It's a pretty popular romhack for Super Mario World that was released in 2021. I recently discovered that the dev made a full walkthrough with commentary about a year ago. It was really interesting for me to watch :) Link to the hack.

Received the new screen and want to share my impressions about the device.

New screen

For those unaware of the screen drama, I'd suggest to read this article first.

Once Retroid announced they will send free new screen replacements, I immediately filled a request for one. They prioritized US citizens due to upcoming tarifs, so I had to quite some time until they shipped mine.

It arrived in a Retroid Pocket 5 box - looks like they just reused existing packaging. I saw some people on Discord got theirs in a Retroid Pocket Mini box instead. The package includes a full black shell, since that's the only color they offer. So, owners of other colors now have a black RP Mini with different button colors 😄

But honestly, black is the best color for this device. Combined with the OLED screen, it makes the letterboxing practically invisible, which is perfect for retro gaming.

The replacement process was easy for me. I just followed their official video. It's not very optimal, though. Sticks and fan disassembly is completely unnecessary, you can skip those. I also occasionally checked this disassembly stream recording.

The screen has rounded edges, but I actually like it. The taller screen (31:27) makes Android interface less painful.

But most importantly, it plays nicely with most retro games. In RetroArch I enabled Integer Scale and set Integer Scale Scaling to Smart. This way games will use overscale, but fallbacks to underscale if when the image is cropped too much. Retro games was designed with overscan in mind, so no important content is cut, the image occupies maximum possible space and everything is pixel perfect. I usually don't enable integer scaling on high resolution screens like this, but it works great for this specific device.

No surprise, GB, GBC and Pico8 looks great. They won't take fullscreen with integer scaling, but it's very close.

But the best systems to play for me are actually SNES and NES! They were played on 4:3, but their actual aspect ration is close to a square. So for SNES9x core I set the aspect ratio to Uncorrected and for Mesen (NES) I set it to No Stretching. I know they were developed with 4:3 in mind, but this way they occupy the entire screen and look pixel perfect!

Systems like Dreamcast and PS1 look exactly the same, I don't have to turn integer scaling off, they take all horizontal space.

In Dolphin, widescreen hacks work well with the taller screen, so you can fill the entire display. However, I usually play Dolphin on my Steam Deck, since the Android version doesn't support RetroAchievements.

PS2 widescreen hacks don't work well with this screen, but it still looks fine in 4:3 - identical to how it looked before the screen swap, except with now properly aligned pixels.

PSP isn't a great fit for this device, but thanks to the OLED and black color, the letterboxing is barely noticeable. I've seen some people stretch the image, but I'm not a fan of that.

Device

Here's what I like about it:

1. Great battery life when using Android. I usually leave a game running, and it barely drains any battery while idle. This makes it easy to earn RetroAchievements in hardcode mode.
2. Pocketable. The sticks protrude a bit, but I found it pretty comfortable to carry in my jacket.
3. The stock OS is fairly clean, though I do wish I could install LineageOS.
4. It can run mainline Linux.
5. Powerful enough to handle all my favorite games.
6. Ergonomic. I can play for hours without my hands hurting.
7. And now it also has a great screen.

However, I would't recommend this device. Here is why:

1. ABXY buttons feel awfull. It's hard to explain, but I simply don't like pressing them. Even swapping to more quite PSX-style buttons from Etsy didn't help. I think it's because of the membrane and glass front. Controls are very important for me.
2. Glass front looks nice, but it's marky. Also dirt easily accumulates on edges on edges and its hard to remove it. I prefer to keep my devices clean.

I ordered the Retroid Pocket Flip 2 after asking for a screen replacement, and somehow they managed to deliver it earlier. But I'm enjoying it much more - it's more pocketable, has a bigger screen, and avoids the drawbacks of the Mini. And it's only $20 more.

After reading this article, I started thinking about buying AR glasses. Could anyone share their experience with them? Also, does anyone here own AR glasses and wear contact lenses? I know it's possible to add prescription lenses to such glasses, but it would be inconvenient to remove my contacts every time I want to use AR glasses.

This Mario hack is so cool! The story is inspired by the Bowsette meme, and by the end, you even get to make a choice 🙂

The level design is excellent. I really appreciate small details - like coins that guide you where to fall, or how all the dragon coins are placed either before or after the checkpoint.

The difficulty is similar to the original game. Some of the Special World levels were pretty tough, but the hack has an adaptive difficulty system: coin blocks sometimes turn into power-up blocks if you have 5 lives or fewer. If you're down to your last life, the level even adds a few Starman power-up blocks!

There are also a bunch of quality-of-life improvements. I especially loved the removal of the timer and the fact that falling into a pit doesn't immediately result in a game over.

And the soundtrack is absolute banger. Most of the songs are well-known hits ported into SNES. Here is the link to the playlist.

And here is the link to the hack.

What’s your favorite SMW hack? 🙂

I posted about this phone when I bought it and promised to tell about my experience after some use. So here is my story :)

Background

I needed to buy a new phone and wanted something unusual. Initially, I was looking at the Hisense A9. It's an e-ink phone and, based on reviews, people love it. But the phone there is no official open source Android distribution available for it (although there is an unofficial LineageOS port). I just don't like running outdated Android versions. I wish we had broader device support, like we do with GNU/Linux distributions.

A few days later I read news about the LineageOS 22.2 release and went to check out which models were supported from day one (it was December 2024). These phones are usually actively maintained, which means they're usually good. I was surprised to see the F(x)tec Pro1 X there. Here is a good article from 2022 if you've never heard of it. To put it shortly, it's a crowdfunded phone with a physical keyboard that had a lot of issues at release. I went to the unofficial F(x)tec Discord server and found out that they finally finished shipping the phone to all backers in November 2024! But some people already have more powerful phones and no longer need the shipped F(x)tec. They had a dedicated channel for buying/selling, so I managed to buy one in mint condition for 300 EUR.

Keyboard

The keyboard is awesome. I previously had the Nokia Asha 200, Motorola Droid 4, Motorola Photon Q, and a physical keyboard addon for my PinePhone, so I can compare. The one in the F(x)tec is by far the best. People who designed it clearly had a passion for physical keyboards. The keyboard is full-sized with Ctrl, Shift, and Fn keys on both sides. It's very important for a slider because it allows you to type while holding it. The keyboard also has home row markers on F and J, and it's natural to type on it without looking at it. The keys also very responsive - I never miss my inputs.

These days, physical keyboards are not very practical. Glide typing on touch keyboards is quite convenient. But I feel like I can type a bit faster and more accurately with a physical one. Plus, I really like the tactile feeling.

Screen

The screen is also great. Colors are very vibrant. It's curved on the sides and I saw people reporting accidental touches while holding it, but it might have been fixed on the software side since I never encountered such an issue. And I actually like how the curved screen looks - especially with such a nice OLED panel and the Android dark theme.

Slide mechanism

It feels very robust, but I don't like how it opens - it's quite loud. I liked it more in my Motorola sliders. But what I like is that the screen is angled when you open it. It's a much more natural than when the screen is parallel to the keyboard. Plus, you get a built-in kickstand :)

When closed, it looks like a regular phone. It's not too bulky - I'd say it's comparable to a typical phone with a protective case.

Fingerprint sensor

I hate it. It's the worst place they could have put it. I constantly touched it by accident when gripping the phone. So I ended up disabling it completely.

Connectivity

Some units have issues with the antenna. I asked the seller to test the connectivity before buying, and it looks like my unit is unaffected. Can confirm that calls and mobile internet work fine.

Performance

The specs are quite low. But I don't game on phones. I use it for calls, web browsing, messaging, and social media. It works smoothly, so it's good enough for me.

Software

As I mentioned, the phone is officially supported by LineageOS. So I immediately re-flashed the stock Android 11 with it after testing the functionality.

Unfortunately, my favorite FUTO Keyboard doesn't propagate the defined layouts to the physical keyboard - it's always English. It works only if I select the default AOSP keyboard as my input method. But since I don't need the sensor keyboard much, I just use the AOSP keyboard. It hides automatically when I open the physical one.

But even when the touch keyboard is hidden, it still leaves a tiny bar at the bottom of the screen when any input field is active. It takes extra space, and in horizontal layout, you don't have much space to spare. So I installed the Hide Navbar module for Magisk which removes it.

Also, when the keyboard is open, the previews for running apps behave as if they're in horizontal mode. But it's a minor bug.

But there is one major issue I still haven't figured out. Sometimes the phone just refuses to wake from sleep once every few days. I have to hold the power button to force reboot it. I asked about it in Discord and it looks like only one other person besides me has this issue. Others never encountered anything like this. The only thing I found in common is that they all install Google services, while I use MicroG. Not sure if it's related. If you have any idea how to debug it, let me know.

Battery

Battery life is okay. I charge it once every few days, but I don't have a lot of screen time. Also, I think the lack of Play Services improves it.

Camera

I currently can't leave my house, so I don't have nice photos to share :) But the camera is okay, even with the built-in LOS camera app.

There's also a dedicated camera button. I think it's convenient, but I don't mind using the on-screen shutter button either.

Weight

It's 46g heavier than my wife's Google Pixel 7 (197g vs 243g). It doesn't bother me - I barely notice the difference.

Headphone jack

I like that this phone has a headphone jack. I know I could just buy a Type-C adapter, but I don't like to carry it with me. And I just can't leave it connected to the adapter, since I also share the headphones with my PC.

Conclusion

I like this phone - it fits my use cases perfectly. I'll continue to daily drive it. But it's not a great value - you can buy a much more modern phone for the same money. And I wish its launch hadn't been surrounded by so many issues. We need more niche phones.

Lemmy has a rate limit on uploading photos, so I've uploaded more photos in this Imgur post.

Just curious 🙂

Bevy is a game engine written in Rust. It targets regular PCs, but thanks to it modularity, it's possible to port it to unusual platforms. These examples replaced the rendering with the one specific to GBA.

Post from @bushRAT in Discord:

Thanks to the ever growing support for no_std in Bevy, I'm now able to use Bevy on the GameBoy Advance! Using the current main branch (which will be included for 0.16!) you can use a crate like agb (and some boilerplate I'm hiding) to write GameBoy Advance games almost as easily as you would for any other Bevy platform. Systems, plugins, resources, queries, the gamepad input API, it all just works. See the attached ROM if you have a GameBoy Advance emulator handy, but I recommend the MGBA emulator as it can also show debug logs (yes, even all the logging just works)

Links to GBA files:

• From 1 GIF.
• From 2 GIF

If you have a real GBA or an FPGA console, the author will appreciate if you try :)

Repository: https://github.com/bushrat011899/bevy_agb_test

A long time ago, I owned a Motorola Droid 4 and Photon Q. Feeling so nostalgic now 🙂

The keyboard on this one is much better - it's full-sized, and the slider mechanism feels quite robust.

If you use https://es-de.org/, which themes do you like the most?