[Music] Hey everyone, Retro Fun Tech
here. Welcome back to the channel. So, I recently found out that the Anbernic RG35XX
can run another custom firmware called Batocera, so I wanted to test it out and show how it
runs. Not only is this another option out there for custom firmware besides Garlic
OS, but it also has the ability to play a few other systems - N64, Dreamcast, and PSP.
Garlic OS doesn't support these systems. Now, Batocera is only in beta version for
the 35XX, so let's see how it runs. So, what is Batocera? For some, you
may think I'm talking about the insect Batocera, but nope. [Music] Batocera isn't new
to the retro gaming world; it's been around for several years. Batocera is a Linux operating
system. It's open source and completely free retro gaming firmware. It supports over 220
systems and emulators on multiple platforms. The typical use case for this operating system
is that you can copy it to a USB stick or an SD card with the aim of turning any computer into
a gaming console. There are even videos out there on how to use it on some x86 handheld
devices or even the Steam Deck. Thank you. So, to get started with installing Batocera, make
sure you have a spare micro SD card. Anything from 64GB to 256GB would work. Make sure that you use a
good quality card like SanDisk or Samsung's to get the best results. Take the spare SD card and plug
it into your computer. Scroll to the link below where you can find the GitHub for the Batocera
custom firmware. Scroll down to the assets section for the latest release. Click the link with the
.img.gz file extension at the end. So, there are two programs that you will need, and I have links
below. First, we are going to use Balena Etcher to write the file to the SD card. Once you have the
firmware image downloaded, you download Balena Etcher. The app should automatically open, or just
open it. So now, we need to do three simple steps. Find the custom firmware image file, select it.
Next, we will select where we are going to be writing that file to; in this case, it's the SD
card. Please make sure that you don't select your computer's hardware; otherwise, bad things will
happen. As you can see, my computer doesn't even let me, which is good. Now, we flash the card. No,
not those flashes. Flash the image to the card. If a window pops up, click yes, you want to write to
the card. This process may take 10 minutes or so, so sit back, relax, go make yourself a sandwich.
If you see any pop-ups about inserting a disk, just hit cancel. After the process is done, cancel
out of any pop-ups that tell you to format the disk. Now, right-click on the card, eject it, and
put it into your 35XX device. Power on the device; you will be greeted with the Batocera logo
and then a few setup screens. This will also take a few minutes, so go grab a snack
or some chips to go with that sandwich. Once the installation is done, the device
will turn off. So when you come back to it, just power it on and see
if the installation worked. Once you get past the initial
screen, you want to hit start. You will need to configure the controls, so
don't skip this part. For anything that you can't configure, hold the button and hold any button
down to skip it and just follow the prompts below. Alright, so here we have Batocera. Now,
we don't have any game files on here yet. There are some free games that come with Batocera,
as you can see here, but Batocera only shows you the systems that you have games for on the
main screen; otherwise, it hides those systems. Installing ROMs. So, before we move game files
over, we need to create a partition on the SD card. Don't worry; it's not that hard. Just
follow along, and I will show you how to do that. To move your ROMs or game files to the card,
let's first power down the device and take the SD card out and pop it into the computer. Here is the
second program that you will need for the process; it's called MiniTool Partition Wizard, and
it's free. The link is in the description below to download it. Once it's installed, open
it, and it will show you all your drives that are connected to the computer. Select the drive named
"share." It'll be down at the bottom. Right-click, and then select "format." Make sure that you are,
for sure, selecting the correct file; otherwise, terrible things will happen. You click OK; you
will need to change the card format to exFAT. You can use FAT32, but sometimes it doesn't play well
with others, so just use exFAT. When you see that it's changed at the bottom, click "apply" in the
bottom left corner. Click "yes" on the pop-up, and then some magic happens, and we're good, as long
as it says "successful." You can exit the program. Now, eject the micro SD card and
pop it back into your device. Now, the device will see the partition on the card,
and it'll start creating the game folders. Once it's done loading and goes to the main screen,
shut down the system once more and eject the card out and pop it back into your PC. When you put
the SD card back into your computer, the "share" partition will show up. You can close out of any
other window except for the "share" partition, and now you can copy over all your BIOS files and
your ROMs. Make sure that you do the BIOS first; otherwise, some systems will not run
correctly without the BIOS files. Now, click on the ROMs folder, and you can copy over
all your ROMs to their designated folders. Another link that I will leave in the description below
is the Batocera Wiki page. I would recommend checking out that site for info on what BIOS
files and the format of the ROMs have to be in. Alright, game testing. Finally, let's show off
our hard work. Here are some games I will test out. As per usual, you shouldn't have any issues
with 8-bit or 16-bit systems on this device, just like you didn't when it was right out of the
box. Now, I will mention that I don't expect to get amazing gameplay from the higher-end systems
- N64, Dreamcast, or even PSP. They are really just bonus systems. This device was not made
to play anything higher than PlayStation one, so the fact that we can get any games running is
really cool. And no, you will not be able to play God of War on here. Don't even try it. The games
that will run will be more two-dimensional games, platformers mainly. There will be some
audio stuttering at times, and well, it's up to you if you think you can handle
playing those games with some audio stuttering. Speaking of audio stuttering, I'm sure you
can hear it with this game. So with N64, I did have to switch the emulator
depending on what game I was running. Super Smash Brothers was a bit
laggy and had some audio stuttering, so I switched the emulator to a different one.
I also turned frame skip on to one, and well, I don't know if it's any better. Some
games just might not work, unfortunately. But some games do work, so you might have to play
around with the settings and the cores and see which games might work for you. Before we get into
Dreamcast, let's enjoy Earthworm Jim for a moment. Now for Dreamcast. Before you even run
Dreamcast, you will need to change the emulation core to Flycast in order to
get the best experience. Otherwise, hardly anything will run. However, you have
to be mindful of the Dreamcast games because some of them actually require a joystick,
which is not something that the 35XX has. Now, this game works without joysticks. There are
still some audio stuttering and a little slowdown, but it might be playable depending on
who you are. I might actually enjoy this tiny slowdown in Tony Hawk 2 because I was
able to land a few more tricks than usual. Finally, we have PSP. Now, before I even loaded
a game, I made sure that the emulator core was on PPSSPP. Say that five times fast. And here
we have PSP. Now, I did get a glitch on camera; I'm not sure what happened, but the device ended
up correcting itself, and I was able to play the game longer than what I show in the video without
any further stuttering or glitching. But you can see that it just corrects itself, and then we're
back to playing Metal Slug. Not sure what happened there, but what ups? And just like with the
other two systems, some games just won't work right. I tried a few different hacks, frame skip
on one, dropping the resolution down to 1x. I even went into the PPSSPP app and changed the graphics
backend from OpenGL to Vulkan. Nope, nothing. It ran a tiny bit better by the time I was done with
it, but it's definitely not playable like this. So, 2D games mostly work fine; just keep in
mind with these extra systems that not all the games will work, and those that
do, especially if they are more 3D, they might take some tinkering to get them to
work right. I would not recommend a new retro handheld user to use this custom firmware;
this is definitely more for the tinkering geeks out there, myself included, that
want to push this device to its limits. So, what do you think about having Batocera on
the RG35XX? I know there are a lot of steps to get this working, but it might be cool to place
some of these systems on your device. Or are you thinking it's not really worth it? Personally,
I think it's neat that we have another custom firmware out there other than Garlic OS. Nothing
against Garlic OS, but it's nice to have some options. I'm interested to see how it will play
once it's added in the beta version anymore. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Stay awesome, everyone, and go play some games. [Music]
