Trying to find the right combination of software for my mini PC

RetroArch General
#1

I recently bought a mini PC to load up with Lakka for an all-inclusive gaming system. I went with a mini PC specifically because the Lakka website stated that it’s the only hardware the 3DO could be emulated on.

I was toying with RetroArch last night while I wait for my mini PC to arrive and found that the 3DO emulation isn’t that great - namely certain games won’t run at all on it (Crash 'n Burn to be specific).

4DO runs perfectly as a stand-alone, of course.

My question is, when I try to emulate the 3DO on Lakka, will I run into the same problems?

If so, is there another combination of OS/Emulator platform I could use that might work better?

I was also thinking of using a combination of Windows and LaunchBox, but I’m worried that the little mini PC I bought won’t have the specs for the Windows overhead. It only has 2GB of RAM.

This is the hardware I bought:

#2

No one seems to be very interested in giving me advice, but I’ll post this update:

I got the mini PC and set it up. I tried to run the stand alone 3DO emulator and the games are unplayable, not enough CPU power. I had some extra laptop memory so I bumped it up to 4GB and it made no difference at all. I also tried a Playstation emulator and it was better, but still not playable.

Now I’m at an impass…

Do I return this mini PC and look for one with more power? I’ve done some more research and to get one that will be noticeably more powerful will cost me 2-3x as much. I wasn’t planning on spending hundreds of dollars on this project.

Do I use it anyway and just use my desktop PC when I want to emulate higher-end stuff? Kind of defeats the purpose of having a stand-alone emulator box for everything.

I could also just use an old i3 laptop I have that I use as a media PC. I was hoping that this little box would have equivalent power or better, but it doesn’t look like it does. The laptop in question is kind of beat up, it’s a normal sized 14" laptop so it’s just not as slick or cool as the mini PC. We also use it for other functions so it wouldn’t be a dedicated emulator box like I was planning.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

#3

Well, you have to prioritize, and that’s a decision only you can make: is 3DO your top priority? If so, you don’t really have a lot of options other than getting a stronger, more expensive machine. If not, you can look at a variety of other hardware, such as Lakka+RPi3, which gets good performance with most other platforms due to ARM-optimized emulators.

#4

Since it’s all about nostalgia, 3DO is nostalgia central for me. I have never met anyone else who bought one new and though it was a shit system, it was my shit system. And I know that anything that can run the 3DO emulator is powerful enough to run everything else.

I’m having so much trouble with doing anything other than running the emulator on my gaming PC that I’m almost tempted to pull the ol’ FZ-1 out of the closet and just using that! But it’s slow, big, clunky and overheats, so I’d rather not.

I’m starting to lean towards returning this mini PC and saving my pennies for a proper one with at least an i3 processor. Looks like it’ll be about $380, almost 4x what I paid for the one I have but if I order another one I want it to be a good one. I’ll also use it as a media PC and retire that old laptop from service.

#5

I bought one new and thought it was a shit system :slight_smile:

But it did have the best versions of Street Fighter and Samurai Showdown at the time. I guess that counted for something back then but today that ain’t worth shit.

#6

Well I can’t return the mini PC, so I installed Lakka on it to see if the 3DO works better on it.

Mixed results. I find the interface kind of crappy, like I can’t type my wifi password with a keyboard for some reason (it’s long).

Total Eclipse doesn’t run very well and looks terrible.

Crash 'm Burn doesn’t run as expected.

I’m not really sure what to do with this thing now except try to see if anyone I know needs something like this.