reviving this ancient thread…
i've been thinking of getting an odin lite because it seems like the most cost-effective way of playing a bunch of games. it's not exactly cheap, so i've been hesitating a bit. anyone here have any experience with the odin handheld?
@“MoH”#p131942 No experience in my hands but I do follow these retro handhelds pretty closely and the Odin models all got pretty rave reviews! What types of games do you want to play on it? Depending on the answer it might be worth it to get the Odin 2 base model which is supposed to ship later this year. It‘s a little less than $100 more than the cheapest Lite but it’s a BIG spec bump that will enable you to play a lot more.
@“sabertoothalex”#p131945 i was looking at the odin 2 as well, but i'm not sure what huge leaps it could really be offering? it seems like the odin lite can play most everything below ps2 + dreamcast, and a good chunk of ps2/gamecube games. would the odin 2 just be capturing more of the ps2 etc library?
@“MoH”#p131947 Yeah I think the Odin 2 upgrade sitch is mostly you‘ll get to play a lot more stuff from PS2/GC that the Lite struggles with and upscaled to the screen’s native res. But if you're mostly not looking to play that stuff(or looking to play limited amounts of it) then the Lite is probably an excellent pick up.
Additionally you might be able to use more of the heavy duty CRT shaders in retroarch and stuff like that on the 2 if you're interested in those.
stuff from PS2/GC
my impression is that handheld emulation for the above gen isn't quite there yet, so you might hold off if that's a priority. You can certainly get by with something cheaper if you're looking at like PSX and earlier. The companies making these devices seem to release incrementally better versions very often so idk if they're a good buy in general if you're interested in playing more technologically demanding games. That said, the Odin does like like a nifty console yeah
my real post is that all of these have varying levels of input lag that personally drive me crazy. it might be fine for RPGs though!
I can‘t speak to the Odin but I got a Retroid Pocket 3+ which says it supports PS2/GC but everything I’ve tried from those platforms is pretty unplayable. They say the PAL roms work better but I haven't tried. PSX and everything below works well.
@“Balrog”#p131978 do you like it? after consulting with my sources (reddit), the retroid pocket 3+ actually seems to be a better fit for what I’m looking for + price
also the weigh-ins on ps2+ capabilities had be wistfully asking myself what games do i want to play
@“MoH”#p132007 I have a Retroid Pocket 3+ and it‘s my go to system these days. I haven’t had too much of an issue with ps2 emulation and am quite happy to play Mushihimesama, Godhand, and Atelier Iris (among others) in bed before I go to sleep. There are game compatibility lists out there and I can verify them; some games run quite poorly and others are just fine. Go in thinking of this system playing Dreamcast/PSP and older with some PS2 as a bonus and you will be quite happy. The controls feel nice, it‘s a nice weight, love the D-pad, and it’s Android so you can play Baba Is You and Vampire Survivors!
@“Southeastpaw”#p132009 ringing endorsement! even if the vampire survivors mention reminded me of the absolute bender i went on when it was released on switch 
I was looking into the Retro Pocket 3+ recently as well and it turns out the metallic version recently came back in stock. Looks cool.
I've just ordered a Retroid Pocket 3+ (clear blue).
After amassing about a thousand games in my collection, I am slowing moving towards ROM sets on SD cards. I have an ODE Dreamcast now and it has increased my play time on the console and enjoyment there of massively. I have been using a PS mini classic for my PS1 and older emulation but keep getting annoyed by the limitation of the USB stick size that it can manage. I don't want to keep switching games on and off, I want them all there.
So the Retroid has hdmi out and I can stick huge SD cards in it. I don't need an entire ROM set, just a bunch of cool games. The device looks lovely and the price is good. I'm looking forward to it arriving, getting it set up and being able to have it on the TV then just grab it to play in bed or whatevs.
my retroid pocket 3+ came in today! i went with the super famicom colors.
now time to go through setup and customization, which might be more fun than playing any games themselves.
I have a PocketGo V2 that I got as a present a few years ago. It’s not bad, I think, but I rarely use it because I have better options most of the time. I mainly use it now as my travel system - if I’m going away somewhere it’s small and lightweight and I won’t be too upset if I lose it. I’ve played Soul Blazer, El Viento, and King’s Field on it while away from home. I’ve also sometimes used it as my most convenient system with save states when old master system/mega drive games got too hard or I was tired of replaying early stages.
It’s got some of the most rapidly deteriorating buttons I’ve ever used, though. After some time between trips I got it out a while ago and could barely get a response to anything, so I pulled it apart and cleaned the contacts and it improved, but now it’s getting dodgy again. I’ve had this happen with other controllers over the years, but not at this rate. I don’t really want to pull it apart again (and also don’t currently have the resources to do so, two time zones away from home). Hopefully I can manage Illusion of Time with frequent dropped inputs.
spent a few days getting the roms i wanted, fine tuning each emulator to have the most ideal settings, and finding + perfecting my preferred front end.
after all that, the first thing i did was boot up yakuza 4 on playstation 😅
Aside from trying to catch up on as much Yakuza as I can before Infinite Wealth (which would be cool to do during the zeitgeist), the Pocket 3+ is what I play most nowadays, so it‘s cool to see so many others playing it, too . I didn’t know we had this thread and recently posted about how much I‘ve been enjoying fiddling with it in the emulation thread – I know there are more sensible ways to do it, but I’m still enjoying the process of manually updating all of my artwork that didn‘t scrape. Got all my art except for arcade, and I’m up to letter “C” there.
If this thing holds out, I think I'll stick to it for a really long time. My biggest concern was the Switch-model analog sticks drifting eventually, but I don't use those much anyway and I've recently found that they're pretty easy to replace with Hall Effect sticks if need be. Slap Daijisho on that thing and it's all I need -- every dang thing up through Dreamcast playing wonderfully plus bonus PSP, GameCube/Wii and PS2 stuff that I haven't even touched yet? I'm good to go
@“tokucowboy”#p134580 ah, i use daijisho with the same theme. i love how atmospheric it is. i also found the scraping tool to work pretty well, have you tried adding different tags before saving and syncing? that said–i spent a lot of time in college updating all the album artwork in my itunes library, so i understand it can be a meditative menial task.
i've since gone back and played through more than a few games. one of the problems with having everything at your fingertips is it's hard to stick with one game. i played a few minutes of each initial d game across various systems, along with racing lagoon and ridge racer 4.
i'm excited to dive into japan-only games i never got to play for dreamcast + ps1. this also gives me motivation to continue studying japanese.
@“MoH”#p134583 oh yeah, it‘s totally a meditative menial task. Most systems scraped well and the additional tags often work for games that didn’t scrape, but for whatever reason my massive arcade romset is stuck with all of the abbreviated ROM names that don‘t scrape – I’ve tried a few different XML files and such, but no dice. So I‘m kinda just working through naming and assigning art to one row at a time out of enjoyment. It’s a fun process to search for art, and to pop into arcade games that don‘t have “Details” sections to find out what they even are, or just play the interesting looking games along the way for a bit. It’s OK to do as a one-time thing if this little device ends up lasting for a good haul, and has become my going-to-sleep ritual
(I've also popped into Racing Lagoon and lots of Ridge Racer 4 -- total goldmine for translated ROMs, just looking at all of the PC Engine CD and Saturn stuff and the glut of SNES RPGs that have been translated over the years is exciting. It's hard to settle, but I've at least been doing a run of Baroque just about each night)
