![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
R36S Game Console
I got this in a Black Friday sale on AliExpress for $42—I wasn’t expecting much and I didn’t think it was worth it for the $60 price tag I was generally seeing it at. It’s sort-of a clone of the Anbernic 353V, a vertical handheld with a 3.5” screen and enough power to play Tier 3 (N64, DS, PSP).
It’s a little more angular and a little less comfortable to hold than some of the other vertical systems, but big enough for large hands (unlike the Miyoo Mini Plus) and it has the analog sticks sensibly at the bottom. (Which you can press down for L3/R3 functionality, even.) The buttons are very “clicky” and hard; they work fine but aren’t the most comfortable ever. No touch screen, but that’s not a big deal here. It’s running ArkOS and EmuationStation, and takes about 20 seconds to boot up. Like the RG35XX, it has two SD card slots (in this case, both are occupied with the OS and games), and two USB-C ports (power and "otc," which I think is just to connect another data source. I don't think this does tv output or second controllers). It’s got the hard reset button, which is always handy.
My biggest complaint, which soured me unduly, is that this has a menu button that is a LIE—as far as I can tell, it does nothing. You need to press L3+R3 to bring up the Retroarch menu and Start+Select (twice) to exit a game. And that’s okay, it works fine, but there’s a button that could be conveniently pulling up the menu and…nope!
Like the TRIMUI Smart Pro, this gives you access to the full Retroarch menu, but it’s the annoying desktop version that’s a pain to navigate. (Except for Drastic and PPSSPP, which use their own custom menus.) That said, the cheat files are already there, and work nicely. Oddly, this leaves save states (and fast forward) in the RetroArch menu and you need to map your own hotkeys if you want them. Also, I don't think the “Last Played” collection actually works—it never seems to change.
All of the lower-end systems I tried work just fine. N64 runs...very badly, actually. Janky, glitchy, and Beast Wars eventually froze and necessitated a hard reset. I'm guessing it's a software issue, which implies to me that N64 could be made to run better by messing with RetroArch settings, though I’ll admit I don’t even know where to start, especially since the L3+R3 combination doesn’t work. (I found some commentary online that suggested going into the emulator settings and forcing it to use RetroArch and the Nintendo 64 – ParaLLEI core; which did make Mario 64 run better but wouldn’t load Smash Bros at all. And implies the hotkeys weren’t working on other games because it’s defaulting to a standalone emulator.) On the other hand, DS and PSP run shockingly well. The screen is a little small for the latter, and the former has a custom set of controls for Drastic, including mapping the right stick and R3 to the stylus, using L2/R2 to swap screens, and L3 for the Drastic menu.
So then I tried popped the SD card and adding a bunch of games for systems that weren’t already represented: Master System, Neo-Geo Pocket Color, Pokemini, Virtual Boy, Wonderswan, Lynx, Jaguar, MSX, and Pico-8. And the results were pretty good! The first five ran perfectly, with the only hiccups being that I needed to fiddle with display settings a little and the Pokemini doesn’t have splash art. MSX and Lynx wouldn’t run at all (I’m guessing the cores are missing) and Jaguar runs very slowly with graphic issues; so I removed those from the card after testing.
Pico-8 gave me errors asking for .dat files, which I suspected I could find and add, and yes, after checking out a RetroGameCorps guide and making a quick trip to itch.io for the correct version of the files, Pico-8 worked, too.
(I also dropped a few games in the “SNES Hacks” folder, and sure enough, it created a new collection. For that matter, there’s a function to create custom game collections in the UI which might be worth checking out.) Attempts to add my own box art didn’t work, but I suspect if I gave it access to my wi-fi the “Scraper” function might be able to find something. I may try that at some point.
Overall: I don't want to like this, because it physically feels like a cheap knock off and it has a fake menu button, but there's a lot here. This has most things you’d want right out of the box (except N64) and requires very little tinkering, so it’s solid price point competition for the RG35XX or Miyoo Mini Plus. (And for the discounted $42, it's a DAMN sight better than the m17!)
It’s a little more angular and a little less comfortable to hold than some of the other vertical systems, but big enough for large hands (unlike the Miyoo Mini Plus) and it has the analog sticks sensibly at the bottom. (Which you can press down for L3/R3 functionality, even.) The buttons are very “clicky” and hard; they work fine but aren’t the most comfortable ever. No touch screen, but that’s not a big deal here. It’s running ArkOS and EmuationStation, and takes about 20 seconds to boot up. Like the RG35XX, it has two SD card slots (in this case, both are occupied with the OS and games), and two USB-C ports (power and "otc," which I think is just to connect another data source. I don't think this does tv output or second controllers). It’s got the hard reset button, which is always handy.
My biggest complaint, which soured me unduly, is that this has a menu button that is a LIE—as far as I can tell, it does nothing. You need to press L3+R3 to bring up the Retroarch menu and Start+Select (twice) to exit a game. And that’s okay, it works fine, but there’s a button that could be conveniently pulling up the menu and…nope!
Like the TRIMUI Smart Pro, this gives you access to the full Retroarch menu, but it’s the annoying desktop version that’s a pain to navigate. (Except for Drastic and PPSSPP, which use their own custom menus.) That said, the cheat files are already there, and work nicely. Oddly, this leaves save states (and fast forward) in the RetroArch menu and you need to map your own hotkeys if you want them. Also, I don't think the “Last Played” collection actually works—it never seems to change.
All of the lower-end systems I tried work just fine. N64 runs...very badly, actually. Janky, glitchy, and Beast Wars eventually froze and necessitated a hard reset. I'm guessing it's a software issue, which implies to me that N64 could be made to run better by messing with RetroArch settings, though I’ll admit I don’t even know where to start, especially since the L3+R3 combination doesn’t work. (I found some commentary online that suggested going into the emulator settings and forcing it to use RetroArch and the Nintendo 64 – ParaLLEI core; which did make Mario 64 run better but wouldn’t load Smash Bros at all. And implies the hotkeys weren’t working on other games because it’s defaulting to a standalone emulator.) On the other hand, DS and PSP run shockingly well. The screen is a little small for the latter, and the former has a custom set of controls for Drastic, including mapping the right stick and R3 to the stylus, using L2/R2 to swap screens, and L3 for the Drastic menu.
So then I tried popped the SD card and adding a bunch of games for systems that weren’t already represented: Master System, Neo-Geo Pocket Color, Pokemini, Virtual Boy, Wonderswan, Lynx, Jaguar, MSX, and Pico-8. And the results were pretty good! The first five ran perfectly, with the only hiccups being that I needed to fiddle with display settings a little and the Pokemini doesn’t have splash art. MSX and Lynx wouldn’t run at all (I’m guessing the cores are missing) and Jaguar runs very slowly with graphic issues; so I removed those from the card after testing.
Pico-8 gave me errors asking for .dat files, which I suspected I could find and add, and yes, after checking out a RetroGameCorps guide and making a quick trip to itch.io for the correct version of the files, Pico-8 worked, too.
(I also dropped a few games in the “SNES Hacks” folder, and sure enough, it created a new collection. For that matter, there’s a function to create custom game collections in the UI which might be worth checking out.) Attempts to add my own box art didn’t work, but I suspect if I gave it access to my wi-fi the “Scraper” function might be able to find something. I may try that at some point.
Overall: I don't want to like this, because it physically feels like a cheap knock off and it has a fake menu button, but there's a lot here. This has most things you’d want right out of the box (except N64) and requires very little tinkering, so it’s solid price point competition for the RG35XX or Miyoo Mini Plus. (And for the discounted $42, it's a DAMN sight better than the m17!)