September Update (Patreon)

Hey y'all!

Hope everyone has been well this summer, here we've kept ourselves busy.

It's time to catch up with what we've been doing for the past month.  What can we say?  The kids are off school, and as parents, we need to look after them.  dajoho has been working from home, and as school is out, I've been at home for over a month looking after my kids.  I teach at junior high schools now, so even though I have time off work, family has priority.  We went to karaoke, ate sushi, and went to the "Monkey Park" outdoor pool and theme park in Inyuama (translated: Dog Mountain)

https://youtu.be/tx8HyMEk8CM

The first time we released Pandory for the A500 mini, celebrations were cut short only after a few days when RGL decided to release a firmware update blocking our software.  Many YouTube channels were super quick to advertise the firmware update as the best thing since sliced bread, so many potential users of Pandory were left in the dark.

With some help, a hole in the A500 firmware was found, and we now have a version that works on the newest 1.1.1 firmware.

We discovered that 1.0.0 has several buggy linux libraries, badly configured SDL2 controllers and graphical issues with some applications.  A500 consoles are now being delivered with 1.1.1 preinstalled, so we need to embrace this new firmware, rather than dismiss it.

https://youtu.be/vhKhki2GWlk

We then reviewed the Retroid Pocket 3.

Now this handheld has a LOT of drama surrounding it.  We ignored the whole thing and just focused on the handheld itself.

It performs really well for the price, the size is near enough perfect, streaming from PC is near perfect AND it plays PSP well enough for me to be pretty happy with it.  So where does it slip up?  With it not being exactly playable out the box- set up is a bit of a chore.  It may take a day or two to get everything to a decent useable state.  And secondly, there is a slight bit of latency associated with using the Android system.

https://youtu.be/VzNfYv8vBFY

Then came ANOTHER handheld.  The Anbernic RG353P.

Wicked Gamer & Collector hooked me up with the company "GoGameGeek", and they sent us one in exchange for a video review.

I gotta say, this is nice jump up in performance from the 351 series.  It feels nice in the hands, and really does it's job when it comes to oldschool gaming.  The unit is set up to play as soon as it arrives at your door, and for the most part works great with little fiddling.  Whatever doesn't work as well, we can change options in the retroarch quick menu.  Even though PSP is technically possible with this unit, it's not really recommended.  A little more grunt is needed, and at the correct aspect ratio we'd be playing PSP games at the size of a postage stamp.

For a 4:3 screen, this is probably the best handheld currently available, but we would like to see a bit more of a jump - possibly to the level that the Retroid Pocket 3, for it to become the ultimate 4:3 handheld.

https://youtu.be/TNp863PP9LA

We finished the month with a Retroid Pocket 3 PPSSPP guide

It was incredible to see that every review on the unit outside our own hated PSP performance on this.  We saw otherwise.

For the most part, one option that is set as default really did slow down the performance on the Pocket 3.  It is probably due to the odd resolution (at 750pixels in height), so we assumed this gave the handheld unneeded work that slowed it to a crawl.  The Vulkan renderer also performs WORSE in this case, so OpenGL should be chosen.  Other settings like Buffered / Unbuffered are standard PPSSPP issue.

Rather than try arguing against the masses of Taki worshippers and RP3 naysayers, we decided to clear the water and show everyone that it is indeed possible on this unit.

Anyways, we hope to catch you on the Discord,

Catch you soon

EmuChicken & dajoho

Team Pandory