Playstation Classic announced

[Dogg Thang]

I feel like the average stupid punter is something of a myth in this day and age. At least to some extent. The NES and SNES Mini came long after a load of Blaze and whatever systems and, as far as I can see, massively outperformed them and did so because the people buying them knew they were done well. Yeah, there will always be clueless buyers but what tipped the scales was informed buyers. Similarly here, it's the lack of informed sales that took this out of the SNES Mini category and threw it firmly into the Blaze category.

[Atticus]

Sony totally telegraphed the poor games line-up by only listing the five biggest when they announced it. I was looking at the back of the SNES Mini box a couple of days ago and straight away I was lost in the titles ... it just made me want to plug in and play.

[Colin]

At £25, if it can be converted with a Pi inside that's a great deal, Tesco probably shifted a load at that price.

[Nu-Eclipse]

At £25, if it can be converted with a Pi inside that's a great deal, Tesco probably shifted a load at that price.

I would concur with this.

None to be found at my local Tesco Superstore, if they were even there in the first place.

[MrKirov]

Bought mine using the 15% ebay discount code on argos, came to £42- figured it was worth a punt to mess with modding it for that.

Got it, and modded it- very very easy. Bleemsync means you can load everything from an USB stick, so you dont have to mess with the OG systems bios at all- want the original 20 games? Turn it off, and remove the stick- it;ll go back to normal without issue.

Bought a 32GB Sandisk Cruzer blade, ripped a bunch of my NTSC PS1 titles to BIN/CUE, and got some PNG images of the box art. Loaded them up, now my PS1 classic has near to 40 games, each of them looks and acts like it would on the regular classic, inclusing resume points. Each has an easy prompt to access the emulation menu to add scanlines, mess with frameskips, extra save states- everything you'd expect from an emulator.

Loaded with stuff like;

Alundra
Brave Fencer
Tekken 2 & 3
Parasite Eve 1 & 2
Xenogears
Xmen vs SF
Marvel Vs Capcom
Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold
Legend of Dragoon
Tomb Raiders
Wipeout
Ridge Racers
Final Fantasy's
Croc
Gex
Twisted Metal 2/World Tour
Koudelka
Resident Evils
Breath of Fire 3 & 4
Silent Hill
Rival Schools
Soul Blade
Street Fighter EX
Vandal hearts
Dino Crisis 1 & 2

Quite easy to do, very happy with the result now. I could have done this with Raspberry Pi or whatever, I know- but theres something nice about having it on actual similar hardware. I do like the controllers even thouh they arent Dual Shocks- however, wireless adaptors are there that make them work if you want too.

Worth £40 if you fancy it

[MrKirov]

Just need to pick up some copies of ;

Klonoa
Pandemonium 1 & 2
Rapid Reload
Bloody Roar

ad a few others, and i'll whack them all on there. It outputs a pretty decent image from what ive seen so far, so will help preserve my discs, and mean I dont have to have the original hardware put in and out all the time.

[fallenangle]

Just viewed a YT tutorial for using Bleemsync - looks an absolute doddle. If I didn't still have multiple working PS/PSOnes and PS2s and had bought a Classic I'd be doing this to it ASAP.

[MrKirov]

Just viewed a YT tutorial for using Bleemsync - looks an absolute doddle. If I didn't still have multiple working PS/PSOnes and PS2s and had bought a Classic I'd be doing this to it ASAP.

It was quite easy yes - in fact the newest update (to be released in a few days) goes even further -

-Custom UI support
-Auto updates
-Fixes to boot time
-More compatibility
-Folders
-Custom GUI to load and organise/load games on your PC.
-The ability to boot to retroarch from the normal classic menu and back again without removing the USB
-The ability to merge the games list so you still have access to the original 20 games, but with the ability to mess with the emulation like you can on the custom files.

It's pretty wild.

I too have modded PS1/2 and prefer this option right now, just because they're all loaded on, and easily connected without fannying with RGB/Component cables- also removes some problems ive been having with supported resolutions/screen scaling on different TV's. Then there's the removal of wear and tear on the discs- its nice to have this kicking about, especially for physical real estate too.

[MrKirov]

Makes me wonder why Sony didnt bother really. Terrible game list, mixed with PAL roms and no basic emulation options.

Perhaps they saw what people did to the SNES mini and relied on sales to come from people doing this to it? Silly really, this thing could have printed cash if it was at this level from the start. Even with only 20 games but a better list with these emulation options it would have been a no brainer.

Idiots.

[randombs]

What for?

People like us would mod it, others would be happy with the 20 games.

Any more than the bare minimum they appear to have put into this would be money down the drain.

Most of us complaining about it wouldn’t have bought it anyway when push came to shove, or we would have bought it to mod and improve.

[MrKirov]

People bought the NES/ SNES mini on the quality of the games, and positive reviews.

The Playstation being just as, if not more iconic would have meant that having more positive press and a better selection of games might have tipped the scales- at least made it not bomb as hard as it obviously has.

Plenty of us with actual SNES still bought the mini well before the hacks were there, because it looked to be a quality product, with a great selection of games, and being able to connect it via HDMI. I don’t see how it would have been any different with a mini PS1- had the effort been put in.

[speedlolita]

Cheers for the PM dude but I'm still some distance from surrendering to emulation. My PSIO should be with me in a few months so I'm not really looking for alternatives. Though I did briefly check out Mednafen recently as that's supposed to be the most accurate PS1 emulator and it seemed okay I guess?

[MrKirov]

That’s fair, for me it’s a space issue, and a conservation one.

The retro arch emulator used in bleemsync seems reasonable- I haven’t noticed slowdown or glitches yet- only when trying to apply scanlines tonsome games. I haven’t got a CRT, so the ability to add them, and clean up the image somewhat compared to playing on an LCD is helpful.

[speedlolita]

I'm not a fan of faux scanlines. With Mednafen I set it to be the nearest integer scale with no stretching and turned off bilinear filtering and that was basically the look I'm after.

[Lebowski]

I probably would have picked this up if the emulation wasn't so bad, the mix of pal and ntsc roms show are real lack of care or attention to detail, as dose the lack of analog sticks. What this should offer over the likes of a Rasbbery pie build is a feeling of authenticity and accurate representations of games of the time. the PlayStation branding, authentic pads paired with a slice of the best games the system had to offer in a neat and cheapish package is what they should be offering here.


the other issue is I don't believe it offers the same nostalgia a 16 bit console like the SNES or NES is because of how ugly and how poorly a lot of early 3d games look and play when judged by today's standards. It's not like 2d platform games are all the rage on the modern consoles anymore too, the pixel art of the NES and SNES offer real slices of nostalgia and a style of games that many people won't of played in a good number of years.

another thing thats stopping me picking one up even at £45 is i have a better PlayStation mini than the one they released this year too,