The Official Analogue Pocket Thread!

[Glorkbot]

On 2/8/2024 at 2:10 PM, Glorkbot said:

 

Atari 2600 Phoenix is not working correctly for me on Analogue Pocket. It starts with the boss screen, then if you beat the boss it goes to the runway scene...and if you beat that it gives you another runway screen, and then another. I haven't gotten further than that, but that is not the correct order for things to occur in the game. 

I’m so stupid…it’s Pleiades that doesn’t work properly on Analogue Pocket, not Phoenix. I obtained a new dump of Phoenix and thought that fixed it…but that’s a different game lol.

[Glorkbot]

On 2/10/2024 at 4:54 PM, Atariboy said:

I'd suggest a different route and track down the Nt Mini Noir romset off the Internet Archive

It does not seem to still exist there unless it’s listed as something other than “Nt Mini Noir”. It’s not coming up in a search. (Only NES and Intellivision Noir pop up.)

Edited February 15 by Glorkbot

[Atariboy]

Search for "Analogue Nt Mini Noir Jailbreak 2021-07-09" in Google and you should see a relevant Internet Archive search result. It has prepared romsets for a lot of the cores. The Spiritualized cores on the Pocket are ports of the Noir cores and share similar standards like what file extension should be used for a particular game, making it plug & play for the 2600 and such.

 

Incidentally it also includes Intellivision, if you're like me and didn't have any luck converting roms to the format that Kevtris uses for his Intellivision core on the Noir and Pocket (I'll still have to figure that out one of these days though for some homebrew roms that I have that aren't included in that romset).

Edited February 15 by Atariboy

[Glorkbot]

I figured out how to make Pleiades run correctly... you just need to change the suffix .bin or .a26 to .ua

[Reaperman]

Woot?  Got an email that my pocket adapter set order is 'being prepared' with a last day to change my address on the FEB 25th.  

Has there been news on this front of it nearing completion on the core side?  This is the first I'm hearing of it.

 

Edited February 19 by Reaperman

[roots.genoa]

I think they recently confirmed (on Twitter I guess) that the adapters would be released at the end of February. So I was not surprised to get the email, but I really thought they would be delayed since the Duo firmware is not ready yet (even the HuCard part, since there are no savestates yet). I'm also surprised the NGPC core is ready, but they wouldn't ship if not I guess!

[SevenTari]

When plugged in to the dock, under "settings" and controller, there's a remap feature grayed out when I select my co troller. Was there a universal remap option that was supposed to come out but never did? Still being worked on? Anyone know? Thanks in advance!

 

 

[Video]

Well last I heard we were supposed to experience shipping for the cart adapters sometime mid February. I've not got an email yet. I need to get my original order email and make sure I actually ordered it, I'm pretty sure I did, but might not due to believing a not available yet part might delay shipping, which was always bad with analog pocket.

[Atariboy]

In December when they announced the latest delay, they said late February.

[Reaperman]

Yeah, but this is the same bunch that loves to fill twitter with their upcoming hardware running games--or at least implied it's their hardware, and I don't see anything new/recent depicted as running on pocket. Surely no lynx/ngpc, but some years-old tg16. Admittedly, I don't understand how twitter works, older posts seem to appear above newer ones for seemingly no reason, and at a glance the place is too disorganized to know if I'm just missing things.

 

My best guess is an official TG-16 core will drop about the time the set arrives, and the other systems will come on a TBD schedule.

I'm most looking forward to lynx, personally.  lots of atari-games' games, from an era of arcade we're unlikely to see any more of in the future. It's not easy to find a console that plays Xybots or Hydra.

Edited February 22 by Reaperman

[Atariboy]

I really doubt that they're going to ship these out without the corresponding cores being ready to go.

 

If they do go that route, it will be interesting to see how it's received. I can't imagine people would be pleased to have received hardware that's going to remain useless until an undetermined point in the future.

[roots.genoa]

7 hours ago, Reaperman said:

I'm most looking forward to lynx, personally.  lots of atari-games' games, from an era of arcade we're unlikely to see any more of in the future. It's not easy to find a console that plays Xybots or Hydra.

I think you'll be happy because it seems that Kev's Lynx core is way more accurate than current emulators.

[+madman]

The latest firmware includes support for the new adapters, everything works. After waiting this long it wouldn't have made sense for them to ship without functional cores.

[roots.genoa]

Well, the NeoGeo Pocket core doesn't have savestates (yet?) though. Also Kev confirmed he made that one as well.

[Giles N]

On 2/10/2024 at 10:54 PM, Atariboy said:

 

The Pocket's 7800 core only works with 7800 games.

 

Have you tested out how extensively it works? Originals (PAL/NTSC), Prototypes, Homebrews, Hacks (🐶), Demos…?

[Atariboy]

I've played at this point approximately 75% of the 7800's commercial NTSC library and have never found an issue. I've not dabbled with PAL 7800 games yet with the core. I don't think that I've had any prototypes like Sirius fired up yet nor any demos. Every hack I've tried has worked fine. Homebrew is the one weak link that I've found so far, but I've had far more successes than failures.

 

Taking a stab at estimating how many homebrews I've tried to play on the Pocket, I'd say approximately 30 including most of the big names such as Baby Pac-Man. The vast majority like Scramble have worked perfectly. I've had one or two that load up to black screens, the new Mario Bros. homebrew throws an error message about rom size, and a couple of other homebrews have loaded but have messed up audio (every rom that I try of Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest for instance has completely broken audio).

 

The core is great for the commercial library (at least on the NTSC side of the pond), but it doesn't quite seem up to the task for some of the most advanced homebrews like Bentley Bear. Hopefully one of these days when Kevtris has a moment to catch his breath, he'll issue an update for this excellent core to resolve these problems (and if Kevtris ever happens to read this, it would be great if we could map the 7800's right joystick directions to the ABXY buttons on the Pocket to enable proper twin-stick controls in 7800 Robotron).

Edited March 7 by Atariboy

[Reaperman]

On 2/22/2024 at 2:05 AM, roots.genoa said:

I think you'll be happy because it seems that Kev's Lynx core is way more accurate than current emulators.

Adapters came in today, Lynx's low-contrast screen filter seems to look great, and the core really captures the crunchy-crappiness of lynx sound. I'm not turning that audio filter on--perfect the way it is.  I will say the stereo separation from the side-firing stereo speakers can occasionally be a bit jarringly awesome when I only remember the games coming from the mono speaker. the roadblasters intro a big improvement in stereo.

 

The STUN runner lower UI color flash seems a bit off to my memory.  I'll have to compare it to real HW later, because the screen mod on my more-easily-accessible lynx seems to have died in storage...again. 🙄 so I have to dig up whatever thread I used to fix it last time. Motivation to fix it is very low as long as I'm looking at the pocket's screen.

[Reaperman]

Anybody got NGPC turf masters?  Mine plays the intro and menus, but goes to black-screen when I try any single player game (menu music still plays)--or a silent white screen if I choose to continue my last save before the intro plays. 

 

Speaking of saves, I'm a little surprised today. I assumed the 2032 battery in the NGPC would have been for both the rtc and gamesaves to the system itself, so a mild shock when my neo geo cup save was right there with my name on it in the pocket adapter. Huh, cart-saves, I probably should have put that connection together earlier.

Edited March 8 by Reaperman

[NE146]

2 hours ago, Reaperman said:

Anybody got NGPC turf masters?  Mine plays the intro and menus, but goes to black-screen when I try any single player game (menu music still plays)--or a silent white screen if I choose to continue my last save before the intro plays. 

Not that I have anything NGP related, but pretty sure I've seen that issue with Turf Masters reported by various folks.

[roots.genoa]

4 hours ago, Reaperman said:

Speaking of saves, I'm a little surprised today. I assumed the 2032 battery in the NGPC would have been for both the rtc and gamesaves to the system itself, so a mild shock when my neo geo cup save was right there with my name on it in the pocket adapter. Huh, cart-saves, I probably should have put that connection together earlier.

I waited long to remove the battery from my NGPC because I didn't want to lose all my saves, and it would be cool if I don't have to unlock everything in Match of the Millenium again.

[str0m]

On 3/8/2024 at 4:04 AM, Reaperman said:

Anybody got NGPC turf masters?

 

 I do but I don't have a analogue pocket 😅

 

Yes a lot save to the cart. Only issue is if the batteries go at the exact point they are saving, had that with Puzzle Bobble before and it scrubbed my save so I had to clear all 99 rounds again.

[Rick Dangerous]

No luck getting my retro HQ SD cart to work with the Pocket with the Lynx Cartridge adaptor....bummer.  I wonder if the newer model works?  Anyone tried with success?

 

On the upside....all actual carts I've tried so far work and man is it cool playing California games on the big screen while this is docked! 

 

Also confirmed save states work...which opens up a lot of possibilities on Lynx.  Beating tough games, saving high score tables, etc. 

 

 

[Rick Dangerous]

The Retro HQ Neo Geo Pocket GD cart works great!  Can anyone test the newer style Lynx flash cart from Retro HQ, the skinny/wedge shaped one?

 

I'd really like to get some Intellivision/Colecovision controllers to use with this console.  Anyone making these with USB connections, or would you have to poach them from a mini console kit? 

 

 

Edited March 11 by Rick Dangerous

[+madman]

6 hours ago, Rick Dangerous said:

The Retro HQ Neo Geo Pocket GD cart works great!  Can anyone test the newer style Lynx flash cart from Retro HQ, the skinny/wedge shaped one?

 

[SainT]

The new style cart works just fine, and with firmware 1.07 (and the next analogue pocket firmware) the save states work correctly with games loaded from the GD. The next AP firmware should also sort problems with the older style Lynx GD cart, which currently does not currently work.

Edited March 12 by SainT