RG35XX: Koriki OS (v1.01)
Dec. 4th, 2023 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroI had been keeping an eye on this one for a while: It’s yet another fan-made OS for the Anbernic RG35XX, and it’s better than GarlicOS for most purposes.
So, this is a lightweight Batocera port. It takes ~10-15 seconds to boot up, and it does drain the battery faster than the stock OS or GarlicOS, but not radically so—I think you get closer to 3 hours of playtime than 4. (Some people have complained about it not shutting down properly after charging. This can be addressed by just booting it up after charging and shutting it down properly afterwards.) It’s brighter and prettier than either of the other OSs, and splits the systems into consoles, handhelds, arcade and home computers.
My biggest complaint is that, as you might have noticed, I like having a dedicated Menu button that…brings up the menu. This retains most of the hotkeys from GarlicOS, only now the Menu button by itself does nothing. The important things to remember are that Menu+X brings up the Retroarch menu, and Start + Select exit games.
If you manually copy the Liberto database into Retroarch/cheats, you can access cheat files for nearly everything. For that matter, you can add an Img folder and put in box art if you’re so inclined. (I probably am not, but I think it’s a cool feature.)
Handhelds:
• Game Boy – Runs well. The RetroArch menu is a little grainy but the games look fine. Properly saves sram. Save states work. Cheats work. Fast forward works. Game Boy Color had similar results.
• Game Boy Advance defaulted to a bad version of the mGBA core in v1.0, which had some slowdown and graphical issues. When I manually switched the core to gpSP it worked fine. (In both cases, cheats worked.) Per a suggestion from the discussion page, turning off vsync in the Video settings seemed to solve the problem. That said, this seems to have been solved by switching the mGBA core version in 1.01. Fast-forward still doesn’t really work, though.
• Game Gear – Runs well. Cheats work. Fast forward works.
• Lynx – Runs well. Fast forward and save states work. Cheats seem to work, too.
• Neo-Geo Pocket – Runs well. Fast forward and save states work.
• Wonderswan - Runs well. Fast forward and save states work. The select button can be used to rotate the screen.
• Pokemini – According to the dev, this was left out of v1.0 but added in v1.01; I still couldn’t get it to work.
• PSP – It registers games and will attempt to run them. The graphical fidelity isn’t great—I tested Breath of Fire 3 and the text wasn’t really legible. It ran mostly at full speed, though, with occasional hiccups in the music. None of the regular menu hotkeys work; I couldn’t actually get to a menu to test any features or leave the game without pressing the reset button. I needed to open PPSSPP from the apps menu and remap “pause” to L2 so I could bring up the menu. (Honestly, this is mostly a curiosity, because a 3.5” 4:3 screen really isn’t big enough to play PSP games on. It’s damn impressive that he got PSP running on this device at all!)
• DS – This didn’t run in v1.0 (and would lock up the system), but was fixed in v1.01 and from there ran decently. The unused L2/R2 buttons were mapped to swapping the screens, and there’s no touchscreen or even a useful stylus (because there’s no analogue stick to map it to), but I could see playing something like a Dragon Quest game on this. The Drastic menu is accessible, but so small I could barely read it, so I didn’t try mapping in a cheat file.
Consoles:
• NES – Runs well. Cheats, fast forward and save states work.
• SNES – Saves sram and manages fast-forward, but activating a cheat crashes the game back to the menu. (A terribly common problem on this device! I wonder if it’s some sort of flaw in the base RetroArch setup.)
• Virtual Boy – In v1.0, it wa left out and games wouldn’t run. I tried a fix from the dev and successfully got it working; it runs a little slowly and fast-forward doesn’t work, but it’s playable and better than the half-speed in GarlicOS. That fix was added to v1.01; and combined with turning on video threading in the settings, it’s playable if not perfect.
• Master System - Runs well. Fast forward and save states work. Oddly, my initial notes said cheats worked in v1.0, but they dumped me to the menu when I tried them in v1.01.
• Genesis – Runs well. Cheats, fast forward and save states work.
• Atari 2600 – Runs fine and save states work.
• PC Engine – Runs well. Cheats, fast forward and save states work.
• Playstation – Runs well. There were some minor graphical glitches, but it wasn’t clear to me if that was the emulation or a result of cheat codes I tried. Cheat codes worked, as did save states and fast-forward.
• N64 – Games run surprisingly well! It’s not perfect, but Mario Kart 64 was downright playable.
• SegaCD - Games still won’t run.
Arcades:
• MAME – Works fine for all the games I tried.
• NeoGeo – Gives a white error screen.
• Final Burn Alpha – Games won’t run at all. Then I swapped my FBA folder to FBN, and Final Burn Neo runs for at least some of the roms I have.
Home Computers:
• Pico-8 – Doesn’t seem to have any buttons mapped, which makes it very hard to play. There’s apparently a manual fix for this, but it’s more technical than I could manage.
Also, I didn’t encounter any systems where the keys weren’t mapped properly or the screen was at a bad aspect. Yes, you could open up the RetroArch menu and fix either of those, but it’s nice when you don’t have to.
And it seems like the dev is still poking at it, so eventually there will be at least a v1.02 that will presumably fix a few more of the bugs.
Overall: This loses a little of the “pick-up-and-play” aspect that the stock OS had and GarlicOS maintained—if you loved the OnionOS/GarlicOS auto-save state and recents menu, you’ll be disappointed here. And GarlicOS has a much better sleep mode. But this gives you working cores for a LOT of systems and runs several that I never thought this device could manage. I like it!
So, this is a lightweight Batocera port. It takes ~10-15 seconds to boot up, and it does drain the battery faster than the stock OS or GarlicOS, but not radically so—I think you get closer to 3 hours of playtime than 4. (Some people have complained about it not shutting down properly after charging. This can be addressed by just booting it up after charging and shutting it down properly afterwards.) It’s brighter and prettier than either of the other OSs, and splits the systems into consoles, handhelds, arcade and home computers.
My biggest complaint is that, as you might have noticed, I like having a dedicated Menu button that…brings up the menu. This retains most of the hotkeys from GarlicOS, only now the Menu button by itself does nothing. The important things to remember are that Menu+X brings up the Retroarch menu, and Start + Select exit games.
If you manually copy the Liberto database into Retroarch/cheats, you can access cheat files for nearly everything. For that matter, you can add an Img folder and put in box art if you’re so inclined. (I probably am not, but I think it’s a cool feature.)
Handhelds:
• Game Boy – Runs well. The RetroArch menu is a little grainy but the games look fine. Properly saves sram. Save states work. Cheats work. Fast forward works. Game Boy Color had similar results.
• Game Boy Advance defaulted to a bad version of the mGBA core in v1.0, which had some slowdown and graphical issues. When I manually switched the core to gpSP it worked fine. (In both cases, cheats worked.) Per a suggestion from the discussion page, turning off vsync in the Video settings seemed to solve the problem. That said, this seems to have been solved by switching the mGBA core version in 1.01. Fast-forward still doesn’t really work, though.
• Game Gear – Runs well. Cheats work. Fast forward works.
• Lynx – Runs well. Fast forward and save states work. Cheats seem to work, too.
• Neo-Geo Pocket – Runs well. Fast forward and save states work.
• Wonderswan - Runs well. Fast forward and save states work. The select button can be used to rotate the screen.
• Pokemini – According to the dev, this was left out of v1.0 but added in v1.01; I still couldn’t get it to work.
• PSP – It registers games and will attempt to run them. The graphical fidelity isn’t great—I tested Breath of Fire 3 and the text wasn’t really legible. It ran mostly at full speed, though, with occasional hiccups in the music. None of the regular menu hotkeys work; I couldn’t actually get to a menu to test any features or leave the game without pressing the reset button. I needed to open PPSSPP from the apps menu and remap “pause” to L2 so I could bring up the menu. (Honestly, this is mostly a curiosity, because a 3.5” 4:3 screen really isn’t big enough to play PSP games on. It’s damn impressive that he got PSP running on this device at all!)
• DS – This didn’t run in v1.0 (and would lock up the system), but was fixed in v1.01 and from there ran decently. The unused L2/R2 buttons were mapped to swapping the screens, and there’s no touchscreen or even a useful stylus (because there’s no analogue stick to map it to), but I could see playing something like a Dragon Quest game on this. The Drastic menu is accessible, but so small I could barely read it, so I didn’t try mapping in a cheat file.
Consoles:
• NES – Runs well. Cheats, fast forward and save states work.
• SNES – Saves sram and manages fast-forward, but activating a cheat crashes the game back to the menu. (A terribly common problem on this device! I wonder if it’s some sort of flaw in the base RetroArch setup.)
• Virtual Boy – In v1.0, it wa left out and games wouldn’t run. I tried a fix from the dev and successfully got it working; it runs a little slowly and fast-forward doesn’t work, but it’s playable and better than the half-speed in GarlicOS. That fix was added to v1.01; and combined with turning on video threading in the settings, it’s playable if not perfect.
• Master System - Runs well. Fast forward and save states work. Oddly, my initial notes said cheats worked in v1.0, but they dumped me to the menu when I tried them in v1.01.
• Genesis – Runs well. Cheats, fast forward and save states work.
• Atari 2600 – Runs fine and save states work.
• PC Engine – Runs well. Cheats, fast forward and save states work.
• Playstation – Runs well. There were some minor graphical glitches, but it wasn’t clear to me if that was the emulation or a result of cheat codes I tried. Cheat codes worked, as did save states and fast-forward.
• N64 – Games run surprisingly well! It’s not perfect, but Mario Kart 64 was downright playable.
• SegaCD - Games still won’t run.
Arcades:
• MAME – Works fine for all the games I tried.
• NeoGeo – Gives a white error screen.
• Final Burn Alpha – Games won’t run at all. Then I swapped my FBA folder to FBN, and Final Burn Neo runs for at least some of the roms I have.
Home Computers:
• Pico-8 – Doesn’t seem to have any buttons mapped, which makes it very hard to play. There’s apparently a manual fix for this, but it’s more technical than I could manage.
Also, I didn’t encounter any systems where the keys weren’t mapped properly or the screen was at a bad aspect. Yes, you could open up the RetroArch menu and fix either of those, but it’s nice when you don’t have to.
And it seems like the dev is still poking at it, so eventually there will be at least a v1.02 that will presumably fix a few more of the bugs.
Overall: This loses a little of the “pick-up-and-play” aspect that the stock OS had and GarlicOS maintained—if you loved the OnionOS/GarlicOS auto-save state and recents menu, you’ll be disappointed here. And GarlicOS has a much better sleep mode. But this gives you working cores for a LOT of systems and runs several that I never thought this device could manage. I like it!
