Is building is a big part of the fun ?

[dr grim]

Hi !

Just wanted tot discuss some kind of weird topic in Retrogaming.

I've started a lot of retro doing retro consoles ( raspberry and retroarch fronts like batocera, retropie and stuff)

And for me, the " building" part was a real pleasure.

Setting up the os, emulators, looking and finding roms on the internet.. ( i hate fullpacks i want to select every game by myself)

All this research and seeing evertthing take place really makes me happy.

Are there other People that really dig that ? Or maybe you want more of a instant plug and play experience?

 

[DunkeyKong]

I think this is pretty normal for some people, not weird at all it's like finding things on your own without a guide iykwim. It's fun seeing the cover, the games, the release date and the history behind it

 

[Dr.Kisaragi Dr.Kisaragi]

If I have a good mini pc I really want turn into plug and play and get all the games I have this dream as a kid that I want a console that you can play games in all generation

But the mini pc I have to wait a good pc on lower price.

 

[tonyhoro]

I'm struggling with this since the Wii days lol

I've spent countless weekends downloading roms, boxarts, setting up the retroarch filters, controllers, etc

Just to be satisfied or tired at the end and ending up playing Mario Kart for half an hour and calling it a day.

 

[PrismRed]

I really dig it too, well I like making things by my own in general, but that's definitely part of the fun.

 

[AceWhatever]

I'm struggling with this since the Wii days lol

Same here. I spent weeks and months setting up a Wii/Wii U/3DS/PS3/Vita/Vita TV with homebrew and curated games collections over the past 12 years and to this day I only enjoyed like maybe 1% of the fruits of my labor. For me it's not just the boxarts. I obsess over adding completed saves to unlock everything in multiplayer games or NG+ bonuses in single player stuff as well as cheats were applicable. At some point I decided enough was enough. I sold my PS4 when I got a PS5 instead of keeping it so I don't put myself through the whole rigmarole of hacking it. And my Switch will stay unaltered for as long as I can resist. At least modding consoles for my friend was worth it since he got a lot of use out his Wii/Wii U with his kids.

Getting OPL running on my old slim PS2 using 3 separate methods for SMB storage was a fun if somewhat frustrating experience, but at least I accomplished my goal for doing that (finishing Yakuza 1 & 2). But now that I have a new laptop that can easily emulate PS2 I'm not sure if I'll go back to the physical console.

When I discovered Batocera 3 years ago I fell into it hard because it's a great alternative to running retro games off the Series X's dev mode. Though I didn't particularly care for having to fiddle with emulator/core settings until it finally recognized 4 controllers for older systems that needed multi-taps. At least I only had to do it once and then it's easily transferable to any future Batocera installation I make.

Unlike Android which basically makes you do everything from scratch for each device. I thought I was through the worst of it setting up 4 devices as gifts, but when I wanted to do the same to my Shield TV to try to unclutter its interface I had no idea what a headache it'd be just because Duckstation isn't natively available for Android TV and the developer had decided to stop hosting the APK just a few months before I started this project. The other PS1 emulators just didn't want to play nice with the frontends I was using on top of the latter having very bad scrapers. So I put that project on indefinite hold and went back to utilize what little free time I had to just actually PLAY games.

At the end of the day I'm always a function-over-fashion kind of guy.

 

[Zerpina]

Nah...

I never liked the whole full ROMSET thing, not with any system.
For one, I don't want every variant of every game and revision. It's a waste of space... and takes for-fucking-ever to sort through them. I like to handpick what I get. I mean I don't need 15 revisions of Batman for M.A.M.E. As long as the game works and is the complete version, I don't need one with slight alterations unless it's some major fix.

I've always found it fun to download games one by one. Yes, I have been doing so for years, and I have a rather sizable collection of games. Not one complete set, except for the NES and the SMS, solely because their ROM sets are a few hundred meg's at most. I said I didn't like the full sets... I never said I didn't have them.

As for systems like PS2, Dreamcast, etc.. no, I handpicked my collections, games I knew I liked, plus weird or odd games I either never had when they were new or have never heard of. So no, I think half of the fun is in building your collection because, in the end, what everyone else likes is irrelevant.

It's what you like that matters.

As for setting everything up, I have done that for years, over and over... with new systems and new emulators coming out when switching to a new OS or PC. Finally, with the advent of Batocera and having gigabytes of BIOS files and such for emulators like M.A.M.E. I just said "fuck it" and built a PC solely for Batocera. Well, you can only set up a PS2 or Sega Saturn so many times before you just don't want to anymore.

 

[Jdan-S]

Some just want a plug and play experience and play the games. Others get into this hobby because the setup and customization is part of the appeal, often to the point where we forget to stop and just play!

For me, the fun and challenge is in setting up a device just how I want it: the curated ROM list, shader settings, custom overlays, theme, etc. If you put in the effort, the result is a setup that's truly yours.

 

[Zerpina]

Some just want a plug and play experience and play the games. Others get into this hobby because the setup and customization is part of the appeal, often to the point where we forget to stop and just play!

For me, the fun and challenge is in setting up a device just how I want it: the curated ROM list, shader settings, custom overlays, theme, etc. If you put in the effort, the result is a setup that's truly yours.

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NGL...
That Clam shell GB system (not sure what it is) with MuOS is fire

 

[Jdan-S]

NGL...
That Clam shell GB system (not sure what it is) with MuOS is fire

It's the RG35XX SP from Anbernic. They also have the same chipset in other form factors, including one that looks like an upgraded original GBA (RG 34XX) with a proper 3:2 screen.

 

[Zerpina]

It's the RG35XX SP from Anbernic. They also have the same chipset in other form factors, including one that looks like an upgraded original GBA (RG 34XX) with a proper 3:2 screen.

Cool, myself i like the Trimui Smart Pro, feel's like a Nice PSP, great screen and actually has stereo speakers (none of that nasty mono stuff) and Really nice buttons to

This one's mine

 

[tonyhoro]

Some just want a plug and play experience and play the games. Others get into this hobby because the setup and customization is part of the appeal, often to the point where we forget to stop and just play!

For me, the fun and challenge is in setting up a device just how I want it: the curated ROM list, shader settings, custom overlays, theme, etc. If you put in the effort, the result is a setup that's truly yours.

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amazing stuff you got there.
Do you have a set of 1080p borders for these portables? I have a Retroid Pocket 4 Pro and I'd love to add some specific border to my systems.

 

[dropsmegamega]

I don't like the building part, it's very stressing. If already you don't have a lot of free time and you gotta waste hours settting things up... you've already wasted all your time before even starting the game. I just want to relax...

If anything I think emulation is or at least should be much easier to setup compared to old pc games that rely on VMs or weird workarounds, so I really dislike retroarch or any emu that makes thing unnecessarily more complicated.

 

[Zerpina]

I don't like the building part, it's very stressing. If already you don't have a lot of free time and you gotta waste hours settting things up... you've already wasted all your time before even starting the game. I just want to relax...

If anything I think emulation is or at least should be much easier to setup compared to old pc games that rely on VMs or weird workarounds, so I really dislike retroarch or any emu that makes thing unnecessarily more complicated.

The thing is, you only have to set things up once, unless you're switching computers or the like. So I don't see it as that bad to set things up. And hey, do one at a time when you have a little free time and want something to do aside from playing a game.

 

[raiden_dj]

Are there other People that really dig that ? Or maybe you want more of a instant plug and play experience?

Me, I´m one of those people.
Man I loved the whole journey I've been through to get where I am right now. I know my emulators, have my config files and front end setup with a very strict, curated selection of games I can play while sitting far away from my screen on my computer or TV, and it took me years to figure all this shit out the way I do now.

 

[dropsmegamega]

The thing is, you only have to set things up once, unless you're switching computers or the like. So I don't see it as that bad to set things up. And hey, do one at a time when you have a little free time and want something to do aside from playing a game.

This reminds me that my Anbernic SD card died like 6 months ago and I still haven't had the time and energy to set up everything again... painful...

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

It's so normal to me that its pedestrian lol

 

[Graw]

Honestly, I'm kind of glad I don't have to do any of that any more and for the most part can just download an emulator and some roms and start playing in less than 5 minutes for most systems. I used to hate it back in the day with stuff like epsxe and Project 64 having to fuck around with plugins and per game configurations and endless bullshit just to make games work properly. The most I bother with now is having individual folders for different systems. Sometimes if I'm feeling really enthusiastic I'll put rom hacks in their own folder. Super Metroid and Super Mario world have their own folders for rom hacks because there's a lot of them. That's about as much effort as I put in to 'building' anything.

 

[Bakuma1997]

As someone that turned his Wii into a Multi Nintendo System (Alongside all of Sega's Consoles from Sega CD to below) you also forgot to mention another trouble: Testing

Not only if the game runs correctly, but also if you really will play it of if it will simply stay inside your Card/Memory, often a game that you liked in the minutes you played it and declared it stay turned out to be bad, that fear of having wasted time alone makes it harder to stick to a game staying

Regarding software... That can be pretty fun if you do it sparingly, my Entire game collection of ROMS was built between 2018 and 2020, in between my Online High School sessions in my spare time, if i did all in a row i would hate videogames in general, mercifully i managed to space my rom curation and there i am, fewer games than most collection, but games i consistently play

 

[ObscureJigglypuff]

For me is a pain in the ass when i have to deal with it.
But as a pirate, i'm having fun in the end either way.