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SNES/NES clones , compatibility?

I have a hard time seeing why not. These are clones in the strictest sense as far as innards go. If you're not sure order from a place with a decent return policy.
 
They're "supposed" to be, but never are. The only one that is claiming to play the entire NES/SNES game library is the Retron5. But where is it?

Real hardware is the best way to go.
 
sweenish said:
I have a hard time seeing why not. These are clones in the strictest sense as far as innards go. If you're not sure order from a place with a decent return policy.
Click to expand...

They're not real clones. The internal hardware is an emulator.
 
The Retron5 looks really interesting. The best info I can find so far is that it may ship this April.
 
SaurusX said:
They're not real clones. The internal hardware is an emulator.
Click to expand...

They're not all emulators, a lot of them are chip reproductions on FPGAs or even ASICs. In China there's even a big market for very cheap handhelds running NES-on-a-chip ASICs that have in time been augmented with better capabilities.

Doesn't make them perfect though. Reproducing a proprietary chip design with zero flaws is hard. Even different hardware revisions by the console manufacturers aren't always 100% compatible.
 
Not to sidetrack this thread, because it's somewhat related - has anyone used NES or SNES controllers with a USB interface to your PC?

How do they perform vs. the actual controller?

I know many people prefer the actual NES and SNES gamepad, but I think some 3rd party ones exist that look very similar.

I will be doing PC emulation of NES/SNES games shortly so I'd like to use the actual gamepads.

ELmO
 
007ELmO said:
Not to sidetrack this thread, because it's somewhat related - has anyone used NES or SNES controllers with a USB interface to your PC?

How do they perform vs. the actual controller?

I know many people prefer the actual NES and SNES gamepad, but I think some 3rd party ones exist that look very similar.

I will be doing PC emulation of NES/SNES games shortly so I'd like to use the actual gamepads.

ELmO
Click to expand...

I have the NES to USB adapter from RetroUSB and it works okay, the only issue I've had is that the d-pad isn't recognized by Mednafen in Windows for some reason. Seems to be okay with other emulators I've tried (and Mednafen in Linux).

Something to look out for is lag added by the adapter. I haven't noticed any lag on my computer with the NES adapter (my TV has pretty bad lag but that's the TV's fault). But I mention this because I had a PS1 adapter years ago that noticeably added lag over a native PC controller, to the point where it was pretty much useless.
 
Definitely, I'm going to be emulating over a projector so my cable length to the equipment rack is a little far - I'm worried about lag introduced over longer USB cables (even the active ones).

Thanks for the input.

ELmO
 
Hopefully the projector itself doesn't add lag. You may want to check out some response time test websites and compare your times against what you can get on a computer with known good response. I don't know if there's generally a problem here or not, I'd just be concerned since projectors aren't usually used in latency sensitive applications.
 
A lot of screens introduce a frame or two of lag (or even more) that didn't exist back in the day of CRTs. 1 frame is probably okay but anything more starts to be quite noticeable.

Also, the original hardware output probably wouldn't work properly with all games on a modern screen EVEN if the connector exists on your TV. Some of the hardware tricks pulled off by a few games will be garbled by the de-interlacer. Other times, your TV's input simply won't acknowledge the existance of something like 240p.


At this point, short of hauling out an old CRT, it might be more advisable to use a highly accurate emulator like BSNES instead.
 
Better off with a Sony PVM type CRT.

256x224 is going to look like crap on a projector.

At the very least if not outputting RGB, even converted lossless to component, being that low res AND being NTSC is going to be full of rainbow artifacts and look like you have wax paper in front of your eyes.
 
Exophase said:
Hopefully the projector itself doesn't add lag. You may want to check out some response time test websites and compare your times against what you can get on a computer with known good response. I don't know if there's generally a problem here or not, I'd just be concerned since projectors aren't usually used in latency sensitive applications.
Click to expand...

I have, I think, the lowest input lag projector (Epson 8350). The model is old but it's measured at single frame lag (17ms) which I think beats anything else out. The next lowest is 1.5 frames (25ms) and that is still very good, but usually the picture quality is not as good as the Epson's.

I played SMB2J and beat it on a panasonic AX200U (another very low input lag PJ) and it was not noticeable. If you ever played SMB2J you know you cannot have any susceptible lag or you're doomed, lol, that game is unfair.
 
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