Why Retro Freak?

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1pil
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Joined: December 31st, 2014, 3:15 pm

Why Retro Freak?

Post by 1pil » February 1st, 2016, 1:26 pm

I just looked it up, and from the looks of it....it seems to be a Japanese ONLY system which seems to be better with more console support like PC engine etc....which is cool except Snes looks like the only US cartridge it plays.
And the astounding ridiculous stupid price of 200 bloody dollars which makes absolutely no sense. Games alone cost a fortune to buy from anywhere, whether it be ebay or amazon or a third party site. So sure you could get the system, but can you afford the games AGAIN? Not to mention rare games from PC Engine, good like getting them in good condition. And we can already play the japanese version cartridges on Retron....and to be perfectly honest I never played PC engine or Turbo GFX....and never really wanted to. There isn't really any games for it. Nothing I am interested in. More console support is fine but why those consoles?....Consoles that barely anyone knows or plays.
So I was wondering why you guys would add that to this site....I doubt we'll ever be able to afford it to test it out.
Maybe some of you are willing to blow 200+ dollars on a system like that but I got no plans on doing so. Unless it drops down to 80 dollars or less. And if it gets hacked to play roms like Retron, or has better support for cheats unlike Retron....

Sorry, couldn't find any other place to post this, there is no general discussion anywhere.

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Lilith
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Re: Why Retro Freak?

Post by Lilith » February 1st, 2016, 2:44 pm

First of all, the Retron 5 was around the same price at launch, certainly more than 80.

It can play ROMs natvely, just put them on the micro SD card. Much easier than the R5.

It can install games on the card from cart, meaning you dont need to stress the cart slots...which by are better than R5s.

There are n64, sega cd, 32x and tg cd emulators

Stock controller is way better

Please dont assume noone plays tg 16. They did this because console is Japanese

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R9delta
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Re: Why Retro Freak?

Post by R9delta » February 1st, 2016, 5:51 pm

-The Retron 5 launched at 140-160. The standard version of Retro Freak was 170 on Play-Asia at launch. Not a massive difference there and I feel it's worth it considering the jump in build quality and other features that the R5 lacks.

-It supports US cartridges for all systems it supports out of the box with the exception of Famicom/Nintendo, which require a cheap Famicom->Nintendo pin adapter to do so. If you don't want to spend the money on one you can still play NES games by throwing roms on a MicroSD card which brings me to my next point....

-It supports Roms. Not through hacking, not through exploiting the patch system like on the Retron 5...but directly and out of the box without having to do anything special. You can back up your own cartridges or you can just throw a ton of them on a MicroSD card from the internet. It doesn't care.

-I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking you speak for everyone when claiming you have no interest in PC Engine/TG16 games. You don't want to play them? Then don't. You don't want to spend the money on TG 16 and PC Engine HuCards? Then don't. You can just download roms of them and play them that way if that's what you want.

-Stock controller is not a complete heap of shit like the R5 and it has support for practically every USB controller out there. Even generic USB adapters to use original controllers if that's a must for you.

-The Retro Freak supports English. In fact it asks you what language you would prefer on boot-up.

Now is the Retro Freak superior in every way? No not necessarily. It doesn't take wireless controllers like the Retron 5 (So the Retron 5 controller and NES30 in wireless mode are out). You'll need to purchase the official adapter (which is overpriced) or some generic ones if you want support for the original controllers. The Retro Freak's cheat database is actually even WORSE than the Retron 5's...which is why i'm thankful you can use the Retron 5's database for it instead.

All these points in consideration i'd rather (and do) take the Retro Freak over the Retron 5 but you may not, and that's perfectly fine. What I do question though is why you feel like it's such a problem that there are others into it and why we have a sub-forum for it. It doesn't negatively effect you and the console is literally based off the same firmware that the Retron 5 is. Everything about it in the way the system operates is practically identical with the exception of what's been covered and other aesthetics. It dumps carts the same way...except that you can permanently store on an SD card. It's cheat database is laid out the same (minus that the Retron 5 is more thorough with amount of cheats). It uses the same emulators for playing the games. It's patching system works EXACTLY the same way. The way you have to do a firmware update is even identical and they both use the same hardware inside as well. If you want to keep it simple it's essentially a japanese version of the Retron 5.

Having a sub-forum for the Retro Freak will only grow this forum anyway and why you're against that is beyond me.

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hikaricore
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Re: Why Retro Freak?

Post by hikaricore » February 3rd, 2016, 3:23 am

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=354

I added these sections to expand our community. Sadly enough Hyperkin seems to to be just going through the motions with the Retron 5 at this point, and I thought it would be a nice alternative for discussion.

KlownKefka
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Joined: May 27th, 2015, 4:24 pm

Re: Why Retro Freak?

Post by KlownKefka » February 4th, 2016, 3:07 pm

Also, if It hasn't been mentioned before (I didn't see it but may have overlooked something), the price just for a system that can play both American and Japanese TG-16 and PC-Engine games is a steal. You're looking at over $200 in hardware alone to do that otherwise. Once the thing gets some time under it's belt and I can see some compatibility stuff pop up, I'm sure I'll get one just so I can play some TG games. It's the only system I really want to support but the hardware has so many issues and it's so pricey.

eeztheman
Posts: 2
Joined: January 19th, 2016, 7:32 pm

Re: Why Retro Freak?

Post by eeztheman » February 6th, 2016, 6:48 am

Hi All,

I hope this is posted in the right section.

I am now on my 2nd Retron 5 - and although I do think it's great, even my second one now is showing signs of wear on the famicom cart slot (the first one I had got so bad it would not read any games).

I have a famicom to NES adaptor so I could still use my NES games - and I have a small collection of PC Engine Hu Cards which is a good bonus over the Retron.

I do have a couple of questions that I hope an owner of a retro freak could answer (would be appreciated)

How are the slots in the retro freak? - Do they seem to be better made than on the Retron?

Can you use the sega power base converter in the mega drive slot to play master system games? (as you can on the retron)

My final question is regarding the power supply............I am in the UK, so would a 2 to 3 pin plug adaptor work without problems?

Thanks in advance to anyone that could shed some light, as I am close to purchasing one..........

dustbuster
Posts: 128
Joined: December 12th, 2014, 7:51 pm

Re: Why Retro Freak?

Post by dustbuster » April 14th, 2016, 9:12 pm

I am still thinking of getting a retro freak in the near future. Curious if all the ips patches I have loaded on my sd card for the retron will work exactly the same(I know it's been mentioned that it does but I wanted to know if I have to change anything at all on the r5 sd card? Just take it out of the r5 and into retrofreak and all the patches will work when the cart is inserted?)

Also after a few months of you some of you owning the retro freak...how are the game slots/connectors holding up? And are you enjoying the adaptor's for the controllers?

sorry for all the questions I just want to be sure before I make the jump :?

boilerbrojoe
Posts: 1
Joined: April 16th, 2016, 12:43 am

Re: Why Retro Freak?

Post by boilerbrojoe » April 16th, 2016, 12:51 am

I think your ips files will have to be in a folder named Retrofreak and then a subfolder named Patch. I believe if those are spelled differently it will not work. But yes, the very same ips files should work fine, although I've encountered a few ips files that I downloaded from Romhacking that didn't work quite right.

The game slots seem fine - haven't really used them much since you only ever need to insert each game once. The Super Nintendo/Super Famicom slot felt worryingly tight to me, but I've heard the Retron5 is even worse, and ultimately it worked out fine. Haven't tried the Genesis/Megadrive slot yet. I briefly used the controller adapter, but soon discovered that my SNES controller is a mess, so I haven't used it since.

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Lilith
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Joined: October 1st, 2014, 12:21 am

Re: Why Retro Freak?

Post by Lilith » April 16th, 2016, 1:31 am

[Delete]
Last edited by Lilith on April 16th, 2016, 1:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Lilith
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Joined: October 1st, 2014, 12:21 am

Re: Why Retro Freak?

Post by Lilith » April 16th, 2016, 1:43 am

dustbuster wrote:I am still thinking of getting a retro freak in the near future. Curious if all the ips patches I have loaded on my sd card for the retron will work exactly the same(I know it's been mentioned that it does but I wanted to know if I have to change anything at all on the r5 sd card? Just take it out of the r5 and into retrofreak and all the patches will work when the cart is inserted?)

Also after a few months of you some of you owning the retro freak...how are the game slots/connectors holding up? And are you enjoying the adaptor's for the controllers?

sorry for all the questions I just want to be sure before I make the jump :?

eeztheman wrote:Hi All,

I hope this is posted in the right section.

I am now on my 2nd Retron 5 - and although I do think it's great, even my second one now is showing signs of wear on the famicom cart slot (the first one I had got so bad it would not read any games).

I have a famicom to NES adaptor so I could still use my NES games - and I have a small collection of PC Engine Hu Cards which is a good bonus over the Retron.

I do have a couple of questions that I hope an owner of a retro freak could answer (would be appreciated)

How are the slots in the retro freak? - Do they seem to be better made than on the Retron?

Can you use the sega power base converter in the mega drive slot to play master system games? (as you can on the retron)

My final question is regarding the power supply............I am in the UK, so would a 2 to 3 pin plug adaptor work without problems?

Thanks in advance to anyone that could shed some light, as I am close to purchasing one..........
You can just play games off of the SD card once you dump them off the cart, if you're worried about the slots. I've only ever had carts in when I was dumping them, but they all felt much better than the Retron 5's.

The controller adapter is fine, it's pretty cool that you can use a Turbografx 16 controller in addition to what the Retron 5 offers, along with a Famicom expansion port, which I assume you can use to play Famicom Disk System games if you really wanted to...although you can simply do that off the SD card after putting the FDS BIOS in "BIOS" and name the file "disksys.rom" (R9 Delta has told me his is all caps, so it may be either, but caps didn't work for me)

It definitely helps that the stock controller is so much better than the R5's that you don't really need to extra controllers as much.


You can use a Power Base Converter fine, but as with the Retron 5, it seems to not read SMS cart battery saves. At least, I can't make it do it. Although, you can just load SMS ROMs onto the Freak and it'll play those fine. Game Gear too, which I haven't heard anything about the R5 Game Gear adapter in quite some time. I hear there's a Sega Mark III/Game Gear adapter out there for the Freak, but I find it a bit pointless when you can load ROMs on. I guess if you had a big collection it'd serve a bigger purpose. As for the 3 to 2 volt thing, I've never had a PAL system or been outside the country (US), but I'd assume that's how that works. Might want to do some more research or asking around.

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