That's a shame. I have a retron for the NES/SNES/Genesis and it works great (as long as you use actual controllers, and not their craptastic doohickeys)
It's emulation via Android. If you're using an emulator you may as well use ROM images not original carts. Using original hardware is far better anyway IMO.
That's how I've always felt. I really only use emulators if there is really no other decent option available.
It's pretty much total crap, yeah. It just drags the rom off of the cart and stores it temporarily on the console for emulation.
Indeed. But if you were some sort of YouTuber or someone who emulated regularly, the Retron 5 isn't even the best option. This beast of a machine is on its way from Japan. http://www.cybergadget.co.jp/retrofreak/ From what I understand, the console dumps the roms from each cartridge too. But unlike the Retron 5 this one doesn't just store them temporarily, it stores them permanently. You can then remove the cartridge slot portion of the console and just take the internal storage part with you, which has a USB port for a controller or controller adapter and an HDMI out. Edit: nice tag line by the way.
Still not a fan of unofficial hardware to play ROMs on. Any android device with OTG would work out just as good. The only real positives on this is if you lack space, which many of us actually do and HDMI out.
Yeah, I've seen several YouTubers and streamers talking about picking one up just due to ease of use in terms of capturing gameplay footage. If you want original hardware and have a shit-tonne of money, check this thing out: http://www.analogueinteractive.com/products/analogue-nt-information
Upscaling to Hi-Def is great if the signal is going to benefit from it. What's the point of upscaling to 1080p or whatever if the original resolution was say 256x192 pixels? That just means blocky graphics stay blocky on a large screen. It's like polishing a turd. Making a system output to HDMI is handy, however for £25 you can do it with an adaptor (eg the one i'm using in my multi-console system which inputs RGB and outputs HDMI). Using such a gadget you can take the video from a NES, mod to composite output, then a few wires to make it work as if to SCART, then into HDMI - in effect composite > SCART. If you're using an emulator system you may as well use ROM images. The logic for "legal" is a bit daft when the emulator console uses code to mimic a console and therefore infringing on copyright, also selling emulators within a system which were not designed to be sold or in that manner also infringes copyright - which is an irony.
I'm pretty sure Hyperkin got in some trouble with the creators of some of those emulators, and I assume that those creators are now getting monetary compensation because the price for the Retron 5 went up.
Indeed, so if the point of using original game carts is to be "legit" rather than using ROMs, then their "legitimacy" in that regard is in conflict to what they do with their emulation hardware and software it uses; hence the irony. May as well use emulation and ROMs, and keep original hardware with original game carts (which are legit)! lol
This was the first thing I noticed. Seeing a game being so large was kind of a shock. I didn't do much with it since I got mine. I wanted to get an SD Card to update it first but I just never get around to it.
I'm pretty sure we've been over this all before. And i'm extremely skeptical of that new Japanese machine. Even the interface looks similar. Why would they bother spending the thousands of dollars and man hours writing their own emulators when they can just steal existing ones? ALA RETRON5.
Hyperkin is an American company and emulators are legal under US law. Your second point is valid, and it wouldn't be the first time a company used emulators they didn't make for their own gain (Neo Geo X and Final Burn Alpha, some PS2 collection also did this...), however, I don't know if the original makers of the emulators ever got anything out of those.
Emulators are legal to use however if you read the readme files that are usually provided by the authors they allow them to be used but not sold for profit, so therefore if a company is incorporating someone's emulator in their system they are using someone's code against their wishes and infringing copyright. We know they are using such emulators, eg for N64. I'm a fan of using original hardware not emulators personally. Games run properly as intended then, without artifacts and graphic glitches, slowdowns, etc.
That's the big stink, most emulators can be freely downloaded, or even freely distributed (from places like emuparadise or whatever), but not sold. I haven't heard much about this since November, but they're still available, so either Hyperkin came to some agreement, or it's going to play out in the courts soon. My guess would be that Hyperkin would argue that they're selling the hardware, and not emulators, but whatever. I can definitely see the convenience of the Retron 5, having support for so many consoles in one box, with a wireless controller would be great, and it would be nice for traveling, but I'd still capture footage from the original units.
