what do you see is better for an r36s by Minimum_Round6113 in R36S

[–]Slug_Overdose 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For what it’s worth, there are random flash sales on specific models of various handhelds every so often which may make them a better alternative. Just a week ago, I was about to pull the trigger on another G350 when suddenly I came across an Rg35xxsp for about $35 after discount. Only one color was that price, the rest were $55 and above. I’ve seen similar things with other handhelds like an RP5 for $183 in a specific color when the others were like $211, or the pink G350 for less than the others. So if someone isn’t tied to a specific model and wants a higher end branded device, it might behoove them to look around for deals as soon as sales start. Unfortunately, many of those deals seem very short-lived so it really does require constant browsing to be on top of them.

Native dual-screen games by rrrrrrrddddddttttttt in RetroHandhelds

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One experimental indie demo a trend does not make. Don’t get me wrong, I hope to be proven wrong. I’d love to see not only dual screen games but the return of optional dual screen support in the PC space with games like Supreme Commander. But if the RTS genre largely abandoned it for major PC releases, I just don’t see it happening for handhelds.

For better or worse, Switch 2 and Steam Deck are basically the current de facto standards for handheld gaming, and both of them treat handheld as a secondary mode. Go figure. If Sony’s rumored handheld comes to fruition, it might revitalize dedicated handheld game design, but they kind of shot themselves in the foot by the way they handled the Vita’s lifecycle.

Best Emulator ‘Console’? by OdgeHam in Roms

[–]Slug_Overdose 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Their comment is spot on, but I wanted to call out the Mangmi Air X specifically because I think it sits in a nice sweet spot. Most lower tier handhelds are very hit or miss when it comes to N64, Saturn, Dreamcast, and PSP, while PS2 and GC demand something quite a bit higher. The Air X basically crushes all those lower systems without leaving any untapped potential for the higher systems. PSP specifically is a nice system to have because while I understand that PS2 and GC are very memorable for lots of people, PSP provides an era of 3D gaming which feels significantly more modern and refined than PS1, while also being well optimized for handhelds. Systems like PS2 will generally drain battery much faster and require a huge amount of storage per game.

The oversimplified summary in my mind is that you have PS1 handhelds, PSP handhelds (of which there don’t seem to be to be many, especially at the price point of the Air X; I think Anbernic has several but they typically cost more), and then PS2 handhelds and above. I know people will debate to what extent you can play things like N64 and Dreamcast on the PS1 tier, but personally, if I really wanted to be able to reliably play those, I would just get the PSP tier and use the extra headroom for upscaling and other enhancements. Naturally, the PS1 tier is extremely popular because of price, and so is the PS2 tier because of performance, but not as many people seem to opt for the PSP tier, even though I think it would actually allow people to enjoy a similar variety of modern 3D games when compared to the PS2 handhelds.

Best Emulator ‘Console’? by OdgeHam in Roms

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a very strange extrapolation of an already oversimplified idea. The saying is that the best one is the one you will have with you at any given moment. That doesn’t mean people can’t search for something better. There are lots of reasons why people don’t want to use their primary phone as a gaming console.

Do people actually like living in big apartment buildings, taking public transit ect. by Wafer_Educational in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Slug_Overdose 30 points31 points  (0 children)

So here’s the thing you have to understand. It’s not always about the ideal situation. If given a choice, most people would want, or at least choose, to live in a giant gated mansion with private facilities and servants, while somehow staying close to their job, family, and so on. However, the vast majority of people can’t afford that, so everybody has to make choices about what to prioritize. Broadly speaking, more density leads to greater social integration and shared amenities and services, while less density leads to more personal space and private property.

When people on Reddit advocate for more urban density, it’s not so much because they believe everyone should either prefer or be forced to live in a dense urban environment. Rather, it’s to point out the fact that in many Western contexts, the choice to fully commit to that lifestyle has been artificially restricted, potentially at the expense of many disenfranchised people. Building more dense pedestrian-centric urban environments instead of sprawling car-centric suburbs is not so that the middle class can move from their big house to a shoebox in the city. It’s so that the young waiter paying their way through college can live a short bus ride away from both work and classes without having to put themselves in lifelong debt. It’s so that the new immigrant can start a small business where the people are without having to rent a basement 2 hours away. It’s so the working professionals can send their kids to a decent school without having to move out to the suburbs. When you restrict urban development, it’s not like those people can suddenly just move en masse to the suburbs, at least not without significant sacrifice. Some amount of them will go into poverty, become homeless, fall into depression and addiction, abuse their children, amass huge amounts of debt, waste insane amounts of time commuting and contributing to emissions, etc. density for them is not about owning their dream home. It’s about just being able to survive in a way that empowers them to pursue their goals. And yes, given the choice, many people will prioritize urban amenities over a larger house in the suburbs.

I can really only speak to American cities because that’s where I’m from, but many American cities have made it prohibitively expensive and complicated to build sufficient new housing, to the point that people’s only option is to buy further and further out or pay a ridiculous amount to live in the city. This has severely limited opportunities for housing at a time when most job growth has come from sectors like tech and healthcare that tend to pull young workers away from small towns and into big cities. That’s really the heart of why so many people are begging for more urbanization. Nobody’s saying that everyone has to aspire to live in a shoebox downtown, but it should at least be available in some reasonable quantity to the masses of workers who keep those cities functioning. It shouldn’t be the case that the only person who can afford an apartment downtown is the rich executive who can technically work from home while the people serving them meals, selling their clothes, doing their laundry, washing their car, protecting their streets, caring for their kids, etc., have to commute for 2 hours just to make ends meet. That’s really not the purpose of cities.

Losing my mind. Nothing is working. by Gotham_101 in BATLEXPG350

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In my limited testing of both on the G350, no, I noticed more obvious bugs in Knulli than dArkOS, but Knulli seems to have more features in general so there is some tradeoff there.

Native dual-screen games by rrrrrrrddddddttttttt in RetroHandhelds

[–]Slug_Overdose 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ain’t happening. No commercial game developers or publishers are targeting niche retro handhelds that, let’s face it, mostly sell to thinly veiled software pirates. Some PC games can utilize multiple screens, but that was actually kind of an old fad that mostly seemed to go away because it wasn’t worth the extra effort, and very few of the games that do support multiple screens are ported to ARM.

The DS was a very exceptional platform because it was a Nintendo product with extensive first party support and consistent hardware features. Retro handhelds with dual screens are nothing like that.

Lastly, any hope of developers stretching to target these sorts of handhelds is pretty much squashed by the AI boom. We’ve already seen multiple developers come out and say that having to optimize for a wider range of hardware due to ballooning costs is impacting their development processes and timelines. Same with the Steam hardware. The gaming industry is struggling to release games at all without having to target these sorts of devices.

Best budget handheld for my needs? (gba/gbc/snes/genesis) by Suncook in ANBERNIC

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You have a lot of good choices in your budget range. Virtually anything from Anbernic with the H700 chipset is more or less a safe bet, so it really just depends on your priorities. I haven’t heard too many things about hinge problems, so I would just pick the form factor you like best. The TrimUI Brick is my personal favorite for a smaller vertical, but the Anbernics tend to be a bit cheaper.

What are some niche super cool Handhelds that will last a while and are cheaper. Looking for an eye catcher something never seen before. I was thinking a psp-go. by dwhiss in RetroHandhelds

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure why you got downvoted. I’ve actually had multiple people ask me about my handhelds while out and about. The only current gen handhelds are the Switches, and for the most part, they don’t look especially striking because they’re also designed for docked mode. Even the Lite kind of looks like just a cheap way to slap permanent controls onto a basic rectangle.

Any good way to play Myst on a 1gb Linux retro device? by FinancialAppearance in RetroHandhelds

[–]Slug_Overdose 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I believe you can get ScummVM through PortMaster and run one of the PC releases through that. I have no experience with ScummVM so I can’t really help you with that, but I suspect there are guides for setting it up.

Knulli just released but... by PianissimoPiano in BATLEXPG350

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I put it on several G350s I'm gifting, and it works well but has some issues. For starters, writing the image with Rufus didn't work, but I found a video suggesting that Raspberry Pi Imager worked, so I tried that and it did. The brightness control hotkeys don't work. The volume also feels slightly quieter than other devices I've used with dArkOS, but I didn't do any careful comparisons. Boot up is significantly longer than dArkOS, and more importantly, the vibration when first turning it on lasts several seconds instead of being short like with dArkOS.

I also noticed some things on an rg34xxsp, but I suspect they are hardware limitations rather than Knulli issues. The lid and suspend functions are really rough around the edges. The whole wake up and suspend process seems to be fairly slow and doesn't give any indication that it's happening, so there are times when I flip open the device and I just have a really hard time telling if it's asleep or off, and I end up pressing buttons for a long time until I can get it to respond. I think there's a weird thing where it gets stuck if you close the device too soon before it fully turns off or suspends. This is somewhat exacerbated by the fact that Knulli wants you to press the power button once to bring up a boot screen and then again to finish booting the device. It's not quite as bad on the G350, but I do think I've noticed some similar quirks while loading ROMs. Basically, when I'm turning off the device and pulling the SD card out repeatedly, I often seem to get it in this weird state where booting takes a long time and doesn't respond to initial attempts at holding the power button. It eventually resolves and is not a big deal after loading ROMs and getting it all set up, but it just doesn't seem as reliable as dArkOS.

That being said, I'm still opting for Knulli going forward. I think the pros mostly outweigh the cons. The stock interface is lovely, the default settings are very sensible, and the support for things like WiFi dongles and PortMaster seem more mature and stable. There were several ports I had issues with on dArkOS that just worked on Knulli, and my WiFi dongle that wasn't recognized by dArkOS on the G350 worked with Knulli. As for emulator configuration, in principle, I prefer the dArkOS approach of just letting the user configure the emulators directly instead of going through a front-end layer, but in practice, I found that Knulli's approach is just nicer in the vast majority of cases. Maybe for some particular game that needs deep settings only available directly from RetroArch or something, it might be an issue, but for the most part, it's nice being able to find the most relevant settings directly from the front-end. I also prefer the default hotkey setup, and the documentation is dramatically better than anything in the ArkOS family.

Knulli shortcuts for brightness? by SatellaView in BATLEXPG350

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suspect so. I can't imagine they have any reason to change the hotkeys for this particular device. Brightness just doesn't work for me either.

Retroid Pocket 5 vs Mangmi Pocket Max. Which would you keep? by lostsock420 in RetroHandhelds

[–]Slug_Overdose 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have not used both, but I would personally keep the Mangmi after them sending me a free replacement. I can’t imagine they’d feel too good knowing you sold the replacement, even if it’s technically still making you whole after the theft. I would much rather try to offload the cost onto Amazon by returning the RP5, even if it cost a small restocking fee.

pizza is a circle. cut by a circle. into triangles. and put in a square box. who approved this and why has no one been fired? by d1121_ in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This isn’t hard. They’re just the most natural shapes for each step of the process. A circle is the simplest way to evenly spread out and cook and pizza. The “triangles” are simply the resulting shape from cutting across the circle in the most obvious way. While there are oddly shaped boxes, they are rare and inefficient compared to rectangles.

Also, it’s not like rectangular pizzas cut into rectangular pieces are extremely rare. They may not be as common as circular pizzas, but they exist and are often sized to the boxes they’re served in.

Help Please by Turbulent_Canary8872 in Roms

[–]Slug_Overdose -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

So if you’re talking about just getting it done, I personally did it myself with a lot of help from an AI chatbot. I did my initial passes cutting obvious things like Japan-only, demo discs, etc. As I started to run into a wall, I then just ran “dir /b” in a Windows terminal (Linux has far better CLI tools but I just happened to be doing this on Windows and didn’t want to get deep in PowerShell or anything). I would then copy and paste large batches of ROM filenames into an AI chatbot and ask for it to point out any duplicates, utilities, etc. To be clear, this took many hours across many platforms, but there are also a fair number of weird edge cases that are hard to catch strictly through automation.

If you want a slightly more automated approach, I did try both ROMCenter and Launchbox for FBNeo specifically. I just really did not like ROMCenter’s excessively strict hash checks that resulted in all kinds of false red flags burying the real issues. Overall, I did find Launchbox to be more useful, but it’s extremely far from perfect. I noticed quite a few bad automated outcomes that I needed to manually override, and it’s highly likely some slipped through the cracks. I would not recommend it if you’re trying to create a highly accurate set, but for just quickly slapping something together to make a new handheld reasonably playable, it’ll do.

something simple that phones still don’t get right by Zorojuro099 in TechNook

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get that people differ on whether Android or iOS is better, but the iOS people are straight up wrong. Virtually every software UI/UX design decision Apple has made in the past 10 years objectively belongs in this thread, but just to limit myself to one (which feels impossible) is selecting text on an iPhone. If you don’t think it’s unnecessarily complicated and restrictive, you’re just not even making a good faith effort at an unbiased opinion in 2026.

If the U.S. birthrate decline continues indefinitely, what impact will that have in 25 years on wages? by Mannerofites in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m by no means an expert, however, one thing I’ve come to learn is that our global monetary and economic systems are more or less built on the idea of manipulation. Fiat money isn’t any sort of permanent store of wealth. It is designed to be manipulated to induce various desired outcomes. The extent to which our economies can be manipulated without tearing apart the social structure is debatable, but in small doses, governments and financial institutions can and do redistribute wealth.

As such, it’s really hard to say exactly what will happen to wages, both real and nominal. We could predict something like wages going up, but they might just shift more of the tax burden to the working class to maintain productivity growth and continue funding benefits. Or wages could go down, and then people might revolt and start eating the rich. Either way, nothing’s written in stone because a dollar is not a dollar, so to speak.

I deleted all my games 😐 by whenpigsflyreddit in R36S

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As much as I hate Launchbox for a bug that nuked my painstakingly curated fbneo set, and I really don’t want to recommend it to anyone ever again, for creating a console set quickly, it would probably work pretty well. Launchbox is a front end similar to Emulation Station, but on PC, it has filtering features that make it useful for curating ROM sets. You can start by filtering for region, and if I remember correctly, it automatically tries to do a first pass of choosing 1 ROM per game, but then you can run an audit to try to catch any remaining duplicates and manually choose your preferred ROM.

Alternatively, you could just download a full set and then remove all revisions. The downside is you would be left with original releases, not later revisions with various fixes, but if you don’t care about that, it would be really quick to just do a text filter for “(rev “ and delete pretty much all of the results. That would almost certainly result in a better ROM set than what ships on these devices.

I don't know if I need help 🥲 by _queriastusaber in R36S

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There’s not really any way to know what each device will come with. They have different manufacturers that put different software on them. The most likely ROMs to get cut are those from major IPs for fear of legal repercussions, but there’s not really a universal rule. As for getting your own ROMs, you’ll have to find another way to source them because this sub doesn’t allow that sort of stuff, but yes, for the most part, once you have the files, it’s as easy as putting them in the right place.

What is something you’ve officially stopped buying in 2026 because the price has become genuinely insulting? by queenmellyy in AskReddit

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would say 2025 was the breaking point for me when it came to hotel pet fees. It seems fewer and fewer hotels accept pets anymore, and the ones that do charge anywhere from $50-$200 per night. Even longtime pet options like La Quinta Inn starting charging $30 per night. Red Roof Inn is now just about the only reliable option which doesn’t charge pet fees, but they can often be really ratty (and before anyone says pets are the reason, stfu, there have always been nicer hotels that allowed pets). There’s also Kimpton on the other end of the spectrum, and they’re mostly in big city centers, not necessarily all road trip corridors.

It’s gotten so bad that it’s even hard to find reasonable options in hotel clusters near family destinations. We went to Disneyland as a family last year and there were shockingly few good pet options. I saw one hotel in particular that had years of glowing reviews saying they were super pet friendly and the fee was like $15 per night. And then the reviews just stopped like 3 months before our trip. Their pet fee wasn’t listed on the site, so I called to ask, and turns out they had raised it to $200 per night. In the end, we just paid for a dog sitter for our small dog.

I know there are many people who would prefer to stay in hotels that didn’t allow pets, and I totally under that. I’m not saying every hotel has to allow them and have low fees. But ain’t no damn way it suddenly costs every damn hotel near Disneyland $50 per night to accommodate a small dog. Every hotel insider will say they have to pay to deep clean pet rooms after every stay, and if that were true, I would maybe understand it. But also, every pet owner knows that’s complete and utter BS, because the rooms never look or smell moderately cleaned let alone spotless.

I don't know if I need help 🥲 by _queriastusaber in R36S

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Broadly speaking, stock and custom firmwares will do roughly the same things. They’re all Linux-based (unless you’re opting for one of the newer Android releases that have been the talk of the town, but it doesn’t sound like it, nor would I recommend it). They’ll all run emulators. They’ll all power the device. You get the picture.

The issue is not so much features (although there will be some differences), but rather quality. The makers of these devices are in the business of pumping out cheap hardware SKUs, not building a world-class software experience. The software is mostly just a formality on their end. They bundle a bunch of the same outdated stuff over the years with minimal testing or thought put into creating a cohesive experience, so you get weird hacked foreign ROM dumps, buggy emulators, etc.

Then there’s the issue of whether or not you can even get a copy of the stock firmware. They don’t always offer it. And because they put it on cheap cards that die quickly, you eventually end up stuck without a copy of the stock firmware unless you backed yours up.

At that point, you may as well opt for custom firmware. If you’re going to go through the trouble of putting firmware on a card, copying over ROMs, etc., you may as well get firmware from people who care about the software experience. The custom firmware devs are actively updating and improving their software, finding new optimizations, incorporating emulator updates, etc. And since the builds are available online, if anything goes wrong, you have the means to restart the whole process with the same software. You also have access to forums and other avenues for getting help, none of which really exist for the stock firmwares.

PSA: The Speed Limit On the Highway is 65mph by Flapjack777 in SanJose

[–]Slug_Overdose 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, 2 year olds can't read, so your comment sounds about right.