<story><title>Odroid-Go Super: $80 Games Console That Looks Like a Switch, but Runs Ubuntu</title><url>https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=187&amp;t=41283</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>imtringued</author><text>The hardware looks impressive but it worries me that the first photo is basically just showing off a bunch of emulators. Why not show off more legitimate ways of playing games on it? I personally have never used steam big picture mode but it feels like it would be a good fit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DCKing</author><text>&amp;gt; Why not show off more legitimate ways of playing games on it?&lt;p&gt;While emulation gets a bad rap because of rampant piracy involved with it for most people, it&amp;#x27;s the piracy that makes it illegitimate and not emulation itself. There&amp;#x27;s nothing about emulation that requires piracy - e.g. Nintendo Switch Online has NES and SNES emulation without piracy. You &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; also dump cartridges [1] or buy legal ROMs [2] to play on this Odroid [3].&lt;p&gt;I understand the confusion, but please do be careful to speak about piracy when you mean to speak about piracy. Emulation is a technically interesting exercise that allows for the preservation and transformation of old video games.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.retrode.org&amp;#x2F;about&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.retrode.org&amp;#x2F;about&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lesateliersphv.ca&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;extracting-roms-from-sega-mega-drive-genesis-classics-bought-on-steam-on-linux&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lesateliersphv.ca&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;extracting-roms-from-sega-mega-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3]: You might argue: &amp;quot;but few people actually do this&amp;quot;. And you&amp;#x27;d be right. Piracy for old game systems is just far more convenient. But that still makes piracy piracy and emulation emulation.</text></comment>
<story><title>Odroid-Go Super: $80 Games Console That Looks Like a Switch, but Runs Ubuntu</title><url>https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=187&amp;t=41283</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>imtringued</author><text>The hardware looks impressive but it worries me that the first photo is basically just showing off a bunch of emulators. Why not show off more legitimate ways of playing games on it? I personally have never used steam big picture mode but it feels like it would be a good fit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mikepurvis</author><text>I agree— I have a PowKiddy RGB10 (knockoff of the previous generation, Odroid Go Advance), and it&amp;#x27;s wildly capable hardware, but the only native ports are either games that have been open sourced (Quake, Doom series) or have modern SDL recreations. Even running DOSBox is dubious because so much software of that era (even stuff like point and click adventures) just assumed a keyboard would be present for occasional but critically-needed use such as inputting the name of your save file. It wasn&amp;#x27;t until Steam Big Picture that there was any serious expectation of PC games being solely controllable from a gamepad. Basically you&amp;#x27;re stuck making up per-title keyboard mappings, and that sucks.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the marketplace issue is a bootstrapping problem. None of the companies making these are set up to support an ecosystem of legitimate software delivery, and now the culture that&amp;#x27;s built up around them treats the availability of thousands of classic game ROMs as being part of the value proposition. So even if you were to try to start, it would be a challenge to break out of that and persuade owners of them not to pirate your lovingly ported indie games when they can play the entire SNES, Genesis, and GBA libraries for &amp;quot;free&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;One final barrier is that although some do, many of these devices don&amp;#x27;t include internal wifi, I assume due to certification hassles. Instead a USB host port is included into which you plug a compact dongle. So this further complicates any delivery&amp;#x2F;DRM schemes, if you have to provide a system image with support for many possible wireless dongles, and perhaps some kind of offline-transfer scheme for those without a dongle or who don&amp;#x27;t want to use one.&lt;p&gt;All in all, it&amp;#x27;s a tough nut to crack; I&amp;#x27;m not surprised no one has tried. The closest thing is probably Panic&amp;#x27;s Playdate, and they went with their own hardware, with much-reduced specs and a gimmicky crank, but at least having end-to-end control.</text></comment>