Hyperkin RetroN 5 - The Translation Patch Machine / MY LIFE IN GAMING 

***** [Try4ce] Newegg had them on sale for $115 back in the winter, that's when I grabbed mine! Not sure how often sales like that come around.

***** ***** This sounds really odd, but check your local Urban Outfitters to see if they still have one. They were on closeout there and SUPER cheap there recently.

***** They are good machines. I had issues with the first one I got, and the cart slots are notoriously unwilling to let go of the carts sometimes, but the machine is great. Using SNES pads to play Mega Drive games is brilliant too.

***** you can also use this to play roms =b

***** Not mentioned in the video is that the Retron 5 is using stolen emulator source code.

Percio M [Try4ce] I've taken the board out of games that won't work no matter how hard I try... they've only been pretty valueless games. Just sort of a neat thing to display, I guess. Sad, though.

***** [Try4ce] "Much easier," yes, but easy? No. The Japanese version of Ninja Gaiden III still took me more effort to beat than either of the first two games...

Well I think for me there is a fine line between really hard and unfair. This sounds more along the lines of Bloodborne where the game is brutally hard but doesn't purposely screw the player over.

***** [Try4ce] Right. It took me hours to work through the final level, but once I learned it, I felt like I knew it. But I NEEDED those infinite continues to learn it (learning levels is a big part of my retro game enjoyment, and also why I like Souls/Bloodborne/etc.).

+Otaku_GameFan [Try4ce] Yeah, everyone hates on the FFV PS1 port, but I've got a lot of respect for it... i mean, it was our first version here in the west. Treasure of the Rudras is the last (I think) internally developed game by Square for the Super Famicom. It's kind of surreal because it looks so much like FFVI, but isn't FFVI. There's some interesting-sounding mechanic where you build your own spells using words, which was apparently a major hurdle for translation. I haven't played it yet myself, but I definitely intend to buy it.

+wittyname100 [Try4ce] While this is not something I've dealt with personally, I believe this is what the UPS format is for. I know that Fire Emblem 6 on GBA needs to be expanded for the patch.

+wittyname100 Take the non-expanded rom (that matches your original cartridge in every way) and the finished product that you're trying to patch to and create a patch between those instead and generally you'll have no problems on the Retron. I've ran into a few that needed expanded and generally as long as what i described is the last step you take you should be fine.

+JerryTerrifying [Try4ce] Probably, but the point is that I wanted to use the real cartridges. We're going to be doing a video on Everdrives in the future.

+My Life in Gaming But the real cart really isn't being used. So it's just sitting there while a rom loaded into the ram of an emulator is being played. The difference between a downloaded rom and one ripped yourself is minimal. May as well just set the Japanese cart in front of the system. Seems like an awful lot of mental gymnastics to justify the piracy. Same thing with repros. The games are still being pirated with the added bonus of wrecking legit games and paying for it. Every time I see a bootleg Mr Gimmick I mourn the loss of The Joker Returns. It would be less wasteful to just emulate or if legit hardware matters, and it does to me too, just use a flash cart. I guess it's neat the retron does that but I'd honestly rather play on the real hardware and I'm one of the CRT goons to boot. dunno to each his own.

[Try4ce] It's true that it's not actually playing the cart, but it's still the best for me. I can't take a game seriously unless I actually own it. Original hardware is very important to me too, but if I had to make a concession, I would still choose the game cart first.

+JerryTerrifying Easier? no its about the same. Also getting an everdrive for each system, then getting all the equipment to even play those games then having the systems modded to get a better picture quality and the price shoots sky high. Don't get me wrong everdrive's do serve a purpose, playing homebrews and games which have went up into ludicrous pricing on real hardware, but in my opinion, translating cheaper or completely regional Japanese super famicom games the retron 5 pretty much has this beat,

+GregLH0 I think most people here would already have all the hardware. The picture quality situation is true but the retron using emulation still presents accuracy issues and input lag. My point is mostly if I'm going to emulate I can do that on my pc without buying an emulator machine. An everdrive isn't emulation and I can play it on my crt, with real hardware, with a real controller and no input lag. When I left that comment I just got done playing the fan translated version of Gargoyle's Quest II on the gameboy with an everdrive. I was able to play it at my job on the real hardware.

ShogunGino I already do this with everdrives as well :) but having a Retron5 cant hurt any.

Also most everdrives don't properly translate the voltage used within the cartridge to match with the voltage used in the console. Which could lead to damage in the long term.

I have street fighter zero 2 on SNES. It's garbage and unplayable as it is too slow. A technical marvel, YES. But you wouldn't loose too much by not having the ability of playing this game. I'm better off playing it on my arcade machine, or better yet...playing the superior SSF2. What you would loose however, is the ability to play the excellent Star Ocean which uses the same chip. Now starfox's speed depends on your machine. Fat snes run this games allegedly faster than the snes jr. model (can test this myself as I own both a snes jr and super famicom)...But dunno about the retron5. STILL, unless you really love this game (even as much as I do), I wouldn't recommend it. It is more of a novelty or tech demo. The game suffers heavy stuttering and low frame rate..it runs just too slow to be enjoyed by the new generations. I love it and enjoy it mostly because of nostalgia...

***** [Try4ce] I bought that cart less than 2 weeks ago! I can't wait to actually dig into the game for real, I can't stop thinking about the music in the pre-title scene.

When you play super mario world, do you experience any lag on the retron 5?

Whaaat, there is proof they stole code?

From what I've read, the Super UFO Pro 8 does basically the same thing the Retron 5 does, except storing the dumped ROM onto an SD card before applying the patch and passing it to the console instead of emulating the console. However, the Super UFO Pro 8 doesn't link up special chips that may be in the cartridge properly, except maybe the DSP-1, so if the game in question uses one of the special chips, you might not be able to play the game properly. The Retron 5 emulates these special chips itself, so it will work with (most of) these games anyway.

​@evknucklehead I know I'm late, but mine doesn't load games over a certain size. For example most any RPGs. So defeats the purpose.

[Try4ce] Wow, seriously?! There is internal storage, not sure how much. Surely you can somehow use it to transfer files from your computer, but I don't know, I've never tried.

Miscommunication. I bought mine at Game Over in Kingsland, GA, but it was an older used model that still has the SD card slot. (thank goodness) The store manager informed me about the new models he had just received. From what he said the new version should have only recently hit the shelves.

ayyelmaojose amazon

That's odd. I bought mine just a month ago and it has the latest firmware plus an SD card slot. Are you sure this is true? I ask because the only way to update and put cheat codes on the retron is to use an SD card...

Can u show a video robert baker of your retron 5 ...i never see a retron 5without the sd card slot..wow that has blown my mind..

[Coury] yeah, you're one person I thought would definitely get some interest from this feature!

SuperDerek RPG Reviews The convenience factor alone kinda boosts its purchaseability :)

+CSIG1001 He says in the video that likes to use original games and original hardware but if he has to compromise on one, he'll pick the hardware.

The everdrive is hardware being used on original hardware. There is no point to own a retron 5 when a modded SNES RGB on the framemeister will work just as good. Everything can be patched on the PC.. Thats like me saying I am going to buy a model 1 genesis to play master system games on the master converter attached to the genesis when i can just use the mega drive to play Master system games through the genesis since the orignal Master system hardware is already incorporated inside the genesis. The only reason to play on the Master System is mod or add the Japanese Sega Master System i Yamaha YM2413 FM synthesis chip . Which would make the gaming experience alot better for sound vs any North American version of the Master system. Even then retron cant do that. Either way my point is this patching can all be done using everdrives and i do not see the point owning a retron V unless you have a massive game library, besides the retron is not original hardware.

Everdrive is original hardware with fake game. Retron is a real cartridge with a clone system. I'm just saying that he says specifically in the video that he prefers the latter over the former. "There is no point to own a retron 5 when a modded SNES RGB on the framemeister will work just as good." Except that the above solution is gonna run you several hundred dollars just to get one system up and running. I have a Retron and it works great for what I need. It was cheap (at just $129) and it makes my games look fantastic on my modern TV. Plus it lets me use original controllers which is crucial for me. I get that there are other options, including just emulating the entire library of all those systems and getting converters to plug controllers into my PC, but I've tried emulation before and I usually mess around for 20 minutes and then get bored. For me, the Retron gets close enough to the actual experience that I find myself engaged enough to play through and finish my old games rather than just messing around with them for a bit. I totally will concede that RGB modding all your systems and doing the framemeister stuff is probably the way to go for a super enthusiast. But for someone who just plays retro games for fun and want them to look nice, the Retron is a great alternative. Gets you like, 90% of the quality/authenticity for a fraction of the time, money, and effort.

But the Retron 5 is illegal because of it's copied Copyrighted Emulators. And using a Flash Cart isn't "fake" because it takes the whole patched ROM and puts it into it's memory, then the Flash Cart has to "emulate" how actual ROM Cartridges work in order to send it to the console. In the end, it doesn't matter if the actual ROM Data is on an SD Card or in and actual Cartridge. Even though people say dumped games are "Digital" Copys, the same thing can be said about a Cartridge. Both are just ROMs and just a piece of code. The only difference is with a game dump you can have more control on what you do with that piece of code and where to store it.

+UnboxedTV I bought a Repro of Mother 3 as well and you will have to use the Gameboy Player for it or an actual GBA because the game demands that you have zero lag to do the timed hits. Repros also wont work on something like the Super Retro Advance because it causes it to randomly freeze. I also tried my repro on the RetroN 5 and it wouldn't recognize the rom that it dumped (granted this was around when the R5 first came out). I lost a LOT of saved games and a lot of progress just trying to get that damn thing to work (I eventually just used a flash cart on a GBA SP AGS-101). So yeah, I'd recommend the Gameboy Player and a CRT if have/can find one because I doubt you have GC component cables and HDTV input lag is a bitch.

Dr. Steve Brule Actually living in Australia means PAL Gamecubes have RGB output and a clever homebrewer has made an app called the Game Boy Interface, which outputs Game Boy Player footage in native 240p (The Official Game Boy Player app only outputs at 480) Combined with the Framemeister it works great

***** [Try4ce] I've had trouble with this feature, though I haven't tried importing saves for very many carts... mostly I've been using the RetroN 5 for games that I haven't yet started. I've also been suspicious that it could destroy the saves that are already on the cart, but maybe it's just coincidence that they disappeared.

***** I've backup all of my save data and randomly tested some that I didn't mind loosing the save if something went wrong, works perfectly. I also transferred my saves to my computer since flash memory is not that reliable.

+Andrew Czudak woh that sounds like magic!

+Chris X Ratio And you can get it for 3 easy payments of $49.99 so order now

[Try4ce] Well, any emulation can be expected to have imperfections. For the most part though, I rarely encounter anything unexpected.

+Jarrah White [Try4ce] I'm not sure exactly what my firmware is, but it was up to date at the time we did this video. Also keep in mind that I don't use it a ton, I mostly play on my original consoles, so other people have probably tried a much wider variety of games on the RetroN 5 than I have. Though I have some friends that use theirs all the time, for all kinds of games, and they basically never have issues (aside from the pins in the NES slot breaking after a while... they were able to get it replaced on warranty). It is true that Retroarch is the basis for the emulator tech inside the RetroN 5, and while I'm not super clear on all of the specifics, Retroarch is not supposed to be used for any commercial purposes. It's pretty crummy of Hyperkin to have done that, I won't deny that. However, for the end user, I still think it's pretty cool to use real carts on an emulator system (even if it's just using a temporary ROM dump and not really "playing" the cartridge). I would love for there to be another alternative for using translation patches in the way we describe in the video. There's another system called Retro Freak in Japan, and I'm not too sure what kind of emulators it uses. However, it stores ROMs rather than requiring the cartridge to remain in the system, so I'm not too sure how I feel about it. I'd like to try one, though.

I like mine alot too. I also have the Game Gear adapter (I've got alot of gg games). If mine went down today I'd still be tempted to get another. I guess it be best to save all games to sd card vs internal so it might be transferable to a new Retron 5. Super Retro Trio hd might be an option too if you dont want to spend that much.

@@dad7275 I have an SD card that I purchased retail that has every game for every system playable on the R5. All I need is one copy of any game from the system I want to play and I have access to that system's 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴. over 14,000 games. I'd like to see if there's a way to repair it, I just haven't found anyone who does this type of thing yet, and I haven't made time to look into it myself. I may go ahead and get another one, but all the cart slots work just as they should so it would be a shame to forego repair without at least knowing absolutely that it's a lost cause.

@@loustandards2827 I've still got my original one I bought and its still going. I do miss playing Virtra Racing Genesis. It worked fine once upon a time in my Retron5. Seems after my last update to v3.1 it stopped playing that game. Don't really know what happened. But good luck getting yours fixed. Have you contacted Hyperkin yet?

@@dad7275 Not yet, but that's a good idea.

Dad72 I just got my Retron 5 on Christmas Day. I still haven’t opened it up. 😂

@@GlassEyeGaming open that thing up and play it! Keep in mind you can reduce lag by using a wired controller and putting your TV in game mode. If your TV has no game mode turn off all enhancements in TV menu. I've heard that causes lag too. It has pros and cons but pros definitely outweighs cons.😁👍

Yep! I do it works great and is an awesome way to get Secret of Mana for 6/7$ vs 60/70$

[Try4ce] Repros/homebrews actually do work. This was a misunderstanding of ours at the time we made this video. It won't "recognize" the cart, but it can still play. Whether it works correctly is unknown. As for Super Mario RPG, I'm not aware of any particular issues with running that game.

Can you give us the model number pretty please?

[Try4ce] I think it's technically quite feasible, it's just a matter of someone actually doing it. I don't know if anyone will, because it seems like most people would prefer Everdrives. But I know for sure I would buy one.