NE146 Posted February 16, 2023 Share Posted February 16, 2023 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? 😛 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roots.genoa Posted February 16, 2023 Share Posted February 16, 2023 Also, I must clarify that even though I played the Pocket a lot during the first half of 2022, I played it much less afterwards and mostly tried openFPGA, so not a lot of real carts. So maybe it used to work better with early firmware, and if I try to play now, some of the games that used to work well won't anymore. 🤷♂️ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 (edited) 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. Edited February 17, 2023 by NE146 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dudeguy Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 1 minute ago, NE146 said: 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. My hope/expectation was that youd have the same functionality as a real Game Boy Advance, out of the box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 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. 😛 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dudeguy Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 26 minutes ago, NE146 said: 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. 😛 GBA carts Ive had no problems with so far 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roots.genoa Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 4 hours ago, NE146 said: The hope is eventually all palettes from both (and more, if customization is allowed) will be accessible no matter how a game is accessed. I'm not sure I understand this well, but maybe they're just not allowed to recreate the GBC BIOS with Analogue BIOS for legal reasons. With OpenFPGA you have to download it yourself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanooki Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 10 hours ago, NE146 said: 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. 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. UGH YES, that...that's so aggravating. I need to use OpenFPGA and a downloaded ROM I guess to get it to do what it should have done out of the box?? That's crap, functional crap, but crap none the less given I want to use my real carts. I don't have CORES loaded and I have no intention to load them as I've got around 150~ handheld games it can fit now, full library + using everdrive gb for 8bit, and omega for gba. Why they'd leave out a stock feature of the Gameboy is insane. Last night seeing that comment, as I hadn't thought of it, I did force the GB to fire up in GBC mode and then finally Dragon Quest Monsters didn't look wrong, finally looked like my modded GBC I put an IPS panel into, just a little bigger, brighter, since the panel is newer/better/bigger. I'm with @dudeguy, for the hundreds I put into this, my expectations aren't a reach, they're grounded and low key common sense...it should work as the Gameboy, COlor, Advance, did out of the box without having to tweak this, limit that, or reset the damn menu choices it forgets on start up. Like him I have 100% play, enjoyment, usage with GBA stuff. Why the 8bit is having to deal with hoops since quite frankly insane to me. The utterly shitty RetronSq cube runs GB+GBC stuff better if you're seeking stock performance based on the cart which is just awful given it's a crap CRC checking cart dumping emulator box. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 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 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dudeguy Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 6 hours ago, NE146 said: 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 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. yeah I'll probably use my AGS-101 as my Game Boy still but Im holding out hope for the Game Gear and Lynx side of things (havent heard complaints about the Game Gear yet) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanooki Posted February 18, 2023 Share Posted February 18, 2023 12 hours ago, NE146 said: 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 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. I already have 150+ gb, gbc, gba games, adding to the mix with more distraction is the last thing I need right now. That's why I'm not using it. And I've got multiple modded and stock GBAs (SP and normal), stock pockets and a modded color here and I'm happy with those. The reason I got the pocket largely was it's new hardware, analogue used to make stuff that works right, and because I wanted it for the dock to play it on the TV almost exclusively. In the time it was preordered to ship also as much so I was going to get the NGPC and SMS adapters, PCE too, then they decided to be assholes cancel the singles, raise the price, bundle in 3 and double their shipping charges so that took that out of the picture entirely. At this rate the only function the pocket does mostly correctly out of the box is being a handheld, and that's if you are cool going in and switching it from GB to GBC only mode depending on the cart which is fine. I don't need that with what I have, what I need it to do, it doesn't work right at all with 8bit games losing settings and goofing up other stuff on top of it mostly not wanting to play nice with wireless and oddly wired controllers. That's why I'm annoyed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dudeguy Posted February 18, 2023 Share Posted February 18, 2023 Things working well enough for me but I did see someone on Reddit mention that Kirby is unplayable because it sometimes registers as "up" even if you pressed "left" or "right". that was one of the first games I played so I noticed the wonky D-pad right away Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy Posted February 18, 2023 Share Posted February 18, 2023 (edited) They improved the d-pad with Batch C units to combat the accidental diagonals. They perhaps took it a bit too far since diagonals aren't quite as natural feeling to trigger as they should be, but I'd definitely rather have slightly less sensitive than desired diagonal inputs than the accidental diagonals that plagued at least some people's systems from earlier batches. Of course a d-pad that just works as it should that was a 1:1 clone of a brand new 1st party SNES controller from the 1990's would be best (my personal favorite d-pad), but apparently that's a lost art that 8BitDo hasn't been able to replicate (They're handling the control side of the Pocket). I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Jotego's newly launched CPS2 core for the Pocket. I'm unsure if it's a Patreon beta (I assume it is) or a public release, but it's still good news either way even if we're a few months away from a public release. Edited February 18, 2023 by Atariboy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanooki Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 CPS2 eh? Not bad. If time were more on my side and backlog was far more minimal, I could see maybe just maybe loading a core or two to the thing. One would be PS1 for the novelty of it, a clean SOTN on the go would be nice or on the TV in HDMI since doing it on my phone isn't ideal(yes they sell it cheap on IOS/android.) Another would just to toss (if they port it, and should) Virtual Boy, and my Neo Geo game sin HDMI would be nice. But for systems (consoles,handhelds) I own I have flash kits for, it's senseless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dudeguy Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 I went and played Donkey Kong GB on my AGS-101 this morning and maaaaaan does that feel like breath of fresh air. only downside there is not being able to have the SGB palette but the thing just works how it should, zero issues whatsoever. How Analogue messed this up this bad is beyond me. It's gotta have something to do with supply chain issues/covid/parts issues 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roots.genoa Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 Well, I don't know what to say to you, guys. Maybe you should get rid of it if you feel that miserable... 😰 I could play a lot of GB and GBA games with no problems, thanks to savestates I was able to beat games that traumatized me as a child. Maybe it doesn't look exactly like the real thing but you know what? The real thing looked like crap (except the GBA SP and Micro). 😅 This is just an incredible piece of technology; the screen alone is mind blowing. And I didn't even care a lot about openFPGA since I didn't buy it for that, so I wasn't angry that it arrived later than promised. And they can still improve what's not perfect yet with firmware updates - except your input problem dudeguy, but frankly you should ask for a exchange or refund. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanooki Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 I'm miserable with the DOCK, that thing is a $100 mistake at this rate they should have in over 18mo now properly tested and coded the firmware for. I can only imagine what the excuse is there. The handheld I'm largely fine with, I don't regret it as much as it's just redundant with all the original stock and modded GB family handhelds I have so it's kind of a sticking point. If I want stock I have a DMG I won't use but Pocket I have a couple in reach. GBC I have just an Atomic Purple I put a modern IPS in and otherwise left alone, that is peak 8bit gameboy quality that matches the analogue device basically without the frills though. GBA though nothing has been increased other than the original AGB model I got a Japanese Super Famicom kit for and a modern IPS, my SPs are all stock as are the micros. With the modded 8bit and AGB panel they're all on a very close tier to the pocket other than being a smaller viewing space. I'm stuck and not selling, the pocket largely will just rest until they get their act together and fix the dock firmware. I would like a Game gear adapter, so I'll be watching for people selling / trading it alone because I refuse to pay their rapey shitty $30 shipping charge for the thing making it cost $60, that's beyond reasonable for a glorified plug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roots.genoa Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 My OG GBs don't work anymore, and my GBA SP doesn't seem to work either; only my GB Micro still works, so it's not like I have a choice. 😅 I didn't even buy the dock initially because the Pocket alone was already expensive and I prefer handhelds anyway. I finally got the dock but didn't really use yet it except for charging (it's slightly more convenient than plugging the USB cable). I planned to write a second review for my website, with the dock, openFPGA, and everything that appeared since my original review, so I'll have to check it more consciously indeed. I also got a few ROMs of Master System games I own in order to beat them on the Pocket with savestates (that I really miss on the Mega Sg...). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punisher5.0 Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 6 minutes ago, roots.genoa said: My OG GBs don't work anymore, and my GBA SP doesn't seem to work either; only my GB Micro still works, so it's not like I have a choice. 😅 I didn't even buy the dock initially because the Pocket alone was already expensive and I prefer handhelds anyway. I finally got the dock but didn't really use yet it except for charging (it's slightly more convenient than plugging the USB cable). I planned to write a second review for my website, with the dock, openFPGA, and everything that appeared since my original review, so I'll have to check it more consciously indeed. I also got a few ROMs of Master System games I own in order to beat them on the Pocket with savestates (that I really miss on the Mega Sg...). Do you have any damage from using the dock? Ive seen some pictures of nasty scratches from the port. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roots.genoa Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 48 minutes ago, Punisher5.0 said: Do you have any damage from using the dock? Ive seen some pictures of nasty scratches from the port. I haven't used it enough but you clearly have to be careful; it's not as straightforward as docking the Switch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 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 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanooki Posted February 19, 2023 Share Posted February 19, 2023 1 hour ago, roots.genoa said: My OG GBs don't work anymore, and my GBA SP doesn't seem to work either; only my GB Micro still works, so it's not like I have a choice. 😅 I didn't even buy the dock initially because the Pocket alone was already expensive and I prefer handhelds anyway. I finally got the dock but didn't really use yet it except for charging (it's slightly more convenient than plugging the USB cable). I planned to write a second review for my website, with the dock, openFPGA, and everything that appeared since my original review, so I'll have to check it more consciously indeed. I also got a few ROMs of Master System games I own in order to beat them on the Pocket with savestates (that I really miss on the Mega Sg...). I look forward to this, you're level headed so I'd like to see a true break down of every active feature it has, the broken stuff, and any work arounds due to their bungles with the dock. The handheld is fine, the dock is just criminally negligent given their sales pitch on the site as it doesn't deliver. 1 hour ago, Punisher5.0 said: Do you have any damage from using the dock? Ive seen some pictures of nasty scratches from the port. I do, and I've taken it on and off the dock carefully maybe a half dozen times only and lined it up before popping it on there. I didn't get into some shaky hand, drunken wobble, or the rest, and it has some scratches right into the paint layer of metal down to the undercoat or bare metal. I didn't even realize it until I complained on here the other day when I went a bit deeper to check forcing GBC colors on Dragon Warrior Monsters and I was pissed. But what can you do? Repaint it? You complain about their workmanship I could expect a warranted replacement in 2024 maybe? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punisher5.0 Posted February 20, 2023 Share Posted February 20, 2023 @roots.genoa @Tanooki It would be nice if someone made a skin just for the bottom. I've also been thinking about getting a usbc extension cable to prevent damage. I dont have a dock yet but Id like to have some kind of protection before it arrives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roots.genoa Posted February 20, 2023 Share Posted February 20, 2023 3 hours ago, Punisher5.0 said: It would be nice if someone made a skin just for the bottom. I think I've actually seen such a thing. From sakura modding probably. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Dangerous Posted February 20, 2023 Author Share Posted February 20, 2023 I'd love to see a case that includes room for the cartridge adaptors. The OEM hard case is nice but it fits ONLY the pocket with a GB cartridge inserted. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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