post pics of your handhelds to me I will rate them from 0/10
(spoiler warning, every rating will be a 10. it'll be like we rate dogs, only better)
@Nine time to show off my babies (I apparently don't have a good photo of my PSP Go on my phone, and I've lent it to my dad rn, but I assure you it's beautiful)
@noiob wow, that last-model PSP looks so tiny, i didn't know it was so compact. a little tempting.
@gatewave it's a wonderful little console! a little short on storage since it's 16GB internally and without mods it only takes M2 (basically small Memorysticks). Might be a problem if you want to carry a lot of PSP games, those are usually a few gigs. There's a hardware mod thing but I haven't done it
@gatewave oh yeah and it's the second-to-last model, the PSP Street came afterwards, it's the budget model which looks pretty cool but from.what I've heard feels and is super cheap
@noiob aw jeez i forgot about the street, what a piece of junk
yeah the proprietary storage sitch sucks (possibly worse on Vita, which has corruption issues). i'd only use it for PSP games i think. for GBA i'd rather have a nice modded GBA and console games are better on CRTs / emus with good shaders.
@gatewave here's the mod, though my friend has had some trouble with a Memorystick adapter on a regular PSP, maybe get one with just one microSD slot https://m2adapter.cart.fc2.com/ca1/1/p-r-s
oh yeah and apparently the Street was hacked the first time it was shown to the general public and they had to remove the demo units
@noiob yeah TV-out's a good feature. i'm a purist though so i wouldn't want to play 240p PS1 games on an HD screen. i actually have a CRT for that and am satisfied with RetroArch's PS1 CRT output.
sexy as it is - it really is - i'm generally moving away from owning specialized hardware with the exception of a DS and maybe that future expensive GBA. for console platforms RA + authentic controller adapter + CRT is my happy spot.
ha, that's hilarious about the Street!
@gatewave you're the only person I've ever heard of playing emulators on a CRT
@noiob that's what CRT_emudriver is for. and before that the ArcadeVGA which was a slightly modified, not-very-fast Radeon card
MAME has also been at the forefront of this for obvious reasons
this past year RetroArch incorporated CRT mode-switching logic which greatly simplified and improved the experience of running it on a CRT. that's when i finally jumped in cuz I've had a big old Japanese-imported Sony here for 15 years.
CRT gaming is beautiful. it's one thing that really re-awakens my old enjoyment.
@noiob it makes the visuals messy and analog again, like my memories. and of course much brighter with great colors, that lovely phosphor glow, yadda yadda.
@noiob nice re: Toshiba. small is good. mine is 29". if i ever get another it'll be closer to yours.
the easiest NA TV input to connect to a PC for 240p is probably component.
Nvidia cards, which most of us run because AMD fumbled so badly, basically make life hell re: outputting 240p. luckily, it's easy to add a cheap Radeon card to your system to handle CRT stuff. got this one, it's considered ideal:
in Win, CRT_emudriver drives it while happily leaving any Nvidia stuff alone
@gatewave Toshiba? I'm in a PAL region, I can use real RGB through SCART 🙂
@noiob sorry, i realized after the toot that i had assumed NA :)
SCART sounds ideal! i'm not personally up on devices to convert VGA to it though, like i am component. prolly easy.
i used to upscale polygonal emulation like PS1 but i stopped liking that ultra-sharp look. with CRT it is basically made unnecessary because of the various CRT IQ benefits
these days i even prefer Chocolate Doom on PC in its 320x240 or whatever glory. the adjustment period going from GZDoom to that was surprisingly brief.
@gatewave bonus Trinitron pics (I should take some proper ones tbh, those were just from testing it once I got it home)
@gatewave right now I can only use my Xbox's RGB so I'll have to get some cables n stuff. Wish it had a way to take S-Vid because that's the best signal my N64 outputs unmodded (even composite looks decent on this one but the dot crawl is real)
@noiob i'm not up on current RGB mods (some have improved over time) but i just paid other people to mod my N64 and TurboDuo back in the day. the modest cost was worth the lack of DIY hassle for me.
never did NES. but whatever, RetroArch covers that now. RA is so good once you beat back its godawful interface.
(related re: mods, i actually need to get someone to recap that TurboDuo before i ebay it. last time i tested showed it's definitely gone bad over the last few years, as have just about all Duos.)
@noiob and actually, i believe original Xboxes are known for capacitor failures too?
@gatewave I removed my Xbox's clock capacitor the day I got it, had to clean some electrolyte off the mobo
I just found out that getting a N64 RGB mod kit would only run me about 35-40€, plus a Nintendo security bit and a compatible RGB cable. The installation looks relatively painless, even with my limited soldering skills, hmmm
@gatewave but it never occurred to me to use an emulator on a CRT… then again I don't mind the pixel-perfect look. I've also been loving the 2x upscale epsx reARMed on the Playstation classic can do, makes Tomb Raider look less blocky but not out of place like running the old windows version at 1080p would do