy out the SAV file from the Pocket and then manually copy it over to the SuperNT/SD2SNES or MiSTer, etc. Which works fine but requires effort and takes time. So I ordered the Analogue Dock, which despite what you guys are saying, seems like the nice ideal solution where I can just pop the Pocket in there and I'd instantly be in TV mode!

But alas.. I only figured that out back in December 2022. So at the expected rate, I'm sure it'll arrive here in Dec 2023, or maybe early 2024 :lol:

February 19

Not exactly a 'glitch' per-se but doing the 5th extra man in Taito Space Invaders Part 2 was my first. The game had a secret reward of an extra life if you cleared a stage in 55 shots (which is the exact amount of invaders on the screen).. but it could be fooled by shooting over 255 shots and rolling over the shot counter. As a kid we didn't fully know this but we knew if we just kept on shooting after a certain point, it would give us an extra man when we cleared the stage. :lol:

After that I guess the lives trick in Mr. Do where you make the apple crush you on your last life just as you clear the stage, then you get 255 lives. Apparently they patched this bug later but luckily for me, any Mr. Do machine I came across had this trick possible.

On consoles the first trick I found was double shots in 2600 Space Invaders.. I was so eager to play the game I would often flick on the console and hit reset simultaneously which kicked off the trick.

That's about all I can remember as far as finding out myself. The rest I would read in magazines like how to shop the bugs from shooting in Galaga, etc.

February 17

51 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

I don't have CORES loaded and I have no intention to load them as I've got around 150~ handheld games

Well that's your choice of course.. but you have a device where that's one of the main features, and only adds to the functionality and takes away none.. so image.png.2c311729d5cf7fc8875906fd9b7b72aa.png

Lots of people are happy with a standard GB/GBC/GBA (maybe modding it with a new IPS screen etc). and those of course work great as well.

February 17

Back when I would only buy 1 game at a time? Of course.. especially starting in the NES/Famicom days and onward. Some games did defeat me though like Actraiser 2 where I said screw it. 😜

It wasn't until the Playstation days when we all started burning CDs when that changed, where it obviously became impractical to try and beat your non-stop influx of 'new' games. On that note that's when I first dealt with something we've all come to face with and that's paralysis of choice... which I dealt with for over a decade+ until I figured out to just make a friggin choice and focus on one game at a time. i.e. coming full circle to my first sentence. :lol:

February 17

36 minutes ago, dudeguy said:

My hope/expectation was that youd have the same functionality as a real Game Boy Advance, out of the box.

I don't know man.. I really have zero bias and (not counting non-handheld forms e.g GB Player, MiSTer) will play GBA games on any GBA or even an emulated on a PSP, Steam Deck, 3DS, etc. and I will say one of the Pocket's main strengths is GBA! Especially when you're talking real carts and the save states functionality the Pocket gives you. It plays them well. Unless you're talking about some edge case, but for me it works well with whatever I throw at it. 😛

February 17

11 hours ago, Tanooki said:

When you get into what GBC did uniquely, it fails. It won't colorize the DMG or Black DMG hybrid carts right. It also won't use the built in pre-set color schematics by the game (or even by the stage in the game) for all the first party PUBLISHED by Nintendo Gameboy games on GBC. That means Kirby isn't pink, Samus isn't red and yellow, Street Fighter 2 isn't colorized either. The best you can hope for is setting GBC mode and it doing the default blue/brown/green thing GBC did on old games if you didn't pick another choice by holding some combo of the d-pad and b and/or a buttons. It's stupid and horrible considering it was a standard feature of the GBC hardware an it's just either not there or broken.\

It's basically the difference between the Nintendo vs. the Analogue BIOS. And while it's probably not what you want (i.e. with the physical cart) it's worth nothing that on the OpenFPGA GBC Core you DO get the pre-set color palettes for those certain games, as well as the GBC color palettes you can choose at startup with the D-Pad + Buttons. So that is an option.

On the flip-side when running a cart it's the Analogue BIOS and as you know, there can get the "Analogue GBC", or the GB palettes (DMG, Pocket, Lite, Pinball).

There is also the "Analogue GB" where you get a few more options in the menu.

I'm not going to even bother mentioning the palettes you get with the Super Gameboy core. 😜The hope is eventually all palettes from both (and more, if customization is allowed) will be accessible no matter how a game is accessed.

February 16

21 hours ago, dudeguy said:

Or the cartridge works in GB mode only, even though it used to be able to start in GBC mode with the full color.

You never mentioned this so figured I'd ask... you sure you don't have "Force GB Mode" enabled in the settings? 😛

February 15

Yeah I've had zero problems playing this thing.. it's my #1 most played console for the past several months.

February 8

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

I know this is probably looking bad, but I had to look up that JSON had something do do with java script. I have no idea what that is, keep seeing it around all this open fpga junk with the pocket, and it basically seemed like it's some kind of requirement that isn't well explained or put into steps to use, may need some basic java script coding language ability too. It kind of backed me off bothering to try and load a few things, PCE CDs included seeing that up there. I can't code, I tried to learn and it was my only D in college or anything near that. Hell I can't even find a compiler online, set that thing up to compile programs off github and elsewhere I'd like to use -- it makes zero sense to me. 😕

Maybe one of those pocket updaters will create a JSON creator eh?

There's no coding necessary.. you just take their sample one and put in 1) name of folder 2) name of .BIN and 3) name of .CUE. But yes it confused me for a few when I first tried it. But as usual, it's super early. They'll probably streamline the Turbo CD stuff as time goes on where it won't be as necessary to do all that manual editing.

February 7

2 hours ago, zzip said:

I think if they made a bunch of small fixes to the 2600 version, it would have been better received:

- fix the colors to be more arcade like- no extra rom needed, should be able to fix this in minutes.

- fix the pacman, get rid of the eye, make it rounder- should consume the same amount of bytes, maybe even save some since you could mirror top and bottom.

- fix the sound, "boing boing boing" is just wrong, should be able to do something closer to the arcade in the same amount of code or less

- put tunnels on the side- no idea what coding challenges/code size this presents

- music: the 2600 music is 4 notes. I think the arcade is 19 notes if you did it in a single channel. So this will cost a few bytes for sure, but not a huge a mount

I think the changes above would have vastly reduced the complaints.

stretch goals: reduce flicker, add fruits, add Pac-man up and down animation, make the maze more arcade-like - Ms PacMan had all these things, but it might require an 8K ROM to get them all.

Nukey did a lot of those in his hack to Atari pacman. Sure he made it 8k (for intermissions, etc.), but it at least gives you an idea of what you're talking about IF we're talking only about improving the original VCS Pac-man we all know and love. :lol:

Aside from that of course at this point there's Dintar816's amazing port of the arcade game to the VCS

February 7

I fumbled around a bit but finally got it going. What wasn't quite clear was how to launch games after you get all your ducks in a row (i.e. BIN/CUE correct, and in their folder, and the corresponding correctly-edited JSON for it).

Once you launch a turbo cd game, it just brings up the menu again.. you THEN have to launch the appropriate .PCE bios file typically found under the /common folder. That part wasn't exactly clear but that's how I get it to work, at least for the moment. Then the turbo cd game will start up.

(obligatory Rondo pic)

and fwiw, here's how the JSON for it is configured if anyone needs a reference:

{
    "instance": {
        "magic": "APF_VER_1",
            "variant_select" : {
                "id" : 300,
                "select" : false
            },
            "data_path": "Akumajou_Dracula",
            "data_slots": [
                {
                "id": 100,
                        "filename": "Akumajou_Dracula.cue"
                },{
                "id": 101,
                        "filename": "Akumajou_Dracula.bin"
                }
            ],
            "memory_writes": [
                
            ]
    }
}

February 6

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

Pocket Updater is that generic dos prompt looking tool isn't it? Pretty handy, just wish you didn't have to keep selecting Y/N for each core when I test clicked it to see how it worked. Great if you want most, but just a few it's a lot of hunt and pecking.

There are like 5 Pocket Updaters out there. e.g. Under the "OpenFPGA Cores and Updaters" section of https://www.reddit.com/r/AnaloguePocket/comments/yhdpso/analogue_pocket_quick_start_guide/ However as I mentioned earlier the one I've leaned towards using is:

On 1/22/2023 at 12:04 AM, NE146 said:

I tend to use "Pocket_Updater by Retrodriven" which has a Windows GUI: https://github.com/RetroDriven/Pocket_Updater/releases/tag/v1.4.4 It's super easy to use.. just click "Update Pocket" and select your SD card, or a directory on your computer, and off it goes.

February 2

54 minutes ago, Crazy Climber said:

I still like it and still play Tetris99 and mario kart online weekly. Well worth 20 bucks a year. I think if I could only have one game it would be Tetris99 haha. Just so much fun battling all those other people live.

Oh wait... do you need it to play the "99" games? I had no idea.. well, I play Pacman 99 a lot if that counts. :lol:

February 2

I have zero interest in online play when it comes to Nintendo stuff, but I do subscribe as I do like the games emulated on the Switch with the easily accessible emulation features like rewind, and save states. It's how I finished Mario Golf 64 with Birdies/Eagles on each hole :lol:

Sure I got the original carts for plenty of them, and an Everdrive, and the Analogue consoles, and a MiSTer, and the mini consoles, and most every single one of those games playable in some form or fashion elsewhere, but whatever. I also want it on Switch. :)

February 2

I've said this a bunch, but Zaxxon would probably be considered a relatively decent (and definitely unique) 2600 game in its day had it never had the "Zaxxon" name... ok and maybe if the ship didn't look like an airplane :lol: But still, it has very unique gameplay as a shmup for the VCS, stages, and.. it has a boss! Can't knock that really. But alas, when viewed as an arcade port of what was a state of the art arcade game at the time, it obviously falls short.

January 30

I took a look on ebay and there are a number on sale for 200-300 bucks but I don't see any actually sold recently.. so who knows what the value is.

I still have my original MUSHA cart I bought back in the day at retail. There was a lot of hype for the game, so (at the time) I just assumed anyone interested in video games would have ran out and gotten it right away just like Street Fighter. :lol: Anyway if it starts actually selling for crazy crazy amounts who knows maybe I'd consider letting it go lol

<edit> Woops! Last 3 games:

Actraiser Renaissance (Switch)

Final Fantasy 5 (translated SNES version on Analogue Pocket)

Pacman 99 (Switch)

yeah pretty boring I know.

January 25

40 minutes ago, sramirez2008 said:

I received a shipment notification earlier today. It should arrive this Saturday.🙂

When did you place your order out of curiosity? Just wanting to know what the expected times are. I already have one as I bought one at launch, BUT I ordered another for my kid on Nov. 11 2022 so I pretty much don't even expect it until the end of this year :lol: But was wondering if that was truly accurate.

January 25

The FXPAK Pro (previously known as the SD2SNES) is better than the snes Everdrive I believe. <edit> woops didn't read the later replies. Yeah I guess they are probably hard to find at the moment.

ALTERNATIVELY, you can always build a MiSTer OR, if you don't mind waiting (which you will if you order one) you could order the Super NT from Analogue. The Analogue Pocket also plays SNES very well in handheld format. All sorts of options these days.

January 22

RE: Updaters, (I sent this to GoldLeader the other day) - https://www.reddit.com/r/AnaloguePocket/comments/yhdpso/analogue_pocket_quick_start_guide/ gives good overall info, and under "OpenFPGA Cores and Updaters" there's a list of the updaters. I tend to use "Pocket_Updater by Retrodriven" which has a Windows GUI: https://github.com/RetroDriven/Pocket_Updater/releases/tag/v1.4.4 It's super easy to use.. just click "Update Pocket" and select your SD card, or a directory on your computer, and off it goes.

4 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I don't have a real use for it..... I just care about the real carts, at worst, the flash kits I have already invested in, so there's no practical personal use for the cores or I'd be all over it 100%.

Just put them on there anyway. 😜 I mean hello.. SNES, GENESIS, TG16, NEO GEO, NES, SMS, 2600, 7800, COLECOVISION all FPGA'd in handheld format! Again.. absolutely zero reason not to put all those on there as far as I'm concerned. And I'm talking obviously as someone (like most here) who has original consoles & carts, flashcarts, the Analogue Consoles, the MiSTer, and any and all sorts of emulation options (PC, Steam Deck, Switch, Mini consoles, etc. etc.) around to the point I can't even think of them all. So what if you have 15+ ways to play Super Mario Bros. 1?. That's a positive, not a negative as far as I'm concerned.. why deny one method for the other

You mentioned you had a Dock. Funny thing is my thought was I didn't need one since I would use the MiSTer (or other Analogue consoles) on the TV, and the Pocket would be purely for handheld play.

BUT.. what I found is when I'm playing through games on the Pocket, especially RPGs, very occasionally I would like to play it on the big screen as well. To do that I have to copy out the save file from the Pocket and put it on the MiSTer, which works, but takes time and is pretty much a hassle. I would much rather just shove the pocket on the dock and boom.. tv mode. So, I ordered one finally. :lol:

January 21

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

I've not put any cores on it, it's vanilla as I've got more than enough unfinished things to play with. IF I felt the need, I'd likely stick to hardware I already own and pop the ROMS for those onto the memory for the the pocket for ease of use. But to be fair, I don't think I would.

There's really zero reason not to shove any available cores on there aside from personal disinterest (e.g. I pass on stuff like PONG). Especially when you can just run the single updater and it puts all of them on your SD card in a click.

January 19

I got a Analogue Pocket from the initial batch… I like it a lot. I also have a Steam Deck and a Switch as far as “current” handheld options. I really meander from one to the other as far as which one gets the most play time, depending on the game I happen to be playing. But if I’m playing any GB,GBC,NES,SMS,GG, SNES, TG16, SNES, then it’s pocket for sure UNLESS I need emulation options such as save states or fast forward, in which case I’ll use any number of emulation options.

January 18

Ok found it.. they're labelled "soldering practice kits"

https://gikfun.com/collections/frontpage

January 18

My kid had to do this at school and now he's pretty good at soldering now due to the sheer amount of points to practice on (he says it's obvious which points are his earlier ones :lol: ) . I'm not sure exactly where the best place to buy it though.. e.g. https://www.amazon.com/WELLVEUS-Electronic-Flashing-Soldering-Practice/dp/B08YCY439Q but that's a pack of 10.

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