Odriod GO the $32 8-bit wonder

[Xavier]

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-go/

I see there's a android & so on portable thread... too freakin bad, this lil guy deserves its own thread.

Fun part, you have to assemble it yourself.

Plays:
In a retropie type screen
NES, GB, GBC,
Game Gear, SMS, I've also heard sg100 if you rename the rom extensions
Coleco Vision

Stand alone emulators:
MSX
Atari 2600,5200,7200
Spectrum
C64

Pros: Small thin form, nice solid build, good quality screen, d-pad/buttons feel good. Price

Cons, no headphone jack, some side scrollers have bad screen tearing NES seems worse and is almost unplayable. Wish it had more buttons and played 16 bit MD,TG16,SNES and some classic mame games.

Let me know when a pi3 or even a zero comes with a complete affordable portable package, until then I suggest buying this. It's worth it for it for the GG and MSX alone IMO.

 

[SML]

I like mine a lot. It's definitely not a powerhouse and it's stuck with a 30fps screen, but the Go-Play interface is perfect for quick gameplay sessions (automatic save states when you exit the game). Between that and a battery that seems to last forever, it's the first device I'd take on a trip.

The community is doing good work to improve on some of the issues Xavier mentioned.

For example, see here: https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=159&t=34135

 

[pixeljunkie]

I almost bought one of these, ended up grabbing the BittBoy, but screwed up and bought it before they released the one with custom FW...so now I am just gonna wait for that Retroflag GPi. I know it's nowhere near as cheap, but you're looking at under $100 for a Pi Zero in an amazing shell with all the buttons you need.

 

[Xavier]

I like mine a lot. It's definitely not a powerhouse and it's stuck with a 30fps screen, but the Go-Play interface is perfect for quick gameplay sessions (automatic save states when you exit the game). Between that and a battery that seems to last forever, it's the first device I'd take on a trip.

The community is doing good work to improve on some of the issues Xavier mentioned.

For example, see here: https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=159&t=34135

Oh hey thanks for letting me know about the new firmware, I hadnt seen aything in several months so I thought everybody had moved on.

NES side scrollers are playable now, not perfect but totally playable

 

[Shinchan]

I got each of my daughters one of the kits for xmas, they play them about 2-3 hours per week, and I've only had to charge them once since we built them xmas morning.

I have trouble playing it because my muscle memory can't get over the latency I experience, but my kids love them.

Between that and a battery that seems to last forever, it's the first device I'd take on a trip.

 

[Xavier]

https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/1...retro-game-console-rockchip-rk3326-processor/

ODROID-GO Advance specifications:

SoC – Rockchip RK3326 quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 processor @ 1.3GHz with Mali-G31 MP2 GPU
System Memory – 1GB DDR3L @ 786Mhz, 32 Bits bus width
Storage – 16MB SPI Flash for bootloader, Micro SD Card slot (UHS-1 Capable interface)
Display – 3.5″ 320×480 TFT LCD (Wide-viewing angle display, MIPI-DSI interface)
Audio – 3.5mm earphone stereo jack, 0.5Watt 8Ω Mono speaker
USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port
Input Buttons – F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, A, B, X, Y, Direction Pad, Left Shoulder, Right Shoulder, Analog joystick
Expansion – 10-pin header with I2C, GPIO, IRQ at 3.3Volt
Battery
3.7V/3000mAh Li-Polymer battery
Up to 10 hours of continuous game playing time
Charging time – 2.5 to 3 hours when the device turns off. 4 to 5 hours while playing games.
Power Supply – 5V/1.5A max via 2.5mm DC Jack
Power consumption – Game emulation: 250~350mA, Power off: 0.1mA
Dimensions – 155x72x20 mm
Weight – 170 grams

The console runs Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit with Linux 4.4.189 as well as a modified EmulationStation front-end with Libretro, and GPU accelerated OpenGL-ES on DRM-FB. This enables emulation of the following platforms in the trial BSP:

Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx
SEGA Game Gear
Nintendo Game Boy, Game Boy Advance (gba), Game Box Color (gbc)
SEGA Master System, Mega Drive (aka Genesis)
Nintento NES, SNES
NEC PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16), PC Engine CD
Sony PlayStations (PSX), Portable Play Station (PSP)
Sega CD (Mega CD)

Here's the specs to the retrogame 350 which is about the hottest Chinese handheald right now @ around $75:
SPECS
- jz4770 CPU @1Ghz
- 512MB DDR2 RAM
- 3.5 inch IPS screen at 320x240 resolution, 4:3 aspect ratio, 60hz refresh rate with vsync, so no tearing
- Battery capacity 2500mah
(It does have dual analog controllers though)

Raspberry Pi 3 Specifications

SoC: Broadcom BCM2837.
CPU: 4× ARM Cortex-A53, 1.2GHz.
GPU: Broadcom VideoCore IV.
RAM: 1GB LPDDR2 (900 MHz)
Networking: 10/100 Ethernet, 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless.
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.1 Classic, Bluetooth Low Energy.
Storage: microSD.
GPIO: 40-pin header, populated.
These little handhelds running on pi3 seems to be going for around $200+ and they may or may not even come with the computer.

It several aspects the Odriod Go Advance could be a better gaming experience than the Pi3.

 

[GohanX]

Shut up and take my money.

 

[pixeljunkie]

Yeeeaaaahhh.... I didn't think I would buy one of these...but I will buy this

 

[fenikso]

Seems like a winner. I'm down for a day one purchase of this. SotN and Alpha 3 on the go? Yes, please.

Enjoying the 8-bit version, despite it's flaws. Can recommend.

 

[Xavier]

I found the Lynx emulator as a standalone and it works well!

Some devs in the last few days have gotten the Odroid Advance models and say the screens are nice. I hope they get more systems working before release especially retro ones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjFq3NcK7oE

 

[Syn]

If I didn't already have too many handhelds, I would get one.

 

[fenikso]

Is it the 'end if January 2020' yet?

 

[Xavier]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52F7egAL9Vg

I've also seen a video of it using a arena front end

 

[fenikso]

Just ordered the Go Advance. Shipping starts Feb 6th.

 

[SML]

The Retro-Go firmware is really impressing me. Castlevania III works and the vertical scrolling across all NES games is much better than it was before. Keys call up menus that offer a little more control than the shortcuts the Super-Go-Play and Triforce firmwares were offering.

 

[Xavier]

The Retro-Go firmware is really impressing me. Castlevania III works and the vertical scrolling across all NES games is much better than it was before. Keys call up menus that offer a little more control than the shortcuts the Super-Go-Play and Triforce firmwares were offering.

I'll give it a go again.
Last time I tried was a couple months ago, it was working now but still not as smooth as super-go-play (and I like it's GUI much better)

Hows TG-16? Last time I tried it was still running choppy even with frame rate set to 2.
Lynx was almost perfect though.

Still haven't a go-advance. Last time I checked it was sold out possibly till May.

EDIT: Ok it's a totaly new UI, playing with it now. Looks like it missing support for some systems.

 

[SML]

It doesn't seem as stable as the Go-Play variants at the moment. I've had to delete the cache and reflash it a few times today. Not sure if it's specific to my unit.

 

[Xavier]

I haven't had any problems with it yet, knock on wood.

So basically now there's 5 different gui's or main branches and I'm getting their names all mixed up.

It looks like another one (retrogo-espa32? go-emu) but it's sharpened up. Wow it's really feature rich and extremely intuitive. I don't like the looks as much as the go-play variants but I probably just need to get used to it. Yeah NES is running pretty good on it.

Are you a member on any of the boards dealing with the ODroid Go, an author or know one?
Could you pass this message along for me?

Main thing is I wish it had support for more systems:
Lynx
7200
MSX
run pretty smooth, it would be nice to get it all under one roof.

TG-16 runs like ass last time I checked and according to his read me that's what he wants to add next.

Sounds like he's more of a front end guy than a emulator person.

Here's some issues I have with the emu's

Coleco

would be nice to get some sort of hot map or more buttons options. A bunch of the games need a key like # or * to start them.

Has numerous crashing problems with professional homebrew (best thing about the Coleco)

Would be nice to get SGM Super Game Module support. This has been brought up on the authors thread, he thinks he can't do it but I don't see why not. Believe its just another 10k of Ram.

Master System

Color Pallette is off on SG-1000 games

 

[SML]

Not a member. I just check in once in a while.

 

[SML]

The specific issue I keep running into with the Retro-Go firmware is that it will eventually boot to a screen for a particular system that displays how many roms have been found for that system, but doesn't list the roms and doesn't allow me to navigate the menus. It just hangs on that screen. Re-flashing doesn't fix the issue. Deleting the thumbnails (and not replacing them) seems to give me more time between the issue coming up, but to make Retro-Go work again I need to pop the microsd into my computer and delete /odroid/cache

 

[Xavier]

The specific issue I keep running into with the Retro-Go firmware is that it will eventually boot to a screen for a particular system that displays how many roms have been found for that system, but doesn't list the roms and doesn't allow me to navigate the menus. It just hangs on that screen. Re-flashing doesn't fix the issue. Deleting the thumbnails (and not replacing them) seems to give me more time between the issue coming up, but to make Retro-Go work again I need to pop the microsd into my computer and delete /odroid/cache

Still haven't had that issue, thank goodness. I have compete sets with homebrew, protos and box art as well

 

[GohanX]

The Retro-Go firmware is really impressing me. Castlevania III works and the vertical scrolling across all NES games is much better than it was before. Keys call up menus that offer a little more control than the shortcuts the Super-Go-Play and Triforce firmwares were offering.

I just loaded it up, there are many great improvements that have made the thing much better. Everything is easy and menu based, and even lets me easily switch volumes and using the external dac or internal speaker easily. Adding the GBC color option to the regular B&W games is a great touch too. The Sega emulators are much improved too, I might actually use them now.

 

[SML]

PCE support implemented.

https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=159&t=37599

 

[fenikso]

I'm going to have to mess with that sometime this weekend. Be pretty cool to play some Turbo on the Go.

 

[Xavier]

PCE support implemented.

https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=159&t=37599

Says PCE running at full speed, I dunno maybe but it sure does have some major sound issues.