Analogue Duo

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I have a "Duo" system from Analogue. It is a recreation of the Turbo Grafix Duo. This is the one that supports Bomberman '94, one of the greatest games ever made.

It, in theory, supports 4 wireless gamepads. Two through USB dongles, and two through internal Bluetooth connections. I have four gamepads. The two that have the USB dongles work great. That offers 2 people in Bomberman. I tried for an hour today and I could not get the wireless bluetooth modes to work with the "8BitDo" gamepad controllers.

Well, this is shitty. I am kind of sick of paying for these things and then not having them work and then not seeing either company STEP UP and provide documentation on how to get this shit to work. I'd also like to say that the Bluetooth standard is fucking balls. The whole "hold a button" down thing is stupid as shit. It should be REQUIRED to have a fucking HARDWARE TOGGLE BUTTON for pairing on all devices. But we are past that now. The people that made the bluetooth standard didn't do a good enough job and I wish we didn't live in the world we live in. But we do. We 8BitDo!

So I wrote both companies and asked them how to make the fucking things pair in bluetooth mode. I do not expect a reply from either Analogue or 8BitDo. Why would they answer? They made shit that maybe kind of works if you "do it right," and go through reddit posts from two years ago. It blows my mind that they don't have any sense of pride or ownership with these things.

[Jizaboz]

That does sound annoying!

I thought about getting one of those but I have a real NEC TurboDuo (though the laser needs adjusting again for cd-rom games grrrre)

What are the main games you want to play on it?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Honestly, the only game I would want even a second controller for, much less 5, is Bomberman 94. I went out and bought the real Hu-card for it. We used to gather around Walrustitty's house and a bunch of us play it and that is the sort of experience I want to have here.

I did get a response from Analogue - they said "make sure you're on the latest firmware." Well, I don't have that, I have the hacked firmware that allows you to run games from an sd card. I dislike the implication that it never worked without the latest firmware. It's so frustrating.

[Flack]

I am unfamiliar with those consoles. Do they have higher compatibility than the MiSTer or is it more of a looks/niche thing? I thought the MiSTer could play those games and four controllers on that is a breeze, but I get that you'd be looking at a MiSTer and not a console.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Yeah, the concept of the Analogue Duo is that I believe they were also going FPGA, but they supported Hu-Cards and CD-ROMs. I in fact bought Bomberman '94 on the actual Hu-Card / original media and it's right in the Duo.

Analogue gives a wink toward firmware hacks, so I was able to place some on my Duo. But before that, it supported Duo games on CD, any CD. No piracy checks. I don'tremember if the Turbo Duo even had them. So I could and did then burn CDs for their larger games.

Honestly at the time, before I got a case, I viewed the MiSTer as this fragile box of miracles. I wanted the Duo to be connected to the TV we have on the main level of our house. I have wired gamepads for the MiSTer. I supposed I never checked to see if it can connect to wirelsss ones. Wires on gamepads are a bit of a no go in terms of the aesthetics of the room for my wife.

[Flack]

I get it. That SuperStation one I bought is similar in a way. At it's core it's just a MiSTer but it's in a case that looks like a PS1 and it has connectors for real PSX controllers and will also read/write physical PSX memory cards. I have a Bluetooth PS4 controller that I use with every other core so the odds of me hooking up a PSX controller for one core out of 50 is slim.

[Jizaboz]

Can confirm the original duo has no checks for region or authentication.

However, in my experience the more you use burned games the more the cd calibration could get out of wack.

Right now mine needs adjustment again.. I’ll get around to it eventually to finally finish Castlevania - Rondo of Blood (awesome game btw) but everything else nearly on super CD-ROM I wanna finish are RPGs so the lag won’t matter. I’ll just use my pi4 RetroPie setup for those even tho I own many and the Everdrive card for all hucards on the real duo.