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DF Retro - Capcom Home Arcade review: the DF Retro verdict

Fake

Fake

Member



This is an interesting product! We went into this one expecting to spend most of our time replaying the Capcom classics but ended up discovering a whole lot more of interest in the arcade giant's exceptional CPS1/CPS2 line-up. Join D dark10x and Audi Sorlie for the definitive breakdown of the Capcom Home Arcade!
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Review
The Capcom Home Arcade is an absolute delight. It delivers almost all of what you might hope for, but there are some genuine surprises on top of that. Yes, the unit does an admirable job of replicating the classic coin-operated experience on a range of genuinely great games, but the biggest takeaway is how it actually introduced me to less prolific - but no less enjoyable - titles from a golden age of arcade history. Even though the line-up contains just 16 games in all, there's actually a palpable sense of discovery here and I came away from the product even more impressed by Capcom's arcade heritage.
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More at: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-capcom-home-arcade-review
 
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theHFIC

theHFIC

Member
Didn't all the developers but one leave Final Burn Alpha after the one developer remaining licensed it to Capcom? Who was doing the optimization at that point?

Did Capcom have coders on this or did they basically slap a nice GUI onto a stable build of FBA and throw it on a Raspberry Pi in a nice (but ugly looking) self contained joystick unit?

The whole project sounds shifty as hell. I will stick to my good ol' fashioned unlicensed emulation.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Gold Member
~Fake said:
Is really strange. Both Sega and Capcom never fix those audio emulation problems. Quite fascinating.
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I haven't noticed any odd audio issues on my Genesis Mini. Would assume sound accuracy is not perfect, but this is software emulation. The sound will never be 100% perfect, that goes for things like the Neo Geo Mini, SNES Classic, upcoming PC-Engine Mini etc. If you want 100% accurate sound, either get the original hardware or an FPGA version like the Analogue products.
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
IbizaPocholo said:
I read a lot of problems with the sound.
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iconmaster said:
The games are 19 years old or more and the device costs $260. There's no excuse for the emulation not to be 100% perfect.
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Whoa, they couldn't emulate the games properly even with FBA?

I use both MAME and FBA on PC and i don't remember anything abnormal with these games when using FBA. Are they using a 10 year old build or something?
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
I haven't noticed any odd audio issues on my Genesis Mini. Would assume sound accuracy is not perfect, but this is software emulation. The sound will never be 100% perfect, that goes for things like the Neo Geo Mini, SNES Classic, upcoming PC-Engine Mini etc. If you want 100% accurate sound, either get the original hardware or an FPGA version like the Analogue products.
Click to expand...
Nah, there are no sound issues or lag with good software emulators like Blastem or GenesisPlusGX.

The issue is the shitty software emulators companies tend to use. Software emulators can be as accurate as the best FPGA boards or even more, like in the case of Higan/BSNES.
 
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Fake

Fake

Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
I haven't noticed any odd audio issues on my Genesis Mini. Would assume sound accuracy is not perfect, but this is software emulation. The sound will never be 100% perfect, that goes for things like the Neo Geo Mini, SNES Classic, upcoming PC-Engine Mini etc. If you want 100% accurate sound, either get the original hardware or an FPGA version like the Analogue products.
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Sry, I was talking about sound accuracy indeed, but was Comic Zone from mini had audio issues? I remember John made a video about that.
 
Saber

Saber

Gold Member
I dunno about you Jon, but when you quit and it "returns to the start up screen" sounds terrible to me.
 
iconmaster

iconmaster

Banned
nkarafo said:
Whoa, they couldn't emulate the games properly even with FBA?

I use both MAME and FBA on PC and i don't remember anything abnormal with these games when using FBA. Are they using a 10 year old build or something?
Click to expand...

DF mentioned both occasional frame rate stutters and some audio dropout.
 
Lionel Richie

Lionel Richie

Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
I haven't noticed any odd audio issues on my Genesis Mini. Would assume sound accuracy is not perfect, but this is software emulation. The sound will never be 100% perfect, that goes for things like the Neo Geo Mini, SNES Classic, upcoming PC-Engine Mini etc. If you want 100% accurate sound, either get the original hardware or an FPGA version like the Analogue products.
Click to expand...

Are you enjoying the Genesis Mini? I'm thinking of picking one up to pair with my SNES Mini and pacify the console wars, I'm honestly still on the fence due to the lack of The Revenge of Shinobi.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Gold Member
~Fake said:
Sry, I was talking about sound accuracy indeed, but was Comic Zone from mini had audio issues? I remember John made a video about that.
Click to expand...

That's one of the games I haven't touched yet, actually. Kinda feel like I need a six-button pad (so dumb to not make at least one of the controllers in the US version a six-button pad tbh).

Lionel Richie said:
Are you enjoying the Genesis Mini? I'm thinking of picking one up to pair with my SNES Mini and pacify the console wars, I'm honestly still on the fence due to the lack of The Revenge of Shinobi.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it is definitely allowing me to get more game time, since I only really have time during the weekends. My younger niece and nephew were really enjoying it too (the nephew in particular was actually beating me at VF2, granted they were button-mashing. They were also pretty good at SoR2, better than I thought they'd be).

I do wish there were some kind of CRT filter option though, and maybe promotional/flyer materials and even scanned review snippets and strategy guides for games that had that stuff back in the day, freely accessible or unlockable through playing the various games. Would add further to the retro aesthetic and I guess aside from certain licensing issues would not be technically demanding to do whatsoever.

Holding Start for 3 seconds to pull up the main menu during a game for things like save slots is a tad annoying tho. Again, just putting in one six-button pad and that'd be dealt with. And while it doesn't have Revenge of Shinobi unfortunately (or Shadow Dancer for that matter), it's still got Shinobi 3, Bloodlines, Gunstar Heroes, Alisa Dragoon, Contra: Hard Corps etc. for run 'n gun/action-platforming goodness.

Should add that some people have complained about slowdown in a small bit of games though, in very specific sections, not present on real hardware. Apparently SEGA underclocked the CPU to 1 GHz, though it can seemingly be safely set to 1.5 GHz and there's vids of people having done this which completely gets rid of any of the reported slowdown bits. And on that note, there's efforts for modding it making some great progress like Project Lunar; I'm looking to see when it'll allow for other games to be installed, and even emulators for other systems (presumed with the upclock active).
 
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Lionel Richie

Lionel Richie

Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
Yeah, it is definitely allowing me to get more game time, since I only really have time during the weekends. My younger niece and nephew were really enjoying it too (the nephew in particular was actually beating me at VF2, granted they were button-mashing. They were also pretty good at SoR2, better than I thought they'd be).

I do wish there were some kind of CRT filter option though, and maybe promotional/flyer materials and even scanned review snippets and strategy guides for games that had that stuff back in the day, freely accessible or unlockable through playing the various games. Would add further to the retro aesthetic and I guess aside from certain licensing issues would not be technically demanding to do whatsoever.

Holding Start for 3 seconds to pull up the main menu during a game for things like save slots is a tad annoying tho. Again, just putting in one six-button pad and that'd be dealt with. And while it doesn't have Revenge of Shinobi unfortunately (or Shadow Dancer for that matter), it's still got Shinobi 3, Bloodlines, Gunstar Heroes, Alisa Dragoon, Contra: Hard Corps etc. for run 'n gun/action-platforming goodness.

Should add that some people have complained about slowdown in a small bit of games though, in very specific sections, not present on real hardware. Apparently SEGA underclocked the CPU to 1 GHz, though it can seemingly be safely set to 1.5 GHz and there's vids of people having done this which completely gets rid of any of the reported slowdown bits. And on that note, there's efforts for modding it making some great progress like Project Lunar; I'm looking to see when it'll allow for other games to be installed, and even emulators for other systems (presumed with the upclock active).
Click to expand...

Awesome, sounds plenty good. Shame about the slowdown, but I'm glad to see it has a solution and only happens under very specific circumstance. I've been watching/reading some reviews and it looks like the emulation is solid enough and I'm very much looking forward to Project Lunar. Just one more question, does the controller feel legit? I'm seeing some differing opinions when it comes to the feel of the D-pad, but overall could it pass for a Genesis pad? That's one of the main selling points for me as I love playing on authentic controllers.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Gold Member
Lionel Richie said:
Awesome, sounds plenty good. Shame about the slowdown, but I'm glad to see it has a solution and only happens under very specific circumstance. I've been watching/reading some reviews and it looks like the emulation is solid enough and I'm very much looking forward to Project Lunar. Just one more question, does the controller feel legit? I'm seeing some differing opinions when it comes to the feel of the D-pad, but overall could it pass for a Genesis pad? That's one of the main selling points for me as I love playing on authentic controllers.
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The controller's just ever so slightly smaller than an actual Genesis pad, but unless you had them side-by-side you would not even notice. TBH I haven't held a legit Genesis controller since the mid '00s so I can hardly remember off recent memory, but it does "feel" accurate to the original from what I can remember. D-pad feels good to me, at least for anything that's not SF (IIRC the Genesis 3-button d-pad was not particularly great for that type of game, unlike the Saturn and (I'm assuming) the six-button Genesis d-pads were), and the buttons are springy while being responsive. I did see an (infamous) streamer named DSP supposedly dead-end one of his controllers while playing, but that dude is notorious for breaking perfectly good electronics (they also bricked a brand-new Switch and gimped a then-powerful gaming PC).

There is a slight thing with double-button registering at the main menu; sometimes you tap in a direction and it will register it as two taps. But this has only happened at the main menu with me. I'm assuming it's because they've implemented a solution where simply holding a direction auto-scrolls you along the item path, and they didn't want people think they needed to tap the button each time to move left/right/up/down when selecting a game via having the user hold too long before triggering a scrolling event for the selection box. That said, they may've made the timing for that triggering a little too narrow imo, but it's nothing deal-breaking, just a small pet peeve.

Just the same, if you have both controllers plugged in at the menu selection, either one can be used to select games and options, so if you're playing with a young'in who likes pressing buttons a lot, just take the 2nd controller away from them for a minute when scrolling through the games lest they choose something you didn't want (just making it so the controller in the P1 port could make the choices would've been preferable imo).
 
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DunDunDunpachi

DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
Really disappointed that the first chance to get a legit copy of Progear -- outside of the original boards -- isn't a good conversion of the game.

CAPCOM Belt Action Shmup Collection when?
 
Lionel Richie

Lionel Richie

Member
thicc_girls_are_teh_best said:
The controller's just ever so slightly smaller than an actual Genesis pad, but unless you had them side-by-side you would not even notice. TBH I haven't held a legit Genesis controller since the mid '00s so I can hardly remember off recent memory, but it does "feel" accurate to the original from what I can remember. D-pad feels good to me, at least for anything that's not SF (IIRC the Genesis 3-button d-pad was not particularly great for that type of game, unlike the Saturn and (I'm assuming) the six-button Genesis d-pads were), and the buttons are springy while being responsive. I did see an (infamous) streamer named DSP supposedly dead-end one of his controllers while playing, but that dude is notorious for breaking perfectly good electronics (they also bricked a brand-new Switch and gimped a then-powerful gaming PC).

There is a slight thing with double-button registering at the main menu; sometimes you tap in a direction and it will register it as two taps. But this has only happened at the main menu with me. I'm assuming it's because they've implemented a solution where simply holding a direction auto-scrolls you along the item path, and they didn't want people think they needed to tap the button each time to move left/right/up/down when selecting a game via having the user hold too long before triggering a scrolling event for the selection box. That said, they may've made the timing for that triggering a little too narrow imo, but it's nothing deal-breaking, just a small pet peeve.

Just the same, if you have both controllers plugged in at the menu selection, either one can be used to select games and options, so if you're playing with a young'in who likes pressing buttons a lot, just take the 2nd controller away from them for a minute when scrolling through the games lest they choose something you didn't want (just making it so the controller in the P1 port could make the choices would've been preferable imo).
Click to expand...

LOL at the DSP thing, how can one man be so based? And I always liked the 3-button controller over the 6-button one, it just feels more natural. Although I can see the advantages in using the 6-button, I'm not a huge fighting game fan. I want to use it to play shmups as the Genesis has a near unparalleled selection of shooters. I'm glad to see the double tap issue doesn't happen in game. Thanks for the answers, it sold me even more on the Genesis Mini. By the time I'm done playing the built in games then the hack should be available so I can add MUSHA, Gaiares, Truxton and all that stuff.
 
Spukc

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
IbizaPocholo IbizaPocholo quoted from the article you posted..
BIG YIKES YIKEY MC YIKE YIKE

BJ: [laughs] We did a similar thing for Retro Games Ltd., where they brought an idea to us for The C64 Mini, and we went into a distribution deal with them. But we also manufactured it and I was the manufacturing manager of that. And it was quite a big success, so I was kind of tasked with considering and then pitching new ideas for Koch.
 
X

X GOD FIST X

Neo Member
Lionel Richie said:
LOL at the DSP thing, how can one man be so based? And I always liked the 3-button controller over the 6-button one, it just feels more natural. Although I can see the advantages in using the 6-button, I'm not a huge fighting game fan. I want to use it to play shmups as the Genesis has a near unparalleled selection of shooters. I'm glad to see the double tap issue doesn't happen in game. Thanks for the answers, it sold me even more on the Genesis Mini. By the time I'm done playing the built in games then the hack should be available so I can add MUSHA, Gaiares, Truxton and all that stuff.
Click to expand...
This thing is what started my research into stand alone emulator machines. I'm glad I settled on the ATGAMES ultimate legends machine instead. It has a rocky start but in my opinion still better than this capcom stick. If they fix the emulator crash from version 3.0.16 firmware update then I believe they will put things like this to shame with their arcade,genesis, snes emulators.
 
tylrdiablos

tylrdiablos

Member
Anyone know if there's been any progress made on modding this/adding new games?
I'd happy splash out for this if I could mod it a bit like the NES Mini and SNES Mini.
 
Tiamat2san

Tiamat2san

Member
It’s on sale at 169€ on amazon (France)
Tempting.
I hope we will be able to buy new games or that it will be hacked.
Why it’s not vampire savior or super street fighter 2X and more games like punisher and Cadillac is what’s makes me wait.
I understand the license for punisher can be a problem.
 
Spukc

Spukc

always chasing the next thrill
Tiamat2san said:
It’s on sale at 169€ on amazon (France)
Tempting.
I hope we will be able to buy new games or that it will be hacked.
Why it’s not vampire savior or super street fighter 2X and more games like punisher and Cadillac is what’s makes me wait.
I understand the license for punisher can be a problem.
Click to expand...
Looks like a very dodgy entry.

Ah it's an outlet sale 🤣
 
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marquimvfs

marquimvfs

Member
Tiamat2san said:
It’s on sale at 169€ on amazon (France)
Tempting.
I hope we will be able to buy new games or that it will be hacked.
Why it’s not vampire savior or super street fighter 2X and more games like punisher and Cadillac is what’s makes me wait.
I understand the license for punisher can be a problem.
Click to expand...
Cadillacs is also behind a license, that's why it never had been re-released.
 
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