NES "clones", how good are they?

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oRBIT2002
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NES "clones", how good are they?

Post by oRBIT2002 »

There's quite a few NES "replicas" these days. Analogue has the Nt Mini, RetroUsb has the AVS. I am no expert in this thing but they're FPGA-based right?
So, how accurate are these devices compared to the real thing? People claims that FPGA-implementations are very close to the real deal but are they really? Are these devices still not "simulations/emulations" of the real deal or have these devices "copied" the original hardware in some form?
I'm curious. :)
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Bregalad
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Re: NES "clones", how good are they?

Post by Bregalad »

Similarly to how a software emu can be more or less acurate, FPGA emu can be more or less accurate depending on how it's implemented. At least, if it's inaccurate they could theoretically upgrade it, provided there is hardware provisions for that.
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rainwarrior
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Re: NES "clones", how good are they?

Post by rainwarrior »

Both the AVS and Analogue NT are very good.

You will never have an exact clone, but the ways in which these don't meet that are more or less negligible for most people. However if you can't stand a shadow of doubt, I don't think you'd want any clone.

I'm not aware of current game incompatibilities with either, but they both have a history of firmware updates whenever such a thing is discovered. I'm sure if you wanted to do some extensive hardware testing you'd find something that distinguishes them from a real NES, but you're not likely to find anything that affects a game.


Even a lot of older NOAC clones do a pretty good job with most games. The most common failing I've seen there is a lack of support for 4-screen games or other unusual nametable modes (e.g. Castlevania III).

The Retron 5 was a bit of an annoying thing for homebrew, since it's an emulator connected to a cartridge dumper that only recognizes games already in its database. That has workarounds, however.
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