Anbernic's second take on a dedicated Nintendo DS handheld refines almost everything I loved about the original, and somehow still manages to be incredibly affordable.
    • PerfectDark@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      10 minutes ago

      They’re super different handhelds, despite being ostensibly the same thing!

      I have two of the Thors from AYN. One is the Thor Pro they sent me back before release to review, the other is the low-end entry model, the Thor Lite. And to me they perfectly nail the 3DS requirements. Obviously you can run DS games to your heart’s content as well, even the Lite model has more than enough power to run them.

      The DS Plus has the advantage of two screens matching size (the original DS had the same size top and bottom screen), and the resolution is exactly 4x that original size. So (this isn’t upscaling), what you get is 4x ‘integer scaling’. It will present the pixels perfectly!

      The Thor Pro will run anything from Switch to the WiiU, PS3, PC game emulation, 3DS upscaled like you wouldn’t believe. But it is designed to be wonderful at everything, and has a price to match that. The DS Plus is super affordable and perfect with DS games. The included stylus you store in the body is the icing on the cake to me!

      Power? Upscaling? Emulating any and all systems? AYN’s Thor. DS? Older low performance systems like PSX, GBA, SNES and so on? DS Plus.

  • NekoKoneko@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 hours ago

    Thanks for this. Does the system use the exact same physical gap between screens? I know some games do fake a continuous play area and were designed for the exact dimensions of the DS including screen gap.

    That is always the litmus test for me, if those games naturally show the backgrounds and sprites scrolling between screens in a way that accommodates the exact same gap.

    • PerfectDark@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      6 minutes ago

      I’m not entirely sure if it is the exactly same gap size, but the screens do match with the action. The best example is Sonic (Rush, I think it is called?). The action matches sync on both screens, there’s no Hz misalignment as we saw on the RG DS back last year before release (and the patch which fixed it!)

  • blkvvvs@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4·
    3 hours ago

    I’m super tempted to buy this but I know it wouldn’t get used enough to justify purchasing.

    • PerfectDark@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      3 hours ago

      Super understandable!

      At least it occupies the lower end of the retro handheld price bracket. Some of the handhelds I’ve reviewed have been worth a stunning amount, I just love how the lower end with a niche laser focused specific purpose like this one can be a more approachable price. You could wait for the 11/11 sales coming up soonish on Aliexpress, they’re famously pretty good for discounted prices :)

  • PerfectDark@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    3·
    4 hours ago

    I’ve just published my time with the Anbernic RG DS Plus, the bulk of this is the usual review things, but of some note was that I got to chat directly with Anbernic about the device and their take on it: why they revisited the original RG DS, the new NNDDSS emulator and some of the design decisions behind the Plus.

    The RG DS Plus itself is Anbernic’s second iteration of making a NDS-focused retro handheld, a modern take on being able to emulate all of the original DS games. I love this one so much.

    I also spoke with the devs behind Cocoon, who are working on bringing Cocoon (a super 3DS-ish front-end/launcher for dual screen handhelds) to the RG DS Plus very soon. Just a bit of a chance to look a little beyond the hardware itself and at what this could mean for dual-screen Linux handhelds going forward, Cocoon for the DS Plus isn’t far off now (they’re moving from being Android-only to both Android and Linux!)

    If you’re interested in the RG DS Plus, DS emulation or where these weird little dual-screen handhelds are heading, you might like this one!___