do you do it on PC? Phone / Tablet or a retro gaming handheld / box of some sort?
what emulators and game consoles do you generally play?
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I retro game. And I do it on handheld devices. I have a few Anberbics(35xx, 35xxH, 28xx) and a couple Miyoo’s(miyoo mini plus and an a30). I also have a BSP-D8 telescopic controller for my phone when I feel like it using it.
I emulate anything from Gameboy all the way up to Dreamcast. The devices I have wont let me do ps2 or gamecube. I have to get something like a $200 Retroiid Pocket 5 for that. And the emulators I use are usually the default ones in RetroArch.
What do you play and on what?
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I have never owned a console in my life…and I’m 46 years old now. buuut, my son-in-law grew up with all the Nintendo consoles up to the Game Cube and plays those with the kids all the time, so I was thinking of getting the brats a handheld for themselves and not be at the whims of their mom or dad since they only have one TV.
I’m considering the Anbernic RG35XXSP for the 5-year-old…and the RG Cube XX for the 10-year-old. both are boys, so will love them. my granddaughter is 8 but is on the spectrum and doesn’t gravitate /or handle tech very well, other than watching YouTube videos…but there are devices that come in pink, so that might be enough to get some interest. I just need to find out what peaceful animal loving / creative games are out there as that’s what she’s into.
I find it interesting that all the Linux based handhelds from Anbernic only have 1GB of RAM while all the Android are 4GB and up. I believe it’s easy to install Linux on them, so maybe get one for me…though I have beeb leanng more towards a controller for my phone since my Pixel 9 Pro XL is pretty powerful compared to all of those.
I have an RG40xxV and a buddy has the 35xxSP, both with muOS on it as a 3rd party custom OS but there are others as well. Anbernic will sometimes ship with their OS and ROMs and bios files but best to source your own as theirs can be janky sometimes. All the XX line from Anbernic have the same internals but you’re just deciding on screen size and form factor.
As far as games, any that you would recognize from Nintendo or the like will be fun (Pokemon, Mario, or Zelda etc). The CubeXX will play games from a system called Pico-8 in its native resolution filling the full screen and there are thousands of free games that are light weight but tons of hidden gems they would love.
The XX lines from Anbernic (or similarly priced TrimUI Brick, Miyoo, or PowKiddie systems) will play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and a lot of Nintendo DS for handhelds. Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo, and some Nintendo 64 games for home consoles. Some Sony PlayStation 1, PlayStation Portable(PSP) and All the Atari and older Sega systems.
The Android handhelds will be more power playing some GameCube or PS2 games but aren’t as easy to initially setup or use IMHO. I originally got an older Android Anbernic for my daughter and it was a lot of tweaking to get things to work for her. When I was ready to get one for me I decided on the 40xxV, easier to setup and maintain and just enjoy.
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have you checked if the one you bought your daughter can have any of the Linux OS installed it?
Its a bit older so not much support for it now, but there is some custom firmware options but still in the Android world, not Linux. The newer Androids are quite a bit quicker and get all the eyes now-a-days lol.
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Don’t know what the official support is in the latest Playstations, but if you can get PS2 emulation I’d recommend Thatgamecompany’s games Flow, Flower, Journey and Sky: Children of the Light (last one is already multiplatform). Also some of the people who worked on Journey later independently made a not too dissimilar subaquatic one called Abzû. All of these are on that fluffy-touchy-feely vibe and very well produced artistically (Journey OST was the first videogame OST nominated for a Grammy as a whole album).
As for what I emulate, I got the urge just last year to play some 80s-90s games like Warpath '97 (Warpath 21st Century turned out to be just as good, and the only one still available as an officially free version) and Sword of the Samurai (RPG), and after a little searching to figure out what special DOSBox setup I’d have to use for each one, I stumbled upon an even better solution created by a community of devs: a gigantic collection of old DOS games pre-packaged with everything needed to run them on modern systems, called eXoDOS. Didn’t have the space for the full download so I just got the Lite torrent since I knew I wanted to download the runtimes for less than a handful of games, which is handled case by case once you have the Lite core of it all.
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how far back to the DOS games go?
All the way back, Prince of Persia, the Saboteur ninja side-scroller one, I think there’s even the one with the gorillas throwing explosive bananas at eachother across city rooftops in there. That’s how far back. 
LE:
OK, if I order by release year apparently the oldest thing in there is something called Adventureland from '78, and Gorilla doesn’t even make the first page. 
But some games that are still available as official releases and don’t need special settings to run were not included, this was a project to revive stuff that you couldn’t get the normal way anymore. So Warpath 97/21st Cen I actually played directly with no eXoDOS involvement, the ones I installed in eXoDOS last year were actually Sword of the Samurai and Budokan: The Martial Spirit.
yeh…watching some stuff on PortMaster, I see you can go waay back into early Amiga / Commodore and stuff. 
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which of your devices do your find yourself using the most? have you found yourself enjoying some games on one form factor more than the others, despite equivalent game play performance?
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At home I use the rg35xxH the most due to it being comfortable cuz its horizontal. The one I take out and about with me is the rg28xx. I love that little guy. Something so small shouldn’t be so powerful.
And in my experience the XX lines go all the way to psx perfectly, and does most Dreamcast games. And a lot of PSP and N64. But I always get the EU roms as they don’t have to run at a full 60fps. I believe they run in 50fps, that’s how I’m getting about perfect compatibility with Dreamcast.
I think your kids are gonna love what you get them. I have the OG RG35xx and the thing has a very premium feel to it. So I’m guessing the 35xx plus feels the same. And the Cube xx I read is pretty comfy in the hands. And the screen being 1:1 it’s perfect for Pico-8(if you don’t know what that is then you must read up on it).
Please come back when you get the devices and let us know what your kids think about them, And you’ll probably have some questions after getting them, so feel free to ask. It’s awesome that we have some retro gamers here
And I’m the same age, and have owned everything from the Pong machine/Atari/Odysee all the way up to last gen(waiting for this gens prices to go down), so I think it’s criminal that you’ve never owned a console/handheld. So you should get yourself one as well. You’ve got over 40 years of games to catch up on. 
Oh and the rg35xx is big enough to where it feels good in the hands, despite being a vertical. I don’t really get hand cramps when I play multi hour sessions. I mean there are printed grips on Etsy that the device(s) will slip into and basically make it feel like a horizontal. But I don’t think your 5 year old is gonna be getting hand cramps, so you shouldn’t have to buy a grip for it or the Cube.
so, I went at this a bit differently. I just bought a Game Sir X2s for my surplus LG Velvet 5G and will install emulators on it and see how that goes. 
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That’s a great route to go. 
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so, put a WTB ad on the retro handheld Discord and someone offered to send me a Data Frog SF2000 for the cost of freight and PowKiddy RGB20SX for $100 CAD, shipped…with case and a few mods to make it better.
excited!
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I have a Data Frog that i absolutely love and paid $7 for. It’s so comfy to hold.
Do put on multicore or purple neo(they’re kinda the same), you’ll have a lot less problems with harder to emulate games. Before I put it on mine, I would save via the Save State menu, but it would never load. So multicore fixed that, which was a huge fix.
Congrats on your new devices
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do you use stock or CFW? of the options, what version do you have installed?
is there any sort of guide out there on what should be done to tune / tweak the SF2000 for the best general performance? the info that I have found is so confusing.
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hehe, just scored an Anbernic RG Cube (non XX) for $120.00, with case. B)
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Nice pickup!
As for cfw I use Purple Neo. Here’s the cfw and like 10gb of roms. Just download and drag and drop everything onto either a new SD card or a newly formatted one. Then just follow the steps on the site. You should be good then. Pop the SD card into the Frog and let it install and enjoy your games.
As for the Cube. I don’t have one but I think the muOS team has made a Cube version.
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I bought the RG Cube og running Android… not the XX, which muOS has been released to. as far as I’m aware, no CFW is in the works for the Cube og.