Comment on Who buys crazy expensive "new retro" consoles and why?

CameronDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• BurgerBaron@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  When it comes to old handhelds, do you replace the batteries? At one point in time I had a PSP battery swell up like a balloon, scary.

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  • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    There are companies that sell parts to repair and sometimes upgrade old devices. Sometimes local retro game stores will service your devices for you.

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  • CameronDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Retro consoles aren’t my thing, but i have replaced batteries for all kinds of devices, and it’s usually fairly easy to do. Aliexpress et al. have all the batteries you could want, and a little fiddling with some screw drivers and you cam usually get the job done. Fairly safe with some basic common sense as well.

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    • BurgerBaron@piefed.social ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I really need to replace my 3DS XL battery…

      …and PS3 controllers actually. Another fire hazard I’ve ignored lol.

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      • CameronDev@programming.dev ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        www.ifixit.com/Guide/…/25068 - Looks easy, barely needs a guide.

        www.ifixit.com/Guide/…/3255 - Definitely doable, although I will say that you should be careful with game controllers, they are often full of springs that will escape and be a complete pain to find and reinstall.

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  • squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Depends on the handheld, but most of the older handhelds have easily replaceable batteries.

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• squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Buying a complete product means you don’t have to mess around with emulators not working quite right, and if it doesn’t work, you can just return it.

  Can you return second-hand consoles?

  Expensive is relative to income. 300eur is not much money for some. Also, 300eur is cheaper than a steam deck…

  True, but I mostly meant relative to other devices you could use instead. The cheapest option would probably to get a phone-attachment controller for maybe €50-100 and connect that to the phone you already have.

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  • CameronDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Okay, I see we have some confusion, when you said “new retro”, I was thinking of the N64 raspi thing that came out last year. Those did have a manufacturer warranty.

    In terms of second hand consoles, yes, no warranty, but, it’s still not messing around with emulators, it should play the games largely as expected.

    Phone attached controller might be cheaper, but surely you can see that its a significantly worse experience than a properly built console?

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    • squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Phone attached controller might be cheaper, but surely you can see that its a significantly worse experience than a properly built console?

      I do have some of my old consoles still, specifically a Gameboy Color and a New 3DS XL. I also have a Razr Kishi v2 smartphone controller.

      The Kishi+phone easily beats the original GBC in every metric except of nostalgia. When it comes to the 3DS, it’s slightly more mixed, since I can’t use the Kishi in portrait mode, so emulating both screens on top of each other is difficult.

      I did try another controller in vertical mode (can’t remember what it was called, a friend of mine let me try it) and there the experience was actually better on the emulator than on the real device, except of the missing 3D graphics. But other than that, performance was better on the emulator (especially Pokemon games struggle on OG hardware), the screen was much better.

      Might be a bit more mixed for games that require precise touch input, but none of the games I played actually need that.

      Especially now that online play has been discontinued on the 3DS, emulators aren’t that far behind.

      And the biggest advantage: saving a few hundred Euros for the controller compared to the original hardware.

      But that’s of course only my view, and that’s why I was asking for other people’s experiences, because I want to understandtand their reasoning.

      In terms of second hand consoles, yes, no warranty, but, it’s still not messing around with emulators, it should play the games largely as expected.

      Ease of use? Yeah, I guess that’s fair, especially if you aren’t hacked. Once you hack the console, it’s just as much hassle as dialing in an emulator…

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