I know that the majority of this community is into upscaling Gen 5 and especially Gen 6 when gaming on our retro handhelds. And rightfully so, as PS2 and Gamecube games for example often look like modern remasters when upscaled.

Last week I've fiddled around with making games under ARMSX2 look like I remember them looking. Native resolution, blur, CRT mask, all that jazz. And I'm so happy with the results, that I thought I might share some of it here. Long time fan of this community and literally my very first Reddit post.

ARMSX2 supports importing .slang shaders from RetroArch and RetroCrisis shaders on top. That's brilliant and something I would wish for PCSX2 to implement as well. With so many options there's plenty of good shaders to make native resolution look really good.

One shader that hasn't made it into the standard RetroArch Shader collection & that I want to put the spotlight on is CRT-SatPixie, which is a fork from well known NewPixie CRT & can be found on GitHub. Its performance hit is pretty small in comparison to higher end shaders like RetroCrisis or Royale. When tuned, I feel like it does a really good job in providing a satisfying image when running games at native resolution. I especially love the rolling scanlines (the screenshot doesn't really do it justice) and the way it blurs the image when tuned.

The shader parameters I optimize when emulating PS1 via BeetlePSX core and Dreamcast via Flycast core, and also when running PCSX2:

Accumulate Modulation 0.5

Horizontal Blur 0.5

Vertical Blur 0.5

Chromatic Aberration 0

Vignette 0

Overscan Crop 0

Though you might have to tweak saturation & brightness depending on your device. In RetroArch I prepend image adjustment shader and in ARMSX2 I use the Shadeboost setting to slightly lower saturation & tune brightness to my liking (mainly using the Pocket Nova right now).

I know, this may not be news to most people on this sub. It's just something I felt like sharing, as a lot of content when it comes to showing off what these devices can do with PS2 & Gamecube focus on the upscaling capabilities. And as the title says - native resolution has its own charme.

No ragrets.

Did miss dual screen gaming. 8.9 inch lesown monitor from aliexpress.

Game: Lost Odyssey (XBOX 360)
Device: Odin 2 Mini 8gb

For the longest time in this hobby I’ve been waiting for 360 emulation to get good enough for me to play through Lost Odyssey again, and then the recompilation comes out and has totally blown me away. I’m playing in 1080p, 60fps!!!

So far I’ve only been playing for about an hour, but other than the slight stutters when it was compiling shaders at the very beginning, it’s been nothing but very smooth 60fps, and I’m not even playing in high performance mode!

Edit: and I forgot to add that it’s a native Android port! So there’s no pc or Xbox emulation going on at all.

Alpha gameplay:

https://youtu.be/ExSKfApTN18?si=kgD-LFL33nnjXTe5

I know many people in this community hate on Mali GPUs as their GPU compatibility is very far off of Snapdragon especially when it comes to vendor/proprietary drivers. However, there are still workarounds to shitty drivers with some good code :)

I’ve managed to push several graphical patches to the SavageWind repo for Mali GPUs so that the game renders well enough to play well!

For context, on Mali GPUs, Eden has not really received great support in the past so it’s awesome to be able to play these kinds of games now on Mali! This game in particular never rendered correctly on Mali and ran at about 7-8 FPS on emulators.

Details of the fixes to get the game working are below for those interested in contributing - still running through several bug fixes atm including flashing surface water, text glitching but the game is fully playable so far with no crashes either on Wayland or X11.

Hopefully this will be merged upstream soon!

————————————————————————

• aarch64 lifter: x16 was used both as a scratch register and to hold NZCV in asm batches that set flags. It's now kept out of the scratch pool in that case.

• Guest heap on Linux: new SAVAGEWIND_VK_HEAP=import|export|dmaheap. The host-pointer import faulted on Mali resulting in instant game crashes. A dma-buf from /dev/dma_heap/system works, and non-coherent memory is flushed

• Global memory over 2 GB: Mali's vendor blob maxStorageBufferRange is 2 GB and the heap is about 3 GB, so it's now split into two bindings (GMEM_SPLIT). This fixed missing text

• Duplicate attachments: a target bound in two slots is attached once. On a tiler, the unwritten slot stored stale tiles over the drawn ones, which showed as squares in the G-buffer and lack of shadow detail

• Lighting reading a bound G-buffer: the lighting passes read G-buffer targets they don't draw into while those targets are bound. On Mali these reads come back wrong, and walls, rocks and barricades were lit like sky. These reads now go through snapshots on Mali (reused within one pass), and color targets a pass never writes are left out

• Pass barriers (performance): on Mali, a pass's start barrier holds back only fragment work, unless earlier GPU work could feed the pass's vertex stage

This is my first post here...

I wanted to play DS Pokemon on my iPhone in landscape with a controller, without constantly having to look between two tiny screens. So I've been working on a single-screen patch for the English-patched Origin HeartGold ROM.

We used targeted reverse engineering to find the relevant screen-routing and menu code, then injected a patch into the NDS ROM. Battle commands and move selection now appear directly over the battle scene. Other supported menus bring their active interface onto the visible LCD, while the unused LCD stays black.

The video shows real gameplay from the patched ROM:

- Battle commands, move selection, and an actual battle turn.

- Outfit selection and entering a name with controller buttons.

- Pikachu's dialogue and a starter Yes/No prompt with the question and choices on one screen.

The target setup is Manic EMU on iPhone with a controller. This footage was recorded on desktop DeSmuME using the same patched NDS; it isn't an iPhone screen recording.

It's still a prototype. The normal intro through receiving/nicknaming Pikachu works in our tests, but the full campaign, every battle edge case, and all side activities haven't been verified. A Y-button quick Poke Ball menu is something I'd like to explore next; it isn't implemented yet.

This is a patch on an existing fan hack, not a new remake. Credit to the original Origin HeartGold and English-translation teams, the HGSS decompilation community, and the existing single-screen projects that helped inform the work.

I mean it goes great with mine. I'm bias though.

This photo is a few months old. I'm playing it on a Retroid Pocket Flip with a cracked hinge at Universal Hollywood's fan nights. It was one enchanted evening of playing my game amongst movie props, and commiserating with a very good Denis Nedry character actor over AI and what a jerk John Hammond is.

I now play this and most Pico-8 content on my Miyoo Flip v2; which I nearly threw out, until I discovered Knulli Scarab on it. Anyhow, I'm bringing it up now because I just finished a version that I think feels complete.

As for gameplay, I'll just say upfront that this is intentionally a "floaty" platformer. I know there are folks that hate floaty platformers in general, but if you don't - then I'd be happy to take your feedback.

It's an homage to Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues for GameBoy. If you liked that game, then I was trying to make something you would like :)

I don't know how much more I'll do with this one game. If you know Pico-8 development, then you know there are heavy limitations and I pushed them all. If I was a better programmer I could probably make more room on this one cart, but as it stands I'd have to go multi-cart to break things up and improve and add... which I might do. I don't know.

Here's the itch link for it if that interests you: https://rezroll.itch.io/jurassic-chaos-reborn
Here's the Pico-8 forum where you can play it if you'd rather do that: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?uid=128619

And of course you can search it up on Splore.

Feel free to ask about my experience with the handhelds I mentioned or my little game, or both. Pico-8 development is great too, I love talking about that. In fact it was this handheld community that brought Pico-8 to my attention a couple of years ago. So thanks for that!

Download here: https://www.reddit.com/r/R36S/comments/1x49x21/release_yabasanshiropirry_optimized_sega_saturn/

Showcase and tutorial: https://youtu.be/r6M3ZSHfR0o

Disclaimer: probably AI assisted since the creator used AI art on it's original post (I'm not the author, just passing the word)

Edit: left is standard Yaba Sanshiro and right is Yaba Sanshiro Pirry

It’s time to buy a new device and I’m coming to you all for advice.

I’d like to be able to play 3DS, PSP and everything below. I’m not really interested in the big console or PC games.

I’d like a horizontal layout with a single screen. (Every device I’ve had with a hinge has broken and the balance felt off.)

I’m perfectly fine with DS/3DS screens being side by side and prefer the ergonomics of a horizontal device.

I was looking at the RG477m, but it seems a bit heavy, and frankly expensive for me.

That’s about all I can think of, for now. Anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you all.

Just started messing around with hakuX today. On my rp5, instantly downloaded fable the Lost chapters. Runs really well uncapped 105 to 130 frames per second but slightly stuttering capping it at 30 keeps it smooth as butter. I haven't running at 16:9 with a 2x scale and fxaa and gsr upscaling. The system drivers was giving the same performance but had horrible tearing in a lot of broken textures. So I switched over to Mr purples driver and have had no problem so far. I have now killed the queen wasp and have moved my way to bowerstone to break the game with apples!!! Still can't believe that this works so well and that I have an Xbox in my hand what a time to be alive

What is everyone else playing for the spooky season?

Since the holidays are coming up, I just wanted to highlight the rise of scams on reddit marketplaces such as r/hardwareswap and r/gamesale. Many of these scammers use AI to generate fake timestamps along with compromised accounts to scam buyers. It doesn't help that Reddit's option for enabling hidden profiles has made it harder to check the legitimacy of traders.

I highly recommend using a payment method that has purchase protection such as Paypal Goods and Services. Some people will try to get you to pay with nonrefundable options such as Paypal Friends and Family, Zelle, Cashapp or other questionable payment methods. I do not recommend those methods unless you're doing an in-person trade or they'll accept payment upon delivery (highly unlikely).

Additionally never respond to people who DM you that don't post on the subreddit as there's a good chance they're banned. The Universal Scammer List is also a good tool to cross reference when trading.

https://www.universalscammerlist.com/

r/hardwareswap

With the rise of AI timestamps, and compromised accounts, scams are becoming more regular and vigilance is needed to combat this fraud.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardwareswap/comments/1xfh2yu/update_on_buying_posts_and_timestamp_requirements/

r/GameSale

We'll make this quick: Please do your due diligence when transacting here. Especially with the rise of AI, we're having to ban more and more accounts for scamming.

Source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GameSale/comments/1ry4w6d/mod_ai_in_reddit_be_careful/

This beauty turns 21 this year and works flawlessly.
Need a battery? You’ll find one in minutes and for few bucks. You’ll just open the battery compartment, throw it in and play.

Would be curious on how many Anbernic, Retroid etc will be able to say the same in few years.

This shit is immortal.

Edit: let’s not forget the hell of a technical miracle this thing was with only 32 MB of ram 🐏

It's crazy to me that we were getting games like Chrono Trigger, Yoshi's Island, Super Metroid, SOTN, etc. while the industry in general was rushing towards 3D.

I know these games aren't everyone's cup of tea. My kid keeps asking why on earth I like this stuff when he can play 4K on his Switch 2. I tell him he has no taste /s. But really the late 90s, early 2000s were obviously a peak time for 2D. They still hold up so well today, while a lot of early 3D games look pretty rough. I guess we were just all so excited by 3D at the time.

Sure, I chose some of the more extreme examples in my "showcase". It can't just be nostalgia, because I love a heap of 3D games from back then too, but I just don't think they hold up as well visually. I would love someone to prove me wrong with some examples though.

Device in first pic is an RG40XXH playing Popolocrois Monogatari with an english translation patch (in case it isn't obvious/anyone cares).

Games in the pics:

1. Popolocrois Monogatari
2. Chrono Trigger
3. Castlevania Symphony of the Night
4. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
5. Castlevania 64
6. Superman 64
7. Bubsy 3D

Edited to add game names.

23 games tested on this $100 handheld:

3:30 Need for Speed: Most Wanted Black Edition full speed

13:56 NARC full speed

20:27 Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball full speed

27:12 Loons: The Fight for Fame full speed

32:10 Blood Wake full speed

37:35 Apex full speed

41:44 Dino Crisis 3 full speed

51:36 Rallisport Challenge 2 full speed

1:00:57 Panzer Dragoon Orta full speed

1:06:16 Soulcalibur II full speed

1:11:11 Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions full speed

1:14:20 Project Gotham Racing minor speed drops

1:19:58 Commandos: Strike Force full speed

1:23:40 Counter-Strike full speed

1:31:10 Burnout Revenge full speed

1:37:25 Blinx: The Time Sweeper crashed, bad game dump?

1:38:04 Blinx 2: Masters of Time & Space full speed

1:46:20 Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge full speed

1:55:35 Project Zero full speed

2:03:40 Castlevania: Curse of Darkness full speed

2:08:30 Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams crashed but new version has fix

2:14:28 Fight Club full speed

2:18:28 Dead or Alive 3 minor speed drops

https://retrocatalog.com/retro-handhelds/retroid-pocket-classic#review

Posting my second review on RetroCatalog after yesterday’s post on RP Flip 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCGaming/s/daYjTlA5uZ

Similar to the Flip 2 review, I wrote this several months ago. Now that Retroid is doing a clearance sale, this is the last chance to share the review. I have also added some photos to the post.

Edit: all variants except Retro 6 buttons have been sold out on Retroid website. But you can still get them on Amazon, AliExpress or get them second hand so I hope this review is still useful.

Hi gamers,

I got new a Brick and am looking for your all-time best sports game recommendations from the SNES, MD/Genesis, GBA, GBC, GB era.

I'm cool with any sport but ideally something you can pick up and easily get in a flow state for 5-20min sessions.

Currently my jams are:

- Mario Golf (GBC)

- Mario Tennis (GBC)

- Brian Lara Cricket (MD)

- Hardcore Pool (GBA)

- Hardcore Pinball (GBA)

Thanks!

Credits: u/ArturDuleba

GBA Maker: https://arturduleba.itch.io/gba-maker

Original announcement Here: https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogamedev/s/EC0TA7W3QT

Expect to see new homebrew GBA games pop up.

I bought this device last week and I got the crappy sd card with a ton of games on it.

I bought a SanDisk 128GB SD card and tried to flash the firmware onto the empty card using Rufus.

After flashing the firmware the SD card shows only 2GB via the Windows explorer.

Via the Disk Management tool on Windows, I see 5 partitions under my removable Disk 1.

Now I can’t copy the old ROMS coz the drive says it only has 1.5GB free.

Not sure what I’m doing wrong.

Please help.

Device : Anbernic RG35XX Pro

Update: Solved
The anbernic firmware I used if for 16GB card.

I went straight to Knulli.

Thanks all!

GTA Vice City (reVC) on a GA36 / R36S Clone running GoodLuckOS — Black Screen, Looking for Help

Hi everyone!

I'm trying to get GTA Vice City running natively on a GA36/R36S-style handheld running GoodLuckOS, and I've hit a problem I haven't been able to solve. I'd appreciate help from anyone familiar with reVC, PortMaster, SDL2, OpenGL ES, or Mali-400 GPUs.

Device and software

• Device: GA36 / R36S clone, GA36-MB v1.1
• SoC: Allwinner A23/A33 family
• CPU architecture: 32-bit ARM (armv7l / armhf)
• GPU: Mali-400
• OS: GoodLuckOS 0.1.0
• Kernel: Linux 7.2.9
• Graphics: OpenGL ES 2.0, Mesa 26.1.8
• Project: reVC (reverse-engineered GTA Vice City engine)

I'm building an experimental port from source rather than simply copying a package intended for another handheld.

What I've done

I built an experimental reVC package for the device and created a launcher for GoodLuckOS.

Initially, I encountered a shader-related problem involving CreateRimLightPipes, neoRimSkinShader, and the u_boneMatrices[64] uniform array.

As an experiment, I changed the bone matrix array size from 64 to 48 in both:

• src/extras/shaders/neoRimSkin.vert
• src/extras/shaders/obj/neoRimSkin_vert.inc

I also clamped bone indices to 47 or lower. The second file is important because it is used by the active graphics path in my build.

This was an experimental workaround, not a confirmed fix.

Current behavior

The game starts, but I get a black screen.

• I hear a very short sound during startup, but no recognizable Vice City music.
• Sometimes the game exits back to the GoodLuckOS menu.
• Sometimes it stays on a black screen.
• Sometimes it closes after a while.

The latest log reports:

OpenGL version: OpenGL ES 2.0 Mesa 26.1.8

It also shows the game state reaching GS_FRONTEND, followed by messages such as LOAD frontend1 and LOAD frontend2.

The latest log does not show the earlier shader error or an explicit segmentation fault, but I still don't have a working picture on screen. Reaching the frontend state doesn't necessarily mean that rendering is working.

There are also some EGL warnings in the log, including EGL_BAD_DISPLAY and EGL_BAD_PARAMETER. I don't know whether they are related to the actual failure.

What I need help with

1. Has anyone successfully run reVC on a Mali-400 GPU with OpenGL ES 2.0?
2. Could the black screen be caused by EGL/SDL2 KMSDRM presentation, shader compilation, or another graphics compatibility issue?
3. Is reducing u_boneMatrices from 64 to 48 a reasonable workaround for this hardware, or could it introduce another problem?
4. What specific log output, OpenGL capabilities, or runtime tests would you collect next to identify the actual failure?

I'm happy to run targeted tests and provide relevant source files or logs.

I own the game files needed for testing; I'm not trying to distribute copyrighted game assets.

The main question is whether this is a fixable graphics/runtime issue on this hardware, and what the best next diagnostic step would be. I'd rather identify the underlying cause than keep trying random patches.

Thanks!

It works well, though I need to remap the controller.

Konkr Pocket Advance

Jade Empire on Xbox

Hello everyone!

This is a port of these games to the web with all of them disgustingly vibeslopped to stupid extremes resulting in the most cursed codebase that not even damned souls should have to read.

If you haven't wretched from reading the above sentence, downvoted and closed this post, let me explain what this really has.

The overall effort is to get the games running in the best shape possible on the web but to also have a portable enough codebase that can be used for future ports to other platforms.

(the pics have a Retroid Pocket 2+ and a Retroid Pocket 6)

The games in detail (so far) are:

• Unreal 1 v200. Original release for nostalgia.
• UT99 v400.
• UT99 v436. This version has been reverse engineered to load mods, networking and I haven't found any gaps so far (including skeletal support). This is an experimental effort, but so far so good.
• UT2004 v3369. Final version.
• Unreal Championship 2. This is a proper port to the PC and web, shaders, sounds and all.
• Bonus ports! Harry Potter 2, both the prototype and a hacked version to run the retail game.

Across all ports, this adds a few quality of life features to the engines or just compatibility aspects:

• OpenAL soft with soft EAX.
• OpenGL ES support and with GL4ES we can invite all mobile devices.
• Proper FOV support across the board.
• This android support.
• Different renderers (including software mode) for more limited devices.
• Much more portable (all engines build in x86 32 and 64 bits, arm 32 and64 bits as well as Android). Windows is an afterthought (why would you use it anyways, just use the official patches)
• In general my focus has been a clean static GCC build.

Unreal Championship 2 got some extra work in

• Proper renderer with all the snazzy effects such as distortion effects, bloom, eye light adaptation, radial blur, etc...
• Proper sound playback by recooking the original release (or cooking the "other" release)
• Full blown keyboard and mouse support. Using the mouse on the menu is still wonky and it is best to stick to the keyboard there.
• 4 player split screen. 3 and 4 are a bit janky, but who cares when you want to have fun with friends.
• Map and mutator support. I've done some automation to port some UT2004 maps to UC2, some layouts are a disaster (open maps are a bit of a bore), but others still play nicely.
• UC2 won't work with the original assets as is, but they can be converted from an original iso with tools in the repo
• UI work to make it work better with widescreen
• Editor compiled and running.

How good are the Android ports

Yes, I'm no android developer, and my ports are as basic as they get, but I figured that if I get the engine running in Android, someone more skilled than me could add them to their port collection. If you want to try the ports, grab the APKs in the source link, install, place the game in the respective /sdcard/ut2004, uc2, etc, directory and run.

They all should have full parity with the web, windows and Linux version, including crossplatform play, gamepad support, and even some rough touchscreen support.

I plan to keep maintaining this as it is a fun project for me so feel free to ask questions and report bugs to any of this.

The code should port really cleanly to port master, but sadly I don't have a compatible device to try that.

Heck my main focus was the web release of these which is in unrealcollection dot games but I don't want to put that as a full url because I've already been "banned" by reddit due to "suspicious" activity and I don't want to arouse more anger from that bot.

Take a look at the pinned repos for the releases in https://github.com/10-p

Heck my main focus was the web release of these which is in unrealcollection dot games but I don't want to put that as a full url because I've already been "banned" by reddit due to "suspicious" activity and I don't want to arouse more anger from that bot.

Credits

• First of all, thanks to the OldUnreal team for keeping the dream alive. Even if this whole thing was done without their involvement (and lets not bother them with any of this), I appreciate daily that they keep these games nice and shiny for the modern age.
• More directly, OldUnreal for XOpenGL and their shader based renderer
• Chris Dohnal for UTGLR
• pitSeb for GL4ES. It is nice getting to use is from the days of the OpenPandora and with it came so many good ports.
• Alex Strout (fox) for the widescreen support references
• dpjudas for Surreal Engine and their reverse engineered references
• Gildor for umodel and its skeletal loading and playback references
• Ryan C. Gordon for the web port to finish 436 support.
• Andiweli for the input scheme for the rest of the games.
• And obviously Epic Games for the excellent games

So I've been chatting with the people behind DroidDeck over the last couple weeks, and I've finally put together what turned into a rather lengthy feature about the project, its history, and the people making it happen.

I interviewed The412Banner, Max, xXJSONDeruloXx, Kimchi and Astro Sky, digging into everything from their earliest experiences with gaming and development to how their separate experiments with Linux, Gamescope and Steam eventually came together. What started as a way of getting the actual Steam client running on Android has grown into something way more ambitious, and I really wanted to tell the story of how that happened rather than just write another overview of what the software can do.

We also got into the technical challenges, the ridiculous pace of development (it updated and changed a few times while writing this!), their approach to AI-assisted coding and automated testing, the importance of open source, and where they hope to take DroidDeck in the future. There are some personal stories in there too, particularly about the early breakthroughs and the excitement of finally seeing things work. It's a long read, admittedly, but I wanted to give everyone involved the space to tell their side of the story. I'm really grateful to all five for taking the time to answer my many, many questions, and I hope you enjoy getting to know a little more about the people behind a project that's quickly become one of the more interesting developments in Android handheld gaming!

To make it clear, regarding the new rules in place for this sub-reddit, DroidDeck makes use of AI to assist development

BioShock early access build for Ko-fi and Patreon supporters.

The changes since my last post;

• Reworked rendering and HUD presentation to reduce unnecessary waiting between frames.
• Game runs mostly at 30fps, dips down in some heavy scenes.
• Optimized lighting/shadow shaders and reduced duplicate shader work, with lower RAM use in later levels.
  
• RT/LT now zoom the map. B or Back closes the map and manual, without the held button triggering something in gameplay afterward.
  
• Fixed the missing SaveGames folder on fresh installs. It’s now created automatically.
  
• Fixed the error when closing the game with Select+Start.
  
• Added more startup, hardware and memory info to the logs to help track down reported issues.
  

I’ve also been testing more mid and late-game levels, and in addition to RG35XX-H MuOS, RG40XX-H Knulli and Miyoo Flip Spruce, I now also tested the R36S on AmberELEC and dArkOS.

Public Release ETA

Probably last time I post about this before public release, giving myself till November 14 to polish everything.

Support

Limiting it to supporters first has helped a lot since with public releases people are just very likely to tell you that something doesn't work but the moment you ask for logs, additional information or their time to try something out to help fix it, you rarely get a response back. Support is very much appreciated, but I am not selling a product, that's not the goal.

Until November 14, I’ll forward all support I receive from new supporters joining for this port to PortMaster. Please comment "PortMaster" on the Patreon post or leave it in your Ko-fi support message so I can identify it.