Reminiscing with Emulators - The Anbernic RG351P

Waking up in the morning and smelling roasted bread with molten cheese. Grabbing a snack after breakfast and booting up my bulky emulator as a console to play Super Mario and Duck Hunt. Sigh.. Those were the days.

Sadly, I no longer have that beautiful machine or the NES Zapper Gun. It was left to dust as I grew older and one day it disappeared. I always wanted to go back to that time, just to play some retro games for old time sake, but I couldn't find the time in middle and high school.

Emulation was never dead

Those times are over. About a year ago (2021), a friend encouraged me to emulate games again. I had tried emulation before from time to time, but it never really worked out. I used an old mini-pc with RetroArch, which I highly recommend for you to try out, but it was not that easy to maintain it, from the games, to the physical pc itself. Aside from the lack of time, I had struggles with the experimental piece of hardware and software I've never used before.

So, at the time of encouragement, my friend sent me this video of RetroGameCorps (awesome guy), a channel dedicated to these fun activities, and I was instantly hooked. I was so excited about a handheld, thus portable emulation station that I could not only bring everywhere, but even play more games on than I used to on my old device with ease! It was time for me to turn over a new leaf and use my mini-pc for something else.
After a few weeks of research, I settled on the Anbernic RG351P. Excited and with good faith, I bought mine on AliExpress. It arrived 3 weeks later, complete with an Anbernic case, USB-C cable, Wi-Fi dongle, a protection layer for the screen and some wipes. It made the product feel more premium than the €89,- I paid for it.

I quickly became accustomed to the device by following the well written guides from RetroGameCorps' website. I tried a couple of operating systems and finally settled on 351Elec, which later turned into AmberElec.
You can personalize a lot on your device. You can have a custom loading screen, different themes, background music and so much more!

But what about gaming?

Right, the fun part! This device get's the absolute most out of Game Boy Advance games. Right now, I play games like Pokémon Red, Kirby - Nightmare in Dreamland, Fire Emblem and I just finished porting Stardew Valley! So cool.
If you wonder where I got all these games from, have a look around at https://r-roms.github.io/megathread/retro/, a trusted repo of ROMs for different systems.

Installing ROMs on the device is a no-brainer. Just pick the ROMs you like, connect your device to your pc (you can use SSH, WinSCP or just insert your SD card) and put the files in the dedicated folders. Boot up your system and voila. Games installed.

Playing them can take up hours of my time, so I'll make sure I only start gaming after work hours. Oh, and I mentioned before that the games run with RetroArch. That means that you can customize a lot inside the game too! You can speed or slow down your game, save snapshots, use cheat-files, use screen-filters, show stats like your FPS in-game and more.
I've tested some games here and there and it can take a lot of systems, although not all of them run as smooth. Yes, you can run Nintendo DS games, but it looks uncomfortable as you don't have a second screen nor do you have a touch screen. I could play all the way up to, admittingly not that smooth either, PlayStation 1 games like Spider-Man. I have used frame-skipping and it was playable, but not playable enough for a satisfied experience.

My final thoughts about my emulator? Totally worth it. I was always fond of playing old games. Even years later from my childhood, in a time where I play modern game with my friends, I always stray back to some good old pixel graphic games. I noticed that lately emulation and old games like these are slowly rising in popularity again and I think that's pretty cool.

Alright, that was all.
Bye bye!

(o゜▽゜)o☆