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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Was thinking about this earlier today, but lately I’ve gotten burnt out on Final Fantasy XVI whether that be due to the tone, design or combat I am not too sure. Had a slow weekend for once and decided to pop in Atelier Ryza 2 as I recently picked up Ryza 3 due to it having a small print run. Spent most of the day playing it off and on, but the brighter and more positive tone was a boon compared to the drudgery of FFXVI.

    Atelier isn’t always my comfort food, but that was a nice change. That distinction would have to either go to rhythm games or to stuff like Trackmania or Minecraft where you can “shut off your brain” and just play. TM has a certain “flow” to the tracks that isn’t like anything else out there and Minecraft just throws you into the world and lets you go. (Albeit on Peaceful.)







  • There are two 4k capable scalers announced for retro games:

    • Retrotink 4k
      • Made by the same guy who made the Retrotink 5x Pro among other scaling devices such as the Retrotink 2x, RGB2COMP and COMP2RGB devices. The 5x is a scaler that works better than the OSSC and can go to higher resolutions along with more effects to help emulate the CRT look and feel.
    • Morph 4k by PixelFx
      • Made by the same team behind the DCDigital (aka. DCHDMI), PS1Digital and now the Retro G.E.M. which is the recently announced console agnostic HDMI modification.

    There is also the OSSC Pro, but the details are sparse and we haven’t had too many updates about it.


    PixelFX has lost any and all respect that I had for them and almost made me want to sell my PS1Digital modded system just to be rid of owning anything they’ve touched. Their announcement video for the Retro GEM took the piss on Digital Foundry by doing a cringe-inducing “parody” called “Digital Infidelity” and was wildly inappropriate. Couple that with the news that the GEM would have DRM on the extra features for an additional $80 once you bought the device and it left a very sour taste in my mouth.

    Prior to their terrible announcement, I was determined on buying what ended up being GEM as I could get HDMI out right from a PS2 I bought specifically for that mod and now I won’t bother.





  • While it has an upfront cost, I’d say the best way to play old consoles is by using flashcarts/ODEs/softmods and a proper scaler like the Retrotink 5x Pro or the Open Source Scan Converter. Those scalers take a multitude of inputs, scale and digitize them for output over HDMI. The RT5X can even do crazy stuff with filters to emulate CRTs and other effects.

    That said, doing all of that comes at a cost. SCART cables for each console are about $40 each and the scalers run ~$325 for the RT5x or $120 for the OSSC. Then if you want to get a way to switch inputs, thats another $50-200 there too. Worth it if you like your old consoles, but to just revisit that’d be an expensive proposition. Is a great way to futureproof them, even moreso with the upcoming Retrotink 4k but that thing won’t be cheap. (Estimated price is ~$1000)


    If you want to do it on the “cheap” but get as close to the originals, I’d highly suggest getting /making a MiSTer setup. This uses a FPGA to do emulation via hardware, which is about as close as you can to the originals providing the code is up to par. That’ll run about $300 all said and done, but gets you a crapton of systems all outputting over HDMI.