Ouya: The $99, Android-Powered TV Game Console

i know how that sounds, but old systems often look really bad on HDTVs, worse than they did on CRTs

Old CRTs did add a certain fuzziness to the picture which can be hard to separate from the whole aesthetic of retro games. The first time I ran a BBC Micro emulator full screen on a PC with an LCD display, it was a bit of a shock, because everything was so crisp and someone how much blockier that I remembered.

Some LCD TVs (and emulators) try to "solve" the blocky sharpness by curving the lines and it looks even worse.

RE: Ouya tho, give it time. AFAIK there are a few big companies that are planning on supporting the thing.

xp Bear in mind that 8-bit/16-bit era games were designed visually with the limitation/feature of scanlines, so it is jarring when you see pixel perfect emulation. Sometimes it looks crisp and great, but other times it looks very strange. We discussed this a little bit in another thread, that some emulators now are trying to solve this problem with special filters and such, but it's a trickier problem than it sounds. In general, old analog inputs into modern HDTVs generally don't look so good

Most emulators have something like "X frames of motion blur" which doesn't really cut it. Though I'm definitely in the camp that doesn't want CRT-ification filters.

And in general interpolation/upscale filters on LCD TVs are terrible regardless of whether you're looking at a console or a TV programme.

I agree, but only because right now they're all terrible. I think at some point if they can solve the math problem or whatever it is to make it look the way it was originally did, it's an option we should have rather than everything being super-crisp or 4xAA.

that retron controller looks so uncomfortable

guys i know all this about scanlines

the solution is, get a CRT tv, and a NES

eh, putting roms on an SD card onto a flash cart is sooooooo cumbersome, who wants to do that?

yeh retron controller is rubbish, but you can plug in any NES, SNES or Genesis/Megadrive controller supposedly
i'm interested in how it turns out, but they seem to be promising a lot of stuff that looks hard to deliver

so, despite being one of the earliest fools kickstarters, I am apparently one of the very last set of people to receive the console. they send a weekly email update with the shipping stats, and the % of Ouyas that have been shipped to early funders is at around 90% or higher.

:(

That sucks. Couldn't they have sent out the consoles in the order that people paid?

i got mine. made so little of an impression that i didn't even think to post!

I'm basically going to use it to emulate older games, I guess. Sigh. and if someone figures out cool ways to hack it and blow my miiiiiind duuuuuude, then that as well.

What's your opinion on the controller?

the controller feels cheap as shit but it feels okay in the hands.
the only appeal so far (and it's a big one) is that there are genesis/snes/ds/gameboy/nes emulators available for immediate download so this is the no frills 100 buck emu console I've been waiting for. Now i just need another life where i can replay all my old games.

Yeah I've had no shipping notification yet, seems a bit of a shambles really. Apparently they e had to push back their retail launch date etc. But yeah, hard to get too miffed about delays given that I'm only going to be using it to play 10+ year old games.

would you guys get behind some kind of open gaming platform that ran on existing last-gen consoles (ps2,xbox,wii,etc...) through some sort of hackery? i always thought that the way to do this sort of thing would be to take advantage of the hardware that's already in most people's houses.

prefer Steambox-like "platform" to open up; their marketplace may be curated, but they have most of what you already need (open PC platform, TV output and controller input standards)

could ouya run steambox client?

now THAT is an interesting question.

btw, i don't dig that this thing is by default always online and reporting back so i basically unplug it whenever i'm not using it... it's also the fourth HDMI on a three HDMI tv soooo....

finally received my ouya in the mail. i tried a few emulators. the EMUya seems to work really well for NES - no complaints there. MUPEN64 is the first n64 emulator i've ever tried, and it doesn't appear to work at all (rogue squadron wouldn't even load, mario golf had visual chaos all over the screen, and mario tennis is like having a slow motion seizure).

of the modernish games, deep dungeons of doom is really fun!

how does the controller feel?

it feels fine to me, although i think probably more forgiving than most. there was a moment where one of the buttons got stuck, but that was because when i put the faceplate back on after inserting the batteries i didn't push it into the proper position. the d-pad feels good (which is especially important to me because i'm mainly playing old games and modern games with a retro feel). haven't really used the analog sticks much. the triggers feel good to me as well.

i kinda wish it had a start button! it has an ouya button which lets you exit out of games or back to the home screen, but a lot of older games are like "PRESS START!" at the beginning and it would be nice to..press start.

sorry, first sentence should read "...i think I'M probably more forgiving..."

in terms of the controller. in real life i am ruthless, don't blink, and drink blood

one thing that i wish existed (if someone knows of it, please let me know!) is some sort of website for reviews/recommendations of ouya games. the menu system for browsing through games to download is not so helpful. three of the categories (CHECK IT, STAFFPICKS, and FAVS) all seem to cover the same territory. i find myself wishing that there was a website that would just recommend 10 games to try out. actually, there sort of is already, but it is...not a good website.

another gripe - games need to be upfront about what is available as free content and what's going to cost extra. for example, like many people i downloaded Final Fantasy III immediately, and it lets you jump straight into the quest. upon launching the game i see that there's an option to purchase the full game for $15.99, but it doesn't offer any indication of how far you can go before it'll make you pay.

it just seems like that for a platform that is built on a model of free to try, purchase extra content/the full game, there should be a system in place that is clear about what you're getting and not getting for every game.

the real killer for me is just that i have 3 hd inputs on my tv, a 360 a ps3 and a tivo.
i don't like switching out cords. /first world etc

deception is a key component of F2P profitability

update on the n64 roms - as i should have known, it's more of an issue with the roms than anything to do with the ouya. the super mario 64 rom works very well (at least after 30 minutes or so).

You know forks, decent and very cheap hdmi auto-splitters exist these days. I only recently picked one up but it CHANGED MY LIFE.

Anyway I finally got a tracking number for my ouya the other day, but DHL say it doesn't exist.

Any MAME-type emus on there yet ZS?

RE: HDMI Splitter - you got an amazon link suggestion?

This is the one I got - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001DAHS5Q/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

xpost

not that i know of...but that just comes from browsing the RETRO category, which had a NES, SNES, and a N64 emulator. i'm hopeful that soon there will be more emulators popping up, especially a genesis or Gameboy emulator.

I guess sideloading is an option too, not sure how fiddly that'll prove to be though.

yeah, and on that topic, i wish i knew more about android. obviously ouya is not going to be a top tier xbox/ps/nintendo level platform, so a lot of its value will come from the ways that you can hack and modify it. unfortunately i know nothing about how to do any of that stuff. hopefully some decent newbie guides will be made available soon.

forks - check monoprice for any cables, splitters, etc. Cheap price, good quality.

is this what i'm looking for?
http://www.monoprice.com/Product/?c_id=101&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011001&p_id=8150&seq=1&format=2#description

I think so?

i don't think i really understand how the controllers are supposed to sync up with the ouya. it instructs that you should hold in the ouya button in the center until the 4 lights switch to 2, and then let go. i hold in the button, a few seconds the 4 lights switch to 2, and then i let go. then, if i'm lucky, a minute goes by and it finally recognizes the controller. if i'm unlucky, like right now, 5 minutes go by with the two lights flashing, and the controller is totally unresponsive otherwise.

oh wait, finally, as i was typing that, it finally synced up. it had been about 6-7 minutes.

you don't sound like a happy beta tester.

killer app: make a badly animated frog jump around Swindon.

http://www.fayju.com/blog/projects/amazing-frog/

(btw I've only used this so far for emulation, N64 and snes stuff is working really well, haven't yet managed to find time to do the extra bit of fiddling that MAME will require, but yeah, this box is basically doing what I wanted it to do so that's fine).

which n64 emulator are you using? whichever one i used had catastrophic problems with more than half of the roms i tried.

Just the one in their store. I've only tried 5 or 6 roms to be fair, and there are a few which didn't work when I tried to run them at full resolution but worked fine when I dropped them to something closer to the original screen size (which is I guess 640x480? Maybe even lower actually). So that might help.

http://i.imgur.com/WBVmBuk.jpg

;_;

have to admit i'm tempted by that $39.99 sega, though. never had a genesis growing up!

The Ouyas on that shelf are still priced at $99.99, which is what they sell for on the Ouya website.