Classic and mini versions of retro game systems have become popular to release onto the market, including the recently announced PlayStation Classic. With a very basic UI, and the chosen lineup of 20 games, many fans were disappointed and claimed that Sony's attempt at a plug and play throwback console was low effort. Complaints only furthered when it was revealed that Sony wasn't creating or reusing their own PlayStation 1 emulator for the Classic, like they had done with the PSP's POPS emulator, or with the PSP emulator that was found within the PlayStation 4 remaster of Parappa, or the emulated PlayStation 2 classic titles on the PlayStation 4 as well. Instead, Sony has opted use an emulator made by the public: PCSX ReARMed. At an event showing off the upcoming hardware, previewers were able to try out the PlayStation Classic, and found a menu listing stating that it uses open-source software, including PCSX ReARMed.

Source

 

[Patxinco]

Sony is gonna make hella profit with the amount of no resources used on this projecct...
" - Let's do a psx mini like ninty!! But we need some ideas to make it low budget guys, so come on!!!
- What if we just get a good free emulator somewhere and we put it in a cheap system with some cheap titles that we still have rights?
- GENIUS!!!"

Sony headquarters probably

 

[Deleted User]

I think some people here forget not everyone may want to go the RPi, etc. route or want this for other reasons e.g. gift idea, collectors item, etc.

Although personally I am disappointed by the games line up and lack of DS controllers making it limited even when hacked.



Not necessarily, there are ways to implement DRM on open source software, just look at Android.

Well thats of course if they decide to add wifi to it if they plan to make us buy more games in the future.Then most likely the console will have some sort of drm on licences.The nes and snes classics dont even connect to the internet at all.

 

[DarthDub]

Welp, at least we'll know that the emulation will be good.

 

[kuwanger]

SBCs are actually getting more powerful lately. There's the UDOO Bolt, ODroid is coming out with a new board that can play up to the Wii, then there's the LattePanda Alpha that can take smaller dedicated video cards. I didn't think the day would come where we'd be seeing such performance on small devices so soon!

Look at the price of the LattePanda Alpha: $398*. I'm not surprised that CPUs have gotten so fast and can be put on such small boards, since the Raspberry Pi showed how possible it is. What does surprise me is the price point. Just two years ago, the Nextthing Chip was selling for $9, but it was very much a dead end and the company is now defunct. Orange Pi has been around for a while, though, and it has multiple iterations over time, has multiple distros/forks that work with it, and it actually is selling boards for $10 (vs Raspberry Pi Zero which I can find nowhere for that price) on the low end (realistically you'll probably want to spend more for a case and power supply), and it's quad core and clocked ~20% faster.

This was why I was bringing up price because the gap between the H3 CPU and the LattePanda Alpha is pretty high in price and performance. Getting to the point of doing PSX emulation or N64 emulation or whatever your intention is the "sweet spot" you need and hence the SBC you would want. Of course, a lot of people (like me) have multiple computers able to do PSX emulation and have found people practically giving away old laptops which have Core 2 Duo chips in the midpoint of the H3 and the LattePanda Alpha's CPU. That's not practical for the vast majority of people. So, it'd be nice to tell people which SBC actually makes sense.

(rant)

So, honestly for people already with several SBCs on Youtube doing reviews, it'd be nice to see more people doing a strong battery of tests to basically spit out the price/performance figures. It's easy for people to say "oh, a Raspberry Pi can do that", but then can it really? Or are you going to see 10% of games that don't work or 20% that regularly dip below 40 fps (let alone 60 fps)? Yea, the PlayStation Classic is going with a set amount of games, so that's what you really should test against to say if your $25 solution is actually a solution or not.

(/rant)

Btw, some Youtubers do a much better job in that regard. They do show FPS on screen (even if that's not a perfect measure**), try to run benchmarks, try to test noticeably hard to difficult games. Those are the ones I try to gravitate towards because they seem to be making a worthwhile effort towards a good user experience.

* You might find some configuration/variation cheaper, but it's in that price range.

** I have a Core 2 Duo laptop with an under powered G35 integrated Intel chipset. If I use any sort of video shader, there's noticeable skipping and/or tearing. If I don't use one, it's definitely smoother but still not perfect. Fiddling with GPU Hard Sync, max swap chain, etc seems to help, but it's really hard to verify. Oh, and the other video filter thing doesn't work, but when it does work it seems to work better at avoiding the skipping on all hardware I've seen. The point is, the FPS always says 60 fps.

 

[smf]

Turns out they didnt

Yeah they did. or at least the person who provided it to nintendo did. There was no way they bothered to dump their own cartridge, it's a waste of time & more likely to give a bad dump.

There is no legal or moral reason why they need to dump it either.

Imagine your car is stolen and a few days later you find it while out walking and you manage to start it with your spare keys. There is no moral dilemma for you to drive it home while still asking the police to prosecute the people who drove it without your permission.

They aren't the first to do it either, I think it was one of the emulator game packs for the PS2 that did it as well. We know because they embedded a zip file on the disc with the roms and they left the readme.txt from the person who dumped it.

Welp, at least we'll know that the emulation will be good.

There are no good ps1 emulators, it will be passable. My credentials for knowing this are...

https://github.com/iCatButler/pcsxr/blob/7936d466c58f6f2603900fbbc9d18b56ac2e4b4c/libpcsxcore/gte.c

Talking about respecting licenses, that file was taken from software that isn't gpl licensed or compatible with the gpl in any way and included in the source code illegally. They also fucked it up in the process, so it doesn't work right.

 

[anhminh]

but you know what is sad? Most consumer did know this or understand it will just think Sony make all of this.

 

[zfreeman]

PSIO Master Race

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Look at the price of the LattePanda Alpha: $398*. I'm not surprised that CPUs have gotten so fast and can be put on such small boards, since the Raspberry Pi showed how possible it is. What does surprise me is the price point. Just two years ago, the Nextthing Chip was selling for $9, but it was very much a dead end and the company is now defunct. Orange Pi has been around for a while, though, and it has multiple iterations over time, has multiple distros/forks that work with it, and it actually is selling boards for $10 (vs Raspberry Pi Zero which I can find nowhere for that price) on the low end (realistically you'll probably want to spend more for a case and power supply), and it's quad core and clocked ~20% faster.

This was why I was bringing up price because the gap between the H3 CPU and the LattePanda Alpha is pretty high in price and performance. Getting to the point of doing PSX emulation or N64 emulation or whatever your intention is the "sweet spot" you need and hence the SBC you would want. Of course, a lot of people (like me) have multiple computers able to do PSX emulation and have found people practically giving away old laptops which have Core 2 Duo chips in the midpoint of the H3 and the LattePanda Alpha's CPU. That's not practical for the vast majority of people. So, it'd be nice to tell people which SBC actually makes sense.

(rant)

So, honestly for people already with several SBCs on Youtube doing reviews, it'd be nice to see more people doing a strong battery of tests to basically spit out the price/performance figures. It's easy for people to say "oh, a Raspberry Pi can do that", but then can it really? Or are you going to see 10% of games that don't work or 20% that regularly dip below 40 fps (let alone 60 fps)? Yea, the PlayStation Classic is going with a set amount of games, so that's what you really should test against to say if your $25 solution is actually a solution or not.

(/rant)

Btw, some Youtubers do a much better job in that regard. They do show FPS on screen (even if that's not a perfect measure**), try to run benchmarks, try to test noticeably hard to difficult games. Those are the ones I try to gravitate towards because they seem to be making a worthwhile effort towards a good user experience.

* You might find some configuration/variation cheaper, but it's in that price range.

** I have a Core 2 Duo laptop with an under powered G35 integrated Intel chipset. If I use any sort of video shader, there's noticeable skipping and/or tearing. If I don't use one, it's definitely smoother but still not perfect. Fiddling with GPU Hard Sync, max swap chain, etc seems to help, but it's really hard to verify. Oh, and the other video filter thing doesn't work, but when it does work it seems to work better at avoiding the skipping on all hardware I've seen. The point is, the FPS always says 60 fps.

The unfortunate problem is that, in the case of devices like the XU4, while there are guides online catered the nuances of different versions of RetroPie made for different SBCs, it seems like the guides you come across always are pointing to stuff regarding a RPi. Like, I wanted to try the new DC/NAOMI/Atomiswave stuff for my XU4, but I only got to where the Dreamcast games kept booting to a black screen. No Dreamcast startup screen, no date/time, just a black screen, and before that, it kept kicking me out of Reicast every time I tried to run it. I'll probably give it another go this weekend with some help from the RetroPie forums, but if it doesn't work this time, all I got to say is:

 

[kuwanger]

I'll probably give it another go this weekend with some help from the RetroPie forums, but if it doesn't work this time, all I got to say is:

Feel the same way about the CHIPs I bought. Every once in a while, I try to use them for a while and just end up being mostly disappointed. It didn't help that I find Discourse beyond useless to actual track and discuss things to actually get help, so Nextthing's forum was virtually useless. I do give credit that people did every once in a while find something interesting, but the gist of it as a whole was that no one was willing (me included) to do a lot of the heavy lifting. That's really what Nextthing should have done, but they were only interested in the PocketCHIP because it sold for $69 vs the $9 CHIP (plus a $10-$12 HD adapter).

The community is a great place, but if it's the beginning and the end of getting stuff working, you really have to luck out that a community will actually surround your hardware and support it where you won't. Hardware without software to run is useless, and even at $9 the CHIP didn't have enough of the easy-bake Linux distro software to make it worthwhile. If they had put a little funding to get Lakka or someone else behind it... :/

 

[tech3475]

Well thats of course if they decide to add wifi to it if they plan to make us buy more games in the future.Then most likely the console will have some sort of drm on licences.The nes and snes classics dont even connect to the internet at all.

I meant if they add protections to the OS itself, for example, on Android the bootloader is often locked by default so it will only accept signed software.

 

[DKB]

Wait, so we’re paying for a PS1 Shell for...a “beefed” up raspberry pi?

 

[0X29Adecay]

Pathetic nonsense.

 

[retrofan_k]

I'm using a PSIO ode + 256GB SD card loaded with over 200+ games from the redump set on a real PS1 console hooked to a PVM in RGB.

The classic will be bought for collecting only, so not arsed about what games it has or what it uses to emulate them.

 

[Jayro]

A slim PS2 with an RGB mod and POPSLoader is still the best way to play PS1 games, because you get to choose between real, virtual, or USB for memory cards, you get flawless game performance, and as an added bonus that other SBCs can't give you, you get hardware texture filtering. PSP can't do it, PS3 and PS4 can't do it, Vita can't do it, and I can't get it to work for me in Retropie no matter what I try. So I'm sticking to my PS2 slim for PS1 games looking and playing at their absolute best.

 

[th3joker]

im pretty shure sony knew we were going to rip apart the classic and find ways to put our own ps1 backup isos on it so they didnt bother to put a long list of blockbusters. it probably costs sony to re license the soundtracks of the old games

 

[Bladexdsl]

shield tv FTW it really can do anything

 

[smf]

A slim PS2 with an RGB mod and POPSLoader is still the best way to play PS1 games, because you get to choose between real, virtual, or USB for memory cards, you get flawless game performance

What does the RGB mod give you that component doesn't?

It's not flawless, or people wouldn't still be posting issues on https://assemblergames.com/threads/ps2-pops-stuff-popstarter.45347/

But it's a pretty impressive emulator.

 

[retrofan_k]

A slim PS2 with an RGB mod and POPSLoader is still the best way to play PS1 games, because you get to choose between real, virtual, or USB for memory cards, you get flawless game performance, and as an added bonus that other SBCs can't give you, you get hardware texture filtering. PSP can't do it, PS3 and PS4 can't do it, Vita can't do it, and I can't get it to work for me in Retropie no matter what I try. So I'm sticking to my PS2 slim for PS1 games looking and playing at their absolute best.

Flawless on Popsloader on PS2 really? It has poor compatibility and not worth the hassle with a lot of games. Even the last WIP 0.6 was rushed out by the dev who admitted it's buggy. Best way and always, is to use original hardware with a mod chip or ode and memory cards cost nothing to buy.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

What does the RGB mod give you that component doesn't?

PS2's don't need RGB mods. They natively support it via a SCART connection and the option enabled in the browser settings.

RGB 240p/480i is the best display to have on a CRT TV over S-video/RCA connections. However, RGB SCART was never supported in NA/CA back in the day with CRT's.

 

[PiracyForTheMasses]

Look at the price of the LattePanda Alpha: $398*. I'm not surprised that CPUs have gotten so fast and can be put on such small boards, since the Raspberry Pi showed how possible it is.

The pi didnt show anything, SMARTPHONES did

 

[DaFixer]

I used as a joke before "Use a Raspberry Pi with a shell instead", but you can literally make this yourself!
Buy a Raspberry Pi, install RetroPie, buy or 3D print a shell, buy some cables and you're good to go.

That's what I dith some time ago, installed a Raspberry Pi 3 in a PSone shell.
I dith many modification's to fit the RBpi 3 mainboard in the shell.
Added BT dongle for the DS4 controller and a 128gb filled with PSX games and more.