Tag Archives: console

The Ayn Odin 2

The Ayn Odin 2 with some customisations

My Ayn Odin 2 with a few small customisations.
A higher right analog stick with Skull and Co thumb grip, and the 3D-printed grips that a friend of a friend gave to me.

In the past year or so, there have been one or two handhelds that have come out which have not only met that performance bar of upscaled GameCube and PS2, but can also come to the party for 3DS, Vita, and even Switch emulation. And between the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro and the Ayn Odin 2, the Odin 2 is the one to get because it runs everything flawlessly, has battery life appropriate for 2024, and very few faults overall. There’s no doubt in my mind that if you wanted a modern handheld console to emulate every system that’s possible to be emulated on Android, the Odin 2 should be your first and foremost choice unless you want something pocketable, or with an OLED screen, or you have a very specific budget.

So why haven’t I bought one?

Had I know about the Odin 2 this time last year, I probably would have. It ticks basically every box that I’m interested in, with perhaps the exception of running actual PC titles on it, even though streaming from my PC might be an acceptable compromise. But after looking into it, it just doesn’t make sense to buy one now, 9 months into its lifecycle. It’s like this: one year ago, there was nothing under $600 that could emulate Switch acceptably. But the handheld console landscape is moving so fast that who’s to say what options we’ll have in another 6-12 months? After all, technology moves at such a rapid pace these days that there’s always something better just around the corner. The fact that you can even consider installing and using fibre optics in your home network at something even close to resembling a reasonable cost — something previously unthinkable not that long ago — is proof of this.

Even if no better options appear by the end of the year, the thinking is I’ll still be able to pick up an Odin 2 and be happy. Hell, I could absolutely do that today. But at this late stage of the game, it would be better for me to exercise some patience and wait six months. I’ve been waiting 20 years to be able to play GameCube and PS2 portably, chances are I can absolutely wait another six months. While I’d love something to play GameCube and PS2 portably now, if I’ve waited this long, I can probably wait another year or two, especially if it’s going to be a significant and meaningful improvement over the Steam Deck/Odin 2. Of course, there’s always better tech just around the corner, but honestly, how much better can it get at the sub-$800 price point?

So my question is really: if I pick up an Odin 2 today, am I going to be missing out on something great that’s potentially just around the corner in the next 6/12/18 months? Because the Steam Deck was basically the precursor to this whole handheld renaissance that we seem to find ourselves in (maybe not for retro games specifically, but it seems to have affected retro games nonetheless), and the Steam Deck has only been around for two short years. Based on my own research, there hasn’t been anything that isn’t a handheld PC that had great GameCube, PS2, and Switch performance for under $800, until last year’s Odin 2 and to a similar degree, the Pocket 4 Pro. It just seems like prior to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, there just wasn’t anything good available at a reasonable price.

Like, the Odin 2 is already powerful enough, with maybe the exception of some Switch titles (and even then with NCE it may not be as big of an issue as it was), so maybe a more powerful chip isn’t that big of a draw card. Where do they go from here, and what other significant hardware changes can they make? The only potential improvements I can think they can make are having an OLED display, with potentially a higher refresh rate. How good a higher refresh rate for retro gaming is questionable, since 8th-generation and consoles typically target 30fps, and it’s not like you can get Switch games to run at 120fps, but this just serves to prove my point that there’s very little Ayn can do to improve the Odin 2.

But thanks to the header image on this post, you already know I ended up buying an Odin 2. I figure if I can get a few solid months out of it, emulating the GameCube and PS2 classics I grew up with, then flip it for close to what I paid, then that’s probably good enough.

Something I didn’t realise is when people talk about upscaling retro games, they mean actual upscaling. It’s not the kind of upscaling you get when you, say, convert a video to play at a higher resolution, because in those cases you’re just attempting to make something from nothing, and often you don’t get anything meaningfully better than the original.

No, video game upscaling is much better than that. Because the video game has access to the source data (the vertices and polygons which dictate how shapes should be rendered on screen), when you upscale a video game it looks incredible. It’s not perfect, because textures might still show their age even though the underlying models are tack sharp, and any pre-rendered assets like photos or videos that aren’t generated from in-game assets will still look blocky, but for the most part, upscaling games from the GameCube and PS2 era to 1080p looks great, and if you add in a HD texture pack, that’s about as close to a remaster as you can get, barring any actual quality-of-life improvements that an actual remaster might give you.

Or a Switch port, if your game is lucky enough to be in that camp.

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But what about the Steam Deck?

The keen-eyed amongst you will have noticed I failed to mention the the technically-handheld, borderline-portable, Steam Deck in my last retro handheld post. And it’s a curious omission of the handheld that arguably kicked off the portable-computer-as-handheld-gaming-console era that we have today. What makes it downright weird is that I’m arguably part of the ideal target market for the Steam Deck. I have a large, expansive Steam library that’s a mix of triple-A titles (although there’s much less of that these days), some of the most popular indie games, and plenty of releases from years gone by, and yet somehow, I haven’t picked up a Steam Deck in the two and a half years that’s it’s been on sale.

And while there are a couple of reasons for that, including how the Steam Deck isn’t officially available in Australia, so I’d have to import it myself, and if I’m not importing it myself, I’m paying a markup tax to the Australian company that is importing them, which adds to the already significant cost of the Steam Deck, I’m just not sure about the Steam Deck as a product I’m really interested in. The other major reason I don’t own a Steam Deck is that it’s kind of expensive for what it is. It’s a fairly serious investment on the same level as buying a new home appliance, a new graphics card, or even an iPad, all of which you would probably get more use from. If you already have a good-to-great gaming PC, the only drawcard the Steam Deck has for you is being able to play titles portably, and even away from your home.

And the crazy thing is, the specs aren’t even that good. Phones from the same era have high refresh rates 1080p displays, but the Steam Deck is stuck with an (admittedly larger than normal phone size) 7.4-inch, 800p display at 90Hz. But if you compare the Steam Deck to what it can do, then yes, maybe the cost is justified. Being able to play triple-A titles without shelling out for a complete gaming PC is a pretty impressive drawcard indeed.

The problem with doing this, particularly when you already have a great gaming PC, is that playing games portably sounds like a good idea until you realise it’s a compromise in basically every way. Playing away from home sounds like a good idea, at least for the few hours of battery life that you get if you’re playing heavier titles. Sure, you can extend your battery life by turning down the graphics options, but then it becomes a question of how much of a trade-off between battery life and graphical fidelity you’re willing to make. And while you can get perfectly fine battery life if you’re playing lighter, easier-to-run games, you’re really telling me you forked out for an entire Steam Deck so you could play Stardew Valley outside your house? I’m not one to yuck someone else’s yum, but that seems like a pretty wild decision to me.

But none of this is new if you’re a member of the PC master race. There’s always been this dichotomy of what you can run acceptably on your current hardware, and in particular what settings you can tweak to make it run at an acceptable frame rate versus still having enough graphical bells and whistles to make you feel immersed. If there’s one thing Valve really accomplished with the Steam Deck, it was that they put this power of choice in the palm of your hand. Well, hands, given how large the Steam Deck is.

While consoles have mostly been immune from this, in the past few years we’ve definitely seen games that have started giving console gamers the choice between lower resolution, less graphical effects, and a higher frame rate, or a higher resolution, more graphical effects, and a lower frame rate. It’s becoming increasingly more common to see games offer the choice between 4K at 30 fps, or something like 1440p but at 60 fps or more.

What’s interesting about all of this is that if it’s retro emulation I’m interested in, the Steam Deck has been able to play GameCube and PS2 portably since it launched, and I hear battery life when playing retro consoles is even acceptable. Not great, mind you, but acceptable. But one of the major draw cards of the Steam Deck, and why it commands such a high price in the first place, is because it can play PC games. Again, you can do what you like, but buying a Steam Deck for retro emulation seems like a strange decision when there are other devices that can emulate retro consoles just as well as it can with better battery life. Well, one or two, and only since the last year.

But as someone from the Game Boy Pocket generation (I never owned one personally, but friends did), the Steam Deck is huge and ungainly by comparison. Yes, all that gaming goodness has to go somewhere, not to mention the battery to power it all AND get acceptable battery life for what is essentially a smaller laptop, and a lot of the size is dictated by the screen size of the device. But there’s just no getting around just how cumbersome the Steam Deck, and most other PC-based handhelds including the ASUS ROG Ally, the Lenovo Legion Go, or the MSI Claw, really are. I don’t think handheld gaming consoles have to be pocketable, necessarily, but I don’t to want to draw attention unnecessarily in public by pulling out a Steam Deck and gaming on the bus/train/plane. It’d be like taking an iMac to a Starbucks. Sure you can, but do you really want to? Do you really want to be that guy?

So when you ask me “what about the Steam Deck?” I say that while it’s may be a reasonable product at a reasonable price, it’s not for me. It’s not even that I prefer playing most games with a keyboard and mouse, or that I don’t have any games that wouldn’t be suitable for playing on it, or even the fact that it’s large, bulky, and kind of pricey. It’s really all of those things, which make it unsuitable for what I’m looking for in a portable handheld console.

Now if and when Valve decide to release something like a Steam Deck mini, I would definitely be interested depending on the compromises that they decide to make for a smaller form factor. But for the time being, the search continues for my perfect handheld console.

The retro handheld console and software emulation rabbit hole

TrimUI Smart Pro

The TrimUI Smart Pro handheld console.
Basically a perfect modern GBA/DS emulator. It can run N64 and PSP, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Every couple of years, I’ll go on a handheld gaming bender where I eschew all responsibilities and spend as much time as possible with my head buried in a handheld console, playing a game that might have been released 20 years ago. For those couple of weeks, I’ll be a teenager again, on holidays and having nothing to do but play video games on a handheld.

By any measure, we’re long overdue for one of those times. While Covid and lockdowns might have been the ideal time to dust off one or more of my old handhelds, I think I was more concerned about surviving and avoiding Covid than I was with playing a handheld console.

One of the great things about handheld gaming consoles like the 3DS and Vita — and indeed, all consoles — is that you can expect them to work 100% reliably with every game that was released for them, because that’s just how consoles work. There’s no performance issues. No incompatibilities. If you have a copy of the game and a working console, they you can always expect to play it, whether that’s 20 years ago when the console was first released, now, or 20 years from now. I know that I’ll be able to pull out my 3DS or Vita, give it a charge, and be able to pick up right where I left off. And that’s the beauty of consoles; they just work.

But as much as I love the Game Boy Color that I grew up with, the Game Boy Advance SP I eventually received, and the Nintendo DS that ended up rounding out the handhelds of my youth, I know this isn’t sustainable indefinitely.

The main problem with the handhelds that I have is that they, like me, aren’t getting any younger. The battery it has now is likely the best battery it’s ever going to have, and while 3D scanning and printing has come a long way and you’ll probably be able to buy replacement plastic parts, that’s not necessarily guaranteed for anything else including screens or other electronics. They’re not making any new 3DSes or Vitas, so there’s no way to get a new one unless I’m willing to pay a premium for one on the second hand market. Which means it’s a one way street for these handhelds, unless I get lucky and find a good second hand model for a non-exorbitant price. So as much as I want to be able to play all my Vita games on my Vita, or play all my 3DS games on my 3DS, I know that one day, that isn’t going to be possible due to time marching ever forward. Parts will break. Batteries will wear out. And when that happens, there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to restore them to working condition. Even if I can guarantee access to games that I want to play, which in 2024 and the age of digital downloads is absolutely not a given seeing as Nintendo has already shut down the 3DS eShop and Sony was about to do the same thing with the Vita PlayStation Store until they received backlash and reneged, there’s no guarantee that the hardware is going to last. How many consoles from 20 years ago do you know of, much less working examples?

Obviously this isn’t an option for even older handhelds like the GBA; in those cases the ageing hardware is even more of a limitation, and getting worse and worse every day. So for the purposes of gaming on a retro handheld like the GBC, GBA, or even a DS, then emulation is really the best option, with all of the inherent advantages and disadvantages that brings.

The question is whether I’m willing to live with the tradeoffs of imperfect software emulation for the conveniences of modern hardware and software. Modern hardware in this case is things like hall-effect analog sticks and triggers, USB-C charging, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and displays with such contemporary technologies like IPS (or ideally OLED, like the Vita had all the way back in 2012) and actual pixel density far above the handful of pixels that older consoles used to have. I’ve been PC gaming at 4K since 2015 at a healthy, if not incredible, 163ppi, so going back to anything less than 720p on a 5 inch display (293ppi) seems like such a huge step backwards when you consider that even the very first Apple Watch had 326ppi in 2015. Which, I’ll remind you, was almost ten years ago.

Modern software, on the other hand, means I can use software to emulate whatever console I’m interested in, provided my device has enough power to run those games. Whether that’s an Android or Linux-based handheld, or something like the PC-based Steam Deck, mostly depends on what I’m interested in playing given the hardware is more or less the same. Android, for example, currently doesn’t have emulators for Wii U, PS3, Xbox, or Xbox 360, and while that might change in the future, that’s the way it is right now.

Conceptually, I think I’m OK with having a device that doesn’t run everything. I think it would be weird to play GBA games on 6 or 7 inch screen, for example, irrespective of how good the integer scaling is, but I think a device that runs GBC, GBA, and even DS games could work. Then if I wanted to, I’d either have 3DS games on my 3DS, Vita games on my Vita, and potentially have another device for 3DS, Vita, and every other 8th-generation console, including GameCube, PS2, and maybe even Switch. From a hardware console perspective, this sort of separation works great as well because retro handheld consoles fit into one of a handful of tiers of modern hardware, each with varying power and price to handle its own set of retro handhelds.

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It Shouldn’t Be This Hard

Now she was dead…

Alternative title: “that’s not what she said!”

I’ve been thinking about buying a 3DS XL for Fire Emblem Awakening, but Nintendo’s decision to region lock their hardware is making it harder than it should be.

In an ideal world, I’d be able to walk in to any good gaming retailer in Australia, pick up a 3DS, and be on my merry way. And in theory, I can totally do that — provided I’m happy with missing out on a massive (okay, decent) selection of games.

Thanks to a combination of region locked 3DS hardware, strange decisions by publishers, and the very nature of a Japan-centric games company, if I buy an Australian 3DS it means I might not ever get to play titles that are released in the US. That’s crazy.

To be fair, this has always been an issue for Nintendo. I completely understand when games are released for the Japanese market that aren’t available in other regions, as much as I want to play the latest Phoenix Wright or Professor Layton title at the same time Japanese folks get to. I get that titles need to be localised for non-Asian markets, voices need to be re-done, etc. But when titles suffer lengthy delays or aren’t released for other markets outside the US, then that’s when I start to take notice and get angry. Fire Emblem, for example, was released in the US back in February. Europe and Australia, however, didn’t get it until late April — why? What possible reason could the publishers have to delay a title that was already localised for English markets an entire two months after the US release?

No possible reason that makes any kind of sense.

I already own a PS Vita, and for the record, Sony does a lot better on the region locking front for the simple reason that the console and its games aren’t region locked. At all. The US and Australian PlayStation Stores are different regions as you might expect, but I’m no stranger to that — the iTunes Store is exactly the same. If you buy a Vita, you can set it up with the US PSN store pretty easily, and your console will buy and download games no problems. Switching between the two stores can be done, but doing so frequently isn’t practical as it involves a device reset every time. In the year or so I’ve owned a Vita, I’ve never wanted to switch to the Australian PSN, and I can’t see this changing anytime sooner — the game selection on the US PSN is far superior to the titles offered on the Australian PSN, games are released earlier, and they’re usually cheaper, too.

If I want to access a larger selection of games and games released months earlier (and, not to mention, cheaper), then it seems the obvious solution is to import a 3DS XL from the US, right?

Well, kinda.

Nintendo, in their infinite wisdom, also region-lock their games. A US Vita can play Australian-bought games just fine, but a US 3DS will only be able to play games bought from the US. No problem, I can just download them directly from the eShop and call it a day, right? Wrong — I don’t know whether it’s a publisher thing or just a Nintendo one, but for some crazy, insane reason, about half of 3DS titles sold at retail can’t be bought from the eShop. Again, don’t ask me why, because I just don’t know.

In contrast, the PSN offers a much wider selection of games than are offered at retail: not only Vita-exclusive titles, but also PSP ones, PS One classics, “minis”, and the best thing about it is that every title released at retail is available for direct download on the PSN. Like it should be.

So if I do buy a 3DS from the US, here’s how it stands. I won’t be able to buy local titles. No big loss, but it does kill off that instant-gratification factor that comes with buying from a brick-and-mortar. Any game I do want to buy which can’t be bought from the eShop (about half of all the titles available), I’ll have to import from the US — although given the lead times for Australian games so far, any delays in getting the game due to shipping will still mean I get the game before it’s released locally.

My point in all this is that it shouldn’t be this hard. The Vita and its games aren’t region locked in any way, and that’s a massive plus in my book. Anything else is making it harder than it really should be.

Now, if only Amazon had the colour 3DS XL that I want in stock, and if only they would ship it to Australia. But that’s a tale for another time.

15 Reasons PC Gaming Beats All

How about an epic PC versus console gaming smackdown, in the tradition of end-of-year numbers lists?

I spent part of 2008 taking polite shots at PC foibles like Microsoft’s halfhearted Games for Windows initiative, the functionality and game support travesties that plagued Vista for the better part of 2007 into 2008, PC gaming’s dwindling stable of A-list exclusives, and the short-term-gains mentality that’s increasingly dropping eggs in low-risk baskets labeled “World of Warcraft” and “The Sims.”

So here’s my last minute about-face defending the PC as a viable games platform, and a friendly rejoinder to Techradar’s “12 reasons console gaming beats PCs.”

via 15 Reasons PC Gaming Beats All – PC World.

PC Gaming is just far superior to console gaming.

Sure, while you don’t have to have to upgrade your console every 8-12 months to have a decent gaming PC, you can enjoy the benefits of all the things listed in the article.

Personally, I’d rather game on a PC than on a console. Either one is cool, but whatever – if someone publishes a story detailing why console gaming is better then PC gaming, I’ll link that too. 😀