OK, so I managed to install Hakchi 2.12 with the Retroarch module on my Famicom Mini today (upgrading from 2.11 without Retroarch installed at all). I prefer to experiment on my Famicom until I figure out how to get everything to work right before I upgrade my NES Classic (my NES Classic is still on 2.10, which is the latest release that has no glitches). I thought I would share my findings with all of you:
Observations:
- All the glitches from 2.11 seem to be gone, great! Final Fantasy 3 (original) no longer disappears. Pixel art for the original 30 games displays again. Names for the original 30 games seem complete once more. The system seems to be more stable overall as well.
- Retroarch blends in very nicely. I don't even notice I'm using a different emulator for games that need it. It did take me a bit of time to figure out how to install Retroarch in the first place however...
New Glitches:
- Remember in the beginning of hakchi when there were missing letters in game names like 'j' 'W' 'X' etc.? Well, here we go again... Not sure what went wrong here since this has been fixed in the past few releases...
- FDS games no longer work, period. Even Metroid from the original 30 games will not load, it goes to a black screen for a bit, the takes me right back to the main menu. This even happens during the automatic demos the system plays. I haven't seen anyone else mention this, I am the only one? I can't imagine I did anything to cause it... They all ran fine on version 2.11.
- Gameboy games set the image too large by default. Only part of the status bars at the bottom of a game display. Something seems to need to be adjusted in the overscan for the default setting for Gameboy games. I didn't notice this problem with other Retroarch cores, but then I didn't try them all either.
- No way to bring up the Retroarch menu on Famicom Mini from a game loaded directly from the main menu. From what others have said, the shortcut is Start+Select+R+L. There are no R or L buttons on the Famicom. I though the shortcut was supposed to be simply Start+Select?
- I tried Megaman V (Gameboy) as a test Super Gameboy game. However, it ran in gray mode as if it had no Super Gameboy colors. Is there some way to get Super Gameboy colors to display? I thought the emulator would look for Super Gameboy color data and display it by default if it existed on a non-Gameboy Color game (a feature I dearly wish the 3DS Virtual Console had...).
- Sega Genesis games work fine, but one of the buttons does not seem to be represented... 'C' seems to be mapped to 'A' on the Famicom controller, while 'B' is mapped to 'B', but the Genesis 'A' is not mapped to the select button as I would expect. This will cause problems in games that need all 3 buttons.
Questions:
- Does anyone know of a translation mod for the Famicom? Cluster mentioned it was possible, but I have not seen one yet. I would like to keep the look of the Famicom menu the same, but have all the Japanese text in the menus be replaced with the English text from the NES Classic.
- Is anyone aware of a Coleco Vision core for Retroarch? That system would be a wonderful addition to the NES/Famicom Classic... If a way could be found of easily entering values from the number pad... Maybe the select button could bring up an overlay where you could choose a value?
- Hakchi did not like it when I tried to add a .bin Genesis game--it came back as unknown. It only seemed to like .gen games. Does anyone know if simply renaming another extension like .bin or .smd to .gen will work? All games I have patched at some point had to be converted to .bin format in order to be patched (Phantasy Star IV with the Wii Virtual Console patch to fix the level up glitch is an example).
I did not try any SNES games (not enough buttons on the Famicom to play) or N64 or GBA either, since others have reported that those don't run so well, I'm not going to bother with those two. Others have reported that Sega Master System and Game Gear support is not fully implemented yet, so I didn't bother trying them. I also didn't explore all the new folder options yet, although the one I chose seemed to work as I expected it to.
It looks like there's lots that can still be added to Hakchi to further enhance our tiny systems, and I'm excited to see it. I just hope the glitches I mentioned can get fixed relatively soon, so I can mod my NES Classic with folders and Retroarch and not have to worry about random errors. Still, I continue to be very impressed with this program and how quickly it gets updated with amazing new features!