Isn't this the case for all RPi clones? Lack of software support, lack of community. Thus not very useable straight out-of-the-box.

I (also) learned the hard way: if you don't exactly know what you want to do you with it and know for sure this is already possible, don't buy the board. Especially if you don't want to be the pioneer programming & porting all the stuff yourself.

@sirhenrythe5th Keep in mind that all colour CRT picture tubes are driven by separate RGB signals going to the electron guns. TVs decode a composite signal into separate RGB signals before amplifying them and passing them onto the electron guns. Given the technology of 1970's TVs, it would be relatively easy to modify a TV to accept your own RGB signal rather than use the one it generates from a composite one.

The XBox 360 d-pad is crap even when it is working correctly as intended. It's a terrible shame, since besides the d-pad, it's a great controller. All the other buttons and analog sticks are just fine.

Also, Microsoft has made Windows 10 require signed drivers but won't release proper signed drivers for the XBox 360 Chatpad, their own device. Shame on their stupid crappy driver signing scheme.

Great knowing that they do. Thanks!

@meleu > But you wouldn't do such villainy, would you?
Only if the father is a really bad guy and his children are ramparts. But for all time: Peace and Harmony!

I've been thinking a lot about what a modern game that could evoke that classic ATARI feeling might look like. Back when ATARI reigned supreme, a game could be about anything. The barrage of space shooters aside, we got some truly wild and creative concepts from that era at almost every turn. Not unlike those endless space shooters of the time, most modern games tend to revolve around controlling a guy running around an environment and interacting with various modes of transportation.

Looking beyond that admittedly fun, but tired concept, what else is out there besides the tried and true racing and sports games that have always existed? Perhaps the perfect model of creativity in modern gaming and that which most closely emulates that original bygone era can be found in Indy and mobile gaming. Sure, every so often we get a AAA title that captures that classically creative, "anything goes" feeling with something like 'Portal', but it really seems as though the only place left to consistently experience a new concept in gaming is through independent development and the type of games found mainly on mobile platforms. To that end, if it is that the ATARI Box does end up delivering their own exclusive games alongside an interface for the Android store, perhaps the two might be perfectly matched for each other.

Sorry I was just referring him upstream to the originating source code authors or some fork. I'm not sure how they decide which versions they want to code next. At one point I think there was some "challenges" between them and the official MAME authors but not so much anymore plus all the forks. It always seems to come from upstream somewhere. You just need to sit downstream as not to do the "heavy" core work! ;)

I think it's bound to happen from time to time, especially when you're mass producing these things.

@kg14 read the forum rules.

How they are doing it is that it's illegal and eBay cares more about getting their cut than the law.

@mediamogul Ok thats good. Yes that is understandable. Code can only be optimized so much and hardware limitations in this case remain constant.

@retrofreak89 I have some input as far as DosBox is concerned, as I have tinkered with this a bit. DosBox distributed with RetroPie has dynamic recompilation enabled by default, and trust me that's what you want (i didn't realize this was possible on a non-x86 CPU at first). With this feature enabled, and if you max out the CPU cycles in the config file you get performance in the area of a 100 MHz x86 CPU, somewhere between a 486 and a Pentium. I've run old DOS games like Blood and Shadow Warrior on the Pi3 and they work well as long as you keep the default low resolution (320 x 200) I believe. Start raising the resolution, and the games quickly start becoming unplayable. I was also able to install Windows 3.1 under DosBox and run the old strategy game Outpost, which was a favorite of mine as a kid. Outpost ran well under Windows 3.1 (after some arm wrestling with the installer) with no sound stutter or other serious issues. Anything more advanced though would likely have issues however, such as War Craft 2 (which I have not tested, but would be delighted to find out it works well).

I would be surprised if this was successfully done by someone. The video for the screen is streamed over a proprietary 5 GHz radio. A gentleman in a previous post said it's based on 802.11n and he could very well be right. Still I think it may be possible through a custom USB adapter of some kind, though the 480mbps throughput limit may turn out to be a constraint, not sure. Is it possible? I believe so yes. Is it something easy to do, almost certainly not. You would probably need to find an engineer to design a custom USB adapter to communicate with the pad.

That's the real trick isn't it, having the support I mean. I think people are just eager for a successor to the Pi3 (myself included) and impatience is getting them to seek alternatives, lol. I hope the next board has a better GPU, as the current one has been stretched as far as it can go I'm thinking. For emulating 2nd through 4th generation consoles, RetroPie has compatibility and convenience I haven't seen with any other solution. And PSX emulation is great also on RetroPie. I just find N64, Dreamcast, and PSP to be somewhat lacking, but I think that's mainly because of the limited GPU in the Pi, to say nothing of the DC's robust FPU.

@petrorie Yeah, that was a dumb question. Ignore it.

The weirdest for me was playing Final Fantasy III on the SNES back in the day, and stumbling upon the Sketch glitch without realizing what had happened.

For those who don't know, Sketch is an ability where you select an enemy and "sketch" it, causing you to instantly use one of its abilities against your enemies. The problem is that when Sketch misses for whatever reason (e.g. spells that cause your target to turn invisible), the game bugs out, and things got weird, usually in a very game-breaking way.

Years later, I found out that this happened because of the way the ability was coded in ASM; when Sketch missed, the algorithm would reference a memory address that contained junk data, and different things would happen, depending on the stored values.

@capeman Well that's leaps and bounds better than my NES/Atari setup

@muehltime ah Attract Mode. Never thought of that. But I'm concerned about after installing and using Attract Mode, will I still be able to boot into Kodi and Rasbian Pixel and vice versa? Also, will my music still be able to be played in the Attract Mode menu ; and still have the ability mute the preview rom video snaps and system preview videos? I'll just have to make a backup of my sd card right before I install Attract Mode, and see how that works out.

Well I was going to add to this list but that's the single most extensive list of 4-player games I've ever seen. Thanks!