Best portable Emulation device (MAME)

[BerryTogart]

It seems there are a ton of options out there in regards to portable emulation. As I would like to participate a bit more in the shmup of the month, but find myself reluctant to fire up the PC each time I could squeeze a round or two in this leaves the question:

Can you recommend a handheld for MAME couch gaming? Thanks

 

[StevenK]

I love my psp go mame setup

 

[wataru330]

I love my psp go mame setup

This. PSP•GO totally scratches my portable itch.

 

[tangemo]

If you have any android devices around you can make those very viable for emulation. It's easy to use a bluetooth controller or some gamer grips etc.

This guy covers a lot of those options along with some other cool stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_0CVCfC_3iuHqmyClu59Uw

 

[NeoSneth]

I would say PSP's as well. The current problem is finding batteries. I'm not sure if this applies to the Go's as much as the 1000's, 2000's, etc.

 

[BerryTogart]

I actually use a vita now and managed to install RetroArch.. however the whole setup seems to be pretty weird. I did test some games and while cps2 does work when specifically selecting the game (e.g.. Gigawing) it won't show up in a scan, NeoGeo (NTM) isn't found in any way and not startable via direct selection, R-Type is the only game that also gets listed in the overview but has not a single emu that runs it at decent speed. Arcade wise I'm not too impressed at this point in time, especially since I hoped to get this up and running for the shmup of the month and CAVE games don't seem to run in any way.

 

[GohanX]

Don't forget that when it comes to arcade ROMs getting the right rom for a particular emulator is a bit of a clusterfuck. Best thing to do is find out what particular romset your FBA or MAME core needs and download a full set torrent for that particular version. I'd try FBA first since it's a bit faster than MAME for the compatible games which is handy for for slower devices.

 

[BerryTogart]

Don't forget that when it comes to arcade ROMs getting the right rom for a particular emulator is a bit of a clusterfuck. Best thing to do is find out what particular romset your FBA or MAME core needs and download a full set torrent for that particular version. I'd try FBA first since it's a bit faster than MAME for the compatible games which is handy for for slower devices.

Thank you

 

[awbacon]

I love my psp go mame setup

Exactly this. Perfect size for travel

 

[GohanX]

Thank you

I don't know if you can do this on your Vita, but in Retropie what I do sometimes is just download every FBA and MAME core that's compatible with the device. When I launch the game I'll select a different core until I find the one that works with it and save that core for that rom so that next time I open it the correct core is selected.

This is a pain in the ass though, which is why I don't use MAME much. FBA has most of the arcade games I want to play these days anyway since it covers Capcom, SNK, Konami, and some Sega and Cave.

 

[Metlcub]

I have found the PS Vita to be much easier to hack, and the systems are starting to go way cheep but are going up again... The OLED screen makes neo games look so sweet.

 

[Xavier]

A handheld that runs on a pi3 should play those games pretty well.
The new Odroid go Advance should handle them as well.
Yeah I run Pifba on my Vita and it doesn't play newer shooters very well.

 

[geise]

For non-mame stuff I've been using the ps vita quite a bit lately. I stay away from snes on vita though since it's slow. If I'm not using my vita I usually just use my GPD Win 2 device. Especially for mame. I don't mess with Retroarch since it's main MAME core is super slow compared to standard Windows MAMEUI 64. I run it through launchbox for easy game selection. Win 2 is fast enough for most of what I want out of MAME. I've even been playing a lot of Daytona 2 and Sega Rally 2 through the Supermodel emulator. Looks and runs fantastic.