at that price point, the R36S clones on Aliexpress, i got one on sale for ~€22. they play everything up to ps1/dreamcast, n64 not so much though. the romsets they come with and their metadata are really bad, and the sd card it comes with is prone to die spontaneously, so it requires some tinkering
What’s the best $35 handheld to get?
xtools@programming.dev 4 months ago
grue@lemmy.world 4 months ago
they play everything up to ps1/dreamcast, n64 not so much though.
Wait, but Dreamcast is newer than N64. Did you mean Saturn or 32X, or is N64 weirdly hard to emulate for some reason?
the R36S clones on Aliexpress, i got one on sale for ~€22.
Is there anything to watch out for, other than price (and maybe avoiding paying extra for a bigger SD card, if they’re unreliable anyway)? Do ones from different sellers have different software? Should I worry about trying to avoid malware, or just assume I’m going to want to wipe the thing and re-flash as soon as I get it, or what?
xtools@programming.dev 4 months ago
what i did is going for the smallest sd card, and buy a proper bigger one, then clone the “stock” card, and copy over roms and metadata from my nicely curated Batocera drive.
it can be super tricky to get any OS that officially supports the R36S to run on the clones, so i run the OS it came with. the device isn’t connected to the Internet so i don’t worry too much about malware.
dreamcast is simpler to emulate, n64 notoriously isn’t, I’ve been struggling with this system during my Raspberry Pi 3 emulation era already. the “real” R36S apparently is a tad more powerful than the cheap knockoffs, but i can’t seem to find it anymore - the closest available official one would be the RG35XX for $55
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 months ago
For $35 I’m guessing whatever on FB marketplace.
Android phones tend to become pretty worthless after like 5 years, but are still perfectly good for emulation. Hell 10 years ago I was emulating the DS without any issues.
minfapper@piefed.social 4 months ago
Just make sure you don’t store any personal data on those devices. They become useless because they slowly turn into a security nightmare
grue@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I want to get something with a physical D-pad and buttons off Aliexpress or whatever, but I have no idea how to sort through all the random no-name choices. The only other criteria I have is that I want it to be fully Free Software with no malware and the best value for money I can find.
artyom@piefed.social 4 months ago
Here’s a good place to start:
https://retrogamecorps.com/