Is the Pandora console any good? I've been wanting a portable emulation machine...

Is the Pandora console any good? I've been wanting a portable emulation machine, and I just learned about this neat looking thing from the agdq stream. The features look awesome, but I don't see many people talking about them.

Just get an smartphone or a PSP/3DS if you are poor.

I can't deal with the awful controls of a touchscreen phone. I have considered a psp. You can emulate games on 3ds?

It's considerably expensive, and the hardware on it is dated.
However, it's a pretty unique system and its inputs beat out any shitty smartphone screen any day (Seriously, emulating retro games on smartphones to play them with a fucking screen is a nightmare unless it's some turn based RPG).

Ashens has a hands-on review of it, if you wanna check it out functioning.

The Pyra has entered its ordering phase. It's a sucessor with a much more interesting set of features, and it'll be upgradeable, even. I'd wait for a Pyra.

PSP is a nice emulating machine, but some SNES games will cause you trouble.
Forget about the 3DS - it's not that good and the battery life is meh. Depending on the exploits you use you can gain better performance (doubly so with a n3DS) but there aren't so many emulators for it, and the ones that exist aren't that well optimized either.

pandora is a joke system. Don't waste your time with it. Get a PSP.

There's native installations for a butt-ton of NES and Game Boy/Color/Advance games, and New 3DS has native SNES installation. Get it piracy-capable and get a DS flashcart and you've got complete access to those libraries as well, and I'm aware there's Genesis injects so you can natively install Sega Genesis games.

N64/PS1 are a no-go though. If you prioritize PS1 games go PSP for emulation, if you don't care so much about PS1 games go 3DS, though with PPSSPP floating around I'd probably go for a New 3DS + a bigass SD card, getting it piracy-capable (there's threads around here for learning how to do that, involves making sure your 3DS is below a certain firmware version though if you buy new and in-the-box you'll guaranteed get one that's good for it), then just emulating any PSP games I was interested in on a computer.

It's mostly as the other user said. The PSP has good emulator support. You will run into a few hiccups but it's pretty good.

For the DS, you're mostly relying on virtual console injects, which take some work to implement (you have to implement homebrew on your 3ds) and only the new 3ds can emulate SNES.

It's not bad. You essentially inject roms to run as virtual console games, so you get the single slot savestate too.

In some instances, there are emulators available, such as for the GBC (gameyob).
Getting a 3DS also lets you purchase a DS flashcart, which has one of the best libraries of our generation. Some cards can emulate GBA, though you can just do a VC inject for those too.

Well actually tripsman, some lesser known PSP games just wont work on PPSSPP. Colin Mcrae 2005 Plus is the one i recall working like ass.

plus psp emulation is fast, far from accurate. Doesn't even have the correct fonts, it's a bit of a novelty.

I see no reason why not to pick up a PSP itself. They're cheap as fuck and they have a great library. Buy a big memory stick for it and you're set.

All models, all firmware are able to be pirated on so take your pick.

Same deal with some PS1 games as well.

Like for instance it is a massive pain in the ass to emulate Misadventure of Tron Bonne but a cfw psp can do it perfectly.

Thanks fro giving me an aneurism, asshole. Wait for Pyra or get a raspberry.

That's because the PSP shares the same architecture as the PSX but smaller and at 333mhz compared to the 33mhz of the psx

helps that the psp is based on the same hardware architecture as the ps1, just much, much faster. Some games have some difficulties on PSP, such as valkyrie profile or brave fencer musashi, but its manageable after you play with popsloader for a bit. It's all very well documented.

Yup. The PSP/PS1 library alone is good enough to make it the best portable emulation machine in my book. SNES/Gameboy/Sega etc are just a bonus.

I HAVE BILLS TO PAY AND PARENTS TO NOT DISAPPOINT ANY FURTHER, DAMNIT!

Theyre making a new one called the dragon box pyra. Alternativly there is the "gpd xd" thats an android emulation machine. I can reccomend the gpd.

40 bucks is a good price. Plus get a sanoxy micro sd adapter, two micro sd's, and you're good. I think in theory you can get up to 2TB on a PSP.


don't these things have horrible buttons?

I have one. The buttons are mushy but they work very well. The dpad is also mushy and feels like the wii u's dpad. But i have no problems with the controls at all.

Look at it this way, after the 40 investment you'll have enough free games to last you for years.

My advice is to go for a 3000 model. The Go is good too but i highly doubt you'll be able to find one for cheap as they're rare (also it's the point where sony started using proprietary memory).

Thanks for all the recommendations guys, I think I'll grab a psp. How is the pspgo for emulation? It's like twice as expensive, are there any benefits to it?

Posted before I read that. Proprietary memory is too Jewish to support, I'll still with the 3000 then.

No, don't get it. I got one of these a year or so back and I've tried multiple times to find some use for it but never can.

Most of the emulators aren't very good or don't run at full speed (ex the snes emu. Can't run yoshi's island at 60 on a rebirth). The only good one is drastic and even then you need the 1 ghz model to even attempt most games without some serious frame skip.

I tried to install different operating systems on to it with varied results. The port of debian isn't very good and trying to get x on a minimal install is fucked. I know they have ports of gentoo and shit but I don't even want to deal with it at this point The included os isn't very good either, so your fucked either way. You can't compile shit on it very easily either as it will almost always throw some error about missing libs. The pnd system doesn't work so well either as it keeps everything as what are essentially mounted isos. The repo you download them from isn't great either; it's slow to load and download shit. Basically, you are fucked if the software you are looking for isn't in the repo and even then your going to have to do abhorent ammounts of trouble shooting to make things work correctly.

It isn't terrible, but it has alot of minor things that bug me. The back doesn't snap on quite right and the screen is a bit malformed. The keyboard feels a bit stiff. The joysticks are fucking awful because they can rotate, meaning thatyour thumbs are liable to slip off. the buttons and the d-pad are fucking great though.

The idea is great but the execution is terrible. You can use it for a music player and an ssh machine but not much else. just wait for the pyra and see how it turns out.

3000 has a great screen, 2000 is good too. 1000 is pretty undesirable.


its a bit smaller, but otherwise not really worth it.

I saw a Go going for 30 bucks on craiglist

NEVER
EVER
AGAIN

I have one and it is a pretty cool little device, emulation works just fine and it's tiny as fuck for travel. If you can only afford one though yeah get the 3000.


For 30 bucks i'd say it's worth it. Even ignoring the extra memory it still comes with 16 gigs on it by default which can hold several games.

Are these things worth buying fam?

I have one of those.
They're not great but they're not awful. I used it for like a year until I changed my phone. I didn't have major issues but also I can't say I found it entirely satisfying. Once in a while a button won't react but there's very little lag and the button-skipping thing happens rarely.
A friend of mine used it to emulate MAME but apparently arcade emulation for Android is damn hassle. I successfully played and finished a lot of SNES, Genesis and GBA games including Mega Man X, Mega Man X 2, Metroid Fusion and TMNT Turtles in Time. To name a few.
Last week a seventeen-year-old I know borrowed it which is fine because I wasn't using it, and she's kinda heavy and at best a 5, but she's super sweet and kind and I'm just bragging about having been blown by a minor.
Although I realise now I didn't mention the BJ.
There was a BJ.

So what I'm saying is sure, I'd recommend an iPega controller for Android if you're OK with a 7.5/10 performance and having to rely too much on the d-pad.
I tried but couldn't set the sticks. The controller itself is recognised by the phone as a blutooth keyboard so you have to set your emulator's buttons to letters, and that's super lame because it leads to some (minor and rare, but occasionally there) issues. The controllers are super cheap but the materials seem very durable so that's a plus.
Comfortable d-pad, good grip, nice front buttons (if a bit small and a bit too close to each other) and the secondary shoulder buttons are so poorly placed I don't think I used them even once.
The sticks feel super firm and nice and I wish I could tell you how they perform but I can't because I couldn't use them even once.

I have a moga Hero and it works pretty well considering it's meant to be portable. It usually hangs out in my backpack and I don't notice it. Only issue for me is that the control sticks don't click unless they are at 0,0.

No. They're overpriced and compatibility is shit.

Really? Mine was cheap.

From someone who had a Pandora, just stick with the PSP. The gimmick of 'a laptop in your palm' wears thin very quickly, and it's got basically on par with the PSP in terms of emulation.

Not to mention the shitty build quality of it either.

You just won a GTX 2080 and a PS5. Im gonna need your name and personal data to deliver it to you

Snail W3D in development hell forever and ever.

Sorry, I won't be taking a seat over there.

Don't have that one, but I have a Moga controller and I can already tell you the answer is no.

It's not because of the way the controller feels or anything of that sort, it's actually because the drivers are shit. I don't know if its their fault or just how Android works, but trying to get it work with anything other than games on the Moga store is a terrible hassle. I doubt it would be better for ipega.

I got one of pic related. For emulators it works fine considering the price. Although you need an emulator with gamepad support. Its a chinese design so there are dozens of brands, you may find that build quality varies.

Some designs come with a link to download the drivers - mine does. Don't even try, they work just fine without chinese malware bloat, thank you very much.

Ashens to the rescue!

minor tl;dw for others (also a bump):

It's a Linux UMPC thats designated itself for emulating old vidya (from arcade shit, all the way to the PS1/N64), and it proudly shows its age of being made in 2008. It does its job.

Now I feel old.

NO!
The Pandora was first released in 2008, they took forever to deliver them, and now its an outdated piece of shit thats overpriced as fuck.

Seriously, get a smartphone

No WAIT!, Get an Intel Atom Tablet with one of those controller attachments! Even low end Atoms compete with high-end ARM chips and modern Intel Atoms are capable of playing many PC games as they have HD series GPUs. They are good enough to run without fans with great battery life. Just don't get the Pandora unless you want major buyers remorse!

Xperia play 2 never ever. Pretty satisfied with this thing. "Analogs" suck tho, if it had actual PSP analogs and less clickier buttons it would be almost perfect.
NES, SNES, Genesis and GBA emulators all worked fine, N64 was meh due to analogs and didn't even tried to get PS to work.
You can get them very cheaply these days.

A phone and a bluetooth controller if a laptop is unweildy.

If a system intergrated controls they shouldn't include face buttons. Only sticks. Have the extra buttons under the fingers griping the system.

Since phone OSs are touch based a keyboard is a waste. Would need to draw no attention to itself. Sticks folding over for storage could help them protrude further. Anchored at the top corners of the screen. Sturdy. System will be handled very roughly.

Screen will need a protective cover already in place.

A 3D screen would be a selling point if comingbwith ambient 2D to 3D conversion in real time. System then becomes the best way to play emulated games and if high spec enough (tegra X1 or higher) then games made for it. Spec for a system should compete with current consoles through use of a lower resolution, such as the PSP 's 480x270 which scales pixel perfect to 1920x1080. Should be seamless with a linux PC and able to use a PC OS instead. Eg an XP partition to run PC games, unless Linux compatibility is resolved. For that CPU cores would have tk be compatible or work in a compatibility mode, don't need to work great in compatability mode just enough to not bottleneck the GPU.

Include some explosive that kills the user if they install "steam".

At the moment something running a hacked version of windows7 or 10 that used minimal RAM and processing time would be ok.

If linux instead, turn on system for the first time or hold buttons and power button: Ask which OS you are used to using (we can make this OS work like it).

Breif tutorual how to do things in the skinned OS. The systems OS more functional. Styles quickly switchable but not kept in RAM.

System would need Wifi and a long range antenna. Phone functionality. Very large battery. Full USB slots, 3 of them. All used to charge and power system.

A beveled black brick of aliminuim. Touchscreen entirely covering surface. High quality camera for USB as accessory. When plugged in facing or away forms part of system body, blending into it. 3 USB on bottom work with it like anything else. Top middlle USB slot for using the system as a controller andbfor the extra picky thst don't want the camera pointing up on voice calls.

Sell games by USB fills. System SSD auto copies them to drive deleting the content on USB sticks as copied. If transfering to USB the same is done from the system. Have a selection of logins on system boot up. All logins can access installed games. Installed games using multiple connected USB sticks to increase read performance.

Gimic using camera to scan objects. Making 3D models. Go over object more times for a more accurate model. All games moddable forced to use idTech6 or better. Pause in game touch an element of the screen and see a list of models you've scanned or downloaded to replace it or place it.

Intel's integrated GPUs victimised as many people as systems using them exist.

GPGPU should replace CPUs. Everything needs a good GPU. GPUs utilised 100% at all times should be standard.

That fancy tablet looks nice as fuck, but I can't see myself playing that on the go with a controller. It'd be uncomfortable.
I'd buy it and I'd use it for reading books and comics and watching movies on the go, and maybe for games at home.
Too big for playing games with a controller in the subway or whatever. With a cellphone you can attach a controller and they're small enough to use them anywhere.

Nice? It looks heavy as shit

Ain't that a Dell tablet? Looks nice for Dell shit.

Maybe you're just weak ass.

You've heard you can hack ATMs with these babies.

Call me when the wrists pain start to hit in big guy

When the pain start to hit?
Dude, I've been practising krav maga and excising every day intensely for seven months now. I'm never not in pain.
Can't say my wrist are particularly sore, though.

Oy vey!!

So, for the PSP bros here, you have me convinced, I want to get a PSP to converse my smartphone's battery life and store more music and shit on it I dislike the phone industry's love of not giving us SD card slots. I've been looking at eBay and I see prices going up to close to $100.

What is the sweet point for pricing, and at what point is the PSP now overpriced? Also, how easy is it to replace the battery?

Actually, since it's on topic of sorts, what's a good UMPC to get? Can anything beat my Surface Pro 2 for emulation standards, or just stick to it and a PSP?


PSPs can still be picked up reasonably from 2nd hand shops for about 40-60. Steer clear from 1000s since no extra RAM and horrible screen despite being best built. 2000 is alright. 3000 is the best screen and all around best model. GO is good if you want to set up a PSP home console since TV out and can connect a bluetooth controller to it.

I'm not Jewish, my little brother just thought krav maga is cool and he wanted a partner. Now I like it too.
He's my "little brother" but he's 33 and huge, so don't picture a little kid.
PSP technology is not there yet.

And the 40-60 buck price tag is regardless of model, right? I might head over to my local game store or just lurk on eBay a bit.


I'm just ribbing you, big bro.

You might find them cheaper off on craigslist.

Shame, there's no one close to me selling PSPs. I'm finding more N64s and OG Xboxes for some reason.

But wait, isn't emulation bad?

Says who?

That's just asking for a 'what are we going to do on the bed' edit.

The pope.

Which one one and why does it matter?

One from the future and it matters because he'll be the ultra pope.

How's the Ras-Pi in terms of emulation? I mainly ask about the Zero, but any will do. Since it's easy to make it portable, might consider doing so.

I want glasses that have super computers in them and allow me to see emulated games in front of me and control them with my thoughts and play them online with people who are using the same emulator, whether or not they're running their emulator from a regular computer or a cellphone or similar glasses.
But I don't want those glasses to look like garbage like that Google Glass nonsense and I don't want them to be huge like that Oculus Rift piece of trash. I want glasses that look like the glasses I already wear.

Get a nvidia shilld

Why.
Convince me.

Get a "gpd xd" or wait for a new android handheld to come out. The pandora is severely outdated. I heard the nvidia sheild's latest updates, atleast the portable one with the controller built in, breakes emulation, so hold out on getting one. If you really want a a linux handheld, the pyra is almost finished, and GPD is making a windows version.

hipster glasses?

What a fucking pleb. I bet you think your waifu pillow and onahole are immersive too.

Neural implants plus super computers right in the face is the way to go. It's not one or the other.

There are non-hipster reasons to wear the glasses I wear.
First of all, my skin is delicate. So I need flat plastic and ad little metal as possible.
Also… that's about it, really.

Have fun with abscesses and rejection. Took forever just to keep the body from sperging out with pace makers.

First adopters are suckers. Imma get me the neurals when they're tested by all the hipsters.
And as a bonus, all the hipsters will be dead, insane or in comma.

and you STILL can't go near certain objects/locations with a pacemaker.

Could you imagine with an implant?

The Zero has enough CPU power to do anything up to GBA.

The RasPi 3 can handle pretty much anything that isn't Dolphin.

I come from the future. I can emulate any and all games from your time with my mind.
Yet I demand more.

Even DS?

get an nvidia shilld for vidya but one of pandora's upsides is that it runs linux, i managed to snag myself a real cheap one some ultrahipster somehow didn't like but the main problem with it is the price for what the hardware is

I actually had one of these
It was alright for what it was.

Emulation machines use original cartridges now.
Is this just so they can claim they're not emulation machines? They have to be aware of how easy is to play downloaded ROMs on them.
Also, when are those multi-console machines gonna play PSX, Dream Cast and Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 games and also different arcade machines?

(Maybe with the Hyperkin RetroN 6?)

I dont understand why those exist. Why spend the money on one of those, plus games, instead of just downloading the roms and playing it on your phone/computer.?

I personally have a Chinese tablet with a Bay Trails chip, its fucking fantastic, battery life is great, screen resolution is 1920x1200, I can play many PC games on it, if you have no controller then just download Virtual Gamepad from Palmtime. Is the virtual gamepad shit? Compared to a controller sure. But touch screens exist for convenience and nothing more or less

Because some of us want to have some use for the cartridges we already own but we don't want 6 consoles (with a jungle of cables) plugged to our wall and TV.
At lest that's the use I see for those consoles and adaptors. I like collecting old games because I've become a fetishist, but I don't have unlimited space, so the games just sit there, not being used.
Like, I remember when someone gave me a Gameboy Player and I tried it for the first time. Suddenly my entire GB, GBC and GBA collection meant something again. It's a glorious feeling, mate.

Of course we can have unlimited games if we emulate them on the PC, but the games we bought back in the day mean something to us. At one point we wanted that fucking Mega Man 7 cartridge so much we saved our money and did extra chores and after a month or so we were able to afford it. Now the game is there and it's a beautiful memory, but suddenly and without much hassle it can be more than that.
See this thing in the video? If I had one I could play my old GBA games again without having to take out the Game Cube and without having to unplug the Super Nintendo. There are similar adaptors for NES and Sega Genesis.
Of course I also have a fetish for the original consoles, but as I said space is an issue. So if one console can play original cartridges of multiple old consoles, there's a market for that.

Fair enough.

Model?

Autism

You're fat mom.

Stingy fucker.

Some people are poor, bro.