That's odd. I always thought it said:

M. Khan is Bent.

OoT is one of those games I desperately want to like, but don't. I respect it for pushing boundaries, its technical wizardry, and its cultural significance. Playing it, however, is a different matter. I'll get to a certain point, get bored, switch off, and won't go back to it. Rinse and repeat every five years or so.

I know I'm in the minority.

Will you be picking them up? Let us know in the comments!

Nah, the world has moved on.

Seems to be official now - the pre-order page is live. However I would wait for the reviews to come in! Don't think of it as saving $15, but potentially saving $300 (or more) if it turns out to be a turkey.

Possibly means a Thor 2 is on the way...

I don't know the law, but 'superfake' suggests being tricked in to buying a knock-off product believing it to be genuine. I don't think that's the case with emulation handhelds. I, and I would guess most people, buy them precisely for what they are, not because they're pretending to be something else.

Could they actually ban the sale of them in the US? I thought the vast majority of them are actually sold in China and Hong Kong and then shipped world wide.

Final thought: this is such a niche of a niche target. If you added up all the sales of emulation handhelds outside of China over the last decade, I doubt you'd get close to even 0.1% of Nintendo Switch sales.

I'd like to see a remake with controller support. I have the entire Wing Commander series in my GOG library, but I find going back to joystick and keyboard controls completely alien to me now, even if they were second nature in the 90s.

@h3s I only saw Landstalker once in the wild, which was a used copy at my local indy shop. It's the copy I still own to this day. It stank of cigarette smoke, but that whole shop did!

The only other place I saw it advertised was in one of my mum's shopping catalogues (Janet Frazer or Kays, I think) at a price well out of my range, even if you could pay weekly.

There's also a monkey. Because it's Monkey Island.

That's not just any monkey, it's Jojo!

But what is Murray the demonic skull doing here?

Retroid reverting to form here. Why produce one dual screen clamshell device when you can release three?

It's a shame. When Retroid get it right, they really get it right.

@Bot_Bot_69 I don't think you missed out. I only have the "new" 3DS XL, so I don't know what the original was like. I found that into-the-screen type games worked the best, but even with the few exceptions that worked for me I mostly preferred not to use the 3D.

Mind you my eyesight is a bit dodgy anyway, so I may not be the best judge of these things.

@Kumatz It's not out yet, so we don't know 😁

I haven't got a Thor, but Joey's Retro Handhelds on YouTube just did a 1+ year review and he's still raving about it. This RG DDS looks promising, but I always caution to wait until the reviews are in... and then wait a little longer for the real reviews come in.

@KingMike True, but even on the New 3DS XL the only games I felt really worked for me were the Sega Arcade 3D titles, and particularly Galaxy Force 2. I haven't played every 3DS game of course, so if anyone has recommendation please do give them a mention.

I'm interested, simply because 3DS hardware isn't going to last forever.

Not having the 3D effect is a bonus if you ask me. With the right game and the right setting it worked great on the 3DS, but those moments were few and far between, so I usually kept it off.

This being Anbernic, however, it's bound to be botched or bungled in at least one way. I'd also imagine this coming in around $250/£200 or more.

@GravyThief Yes, but I think Damo was trying to relate clearly which end of the device you end up holding.

I still think this needs to be in £100-£120 price range. I get it that component costs are through the roof, and that the two Banjo games are a real sweetener. But £170 is a lot for not much in the way of tech. I don't know why they don't just subcontract the manufacturing to an outfit like Anbernic.

I'll say this for Blaze and Evercade, though. What they're doing now is lightyears ahead of all that AtGames crap they used to pump out.

@slider1983 Wouldn't surprise me.

@slider1983 Probably one of those who owns what rights minefields.

22nd April 2027: Sorry everybody, but due to unforeseen circumstances we're having to delay release until 2028. I know this may come as a disappointment, but we'd rather release the 800XL in its intend... blah, blah, blah, learning experience, blah, blah, blah insert extra waffle here.

This company now has a reputation for failing to deliver. A man would have to be some sort of a fool not to see the trend and pre-order this.

I used Play Asia a few times to import the Japan-only Cave shooters for the 360.

Other than that, I had a couple of EA Genesis games (Syndicate and Desert Strike). I don't count this as importing, however, as I merely went to Cash Converters not really knowing that they were import versions.

Some of my big-box PC CRPGs (and some other games like Warcraft 2) are the American versions. Technically these were imports, it's just that it was me physically going to the states, buying them, and then bringing them back.

The only hardware I've ever "imported" is a Japanese Vita Lite in a nice turquoise colour, although this was via a UK based eBay seller*.

*Edit - how could I forget my GP2X and all the other Chinese/Far East handhelds, gadgets, widgets, wotsits and other "stuff" I've bought?

@Sketcz Ok, ordered!

One of my favourite anecdotes about the Game Boy (and one I sincerely hope is actually true) is that when a senior Sony executive spotted it, they berated their engineers and claimed it should have been a Sony product, given the company's success with the Walkman and Discman.

I've heard the same thing, except about the iPod. I have the sneaking suspicion that variations of the anecdote emerge to suit the circumstances.

@-wc- High-Five!

I'm tempted, but I want a cast iron guarantee: If I buy this now, I don't want to see an extended/enhanced/definitive version released 12 months hence.

@GravyThief Ordered!

@Mr_Jan I'd like to know which game series you have developed.

Is it none?

So before you start giving advice out to people who made games and built careers out of them, try doing it yourself first.

Well I say well done to the Oliver Twins for experimenting with the tech and for refusing to kowtow to the braying mob.

It seems fairly clear to me that the people behind this are keen to keep hold of as much as that $1.8M as possible.

I don't blame them, to be honest.

This is a real shame. I was hoping for a quirky, eccentric, British design that, despite all the odds, managed to work.

But at that price, with those issues, and with Chinese companies pumping out emulation devices more regularly than an atomic clock ticks, I can't justify the purchase.

Still I hope this isn't the end of Grant Sinclair's tinkering. The GamerCard showed promise, it just needed more time in the oven.

When I think back to the 80s and early 90s, I knew only one person who owned an NES and another who owned a Master System. Given the sales and population size back then, it feels like I should have known more people who owned one or the other.

@Tankov

"Witch-hunt mentality". Now you are just over-exaggerating the situation. Some people here have very strong opinion about AI and like to ridicule the incompetent individuals who used it. I don't think I've seen anyone who had threaten to take any harmful action.

No, I think I've got it spot on. You've even fallen into the same trap - you've called them "AI bros". Once you start calling people names it's a slippery slope.

@Tankov

With that in mind, shouldn't the burden of responsibility falls onto Silicon Valley instead of whichever local official you blame for "bad city planning"?

I don't know what it's like where you live, but planning is very much a matter of local decision making where I am. My local council has the ultimate say on what gets built and where. So when you hear these stories coming out that people are protesting against data centers, well yes they are, but more to the point they're protesting against the local decision makers who greenlit the development.

Until the authors of these vibe-coded translations and recompilations can prove that they only used locally-run models trained solely on data that have been allowed by their owners, then people have the right to be suspicious and critical of these projects from the environmental and intellectual rights angle.

I wish it was limited to suspicion and criticism. But as we've seen in this thread, what we really have is a witch-hunt mentality.

@81632bit No, that wasn't the argument I was making at all. People can read me actual argument above, but to summarise:

If your concerns about AI are environmental or because they "steal" data, local LLMs provide an answer to that. Open source models are generally trained on publicly available data.

And yes, making things easier is a good thing.

@81632bit

Ah, the old environmental and theft retort. I'll come on to why those aren't arguments against AI in a moment, but if either of them were true local LLMs have you covered.

I run an open source model locally. No data center required, and trained only on publicly available data.

However to address the topics of:
a) The environment. This is really an argument for better Town & City planning regulations in the United States. Those problems don't exist elsewhere and could easily be ameliorated in the United States.
b) Theft. I don't think most of the people parroting this line believe it. If they did, I'd ask them how many roms, isos, bios files, ebooks/pdfs, mp3, films, applications they possess without the right to.

As for laziness - the printing press took over from the scribe, the word processor took over from the typing pool, AI is going to take over from programmers.

@Tankov Yes. You said you want to see "strict limits" and then went on to mention consumer rights. I wonder how you can do either without imposing tests of one form or another. I also wonder how anyone can definitively know what AI can or can't do (in order to "drum it in to people") without extensive experimentation.

@81632bit

I don't think you have to accept anything. If you don't like AI, LLM's, Machine Learning, or any of the associated technologies that's your preference.

But that doesn't give you or anybody else the right to attack people who do want to use the technology, who do want to experiment with it.

And unlike @Tankov who seems to think there needs to be some sort of test, although he's not sure what, before anyone can use the tech, I think people should be free to use it.

Wow, that's looking top notch!

@Damo Thanks!

@Damo How does the hinge feel to you? I know you can't possibly to hundreds-of-thousands of open/closed on it, but does it feel robust?

@81632bit Is that addressed to me?

Robot Jox is one of the worst films I've ever seen. I mean shockingly poor.

Terrible script, terrible acting, and I think the director must have been either drunk or absent most of the time. If it was a choice between Robot Jox and a blank wall whilst being serenaded by an out-of-tune harmonica for 90 minutes, the wall and harmonica win.

@Deway Yes, he's certainly been a lot better than the usual culprits shouting "SLOP" at the top of their lungs. 😜

@Tankov It just means I'll modify my language to be clearer for you. Don't get me wrong, your English is very good, but I think I might be being a bit too colloquial which you're taking literally.

BTW I'm guessing German, Austrian, or German-speaking Swiss.

@Tankov Is English a second language for you?

@Tankov You missed the point:

It doesn't matter how convinced other people are about the feasibility of landing on the moon, if you, personally don't believe it's possible you will never get there.

@Tankov Well I think he should be able to use AI in ways he finds most useful. I also believe he should be free to release beta versions of his efforts on a schedule of his own choosing.

Furthermore, I am glad there are people experimenting with these tools in this field. Nobody ever got to the moon by believing the task was impossible in the first place.

@Tankov So where does a recomp of Knuckles' Chaotix fit within that framework?

@Tankov

"All these talks about "AI is getting better" won't matter if we don't impose strict limits and educate everyone about when, where and how they should use AI."

Who gets to decide these strict limits and who is going to impose them and provide the education? Are they moral or criminal limits? What sort of education is it? Religious? Civic? Are we going to send transgressors to prison or perhaps the gulag?

@Ruka Fair play, that's a completely legitimate position.

@Ruka Lots of reasons:

Higher resolutions
Widescreen
Greater draw distances
HD textures
Locked/improved frame rates
Mods
Portability (running natively on your system of choice)
Preservation
Controller support

It's not a replacement for emulation or real hardware, but another option that has its own strengths.

It's a work in progress, which hasn't even reached a stable 1.0 release.

Somebody really should do a history of Gaelco. I think it would make for a fascinating read.