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So now that I think about it, those 8BitDo PC Engine mini controllers are now available. Has anyone here actually tried them? I don't think anyone has mentioned using them yet unless there is something that I missed somewhere. They were specifically made for a mini console that not many people seem to have (at least, not many people here), so I'm not really surprised that nobody here has mentioned them yet.

 

I'm mostly curious to see if 8BitDo has figured out how d-pads are supposed to work yet, but I'm also curious about the general quality of the controller, especially since it seems to be mostly identical to the new controller that will come with the new version of the Nt mini.

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I received my PC Engine Mini last night! So yeah, that was incredibly fast shipping from Japan.

 

So, this is only slightly smaller than the actual PC Engine. It's just mind-blowing that they were able to make the original so small.

 

The menus are fun and creative. I like the animations showing a HuCard being inserted, or the CD-ROM spinning up. Not strictly necessary, but very atmospheric and cool, and they are quick enough not to become bothersome. Among the first games I've tried are ones that I'm most familiar with already from the Sega Master System, but was always intrigued by these versions... R-Type and Space Harrier. Then I settled into some Blazing Lazers. I also want to try out Ninja Spirit... an arcade game I never saw back in the day, but when I discovered it via MAME I was blown away, as it seems to me to be a cool hybrid of platformer and almost a shmup as you spend so much time in the air. I think the vertical shooters will ultimately get the most play time from me, but beyond that, I'm just excited to go exploring through this curated section of the PC Engine library.

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9 hours ago, Zoyous said:

I received my PC Engine Mini last night! So yeah, that was incredibly fast shipping from Japan.

 

 

I  received my Turbografx Mini Yesterday, too, also from Japan!.  I'm definitely amazed at their shipping speed, especially as I have some eBay items that are taking forever (or they never shipped, because eBay can't seem to tell when auctions are fake anymore (that may be my new thread if I ever get around to it)...Anyhow I haven't had any time to crack it open, but at least the box is in my possession ;)  

 

I'll probably treat it mostly as a reward for catching up on my work when I'm on vacation from my (main) job in a couple of days...

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Yeah, this one has the best menu of the mini consoles that I have (Famicom, MD, PC Engine) in terms of aesthetics. MD is the fastest to navigate by far, though. I like the inserting of the card and how it shows the CR-ROM2 starting to spin.

 

I did notice one weird thing the other day after watching Joe's review. If you set the system language to English and then set the screen to use the PC Engine GT bezel and stay in the screen options menu, look at the bottom of the screen where it shows you what the buttons do. Next to the II button it says Backl instead of Back. As far as I know, this only happens on this one screen, only while the PC Engine GT bezel is equipped, and only in English. I left mine in Japanese, so I never noticed it before!

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Yeah, this one has the best menu of the mini consoles that I have (Famicom, MD, PC Engine) in terms of aesthetics. MD is the fastest to navigate by far, though. I like the inserting of the card and how it shows the CR-ROM2 starting to spin.
 
I did notice one weird thing the other day after watching Joe's review. If you set the system language to English and then set the screen to use the PC Engine GT bezel and stay in the screen options menu, look at the bottom of the screen where it shows you what the buttons do. Next to the II button it says Backl instead of Back. As far as I know, this only happens on this one screen, only while the PC Engine GT bezel is equipped, and only in English. I left mine in Japanese, so I never noticed it before!
I spend an hour scrolling on the open source licenses screen hoping to find an Easter egg at the end but, nope. Did notice at the top that they spelled it "lisence" or something. :)
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4 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Yeah, this one has the best menu of the mini consoles that I have (Famicom, MD, PC Engine) in terms of aesthetics. MD is the fastest to navigate by far, though. I like the inserting of the card and how it shows the CR-ROM2 starting to spin.

 

I did notice one weird thing the other day after watching Joe's review. If you set the system language to English and then set the screen to use the PC Engine GT bezel and stay in the screen options menu, look at the bottom of the screen where it shows you what the buttons do. Next to the II button it says Backl instead of Back. As far as I know, this only happens on this one screen, only while the PC Engine GT bezel is equipped, and only in English. I left mine in Japanese, so I never noticed it before!

Sometimes ya just want to go Backl instead of Forwardl  ?

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On 6/16/2020 at 5:06 AM, Steven Pendleton said:

So now that I think about it, those 8BitDo PC Engine mini controllers are now available. Has anyone here actually tried them? I don't think anyone has mentioned using them yet unless there is something that I missed somewhere. They were specifically made for a mini console that not many people seem to have (at least, not many people here), so I'm not really surprised that nobody here has mentioned them yet.

 

I'm mostly curious to see if 8BitDo has figured out how d-pads are supposed to work yet, but I'm also curious about the general quality of the controller, especially since it seems to be mostly identical to the new controller that will come with the new version of the Nt mini.

 

I haven't tried them specifically,  But I've been generally quite happy with all of my other 8BITDOs*...At this point I trust them implicitly.  Maybe I'll get one in the future!

 

 

*I have'em for SNES Classic, Super NT (2 kinds), MEGA SG, and a wireless adapter for the PS1 Classic...Plus they work on the original consoles...They're Awesome! (Give or take the weirdities of BlueTooth, of course).

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2 hours ago, CZroe said:

I spend an hour scrolling on the open source licenses screen hoping to find an Easter egg at the end but, nope. Did notice at the top that they spelled it "lisence" or something. :)

Yeah, I think I do remember seeing something like that! "Lisence"... I often wonder how non-native English speakers put up with the crap that is English grammar and spelling.

2 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

Sometimes ya just want to go Backl instead of Forwardl  ?

This made me laugh way more than it should have for some reason...

2 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

 

I haven't tried them specifically,  But I've been generally quite happy with all of my other 8BITDOs*...At this point I trust them implicitly.  Maybe I'll get one in the future!

 

 

*I have'em for SNES Classic, Super NT (2 kinds), MEGA SG, and a wireless adapter for the PS1 Classic...Plus they work on the original consoles...They're Awesome! (Give or take the weirdities of BlueTooth, of course).

You're super lucky or I have bad luck. Here's my 8BitDooDoo story...

 

My problem with 8BitDo is that I have 5 of their controllers and 4 of them are dumpster-tier. The 1 that is not dumpster-tier is the M30 2.4g, which is amazing, somehow. The other 4 are the SN30, SF30, N30 Pro 2, and the SF30 Pro. All of these 4 have terrible d-pads. I tested them in Sonic Mania, and I have difficulty making Sonic crouch instead of running to the left or right. Of the 2 controllers with analog sticks, all 4 sticks are useless since they have difficulty recentering themselves after I let go of them sometimes, and they often give me strange inputs when not touching them.

 

Here's a picture of my N30 Pro 2's stick calibration screen on the Switch several hours after I got it.

Pic_0206_219.thumb.jpg.b4e3a7ee4d07d15e5faf9314db4d5e8d.jpg

 

I was unable to get the SF30 Pro to actually connect with the Switch for over a year after I got it, and I was only able to get it to work about 50% of the time starting several months ago. As for the SN30/SF30, I have great difficulty getting them to actually connect to the receivers on my Super Nt. Most of the time, they just sit there and blink until they fail to connect and turn off. I did find a strange fix for this, though; turn the controller on before the system and it works every time, but I still have to give it between 10~20 seconds frequently.

 

Yep, no more 8BitDo for me except that controller that's coming with the Nt mini, and only because there's no option to not have it, unfortunately. At least this time they actually put the buttons in the right configuration for that system.

 

Like I said, though, the M30 2.4g is awesome, so it's not entirely hopeless, but 4 out of 5 being bad is not exactly a good record. Hopefully it will be 4 out of 6 being bad here when that other controller comes. I'm still curious about the PC Engine mini controller, though, so if you try it, let me know!

Edited by Steven Pendleton
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I've been playing a bunch of TG16 recently (currently going through Ys book 1 & 2) and I have to say despite having a regular Duo, and a MiSter which plays things great, I'm preferring playing games on the TG Mini :lol: It's all about the save states for me right now really.. even though you do notice some sounds that's aren't "quite right" with the emulation. e.g. the drum roll after winning in Nectaris/Miltary Madness.

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2 hours ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

I really only play shumps and Bomberman on my PC Engine right now... so I don't really need save states. The Bomberman passwords are super simple anyway.

I'm actually playing through Blazing Lazers right now using save states.. Particularly because the stages are long and I only play through one maybe every other day or so. 

 

Those who think that's cheating can rest easy from the countless times I'd beaten the game in 1989-1990 on my regular old Turbografx-16 :lol:

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On 6/19/2020 at 10:12 AM, NE146 said:

I've been playing a bunch of TG16 recently (currently going through Ys book 1 & 2) and I have to say despite having a regular Duo, and a MiSter which plays things great, I'm preferring playing games on the TG Mini :lol: It's all about the save states for me right now really.. even though you do notice some sounds that's aren't "quite right" with the emulation. e.g. the drum roll after winning in Nectaris/Miltary Madness.

I've actually more or less switched to the PC Engine mini myself now that I have a functioning turbo controller. The SuperGrafx doesn't fit on my desk with the Saturn on there, but the PC Engine mini does! I really need to find a way to do this properly rather than just piling 9~12 systems on my desk at the same time, depending on how much space they take up.

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6 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

I really need to find a way to do this properly rather than just piling 9~12 systems on my desk at the same time, depending on how much space they take up.

I built a small cabinet that is designed to hold four consoles at once. It has an open back where cords can come out, and two "chambers" on each level... a larger one for the console, and a smaller one for controllers and accessories. I also made wooden covers for each chamber - so they look like drawers when it's all closed up, but they are actually more like wooden faceplates that are held in place with magnets and I can just remove them one at a time when a system is in use. It's small enough overall to go either on top of my desk or under it. There are probably some standard shelving kits that could serve the same purpose. But the main issue with something like this always comes down to cord & cable routing and dressing. It's just always a challenge to dress cables well, and then once you do, you have a whole 'nother can of worms if you ever need to move or rearrange anything, because you have to 'un-dress' all the cables and re-do them again.

 

Eventually, although it was decently organized, I didn't actually frequently use all four systems, and it felt kind of imposing in a weird way. So I decided that for me it was actually better to just store my consoles in boxes and then from time to intentionally decide, 'this month I'm going to hook up the Saturn and focus on those games for a while,' or 'this month I'm going to hook up the OG Xbox and play through JSRF again.' It also kind of helps because I sometimes get paralysis from too many choices.

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1 hour ago, Zoyous said:

I built a small cabinet that is designed to hold four consoles at once. It has an open back where cords can come out, and two "chambers" on each level... a larger one for the console, and a smaller one for controllers and accessories. I also made wooden covers for each chamber - so they look like drawers when it's all closed up, but they are actually more like wooden faceplates that are held in place with magnets and I can just remove them one at a time when a system is in use. It's small enough overall to go either on top of my desk or under it. There are probably some standard shelving kits that could serve the same purpose. But the main issue with something like this always comes down to cord & cable routing and dressing. It's just always a challenge to dress cables well, and then once you do, you have a whole 'nother can of worms if you ever need to move or rearrange anything, because you have to 'un-dress' all the cables and re-do them again.

 

Eventually, although it was decently organized, I didn't actually frequently use all four systems, and it felt kind of imposing in a weird way. So I decided that for me it was actually better to just store my consoles in boxes and then from time to intentionally decide, 'this month I'm going to hook up the Saturn and focus on those games for a while,' or 'this month I'm going to hook up the OG Xbox and play through JSRF again.' It also kind of helps because I sometimes get paralysis from too many choices.

Sir,  your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter!

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Video Game paralysis is a real thing indeed. I first encountered it when I was first able to burn PSX games in 1999 or whatever, found myself with spindles and spindles of hundreds of games, and never playing anything. :lol: It took me years to break out of it.

 

I used to do this thing where I focus on "One game per platform" and focus on that game until I either finish or REALLY get tired of it. But nowadays my method is to simply "Pick a game that's interesting to you at the moment!". There's thousands upon thousands to choose from every platform over several decades. I just kind of get an inkling from any muse somewhere, figure out what I'm attracted to at the moment, then I just sit and play THAT game (or 2 ).. exclusively. Right now it's Turbo CD Ys and Pictoquest.

 

 

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Here's the cabinet I built, and how I initially had it set up. The other factor that helped this work was, I had a monitor that had all sorts of inputs, so I had the Dreamcast on VGA, the PS3 on DVI, the Xbox One on HDMI, and the Xbox 360 on component. I have a Trinitron for my older consoles.

 

Regarding the paralysis of too many choices, and how it probably also relates to a "pile of shame" (i.e., purchased but unplayed games) ~ I think it may go back to the early arcade era, when games were coming out steadily but it still seemed possible to keep up with all the new releases and try them all out. Especially since about five minutes was a satisfying playtime. Now the frequency of releases has increased exponentially and the duration of gameplay has increased to possibly hundreds of hours, and it's impossible to play everything that catches your interest.

cabinet_inner.jpg

cabinet_outer.jpg

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On 6/18/2020 at 7:42 AM, Steven Pendleton said:

Yeah, I think I do remember seeing something like that! "Lisence"... I often wonder how non-native English speakers put up with the crap that is English grammar and spelling.

This made me laugh way more than it should have for some reason...

You're super lucky or I have bad luck. Here's my 8BitDooDoo story...

 

My problem with 8BitDo is that I have 5 of their controllers and 4 of them are dumpster-tier. The 1 that is not dumpster-tier is the M30 2.4g, which is amazing, somehow. The other 4 are the SN30, SF30, N30 Pro 2, and the SF30 Pro. All of these 4 have terrible d-pads. I tested them in Sonic Mania, and I have difficulty making Sonic crouch instead of running to the left or right. Of the 2 controllers with analog sticks, all 4 sticks are useless since they have difficulty recentering themselves after I let go of them sometimes, and they often give me strange inputs when not touching them.

 

Here's a picture of my N30 Pro 2's stick calibration screen on the Switch several hours after I got it.

Pic_0206_219.thumb.jpg.b4e3a7ee4d07d15e5faf9314db4d5e8d.jpg

 

I was unable to get the SF30 Pro to actually connect with the Switch for over a year after I got it, and I was only able to get it to work about 50% of the time starting several months ago. As for the SN30/SF30, I have great difficulty getting them to actually connect to the receivers on my Super Nt. Most of the time, they just sit there and blink until they fail to connect and turn off. I did find a strange fix for this, though; turn the controller on before the system and it works every time, but I still have to give it between 10~20 seconds frequently.

 

Yep, no more 8BitDo for me except that controller that's coming with the Nt mini, and only because there's no option to not have it, unfortunately. At least this time they actually put the buttons in the right configuration for that system.

 

Like I said, though, the M30 2.4g is awesome, so it's not entirely hopeless, but 4 out of 5 being bad is not exactly a good record. Hopefully it will be 4 out of 6 being bad here when that other controller comes. I'm still curious about the PC Engine mini controller, though, so if you try it, let me know!

 

Wow!  You have had bad luck with them!

 

Best to go with your experiences, then...

 

Not meaning to mislead of course, but a lot of what I said was based on first impressions...

 

Lately it seems I've had very little time for video games.  And every console, game, or joystick I buy is an investment in the idea that someday I will give them a better test and I'll get a chance to really try them out...(Soon I hope)

 

I better revamp my thoughts to say, my First Impressions,  were generally pretty positive with 8BITDOs...But,  I don't have any with analog sticks (even though I plan on getting an FC30 PRO), and (I could be wrong) but I think the pairing thing could be a Bluetooth issue.   I've always said Bluetooth is crap,  because it's always been a headache for me...Every time, with the sole exception being PS3 controllers that somehow just work...(and they don't require lining up blinking lights, computer keystrokes, firmware updates, or putting in the magic button combo to get something into Switch mode or whatever)...

 

 

 

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On 6/21/2020 at 12:27 AM, Zoyous said:

I built a small cabinet that is designed to hold four consoles at once. It has an open back where cords can come out, and two "chambers" on each level... a larger one for the console, and a smaller one for controllers and accessories. I also made wooden covers for each chamber - so they look like drawers when it's all closed up, but they are actually more like wooden faceplates that are held in place with magnets and I can just remove them one at a time when a system is in use. It's small enough overall to go either on top of my desk or under it. There are probably some standard shelving kits that could serve the same purpose. But the main issue with something like this always comes down to cord & cable routing and dressing. It's just always a challenge to dress cables well, and then once you do, you have a whole 'nother can of worms if you ever need to move or rearrange anything, because you have to 'un-dress' all the cables and re-do them again.

 

Eventually, although it was decently organized, I didn't actually frequently use all four systems, and it felt kind of imposing in a weird way. So I decided that for me it was actually better to just store my consoles in boxes and then from time to intentionally decide, 'this month I'm going to hook up the Saturn and focus on those games for a while,' or 'this month I'm going to hook up the OG Xbox and play through JSRF again.' It also kind of helps because I sometimes get paralysis from too many choices.

I've really got no idea how to have a nice setup, unfortunately, and this is 100% because of the size and design of my room. I have 1 and only 1 electrical socket in my room. I guess whoever designed this building in the late 50s didn't foresee that someone would want any electrical devices in their room aside from an air conditioning thingy and a lamp. That, combined with the fact that most of my floor space is taken up by my bed, desk, and my huge CRT makes it difficult. I guess I could put all of my systems in my kitchen/shower room (yes, the shower is immediately next to the kitchen sink), but I've not decided yet.

On 6/22/2020 at 6:25 AM, GoldLeader said:

 

Wow!  You have had bad luck with them!

 

Best to go with your experiences, then...

 

Not meaning to mislead of course, but a lot of what I said was based on first impressions...

 

Lately it seems I've had very little time for video games.  And every console, game, or joystick I buy is an investment in the idea that someday I will give them a better test and I'll get a chance to really try them out...(Soon I hope)

 

I better revamp my thoughts to say, my First Impressions,  were generally pretty positive with 8BITDOs...But,  I don't have any with analog sticks (even though I plan on getting an FC30 PRO), and (I could be wrong) but I think the pairing thing could be a Bluetooth issue.   I've always said Bluetooth is crap,  because it's always been a headache for me...Every time, with the sole exception being PS3 controllers that somehow just work...(and they don't require lining up blinking lights, computer keystrokes, firmware updates, or putting in the magic button combo to get something into Switch mode or whatever)...

 

 

 

Yeah, I've had enough of 8BitDo. Now that I think about it, the only 3rd party wireless controllers I have ever owned are these 5 controllers, unless those Retro-Bit x Sega controllers count. The only ones that I've ever had connection problems with are the Bluetooth ones, and even Nintendo isn't immune to this; I sometimes have issues getting the Switch Pro Controller to turn the system on for some reason, but it always works out eventually, even if I have to try a few times. There is also the inherent lag that Bluetooth has. I'm really not sure why or how it became the standard, but it is now for whatever reason.

 

2.4GHz has problems with interference, supposedly, but I've never had any issues with it after I updated the M30 2.4g and the Retro-Bit Sega controllers. I never thought I'd see controllers getting updates, for that matter, but here we are.

Edited by Steven Pendleton
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15 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

I'm getting my CoreGrafx mini today! The delivery guy has 7 clients before me... ;)

Wait, 6 now!

lol finally! I've been looking forward to your review for close to 3 months now... what a giant mess this release turned out to be.

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26 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

Make it 4 clients. ^^ Well, on Saturday I'm posting my review... of Evercade. ?

I'm kind of curious about that thing too, as you probably remember from its thread over in the other section. I wonder how it is now, if they've made any changes to it or anything. Haven't really been paying attention to it, but it has some promise for sure.

 

But yeah, for CoreGrafx mini, I hope you like it, since you've been waiting for over 3 months for the damn thing!

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4 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

I'm kind of curious about that thing too, as you probably remember from its thread over in the other section. I wonder how it is now, if they've made any changes to it or anything. Haven't really been paying attention to it, but it has some promise for sure.

 

But yeah, for CoreGrafx mini, I hope you like it, since you've been waiting for over 3 months for the damn thing!

It's sitting right next to me! :) The box is small, I like that.

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1 hour ago, roots.genoa said:

It's sitting right next to me! :) The box is small, I like that.

After 3 months, you can finally say Get!! and play the system! By the way, I have no idea why games and ads and stuff in Japan always have Get!! with 2 exclamation points, but I guess that makes it more stimulating... or something.

 

Curious to see how you feel about it. I'll probably save my money for now and get the CoreGrafx mini in the future. No real rush to get it now, but I have to be careful that they don't run out of stock since Amazon is the only store that sells them.

 

For some reason, I just realized that the PC Engine would make a very nice cake. It's nice and square and stuff, which makes it easy to bake a cake in its shape, and its overall pleasant aesthetic would make it visually pleasing. I suppose the CoreGrafx and SuperGrafx would make nice cellular peptide cakes with mint frosting due to their colors, as well, and I have absolutely no idea why I am thinking about this.

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10 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

I've really got no idea how to have a nice setup, unfortunately, and this is 100% because of the size and design of my room. I have 1 and only 1 electrical socket in my room. I guess whoever designed this building in the late 50s didn't foresee that someone would want any electrical devices in their room aside from an air conditioning thingy and a lamp. That, combined with the fact that most of my floor space is taken up by my bed, desk, and my huge CRT makes it difficult. I guess I could put all of my systems in my kitchen/shower room (yes, the shower is immediately next to the kitchen sink), but I've not decided yet.

Wow, I've heard that living spaces are quite small in Japan and wondered how I might adapt to that. In a way it sounded more appealing to me when I was kid, but then I grew up to be 6'6" and I get an uncomfortable feeling in small spaces... not anything serious like claustrophobia though.

 

The single power outlet definitely sounds like the worst part. Are you daisy chaining power strips, or how do you handle that?

 

I'm not sure what is allowed by your landlord or what you could realistically do, but I would explore vertical options. Is it possible to raise your bed onto a taller platform that could have some usable space underneath it? Almost like a bunk bed but with no lower bed; maybe your desk could go underneath it. (If it's possible, it'd definitely be something that you'd want professionally done, you don't need to have that much weight perched up precariously.)

 

I was thinking of making some sort of small tray to hold my mini systems, because they're so light, I don't want them tumbling accidentally.

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