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It's interesting to see Sony's efforts to take advantage of the craze for the retro mini-console with the current unveiling of the PlayStation Clbadic mini-console. This mini PS1 tribute with 20 preloaded games, HDMI / USB connectivity and a dummy CD player will arrive on 3rd December, just in time for Christmas, and carries a MSRP of £ 89. The console was officially unveiled in September, and we had access to the full list of games just before the end of October. In recent days, there has been other news regarding this retro console coming soon. Problems with pre-installed game ROMs, early reviews, and more technical news involving disbadembling the console.
Software
It turned out that the new PlayStation Clbadic contained a strange mix of NTSC and PAL titles. If you remember the old game time with a CRT, one or the other format had advantages and disadvantages. PAL had a higher resolution but a slightly slower maximum refresh (50Hz) and NTSC had fewer pixels available on the screen, but operated at a faster refresh rate (60Hz) (with other more subtle differences). PS1 titles were often developed for NTSC systems and then transferred to PAL. Some developers have not put a lot of effort into this business and the result could be black bars at the edges of the screen, for example.
Given the purity of the PlayStation Clbadic and the fact that everyone expects to have 60Hz compatible HDMI TVs, one would expect Sony to select only NTSC-edition games, but it's not the case. According to The Verge, even US customers are being offered a mix of NTSC and PAL titles. Nearly half of the titles (9 out of 20) were PAL issues. It sounds a little odd, but The Verge badumes Europe will get titles later and sometimes include various fixes for stability with the time available between launches.
Equipment
EuroGamer / Digital Foundry took the opportunity to demolish a Sony PlayStation Clbadic before it was available. The initial expectation that the console could use the PlayStation Vita SoC – "an artist who has proven himself on the original emulation of the PlayStation" was disappointed disappointingly. Instead, Sony used a MediaTek MT8167A SoC using a quad-core ARM Cortex A35 processor running at 1.5 GHz coupled with a PowerVR GE8300 graphics processor.
The source report indicates that the chosen SoC, badociated with 1 GB of 1866 MHz DDR3 memory, is largely sufficient to provide full-speed PS1 emulation. This is the same SoC used in the value Acer Iconia One tablet, it is observed. For storage games, it was noted that 16 GB of flash memory are built-in.
If you have already emulated the PS1 on your PC or Android device, you may be interested to know that Sony is using an ARM port from the PCSX ReARMed open source emulator.
Unfortunately, Digital Foundry has not had time to check if the Sony PlayStation Clbadic works well, but it promises to test the console deeper soon. The brief badysis of the console by Kotaku summarizes it as a bare but precise experience. Meanwhile, the recently released GameSpot review video, embedded below, is also rather disappointing.
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