The Official Analogue Pocket Thread!

[Video]

I clicked the thing on the site and it claims to have stuff so I ordered it, for the price of the base unit from others, I got a system, white, though that's not important really, I got the tv dock thing, A clear case, though it looks to be a display case more than a protective mobile case, and the game gear adapter. 

 

Anyone try using the game gear adapter with a master gear converter to play master system games? Portable that would be impractical, but if it works, I could see doing that while docked lol.

 

How good is its emulation? I know its "fpga" but its still essentially emulating the hardware side of things (my understanding is dogs is essentially A processor version of eprom, but I could be wrong) I ask, because if its good enough, while not for pirated roms, I do have ever cards for game boy and advance.

 

 As for internet IV, lol, just a term for systems requiring internet to work right, or at all. Seems to defeat the purpose of a handheld, but most the YouTube videos I saw seem to involve mass quantities of people hooking it to the internet (though admittedly, mostly to do things outside of what its intended for, like PlayStation)

 

Edit) I emailed and told them they really need to change that preorder thing, I would have ordered one like 8 months ago had I known it wasn't just for preorder. No telling how many sales their losing for that (and its always a good idea to put a bad taste in peoples mouths by having them pay order of magnitude more for your products through third parties) oh, the lynx card is a preorder, don't know if it'll be sold separate, or bundled with Nobel pocket and turbo graphx, though I've got carts and cards for all those, so eventually I'd get them all anyways, unless the system just ended up apocalyptically shitty or something. Right now offered only as a bundled preorder.

Edited January 24, 2023 by Video

[Tanooki]

Uhhh what do they claim to have in stock?  The pocket is still on Group C 2023 as are the other parts, and knowing their shenanigans it could be December or into Jan/Feb of 2024 given what I've seen of some pockets promised for 2022 still not mailed out which is bad.  You got me curious so I looked, and then I decided to get more curious and put that Game Gear adapter @Video asked about in the bin, and they want $30 SHIPPING?!?! on a probably 4-6oz adapter if that.  I removed it from the cart, rather pay someone unhappy for a second had one than pay double for it on principle alone.  They need to grow up and stop pocketing side money or find a less dishonest shipping contract.

 

That fat post before the last is dead on right, the pocket itself, it alone is fantastic, as are their previous nintendo/sega pieces too.  And they have become more greedy in the last year with shipping as it was bad before, now it's worse into pure exploitation levels.  They tout upgrades, accuracy and all that... and they've been pretty high but not 100% right on previous, pocket included, but the dock is a moderately functional disaster and why they're not being perpetually harassed, called out, bombed by consumers is mind blowing as they're just getting away with it.  I hope someone jailbreaks the shit out of it and fixes their own failures as a company for them because I find it a struggle to keep the thing (HDMI plug) attached unless I choose to use which which sucks, a $100 investment that partially works.  At this rate I'm about 50/50 inclined to use it as a charge station for now largely and fall back on using my GB player because at least it doesn't glitch and bitch.

 

 

Is anyone working to make the dock run right since they seem to be uncaring about it?

 

[roots.genoa]

8 hours ago, Video said:

Anyone try using the game gear adapter with a master gear converter to play master system games? Portable that would be impractical, but if it works, I could see doing that while docked lol.

It works, but it is impractical, indeed.

 

8 hours ago, Video said:

How good is its emulation? I know its "fpga" but its still essentially emulating the hardware side of things

It's difficult to answer that question, because it depends. On paper, you can program every part of any hardware into a FPGA (as long as it is big enough), so it will behave exactly like the original system. But there are a few problems:

1. You won't program the memory parts inside an FPGA, because it would require too much space. So the RAM is always one or several separate components, which forces the developer to change the architecture a little, so it can introduce bugs or at least differences. By the way, the Analogue Pocket has 4 different RAMs to replace the different kinds of RAM you find in a Game Boy (and other game systems). It's important because the MISTer only has one big RAM (at least on default), so each RAM is simulated by the same, which makes the synchronicity more complicated (if several chips access their own RAMs at the same time). Which leads to the second thing:
2. Unless you know the exact composition of every chip in the original hardware, you almost never recreate it 1:1. Developers tend to simplify things by replacing several parts by a single one, for instance, especially when they're dealing with very big or complex architectures (the SNES or 32-bit systems). In fact, a lot of developers recreate software emulators in FPGA, rather than recreating the original hardware. Analogue's chief engineer thinks it's stupid, but at least it usually works, even though the emulation is clearly not as 'authentic'.

That being said, even though FPGA is not always better than software emulation, it's at least better for recreating the synchronicity between components (because it doesn't depend on the PC you're running your emulator on), which make things easier and remove input lag.

[derFunkenstein]

I got my preorder pocket in December, literally two or three days before Christmas. I feel bad about all the delays, but I want to assure those of you waiting that it's worth it. 

[+sramirez2008]

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

[NE146]

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   But was wondering if that was truly accurate. 

 

 

[+sramirez2008]

3 hours ago, NE146 said:

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   But was wondering if that was truly accurate. 

 

 

2021-12-15 order placed

2021-12-20 Preorder Fulfillment Group Email received. Placed into Group C

2022-11-22 “Pocket Preorder is being Prepared” Email received.

2023-01-25 “A Shipment from order #130229 is on the way” Email received. 

 

[Punisher5.0]

Saw a video today of PCE CD running on the Pocket. Its in early stages but was great to see someone working on it.

 

[Tanooki]

That's good.  Last time I saw a PCE CD working on a handheld was at least a decade plus ago.  PCEAdvance for GBA added ISO support so I had placed a couple games I had at the time on there to take with me.  It ran fantastic on that more limited hardware so I would imagine it should in the end have great support on the pocket.

[Reaperman]

Today I got a Dual Screen Rumble Pack and tried some Drill Dozer. It's a pleasing little game, and the rumble gimmick serves it well.

What a fun little feature for the pocket to have.

 

BITD I skipped over NDS and went right to NDSL, so I've never had one of these before, but the full-size rumble is MUCH better in the analogue pocket compared to my old generic 'lite'-sized rumble cart. I do not recommend that generic NDSL one for the pocket--its rumble is more noise than feel. I don't recall it being quite so trash in the DS, but maybe. It uses a pager motor, where the official version of the small one makes its rumble in a different way (and I don't have a real one to compare). 

 

Somewhere around here I also have an EZ-Flash 3-in-1 as well (Rumble/RAM/GBA) but I haven't tried it in the pocket. Even if I find it, it's probably stuck in GBA mode until I find the software to change it.

 

(embiggen)

Game pictured for effect, obviously cart unnecessary

Edited February 3, 2023 by Reaperman

[dudeguy]

On 1/25/2023 at 12:22 AM, Tanooki said:

Uhhh what do they claim to have in stock?  The pocket is still on Group C 2023 as are the other parts, and knowing their shenanigans it could be December or into Jan/Feb of 2024 given what I've seen of some pockets promised for 2022 still not mailed out which is bad.  You got me curious so I looked, and then I decided to get more curious and put that Game Gear adapter @Video asked about in the bin, and they want $30 SHIPPING?!?! on a probably 4-6oz adapter if that.  I removed it from the cart, rather pay someone unhappy for a second had one than pay double for it on principle alone.  They need to grow up and stop pocketing side money or find a less dishonest shipping contract.

 

That fat post before the last is dead on right, the pocket itself, it alone is fantastic, as are their previous nintendo/sega pieces too.  And they have become more greedy in the last year with shipping as it was bad before, now it's worse into pure exploitation levels.  They tout upgrades, accuracy and all that... and they've been pretty high but not 100% right on previous, pocket included, but the dock is a moderately functional disaster and why they're not being perpetually harassed, called out, bombed by consumers is mind blowing as they're just getting away with it.  I hope someone jailbreaks the shit out of it and fixes their own failures as a company for them because I find it a struggle to keep the thing (HDMI plug) attached unless I choose to use which which sucks, a $100 investment that partially works.  At this rate I'm about 50/50 inclined to use it as a charge station for now largely and fall back on using my GB player because at least it doesn't glitch and bitch.

 

 

Is anyone working to make the dock run right since they seem to be uncaring about it?

 

None of this surprises me. I have 2 Docks on pre-order. The build quality of the Super NT and Mega SG were superb but the Pocket has been disappointing- namely the buttons have been problematic, and the OS is not nearly as user friendly or intuitive as the ones for the aforementioned systems- though to be fair I jumped straight into the 2021 firmware updates so maybe the OS originally wasnt very good.

 

That said, the screen quality on the Pocket is excellent, and zero latency. Love being able to track how much time Ive put into cartridges and being able to save state the cartridges is awesome.

 

Analogue benefits from the fact that they have zero competition. There is no one else making systems that play cartridges on a high-caliber level. It seems Retro Bit and Hyperkin try to make budget friendly products. So there really needs to be another luxury brand to compete against Analogue

[Pixelboy]

I don't know if this thread is the right place to ask, but I have a question for electronic hardware experts. Perhaps Kevtris himself could answer this, if he ever visits this forum thread.

 

Famicom carts have 60 pins and NES carts have 72 pins. Would it be possible to put an NES ROM on a Game Boy-sized cart with 32 pins? We're talking about a custom cartridge PCB designed specifically to fit the cartridge port of the Analogue Pocket, together with a custom FPGA core, of course. The point of my question is whether it's possible to cram all interactions between an NES core and an NES ROM into 32 pins. I suppose there could be NES mapper issues to consider, but that would only relate to cartridge PCB design.

 

I figure it would be relatively easy to implement ColecoVision, Atari 2600 and Intellivision GB-sized mini-carts designed specifically for the Pocket since the original carts have less than 32 pins, but the NES is another matter. I could ask the same question with the Sega Master System, which apparently has a 50-pins cart port.

 

Edited February 3, 2023 by Pixelboy

[Tanooki]

5 hours ago, dudeguy said:

None of this surprises me. I have 2 Docks on pre-order. The build quality of the Super NT and Mega SG were superb but the Pocket has been disappointing- namely the buttons have been problematic, and the OS is not nearly as user friendly or intuitive as the ones for the aforementioned systems- though to be fair I jumped straight into the 2021 firmware updates so maybe the OS originally wasnt very good.

 

That said, the screen quality on the Pocket is excellent, and zero latency. Love being able to track how much time Ive put into cartridges and being able to save state the cartridges is awesome.

 

Analogue benefits from the fact that they have zero competition. There is no one else making systems that play cartridges on a high-caliber level. It seems Retro Bit and Hyperkin try to make budget friendly products. So there really needs to be another luxury brand to compete against Analogue

I'll say this, from experience since I have had it differently than you.  I got in on the 2nd run of the SuperNT and I guess it was the 2nd run of the Sg too as it came nearly a year after (now we're on final 3rd run if I remember right.)  The stock firmware both of them had was rock solid and I noticed nothing much of a change or improvement at face value of the menu system itself even with the upgrades to current on either.  They worked great out of the box, mostly the changes were superficial to specific oddball reactions a few games had on various perhaps versions like a 1.0 being whiny over a 1.1 type stuff or random games just wonking out because they did something unexpected to the 99.9% of other titles.

 

Pocket I just got around Christmas so I had the stock old firmware they for some reason left on there, then got a double update on the handheld and a firmware push then to the dock from the 2nd handheld update as it rolled it up to date within that too.  I saw really no different again in the firmware, but the difference being, you spelled it out already as have I.  It works largely fine on the handheld, but the dock nope... much is grayed out, or you touch it and it changed NOTHING as it's broken.  All their problems with the device, around some having the button issue you said (I have not noticed it on mine), is largely centered on crap software with the dock for itself, its interactions with wired devices and even more so with wireless devices.  Given how long they got hosed with the virus and pushed back to production this NEVER should have happened, they had at least a good year delay to sort that crap out, and didn't, and now another year in yet, and it's still bad.

 

They even with Hyperkin and Retrobit at it, aren't quite competition still so they're alone.  Those two don't make their own stuff, they find off the floor somewhere sweat shop chinese goods cheap and brand as their own, usually to mixed and poorer results, rarely do they knock it out of the park like the Supaboy S or the HDMI from nintendo multi/genesis/tg/neo geo style powered cable thing that goes for $30 from both hyperkin.  In the case of retrobit it's when they get a quality game or game +fluff toys a third party makes they act as a US publisher/shipper for.  Analogue is analogue, so they seemingly can get away with murder as the only competition they would have, if bunnyboy got his shit together and they still bothered to make them, would be the HD NES/FC arena as the AVS matches the NT/NT noir if not surpasses it at a $200 vs $400-600 price range too.

 

 

@Pixelboy Probably, it seems to have no issue with adapters for other devices that can route the information.  There's the Lynx, NGPC, GG, and TG16/PCE to GBA slot add-ons.  If someone could find a way to wire up a jack that would correctly route the proper info to the proper pin on the GBA receiving end, then though jailbreaking or a legit additional cart reading access core it could be done I would imagine.  I think the reason you don't see it, cumbersome and wonky having a wide FC or wider (and taller) yes NES cart wobbling around on top.  It doesn't have good street appeal or picture worthy looks having this big flappy thing wobbling around on a little sleek GBPocket sized handheld.

[Pixelboy]

39 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

  I think the reason you don't see it, cumbersome and wonky having a wide FC or wider (and taller) yes NES cart wobbling around on top.

I wasn't talking about cart adaptors, I was talking about creating a cartridge PCB that fits in a regular Game Boy cartridge shell, but instead of containing a GB/GBC/GBA game ROM, it would contain an NES ROM. It's not something that would work in an original GB/GBC/GBA, it would be tailored specifically for the Analogue Pocket.

 

[Tanooki]

Oooooh. Hmmm.  Same thing in practice just more challenging.  Need to make a gba sized or gb cart but with the other info and runs that.  Seems possible but it would take someone adventurous to try.  More of a proof of concept than practical. 

[Pixelboy]

13 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Oooooh. Hmmm.  Same thing in practice just more challenging.  Need to make a gba sized or gb cart but with the other info and runs that.  Seems possible but it would take someone adventurous to try.  More of a proof of concept than practical. 

Well, I'm not entirely sure it would be worth doing for NES, but given the high number of good homebrew games that have been released on the Atari 2600, ColecoVision and Intellivision over the years, I'd say a GB-sized cartridge playable on the Analogue Pocket would be an interesting additional outlet for those games, with people who enjoy owning physical media being the target market. But then again, there are already FPGA cores runing on the Pocket that cover those systems and can play pretty much everything from an SD card for free, so I don't know how successful specialized GB-size Pocket carts would really be. They would be cool novelty items at the very least, that's for sure.

 

[+sramirez2008]

Received mine, but still need to set it up. @Rick Dangerous what size/class SD card did you decide to use?

[Punisher5.0]

Anyone try the PS1 core yet? There's been updates but I haven't seen any follow up videos.

[Atariboy]

I don't think that core is public. Only available to private testers it seems.

 

A lot of the Jotego cores though went public a few days ago after being exclusive to Patreon sponsors. I don't think Outrun has gone public, but most of the others did. I didn't see news about that, so I was pleasantly surprised when they all started installing when I ran Pocket Updater the other day to get the latest build of the Neo Geo core.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Atariboy

[Tanooki]

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.

[Atariboy]

Sounds like you're using a different updater. What I use is called Pocket Updater, has a graphical interface, installs all necessary bios files, downloads roms for the arcade cores, and is extremely easy to use. By default it will grab every available core, but deselecting one is just a mouse click away (And I believe it will remember that when you run it again).

 

And you're either going to have to click to select to install a core or select to not install a core. There's no 3rd option here and I think most are going to prefer the latter approach where everything by default is selected to be downloaded and installed. Few folks enjoying OpenFPGA on their Pocket are going to grab an automated updater if they just want a core or two. Most are going to want everything or most everything installed. So making you click on what you don't want is arguably the best of the two options. For instance I only skip the Pokemon Mini core since I know I'll never fire it up. Everything else will get played with, or at least fired up once or twice out of curiosity.

 

Installing cores manually seems pretty straight forward and easy. If one just wants a real limited selection installed of what's available on the Pocket (such as only wanting the NES and SNES core installed alongside the stock Game Boy capabilities), that's probably the option to go with. Where the automated updaters come in handy are for those that don't want to install and keep updated dozens of different cores.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Atariboy

[NE146]

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. 

 

[Atariboy]

That's what I use. Other than a quickly fixed issue that I had (and which the author quickly identified and resolved), it has worked out beautifully so far and greatly streamlines the process of keeping up with new core releases. 

 

About the only thing it doesn't yet do are game images. If you want to fancy it up so you'll see a screenshot of the cartridge that you've got inserted (like seen in the first picture here), you have to download and install those images manually. But I'm sure that's on the docket to be automated soon enough (Pocket Updater recently added support for downloading and installing the platform images of your choice, like seen here).

[Tanooki]

5 hours ago, NE146 said:

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:

 

Oh nice thanks, had not seen the GUI based one like that before.  I kept getting pushes towards this command prompt one where you repeatedly have to mash Y or N based on the hardware which sucked.

If I decide to side load/jail break whatever you care to call it, it would be because my arcade cabinet is too heavy to carry, so I'd throw the Neo Geo on there for HDMI TV play using my 8bitdo wired usb snes30pro controller which would be fantastic.  I think virtual boy would be worthy too if that ever gets added (it should.)

[Punisher5.0]

PCE CD is here!

 

https://github.com/Mazamars312/openfpga-pcengine-cd