Flip 2 pre-order, handheld style controllers, and misc retro gameing ramblings

This is another one of my posts that’s effectively a few posts crammed together on related topics. Long story short, I started looking into handheld consoles a couple of months back, but in doing so picked up a handheld style controller for mobile instead. I’ve really enjoyed that style of gameing, so I wound up circling back and pre-ordering a handheld from Retroid. In addition to talking about that, however, I’ve also rambled on about how I got started with emulation, and have some notes on the different handheld options I found during research. Feel free to skip around if you’re only interested in some of the post.

Table of Contents:

• How I got started with Emulation
• Handheld style phone controller
• Emulation Setup/Tricks
• Flip 2
• Other handhelds I looked into

How I got started with Emulation

When I was 11 my parents got me a Pandigital e-reader¹. I read a bunch of books with it, but being Android it could also run games. My parents preloaded Color Dots and Fearless British Mayor (and maybe another game or two that I’m forgetting), but on some random day I was browsing the SlideMe app store for games. It was Android 1.5, so the games that would run on it were fairly limited, but while going through them I ran into this weird app labeled “SNES9x.” A few roms downloaded from CoolRoms later² and I was trying to figure out how to use it.

By all standard metrics the emulation was horrible. Fun fact about Android 1.5: it didn’t support double touch. So, for example, if you were playing something like Mario World and wanted to jump you’d take your finger off the virtual d-pad and press the jump button, only to quickly take it off the jump button and put it back on the d-pad. It was playable, though, because the emulation was running in slow motion - so as long as you were holding the d-pad a second ago and took your finger off to press jump you could still jump in a particular direction.

Still, to me, it was amazing. My previous gaming experience was limited to old PC games on the family computer or on my Dad’s old Win 97 work laptop that was older than I was, Brick Breaker on an old BlackBerry, and potentially Atari games on one of the little mini consoles built into a controller (can’t remember if that was before or after I started emulating).

Later on, however, my family would get home internet through Verizon. It came with a whopping 3GB of 3G data, but more importantly, instead of some boring router it was provided through a Samsung tablet - an emulation powerhouse capable of running SNES games at full speed that also supported dual touch. Once I figured out you could have copies of the same ROM with different names to have different save data, my siblings and I played a ton on it.

A couple of years later I had my own computer and eventually tried a couple of other systems, namely the DS and N64. I can’t remember which was first, but I remember being blown away when I discovered you could emulate DS games. Emulating a console (SNES) that was, at the time, nearly twice my age was one thing - but finding out that I could emulate an almost current generation gaming device, playing anything I wanted to for free², was mind blowing. Some of the games ran a little slow, but I played through Mario 64 DS and tons of New Super Mario Bros DS (even later making my own ROM hack).

It was a similar case with the N64. My family would later get a Wii, and after I got my hands on a Bluetooth adapter for my computer my brothers and I would sync up Wii remotes to my computer and played a ton of Smash Bros for the N64³.

Not all my emulation was strictly because it was free. Sometime later when my parents got me a laptop (which was much more powerful than my Dad’s old work desktop I had previously) my siblings and I played through Newer Super Mario Bros Wii on Dolphin. Nintendo did get my money; my siblings and I split the cost of the game. There was of course the occasional yelling when somebody took an item that should have belonged to somebody else, or when somebody got ‘accidentally’ ground pounded into lava, but we played it a ton and 100% the game multiple times. Modding the family Wii was definitely not something I was about to do, but acquiring a ROM and patching in various ROM hacks also provided a lot of emulated fun beyond what we could squeeze out of the base game.

I don’t really have a moral of the story or conclusion here; I’m just kinda reminiscing on some of the old games I played in the past. But yeah, even though the old games might look a little dated, they are definitely still worth playing. Some of the old games got re-releases/remasters, Nintendo made mini emulated SNES consoles, and Nintendo offers emulation for select titles on Switches - all of which are options for anybody who wants to give some games a go without making companies like Nintendo sad. And, of course, there’s the alternative means of acquiring them as well².

Handheld Style Controller

Anyway, rambling about my introduction to emulators aside, a couple of months ago jumpstarted a bit of a deeper dive into emulation & handheld like gaming. A number of years back I had a Xbox style controller with a clip on it that I used with my phone sometimes for emulation or game streaming, but when I got a more powerful computer a couple years ago I stopped game streaming and wound up giving that controller away. I did/do still have a regular Bluetooth controller that I did/do use with my phone and PC on occasion, but it’s still a hassle to use with my phone in some circumstances like sitting on a couch.

I started looking into handheld consoles but wound up finding a handheld console style controllers meant for phones as well. The exact controller I wound up with was a BSP-D3 controller, which ran me around $25 on Amazon, though later I found out that you can usually find it for ~$10-$15 on Aliexpress. All in all it seems like a great controller, the buttons feel fine (albeit I’ve never been too picky about controllers) and it’s got a pretty standard Xbox style layout. It has the standard controller input via Bluetooth, which works fine with anything that supports a controller, and also has an optional programmable mode to map controls on games without controller support.

I’ve found it to be really enjoyable to play games with; being handheld allows me to play games on a couch or my balcony now that the weather’s getting warmer instead of being stuck at my desk. It’s also really portable, seems pretty durable, and it’s cheap so I’ve got no qualms just throwing it in my backpack. I usually leave my personal laptop at work on workdays since I work relatively long shifts, so being able to bring my controller and phone with me to and from work gives me a device to play games if I want to play a game or kill some time and have an hour or so before/after work at my apartment. It’s also been nice during times like when visiting family out of state, if I’m there for a couple days there’s usually down time where something to play is nice without needing to dig out my laptop.

And, of course, there’s also the laziness factor. Sure, my laptop might be in the same room as me sitting on my desk, but if I can just take my phone off the table and jump into a game with even less effort than sitting at my desk and booting up my computer. It’s especially handy if I’m cooking or doing something similar where I’m kinda killing time between stirring a pot or waiting for something in the oven to be done, or similarly handy if I’m feeling really lazy and just want to play a game while lying in bed.

Emulation Setup

Most of my emulation is done through Retroarch, though I’ve found Dolphin on PC via Retroarch crashes a bit and gets worse performance on mobile, so I use standalone Dolphin. Both Dolphin and Retroarch are usually plug and play, as long as you have your ROMs and a knowledge of how file directories work it’s just a matter of learning the interface for a few minutes. Still, I’ve got a few tidbits that I’ve found to improve the emulation experience, specifically save synchronization and shaders.

Save Sync
To sync save data I use Syncthing. The simplest setup to sync between two devices is to install it on each, add the folders, and as long as both devices are online it’ll sync automatically. Since I have a VPS running a feed reader, however, I also set up Syncthing on the VPS to have something resembling cloud saves⁴. If you have an always online device like a VPS you can sync on the device you’re using without the other device running simultaneously, which is a useful feature, but not required if you just want an easy way to get save data from one device to another.

Syncing Retroarch between both Desktop operating systems and Android is super easy. The exact location will vary based on what OS and installation method, but adding Retroarch to Syncthing on a desktop is as simple as adding ~/snap/retroarch/3223/.config/retroarch/saves/ and ~/snap/retroarch/3223/.config/retroarch/states/ to Syncthing⁵. Android is a bit more complicated since you’ll need to set Retroarch to use a custom folder to store its data instead of the standard app data folder. All you need to do is create a folder like “Retroarch” in your phone’s file manager and tell Retroarch to use that folder to store its data in settings, something you’ve probably already done if you’ve migrated saves from one Android device to another. Then it’s just a matter of sharing those folders in Syncthing on desktop to your phone, telling Syncthing on Android to sync the folders shared from your PC to the “saves” and “states” folders in the “Retroarch” folder you created on your phone.

Syncing Dolphin is very similar to Retroarch on desktop. Find your Dolphin folder, something along the lines of ~/.var/app/org.DolphinEmu.dolphin-emu/data/dolphin-emu/ although it varies depending on OS and installation method. Then add the “Wii” and “GC” folders to Syncthing. Syncing Dolphin data to Android automatically, however, currently isn’t possible as you can’t change where Dolphin stores your saves. My workaround is to create a folder on my phone’s home directory and set Syncthing to sync those folders to there - then, when I want to import game data from my PC I simply delete Dolphin’s Wii/GC folders and copy the Syncthing folders to Dolphin. To send data from my phone to PC I do the reverse, deleting the Syncthing folders and copying the Dolphin folders instead.

Note: Don’t delete a Syncthing folder while it’s running or it’ll get angry with you. Make sure Syncthing is not running when you delete the folder and copy the Dolphin ones in their place, then you can run Syncthing and it’ll sync over the new data.

I’ve found Syncthing to be way more convenient for playing emulated games. As long as I run it before and after playing, I can play a game on my computer and then pick up where I left off on my phone or vice versa. It’s also nice to have a real time backup of game data, and with Syncthing’s file versioning enabled it’s easier to undo a mistake if I accidentally delete or corrupt something.

Shaders
I only very recently started toying around with shaders, but in a few cases, I’ve found them to be a pretty big boost to appearance - especially when upscaling is either not possible or would hinder performance. Since I haven’t been using them for very long I might be missing some really great ones, but so far I’ve toyed around with two different types of shaders that I feel significantly improve some games.

CRT shaders never really used to sound like something I’d want to use. I saw plenty of CRT screens growing up, and while some people are, I’m personally not nostalgic for them - I’ll gladly take a much nicer digital display. Still, when I was researching shaders I saw a bunch of people saying that older games (especially in the 8/16 bit era) were designed specifically for CRT monitors. Giving them a try I’ve warmed up to them a bit, a lot of games go from looking overly sharp and pixelated to a bit softer as the devs probably intended - going from looking like low powered graphics to better graphics displayed on a more limited display medium.

Still, however, even if it might look a bit better, CRT shaders don’t improve graphics; they trade out one limitation for another. Upscaling shaders, however, can do just that. Something like HQX does a nice but subtle upscaling, smoothing out lines and depixelizing some stuff without messing too much with the game’s art direction. The various versions of ScaleFX go way further, looking incredible on less detailed or already stylized games, although it will definitely clash with some games’ art direction.

There’s a bunch more options bundled with Retroarch as well. There’s plenty of generic shaders that I haven’t tried or that just didn’t interest me as much. For example, if you want something that softens the image a bit there’s plenty of shaders that can do it without adding scanlines and/or making color corrections like some CRT shaders will. There’s also plenty of shaders with more specific purposes, like emulating specific handheld screens, and plenty of boarders you can add too if that’s your thing. You can even stack shaders on top of each other, for example: upscaling the video with HQX, then running a CRT shader, and finally adding a border and emulating curvature to make it look like your screen is an old CRT monitor.

Flip 2

All in all, my phone with the standard handheld controller works fine, but there are some limitations, so I still went with my original plan and purchased a dedicated handheld. The Flip 2 seems to meet what I’m looking for, and was kinda the middle of the road price wise where it’s cheaper than the more powerful alternatives but still much more powerful than the really cheap options.

The biggest pro is an increase in power. In my phone reviews post I talked about my 5a being able to run Wii games just fine, but getting really hot really fast. Since then I’ve toyed around with my 8a more and it doesn’t overheat when emulating Wii games, although performance on the games is hit or miss. Most Wii and Gamecube games seem to run at 60fps most of the time, but hit lag spikes during certain things. Some games like Super Paper Mario - which I got stuck on using real hardware but beat for the first time like a month ago via my phone - ran nearly perfectly and only lagged at really brief moments. Other more demanding games, however, have short but routine moments where they drop from 60fps to like 20fps, making them a bit more difficult to play.

The Flip 2 has a more powerful chip than my phone, but it also has active cooling, so the chip can be clocked higher by the manufacture while still being less likely to need to be temperature throttled. Since the Flip 2 and Pocket 5 share the same internals, from the looks of it everything from Nintendo Wii/3DS and under, as well as PS1 & 2, would play fine. The Wii U and Switch look hit or miss depending on the game, and since Retroid devices support both Android and Linux it might be possible to eek out performance on some Xbox/PS3 games. It’ll also (theoretically) be able to perform a lot better with PC games than my phone can (my phone can run things like Morrowind, but even struggles a bit on things like that).

Also, the form factor looks nice. As opposed to the flatter handhelds, something that folds will hopefully have a more protected screen and offer a little bit of extra space for my hands to sit without being too big to be portable. Although I’ve never touched a handheld console with the exception of multiplayer games with family on a docked switch, so there’s a chance I’m misjudging how handheld console size/shapes go.

It also:

• Has better IO: SD card support, HDMI out, and the ability to charge while playing. Some phone controllers support passthrough charging, although those controllers are as expensive as a cheap handheld.
• Is a dedicated device. I don’t need to worry about eating up my phone’s storage by preloading it with a bunch of games, using it won’t drain my phone’s battery, and I don’t need to worry quite as much about security if I want to boot into another OS or run experimental &/or less well known software.
• Supports Linux, which means through Box64 I should be able to run desktop software and games nearly natively.

The cons? It’s $220 ($230 after the presale ends) compared to a $10-$25 controller.

I’ll probably post a review once it comes in and I’ve used it for a bit.

Other Handhelds

While researching handhelds I found a few different options that also stood out to me. I took some notes while researching, so I figured I’d make them more verbose and share them here if anybody might find them helpful.

There’s a number of handhelds by Ambernic and with similar unbranded devices that are really cheap. Like $20-$40 cheap. Most appear to cap out at 8/16bit era games, some capable of N64/Dreamcast/PS1 emulation on a case by case basis. They seem to vary a bit, but most are vertical and have a d-pad only, and some come preloaded with ROMs. If you were only interested in playing that era of games, though, it could very well be cheaper to buy one of those handhelds than it would be to buy a generic controller to play on your phone/PC.

There’s also the TrimUI Smart Pro which seems to run about $50 and is capable of running N64/Dreamcast/PS1 & below games, but still no PC games or more modern emulation. It’s still cheaper than an official Xbox controller though, so it might be worth it if you just wanted to emulate that era and before.

There’s also a number of devices by Odyn. They seem to be in a pretty similar class to the Retroid devices, although the Retroid devices appear to beat out the Odyn devices in terms of price-to-hardware comparisons.

A hacked Switch was another thing that caught my eye. Switch Lites are cheap (~$100 used), which is very good for the hardware they’ve got⁶. They also have the benefit of being able to emulate a portion of the older Nintendo library in a Nintendo-approved way and support playing Switch games natively. However, if you want an easily hacked Switch you need an older model which runs about ~$300 - modding a Switch Lite either requires you to have some advanced hardware repair skills or pay somebody else to mod it for you (which would appear to bring the cost of the setup to ~$250+). At the ~$250-300 price range the hardware is actually a lot more underpowered, and personally the Switch library doesn’t have too much that I’d be looking to play.

A hacked DS/2DS/3DS was also something else I looked at, although it’s really limited in what it can do in regards to general handheld stuff. Assuming you’re on a 3DS, native support for GBA, DS, and the 3DS library is pretty expansive - but from the sounds of it, emulation is only reliable with 8bit and 16bit stuff. Hacking DSs seems more focused on either restoring services Nintendo shut down or acquiring natively supported games through ‘alternative’ means.

The Steam Deck also looks like a pretty good deal. For ~$300-$500 depending on sales, specs, and getting it new/used it looks pretty good price-to-hardware wise, even if it’s a bit more expensive then the other options. From what I hear it supports just about anything you can emulate, in addition to supporting a much larger swath of PC games than those above. Though it seams more geared towards being able to be played anywhere you can sit in your house as apposed to being more portable; it’s larger than the other options, and is x86 based so battery life is more limited.

Stuff like the ROG ally and Ayano Flip DS look like really powerful devices, but you’re paying mid and high end gaming PC prices respectively for entry level performance. I could see there being use cases to pay for a much more powerful handheld - if you traveled a lot, or if you had kids and your only gaming time was on the couch while they watched TV, but in most cases I feel it’s way too expensive for a handheld; at least with what I was looking for anyways.

Footnotes: