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LGP $99 Gamestop


Goochman

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YAY, it came today and is charging up! Is there some reason for the lack of love?  What soul-crushingly bad experience am I about to encounter?

 

Controller has:

  • an MDF (or similar) top
  • Suzo/Happ or IL-style clones for buttons,
  • a sanwa jlf clone with 8-way restrictor(!) for the stick. 
  • Stick works in windows via USB (maybe also bluetooths to things)
  • CLEAN WIRING (more rare than it should be)

 

I was so thrilled, I tore it down for the camera before I even got it charged.  How could this thing possibly be about to let me down?

 

 

Edited by Reaperman
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So now that I've had some time with it, I've got some opinions.  Seemingly a text wall of them.

 

stick:

As far as the controller goes, it's components probably make it an 8/10 stick out of the box. I love this thing. Its components aren't 100% the styles I would have chosen, but they were combined with care and a clear vision in mind. VERY interesting choices ❤. Clearly still built to a pricepoint, but the money went to the right spots. I'd expect this stick to be $80. That said, some parts of it feel real cheap (the plastic tub for sides/bottom), and also its features are poorly documented in instructions. I'm not going to ding them for not having 'real brand' components, they feel better than 'just fine.' probably the best controller I've seen packed with any console, and surely blows stock neo geo and cps-changer controllers away.

 

The stick would not bluetooth or USB to switch (nor was that that was advertised), windows sees it as a HID controller with 24 buttons and the stick is the 'hat' on a flightstick. I saw no way to change this. This means not all games will be happy with it. It played GREAT in jamestown+, could not get it to see the stick in crimzon clover. Great, seemingly lag-free experience in jamestown, however bluetoothed to the console it came with, I did experience lag which varied a good bit by game--usb'ing it to the atgames console may have helped lag a bit, but not perfectly. (bluetoothing an 8bitdo arcade stick seemed more responsive).

 

Poorly documented stick instructions:

The P1/start button turns the radio on/bind or off by holding it for a few seconds. You'll want to turn the radio off manually in usb mode--it has a blue indicator by the power button that flashes forever if you don't. There is a bind button on the console. tap it to bring up the bind menu, wait for it to find a stick. Tapping that same button moves down the list of 'found' devices and holding it binds the selected one.  This menu is your friend. you will be visiting it a lot. it's also an enemy, for if the bind fails, that 'bind' button does not clear the 'failed bind' popup, or in any way help you (console power cycle by pulling power...)

 

also pinout for the optional ($50!) side 'pinball' buttons--the center pin is the common/ground.  Shorting it to either side presses a button in windows--there I saved you $50, assuming you have some buttons to wire in. 

 

 

The console:

 

Built-in games and lag:

The console itself features 100 built-in games. Several of these arcade titles I own. I experienced comparatively more lag on neo drift out by comparison to real hardware on the same screen (my 'real' setup yields 2-3 frames of lag). This console is the perfect storm for lag. It changes resolutions a lot, forcing my tv's built-in scaler to add lag, bluetooth controller seems to add lag, and the emulation itself probably adds lag. When it switches resolution my tv blanks and my capture device loses sync *sigh*.  Still fun to be had here, but I think I had a good bit better experience with the atgames legends flashback units. Those plug-and-plays are no where near as ambitious, mind.

 

Online features:

this thing does wifi and ethernet. When you sign up for your free arcadenet account (you want this), it will spam you daily for events. It's starting to get old, but event announcements are still neat for a while. It seems like there are some online leaderboards (cool), online gameplay that's fairly empty (still cool), and streaming of stuff from their cloud or your computer (meh.. probably even more lag). There's also an app store that has pinball (probably okay), and coinopsx app. The care put into the online ecosystem is obvious, though I haven't tried all of its features, it's much more substantial/ambitious than I imagined it would be. I feel I should no longer consider this a 'plug and play' system for that reason.

 

CoinopsX: 

this free app from their app store allows players to play their own games from usb. prebuilt themed gamepacks for this are plentiful on archive.org and the usual suspects. coinopsx app wants to be online, and will only give you 5 starts of the app in offline mode before it will want to reconnect--this online drm is probably also protecting the pinball stuff too and is honestly expected in todays age.  the coinopsx emulation packs vary in quality, but compared to the built-ins more problems will immediately be visible without looking too hard. The lynx set has graphical/audio/speed glitches, for example. Other packs did things like ignore quicker button presses (example: dragon world pretty chance) which real hardware does not. Still, there's a great variety of packs, setup isn't that bad, and if nothing else there is fun in the process of sampling them all.

 

for $50, I'm over-the-moon happy. I probably don't come off that way, but I'm kind of a negative guy. I even bought another one! Also bought some upgrades for the controllers, though I'm mostly going to enjoy these stock and am even keeping the buttons 100% stock.

This experience probably feels worth the $129 asking price, but honestly I never would have bought it for that, since it's over the impulse-buy threshold (except when it hits $50...).

Edited by Reaperman
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I got this in Sams Club on super closeout sale for $50 sometime in January, and it's still in the box. I knew it's a good deal when I saw it.

At the same time I got The Pinball Legends, so it's using some of my play time.

Someday I'll open it and play with it.

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I spent some more time with it. I love this controller. Works *GREAT* with MiSTer.

and it comes with its own micro-console-puck which is decent fun to horse around with.

Truthfully a few times I'd nearly pulled the trigger on atgames core on ebay, and I'm glad I got the one with this fantastic controller instead.

 

While the controller will probably see more use, there's about a 75% chance I'm not going to turn that console on again until I dig it out of a dusty box in 15 years. I've filed it with the MOJO and the Gembox.

 

 

Edited by Reaperman
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Few tidbits from my experience with the LG Pro:

 

You want to have the control board connected to the puck via USB - bluetooth introduces lag.

 

If you want to use it on your PC then you need to get Joy2Key - it will allow you to map your controller to any keyboard setup you want.

 

The latest CoinOpsX release (within last 2 weeks) works flawlessly - its much easier for me to run my LGP w/CoinOpsX than to fire up my MAME PC.

 

You should use a wired internet connection if you plan on playing the included games from ATGames.  Anything over wifi will be a bit laggy IMHO.

 

I bought a second one as a backup to my first.  $100 for a dual stick/track ball controller for windows is pretty cheap.  Im happy with the controller components but its easy to replace almost anything you want on the cab.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I got one of these for $50, but returned it today... I was trying to see if there was any way to use this with other game consoles, but it uses its own unique mapping and designation.  I ended up returning it and keeping the 8bitdo arcade stick I got for $70 -- that thing works with everything!

 

If only there were a way to get this thing working with the various adapters...

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So my schedule lined up with an atgames happy hour last night--one of the many, many, many invites atgames sends to my inbox. Up to 3x a day. I'd never before seen another user online, and this was my best chance to catch one, and check out their cloud service. So I decided to head into the lobby during those hours and record the experience. It's a bit of a lonely, laggy, crashy time, where you can actually watch the hope draining out of me.

 

The Invite (left) and the pure volume of email correspondence (right)

 

gn1Ucpam.png   gMiGaO8m.png

 

Things I learned:

 

  • Watching (the official youtube show) the next morning, seems to indicate that there were actually people there(!). Paying subscribers see far more games (which is fair) but free users can't see how many users are in them or online. Nobody was in free tier games, and there was no indication anybody else was online so I might as well have been playing my real copy of MOTW alone downstairs. 
  • The cloud pinball app download comes from the left-hand column of the ArcadeNet tab--not the app store where I spent a lot of time hunting for it. The swirl button jumps over to that column.
  • Along the same lines, the lobby game list doesn't scroll, it's paged. It takes me embarrassingly long to figure out there are more free-tier games. Instructions are actually on-screen, it's the x&y buttons to page.
  • It appears that the voice chat feature is (via bluetooth) vs USB. Or maybe USB works too, the interface and the instructions don't have anything to say on the matter. In any case I may not have even found the place where chatting happens until late in the video. I couldn't figure out how to add friends, join existing chat rooms, or even see if anybody was online.
  • Even with a wired broadband connection, and the controller wired via USB, it's a delayed experience. I'm actually quite familiar with MOTW, and while I'm scrub-tier, I'm not NEARLY as terrible as in the video. It felt like I was queuing up moves rather than reacting to the action on the screen, and in prehistoric isle, my craft moved in seemingly random amounts for similar directional inputs. While my network isn't slow, I may be geographically distant from the servers. There is a latency gauge, and I was seeing 40-75ms latency. I suspect that rating is each way, or significantly more was added by the far end's emulator.
  • I mentioned it before, but holding the 'p1'/start button for 5seconds disables the bluetooth radio on the controller, useful for those connecting it via usb.

It's pretty rare for me to attempt to be social like this, but it turned into a bit of a failstream. (granted it's a recording vs a stream, since I wanted to give the atgames every possible chance)

 

Screenshot of a free-tier lobby.

There are people online(?), I just can't see them:

JXvAUEGm.png

 

Also for system "upgrades" I've given it a usb power switch to save the usb port (since there is no power switch)

and a usb hub so I can connect my controller and the necessary usb storage at the same time:

6SVDxTwm.jpg

Edited by Reaperman
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I own most all of the current mini systems and my legends device has the worst lag of them all. Even the legends flashback system is better than the legends ultimate. Now, I just have the puck, but, I wonder if the legends arcade cabinet is just as lagged. The are a couple vocal people online who absolutely love their arcade machine, and I have to wonder, are they just clueless?

I also noticed that they screwed up a lot of functionality of side loaded games with their constant firmware patches. I hear they were trying to stop people from hacking it and broke spinner and trackball support and a lot of the UCE files will no longer work.

Did you ever receive your edge v2 joystick?

Edited by Slikatel
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On 3/12/2022 at 7:36 PM, Reaperman said:

I spent some more time with it. I love this controller. Works *GREAT* with MiSTer.

 

Well that gives me some hope, but seems odd to me.  I hadn't tried the sticks with MiSTer, as everything I read seemed to blame all the lag on the joystick more than the puck, and during my testing, I found I can use a wired Hori stick to dramatically improve the lag/play experience.   I'll have to give it a shot with MiSTer.

 

 

 

 

37 minutes ago, Slikatel said:

I own most all of the current mini systems and my legends device has the worst lag of them all. Even the legends flashback system is better than the legends ultimate. Now, I just have the puck, but, I wonder if the legends arcade cabinet is just as lagged. The are a couple vocal people online who absolutely love their arcade machine, and I have to wonder, are they just clueless?
 

Yeah, same here.  I pretty much all my minis, but the Legends and Flashback something (2 atari paddles) are unplayable for me.   I had the same negative vibes when I played on the arcade machine as well, sadly.

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7 hours ago, Slikatel said:

Did you ever receive your edge v2 joystick?

 

Yes, it came in last week, as did the emio snes classic stick. Ordered it "new," but it came in a box with heavy referb stickers on it. Haven't unboxed either yet. IIRC I disliked the v1 for reasons unrelated to its lack of classic compatibility. I can't recall if it was ergonomics, latency or what.. The bat top the v1 came is living on my 8bitdo stick. Great that they included both.

 

6 hours ago, Razzie.P said:

Well that gives me some hope, but seems odd to me.  I hadn't tried the sticks with MiSTer, as everything I read seemed to blame all the lag on the joystick more than the puck, and during my testing, I found I can use a wired Hori stick to dramatically improve the lag/play experience.   I'll have to give it a shot with MiSTer.

 

At this point, I'm mostly blaming the puck. Though now I have the added variable of a USB hub, which is required to 'go wired' while mounting the usb storage that's required to go online, sideload games, etc. When I tried with bluetooth, I do recall distinctly and immediately thinking my 8bitdo's bluetooth was very noticeably sharper/snappier than bluetooth on my legends gamer mini controller. (so I never really played on it via BT again). It's got no official latency numbers on misteraddons, and I believe it takes better camera tech than I have to test.

 

Here's an unlisted YT vid of tonight's 'MiSTer retest,' using my stupidly unscientific method of 'if its quick enough my hands should just know the way.' NES Super C followed by A8 Joust. It's not riveting content--well I suppose it is when compared to me sitting by myself in an evercade happy hour ;).  Honestly, I probably did expect me to do better, especially on joust.

 

will (eventually) be live here:

 

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19 hours ago, Slikatel said:

the snes emio stick should come with a nifty little nes classic to usb adapter. and a small strat guide. The nes edge v2 stick i got had a horrible joystick and buttons, so i swapped them. The snes super edge wasnt quite as bad. it is still sitting stock.

I got the emio SNES classic controller, which also came with a "Classic Controller to USB" adapter -- but I remember not getting that to work on anything OTHER than the emio gamepad itself.  I don't see why, but I remember trying to use it with "real" classic controllers and it not working.

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2 minutes ago, Slikatel said:

i only tried it with the nes classic edge joystick, also by emio, it worked. They also have that adapter bundled with the edge super gamepad, which I also recently picked up for cheap. I guess some more testing needs to be done on compaitbilty.

I remember trying it out with my Hori Wii fighting stick (Capcom vs. Whatever-that-game-was-called), and it didn't work.  I'm fairly sure I also tried it out using a Wii Classic Controller with no luck.

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so the older emio controllers for the nes classic are the only things that must be compatible with the snes adapters, weird. For what its worth I got the snes edge super gamepad for 6 bucks, so still pretty inexpensive if you want to use your emio nes advantage styled stick on PC or whatevs.

 

$5.99 new, free shipping. (click on other sellers)
Amazon.com: EMiO Edge Gamepad for SNES Mini - Super NES : Video Games

Edited by Slikatel
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5 hours ago, Slikatel said:

so the older emio controllers for the nes classic are the only things that must be compatible with the snes adapters, weird. For what its worth I got the snes edge super gamepad for 6 bucks, so still pretty inexpensive if you want to use your emio nes advantage styled stick on PC or whatevs.

 

$5.99 new, free shipping. (click on other sellers)
Amazon.com: EMiO Edge Gamepad for SNES Mini - Super NES : Video Games

  I'm going to have to dig up the adapter and try it out again, just to make sure there wasn't something weird going on at the time... but, yes, I couldn't get the thing to work on anything OTHER than the emio gamepad it was bundled with. 

 

5 hours ago, Slikatel said:

Tatsunoko vs Capcom - Ultimate All-Stars

Was that a Hori or a Mad Catz fightsick? or were there two different sticks made?

Oops -- yep, it was Mad Catz.  I don't know why I was thinking Hori.

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The Wii Classic Controller to USB adapter that came with my Emio SNES Super Edge arcade stick seems to work with all Classic Controllers. I've used the official Classic Controller Pro as well as the official NES and SNES Classic Edition gamepads on my PC quite a few times with it.

Edited by Atariboy
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15 minutes ago, Atariboy said:

The Wii Classic Controller to USB adapter that came with my Emio SNES Super Edge arcade stick seems to work with all Classic Controllers. I've used the official Classic Controller Pro as well as the official NES and SNES Classic Edition gamepads on my PC quite a few times with it.

thats great news, because that makes that adapter very handy for a small price. I would imagine playing on PC with official S/NES classic controllers is pretty nice. I just tested the advantage style stick with nes emulation, but it was pretty fun.

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4 hours ago, Atariboy said:

The Wii Classic Controller to USB adapter that came with my Emio SNES Super Edge arcade stick seems to work with all Classic Controllers. I've used the official Classic Controller Pro as well as the official NES and SNES Classic Edition gamepads on my PC quite a few times with it.

Weird... I'm going to have to dig mine out and test it again.  I remember trying it and having no success at all with anything other than the emio controller.

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