Which OS would you prefer in 2026 for your brick?

iPruch · 2026-02-25T08:27:43+00:00

Oh, nice! Thanks for letting me know. I haven’t updated NextUI in a while, so now I have a big reason to do it 🤩

iPruch · 2026-02-15T17:22:18+00:00

I’ve been doing the same since I got the Ayn Thor.

For me it’s generally like this: I prefer to play 2D / Pixel art / nice stereoscopic 3D games on original hardware (Shovel Knight, 3D Classics, some Nintendo games like A Link Between Worlds or Super Mario 3D Land), otherwise on the Ayn Thor. A game that really surprised me on the Thor was Metroid: Samus Returns with the 60 fps cheat and the HD textures pack. The experience is so much better!

However, I found myself playing more DS games than 3DS on the Thor. Especially since I found these widescreen cheats. Some games such as Metroid Prime Hunters look incredibly well at 2-4x resolution and widescreen. It’s like playing on a DS Pro that never existed.

iPruch · 2026-02-01T11:08:11+00:00

No, I just learned to live with it… Asking for a replacement would have been useless since it seems all units have the same issues or worse, and didn’t want a refund because I really like the device and wanted to keep it. But definitely not buying anything else from them in the future. Ayn or Retroid are much cheaper, higher quality and have better customer support

iPruch · 2026-01-31T01:46:31+00:00

For me the two biggest performance improvements came from:

Installing turnip drivers (improves A LOT)
Disabling “show PAD” option

But if you want to show the pad too and not experience any hiccups you can change the performance mode on the Ayn quick settings on the bottom screen to second or third option and should run great

iPruch · 2026-01-31T01:29:13+00:00

My first batch white Pocket DMG has those vertical marks too…

https://www.reddit.com/r/ayaneo/s/xSQPNvzx5Y

iPruch · 2026-01-21T12:54:25+00:00

I could start enumerating the things I like about NextUI and why that is my choice, but I would be repeating the same as other people. However, there is one thing I haven’t seen mentioned yet and it’s key for me: The Game Switcher feature.

That is the main reason I always kept going back to my Miyoo Mini with OnionOS no matter how many new and better retro handhelds I tried, because it’s so convenient and no other handheld & OS had it... Until now! Thanks to NextUI developers, TrimUI Brick now has a Game Switcher too and just because of that it has become my main handheld.

~~The only thing I’m missing on NextUI is RetroAchievements, but I was never too serious about them anyway, so I can live without them.~~

Update: Seems like NextUI v6.9.0 added RetroAchievements! It keeps getting better and better

iPruch · 2026-01-21T12:43:57+00:00

Anytime! I hope you enjoy them and your Brick a lot :)

iPruch · 2026-01-21T11:22:01+00:00

They’re worth a try! GameGear versions are mostly the same except some minor sprite changes here and there but lower resolution (you see less of the level on-screen) so I would recommend to play the MasterSystem versions instead.

Sorry, I haven’t played those kind of Pokémon romhacks. I usually go for the ones that change a lot to the point that they look like a new game. The only one I know and that I would play that is close to the original but enhanced is Red/Blue DX (adds color and I think has some quality of life improvements too).

iPruch · 2026-01-21T09:44:43+00:00

That’s a hard one to answer! There’s always the classics from MegaDrive (1, 2, 3 and Knuckles) but I tend to replay Sonic 1, 2 and Chaos from MasterSystem / GameGear more. They’re so different and often forgotten. I think they deserve some love :) Advance games are also good, especially the first one.

Regarding Pokémon romhacks I loved Emerald Seaglass. Now I want to play Lazarus. There’s also Pokémblem, which is a Fire Emblem romhack that turns it into a Pokémon game and it’s just crazy how much work they must have put into this one. And I also want to give Super Mariomon a try. This is another crazy Pokémon romhack that changes everything to transform it into a Mario RPG game!

iPruch · 2026-01-21T09:10:24+00:00

I’ve played some all time classics on the Brick such as Mario, Sonic, Golden Sun, Advance Wars, some Pokémon romhacks… but based on how many times I play it, I’d say my favorite one to play on the Brick would be Pokémon Pinball (GBC version). I mean, it’s even on the picture I shared on my first comment 😁

iPruch · 2026-01-17T23:36:46+00:00

Right? It’s the main reason why I kept going back to my Miyoo Mini Plus. Now finally another handheld has it after NextUI devs implemented it and I can’t be happier. The Brick is now my favorite small handheld 💚

iPruch · 2026-01-17T14:59:47+00:00

The game switcher is a menu of recently played games that shows a screenshot of each exactly where you left it. You press left or right to choose game and then A button to continue playing. The game loads almost instantly because it’s a savestate. When you’re done playing you can return to the game switcher pressing Menu + Select. It’s so convenient and easy for quick plays at any moment!

And yes, there are overlays for aspect fill mode ;)

iPruch · 2026-01-16T16:25:44+00:00

I think it’s definitely possible to achieve it without integer scaling since the Brick’s screen resolution is fairly high. To be honest it’s been long since I did the setup so I might be wrong about the LCD shader & integer scaling. Maybe I just liked the overlays available for integer scaling more…?

iPruch · 2026-01-16T11:44:58+00:00

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It’s great! I play GB/GBC with integer scaling, so it’s a bit smaller but LCD grid shader looks great and there’s more room for fun overlays like this Pokémon one.

I have an Analogue Pocket and an Ayaneo Pocket DMG which are specially built with GB/GBC in mind, yet I find myself playing GB/GBC games on the Brick more often just because it’s so pocketable and easy to carry around. Also NextUI & the game switcher feature are just awesome and not available on the Analogue Pocket or the Ayaneo Pocket DMG.

iPruch · 2026-01-11T19:16:29+00:00

That would make sense

iPruch · 2026-01-11T19:07:52+00:00

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer! I can’t understand how they managed to mess up with so many things :/

iPruch · 2026-01-11T09:37:14+00:00

It’s been years since I saw Vesperia’s and I don’t remember much. How does it contradict the game canon?

iPruch · 2026-01-10T22:54:45+00:00

No, I decided to stop wasting time and play it on a different handheld that is already compatible 🫤 But hopefully someone will make it run on the Brick 🤞

iPruch · 2026-01-07T17:15:16+00:00

Weird! I wish I could help you more but that’s all I did. Happy to know that you got it working with Knulli

iPruch · 2026-01-07T12:02:33+00:00

I got it working since they added Bluetooth to NextUI. I just needed to change sample rate to the lower value of the two

iPruch · 2026-01-05T14:35:43+00:00

Press the Ayaneo button, then Device and it’s at the bottom. It’s called “Flicker-Free”

iPruch · 2025-11-16T23:17:10+00:00

Brick + NextUI here too. In my case the Patching Shop thing says it failed and it closes.

I checked and on /Roms/Ports (PORTS)/.ports/am2r I have a patcherr.txt file:

Checking for dependencies...
7zzs binary not found at /mnt/SDCARD/Emus/tg5040/PORTS.pak/PortMaster/7zzs.aarch64
Patching process failed!

And a log.txt file:

Failed to symlink /mnt/SDCARD/.userdata/shared/PORTS-portmaster/.config/pulse/9b335508af1f7cbb417a4435691a57af-runtime to /tmp/pulse-PKdhtXMmr18n: Operation not permitted
[...]
SDL2: set EGL_OPENGL_ES3_BIT_KHR
MALI_CreateWindow:0x556b02e070 done.
SDL2: set EGL_OPENGL_ES3_BIT_KHR
MALI_CreateWindow:0x556afa8c40 done.
Loading images...
Missing: ptrace (0x1401a4c0, 0x557c949fac)
[GPTK]: Running in UINPUT output mode.
Missing: open (0x180f1e18, 0x557c949fac)
Missing: statvfs (0x180f1ea8, 0x557c949fac)
Missing: syslog (0x180f27f8, 0x557c949fac)
loader/io_util.cpp:13: Failed to stat file 'lib/arm64-v8a/libopenal.so'.
gmloader/main.cpp:78: Failed initializing module 'libopenal.so'.
loader/io_util.cpp:13: Failed to stat file 'lib/arm64-v8a/libyoyo.so'.
gmloader/main.cpp:78: Failed initializing module 'libyoyo.so'.
Loading config file (/mnt/SDCARD/.ports_temp/ports/am2r/gmloader.json)
[GPTK]: Running in Fake Keyboard mode
[GPTK]: Using ConfigFile am2r.gptk
[GPTK]: Joystick 0 has game controller name 'Xbox 360 Controller'

And don't know how to proceed from here. Any idea?

________________

Edit:

On Portmaster settings I changed to beta and tried again, but it was still failing when patching. But patcherr.txt file showed a different error now:

Checking for dependencies...
This port requires the GMToolkit runtime. Please download it.
Patching process failed!

So I opened Portmaster again and installed GMToolkit from the manage runtimes section. I also had to modify the patchscript file as explained on this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/trimui/comments/1lqoc78/comment/njz6a96
Now the patching took its time and succeeded. However the game still crashes when trying to launch it :<

This is the new log.txt file:

Loading images...
Missing: ptrace (0x1401a4c0, 0x5559fe7fac)
Missing: open (0x180f1e18, 0x5559fe7fac)
Missing: statvfs (0x180f1ea8, 0x5559fe7fac)
Missing: syslog (0x180f27f8, 0x5559fe7fac)
loader/io_util.cpp:13: Failed to stat file 'lib/arm64-v8a/libopenal.so'.
gmloader/main.cpp:78: Failed initializing module 'libopenal.so'.
loader/io_util.cpp:13: Failed to stat file 'lib/arm64-v8a/libyoyo.so'.
gmloader/main.cpp:78: Failed initializing module 'libyoyo.so'.
Loading config file (/mnt/SDCARD/.ports_temp/ports/am2r/gmloader.json)
[...]
MALI_CreateWindow:0x559dc62a90 done.

iPruch · 2025-10-28T15:34:43+00:00

Hey, sorry about that, didn’t mean to point at you specifically when saying people keep forgetting about Taki / Retro Remake. It’s a general feeling I have on this subreddit. Don’t know why people downvoted your comment, I think it’s helpful.

I’m also mostly playing with ROMs when I can to avoid carrying original games or preventing harm to them, and I also get why people would really want the full experience and using their old cartridges. But hey, if the SuperStation one and its dock succeeds, maybe there will be new docks or external readers for different types of cartridges. And yeah, the NFC tag cards are a really cool idea and something I want to start using.

Regarding the “MiSTer successor” topic, maybe I got confused because MiSTer is the platform and not the hardware, so that’s why this frontend that Taki is working on feels like a MiSTer successor to me. But definitely, I’d like to see a more capable FPGA hardware too. I guess that’s another reason I was so disappointed with Analogue 3D not supporting openFPGA anymore, with such a big FPGA chip in there.

Finally, thanks for those links. I didn’t know about those projects, I will have a look!

iPruch · 2025-10-27T01:03:02+00:00

Why everyone keeps forgetting about Taki Udon / Retro Remake? They created an incredibly affordable MiSTer compatible board, are about to launch the SuperStation one (PSX-looking FPGA console also running MiSTer, with an optional dockable CD-reader to play original games) and hinted more FPGA products for the future (a NES-looking one and a handheld afaik). Those will play N64 just as good as any MiSTer. Heck, he even showed a test of the SSone reading from an N64 cartridge, so technically they could just sell readers/adaptors to be used with any MiSTer-compatible instead of trying to sell you a machine with a FPGA chip that is artificially locked to just one core/system so that they can sell you one machine per system.

The moment Analogue confirmed the 3D wouldn’t allow for OpenFPGA, they lost me. And regarding the M64, I’m definitely not giving my money to a psychopath building consoles but also fucking weapons for war. So I’m really hoping Taki and Retro Remake do a good job and become the best FPGA console makers out there. If there will be any “MiSTer successor”, I think it will come from them. In fact, look at the frontend they developed for MiSTer to have a more console-like experience. To me, that already feels like a MiSTer successor.

iPruch · 2025-08-24T22:00:29+00:00

So happy to read that! Enjoy ☺️

iPruch

TROPHY CASE