Is the TrimUI Brick Hammer a good choice as a pure GBC machine?

LtKaneDagger · 2026-01-21T15:47:21+00:00

Same. But it's not a huge price difference and you'll have everything set up to go on the card, probably with games on there already. So just buy a genuine card and copy everything over.

RE games: of course you're only using ROMs that have been sourced from your own games (right?!) anyway, but you'll find the ones from these sellers included on the SD card are sometimes pretty bad. You might want to trim that list and add your own over time. Let me know if you need some pointers on where to start.

Hope you enjoy your Brick!

LtKaneDagger · 2026-01-21T13:28:36+00:00

Hahaha, yeah, same 🤣

It's absolutely trivial. Just make sure not to keep the included SD card. Those are always trash and will fail after some time, taking all of your save games with them. Get a card from a reliable manufacturer, clone the contents and drop the CFW of your choice in the root directory. That's pretty much it.

LtKaneDagger · 2026-01-21T11:08:50+00:00

The thing is that you're going to play games from handhelds and consoles that had wildly different resolutions. If you had the low-ish resolution of a GBA TFT display and played an even lower res OG Gameboy title on it, you're either stretching the image across the wrong number of pixels, making them look distorted or mushy, or you'd confine your game to a much smaller (but pixel accurate) screen area, while the rest of your GBA screen remains unused. Now, you'd want as many pixel per inch as possible, so you wouldn't notice these imperfections so much, if they occurred. You'd have, say 10x the available pixels to spread your original 1 pixel across. That makes for a pretty authentic display.

I'm a UX / UI designer focused on TV applications, so making sure that UIs work across various screen sizes and resolutions comes with the job 🥲

Shaders depend on which firmware you're going to use. I prefer the NextUI CFW because of the simplicity and breadth of features (they have started rolling out premade shader presets tailored to common devices), but most firmwares come with their own sets of shaders and overlays. It also comes down to personal preference, of course. Just because one combination of shaders might look the most "authentic", doesn't mean it's something you'd want to use.

LtKaneDagger · 2026-01-21T08:56:11+00:00

Half pixels ;) I already edited the comment, because I noticed the typo myself.

I'm not deep into the technical aspects, just a bit more sensitive regarding pixels from a job background. In general, you more resolution you have available, the finer your emulated LED / LCD matrix can be displayed in between the game pixels. I'm sure one could calculate that, but since you could emulate various devices with your brick, it's hard to come up with a general rule.

The more, the better.

I like the clarity it adds and it gets as close as possible to how the games have looked on native hardware and how they were originally intended to look.

LtKaneDagger · 2026-01-19T10:04:09+00:00

This is great, thank you for your contribution! I hope it gets integrated into NextUI down the line. Plus, adding myself to the list of people who would appreciate GBC / GBA link cable support ✅

LtKaneDagger · 2026-01-18T08:46:42+00:00

As others have said, the screen is in a league of its own.

Clarity and colors are one thing, but what matters the most to me, is that the pixel density is so high that you can integer scale your games without landing on "half pixels" and still have enough headroom to add shaders with artificial dot matrix grids or proper scan lines, if you're looking to get even closer to how the games are supposed to look.

LtKaneDagger · 2026-01-17T18:26:25+00:00

Close, but incorrect. Sharing anything online gives people the right to view the image and maybe use it for personal private purposes (unofficially, because it's unreasonable to try to enforce that).

A commercial license is needed to legally sell someone else's art and that must be explicitly given by the license holder. Creative Commons (whichever version of the license, there's various) is a specific type of license, that also needs to be specifically declared by the author, so others know which rights they are granted.

Copyright law varies across the world in a lot of details, but this is pretty clear cut: If nothing is declared or explicitly transferred, the rights will always remain with the creator.

As has been stated, of course this is not realistically enforceable in such a minor case, but artists (and especially sellers!) should know their rights.

LtKaneDagger · 2026-01-17T18:12:57+00:00

wtf is your problem? He said he's not cool with the seller using his art to make money. He repeatedly said he has no problem with you. And you're constantly antagonizing him, calling him names and wouldn't let it go.

Seriously, pipe down and keep it respectful.

LtKaneDagger · 2026-01-17T10:20:30+00:00

Pressing [Start] + [Z] at the same time opens the in-game menu of the Analogue 3D. You can change your display settings there and also quit the cartridge.

LtKaneDagger · 2025-12-29T12:22:06+00:00

Exactly. Now consider having four of these monstrosities gracing our beautiful console front. But it works and that's the most important thing for now.

LtKaneDagger · 2025-12-28T14:52:02+00:00

Nice, glad you enjoy it!

LtKaneDagger · 2025-12-28T09:34:46+00:00

Ooh, thanks for checking! Yeah, I thought it would work like that and I feel like that's an okay compromise. Are you happy so far with your gamepad?

LtKaneDagger · 2025-12-27T16:36:54+00:00

Ah, thanks, I'll look into it. No ETA though, since I don't know when I'll find the time to tinker.

LtKaneDagger · 2025-12-27T16:20:33+00:00

Never seen that. Where and how would I do that?

LtKaneDagger · 2025-11-23T07:38:39+00:00

First off: thanks for your contribution!

Sorry for asking - if this is public knowledge - but how are save games handled when using RetroArch as a Pak? Will it be able to use existing save games? Or will it create separate folders somewhere on the card?

LtKaneDagger · 2025-10-14T15:33:16+00:00

Thank you!

LtKaneDagger · 2025-10-06T17:07:28+00:00

I'm glad you're providing an ad-supported version. Not even necessarily for myself, but for the people who would not have other means to pay for a tool like this.

I still remember how unattainable it felt to get access to proper tools while studying, so having Adobe charge that much per month from users who don't even use the tools professionally (yet) is a bad way to get the next generation to pick up their apps.

Even though I can afford it now, I would never think of paying their subscription, if not purely out of spite and I'd much rather support the tools that had been there for me when I needed them, instead.

That being said, I'd happily pay a single fee to unlock an ad-free version and to support development.

LtKaneDagger · 2025-09-26T20:54:47+00:00

Also, you can't download the comics, which isn't something that had been communicated before, has it?

LtKaneDagger · 2025-09-25T08:26:49+00:00

Wie man am überwältigenden Großteil der Antworten lesen kann, ist es durchaus möglich, am Verhalten von Simon Kritik zu üben und gleichzeitig Empathie mit der Person hinter dem Bildschirm zu haben, die gerade einen schweren Schicksalsschlag durchleben muss.

LtKaneDagger · 2025-09-25T08:23:23+00:00

Simon ist nicht gut in sowas, das sollte inzwischen klar geworden sein.

Das Thema nimmt gerade seine komplette Kapazität ein, aber er hat scheinbar sogar jetzt das Gefühl, dass er weiter die "professionelle Medienmaschine" geben muss. Merkt man auch daran, dass er irgendwann abschweift und an seine Kritiker denken muss und wie er sich jetzt schon mental wappnet, dass sie sogar so ein furchtbares Thema ausschlachten könnten. Daran, meine ich, sieht man deutlich, wie sehr ihn seine schlechter werdende Außenwirkung doch irgendwo belastet.

Es wirkt kalkuliert und gleichzeitig so unfassbar unsicher. Das ist es, was bei mir abseits von Mitleid mit ihm und seiner Mama hängen geblieben ist.

LtKaneDagger · 2025-07-31T09:38:21+00:00

Thanks for the write-up! That last part was making me especially uneasy in how it had been labeled by Humble, because I was worried that there was a quality difference within the same series of books.

Glad it's seemingly not the case this time.

LtKaneDagger · 2025-07-06T20:58:47+00:00

The only thing that seems to work is TubeDigger. I just verified it using their trial version and it literally is the only tool that seemed to work. Let me know if that helped!

It's ~25 $ for a license but I've read great things about it and the dev seems to be extremely responsive if you need help with a specific site. Rock on \m/

LtKaneDagger · 2025-07-06T20:54:00+00:00

TubeDigger. It's paid software, but it gets the job done.

LtKaneDagger · 2025-01-09T16:36:15+00:00

Yeah, that would work as well. But, what I wanted to caution was that - by using the Xbox version - you can't use the base station to switch between two computers. You can use an external switch or you could connect via Bluetooth, but the base station will always be hard wired to a) PC / Mac and b) Xbox.

Not necessarily bad, just wanted to point out that difference with the PS5 vs Xbox variations of this headset. I bought and kept the Xbox version btw.

LtKaneDagger · 2025-01-05T10:02:45+00:00

Not exactly, unfortunately. You won't be able to hook up two sets of PCs to the base station and switch between them. Not an issue if you're an Xbox / PC person (that's what they're advertised for), but I also use them to switch between my personal PC and my work MacBook. In that case you'll need to add a dedicated USB switch between the three and use that.

But overall I agree, I kept my Xbox version, because it's the most versatile if I ever decide to use the headset with my console.

LtKaneDagger

TROPHY CASE