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This is what it looks like – sweet, huh?
Welcome to retrode.org! On this website, we will collect all things useful and fun around the Retrode, the world’s bestest USB adapter for vintage video games. Expect the following and more to show up in the near future:
- User Stories. We have a growing team of editors who will take care of user-provided content. Do you have a retro-gaming project that you want to share, or tutorials, useful bits of information? We’ll do our best to feature them on this website. Just drop a line to editors@retrode.org, and make sure to include as much information as possible. If you have pictures and/or a video, don’t forget to include them!
- Documentation Repository. We keep on extending our collection of documentation about the Retrode, including troubleshooting hints, how-tos and lots of useful information about your Retrode.
- Community Forum. Once again, [lulemurfan] built us a nice forum. Meet your fellow Retrode enthusiasts in here!
- Development Blog / General Announcements. As always, we will blog about the latest news and behind-the-scenes stuff.
If you have never heard of the Retrode, or are interested in buying one, make sure to check out the new product site, retrode.COM!
Note: As of December 2011, some information provided on this website still refers to the original Retrode and may no longer be valid for the current model. Please give us some time to get everything up to date.
The USB part of the Retrode firmware is based on the LUFA library by Dean Camera (license). Thanks Dean for such an awesome piece of code!
Sometimes people ask me what I do for a living (obviously, it is not selling Retrodes). Here’s a video of me presenting some of my day-to-day work in front of 2000-something people at the SIGGRAPH 2011 conference. You could say that this lens flare paid for part of your Retrode :-) If you want to know more about the technique, you can find the paper on the project homepage. Enjoy!
SIGGRAPH TALK on Physically-Based Real-Time Lens Flare Rendering from Matthias Hullin on Vimeo.
… find it here!
Release history
v0.17c (2012-01-19)
- Version number now displayed in config file
- Sonic&Knuckles lock-on technology bug fixed
(Retrode 2 or Retrode 1 w/ S&K fix)
- Config option for Sega SRAM "16-bit mode" (some
emulators access SRAM in bytes, some in words)
(experimental, Retrode 2 only)
As previously reported, Matthias and myself have been working on a Master System and Game Gear plug-in adapter.
I am very pleased to now say that we have a fully working adapter, which (I think) will go into production at some point later in the year.
You can read all about how it came to be over at my site: Part one – Initial idea and Part two – Final testing.
→ Got a story? Let us know at editors@retrode.org.
Yes, world, it works on PS3 also! Hunter Davis of HunterDavis.com tested the Retrode 2 on various devices including PS3 and Android 4.0! His blog illustrates how you can use an original SNES Controller and Cartridge with your PC, PS3, or Dockstar.
HunterDavis.com additionally reports that the Retrode works fine on a stock PS3, as the PS3 auto-maps usb controllers to PS3 controllers internally (the usb#->ps3 controller # mapping can be changed in the menu as well), so even the PS3 menus themselves work with SNES controllers.
Edit, Matthias_H: Please join me in welcoming Felix to the retrode.org editing team! Felix has supported the Retrode project since its earliest days, and contributed a lot of hands-on help, as well as essential hardware for testing. He was the first to show the Retrode in action on a Wii in Homebrew mode.
→ Got a story? Let us know at editors@retrode.org.
Great news: Here we see 150 brand-new Retrodes, all boxed up and ready to go out to all of last summer’s pre-orderers in the next 1-2 days. Quite a bunch more are available from
With the cases arrived in Hamburg and soon to hit the assembly line, we’re now all eagerly awaiting the advent of zillions of lovely little Retrodes. Meanwhile, here’s some reading: the instruction sheet that will come with your Retrode 2, as PDF (English / German). Update, Dec 20, 2012: Merci à Lestat pour la traduction française ! For those who want to customize their desktop for Retrode use, I’ll throw in two icons as well:
In Windows, you can assign icons to drive letters as follows:
- Launch the registry editor.
- Navigate to \\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer.
- Make a new key named “DriveIcons”.
In “DriveIcons”, make a subkey named after your drive letter without the colon (say, “F”).
In “F”, make a subkey named “DefaultIcon”.
- Change the default value of “DefaultIcon” to the path of the icon file, e.g., “d:\icons\Retrode.ico”.
- Done :)
Here’s your latest update about the ongoing mass production of the Retrode 2. As always, everything took a bit longer than I thought it would, but land is in sight.
Old status:
Electronics: Production finished, waiting for samples.
Cases: Expecting final tweak to injection tool, final run of samples, then mass production.
USB cables: Looking for supplier.
New status:
Electronics: Samples are here and tested. All is good, and they’re pretty darn beautiful (see picture on the right). Factory firmware installation planned next week, then wait for cases and final assembly.
Cases: Final samples (painted and printed) arrived, mass production finished, cases in transit to Germany (expected day of arrival: Dec 2) Update, Nov 14: The shipping company corrected the estimated time of arrival to Dec 19.
USB cables: Ordered. expected arrival: Nov 18.
Final assembly: 2-3 working days from arrival of cases.
Packaging and shipping: Within 5 working days of finished product. That would be around Dec 14 Dec 27. I repeat: land is in sight :)
I should add that I also have GBx/N64 and SMS plugins in the pipeline, but they will take a bit longer to finish. Will try to figure out a deal for pre-orderers.
Totally unrelated but still neat:
Meanwhile, here’s a firmware update for owners of the original Retrode. The upcoming plug-ins will be supported by your units as well. As always, feedback is highly appreciated, for I can only fix bugs that I know about. Download the file here, find the instructions here.
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* Some product names used on this website are trademarks of their respective owners, with which I am in no way associated or affiliated. These trademarks of other manufacturers are used solely to identify said products. "Retrode" is a registered trademark of Matthias Hullin. |
