Poll: How much time did you spend completing your Game Boy Pi vs actually playing it?

[statikeffeck]

This is for those who have a working, playable Game Boy Zero or similar gaming device.

How long did you take to complete it? (Even if you may be continually modifying it, let's say from the beginning to the time it was playable with controls, video, and sound all inside the case + with screws on)
How long have you played games on it so for?

e.g. "20 hours / 10 hours" or "40 hours / 80 hours"

Ball park estimates welcome

[chiz]

I lost count of how many hours I've put building the thing. I and my daughter have been playing with the GB Pi2 esp. during the burn-in test. Had my GB not reaching 60 degrees C after 20mins, we could have played it more -- until I address the overheating issue.

Btw, did you mean to have an actual poll in the post using the poll feature? I don't see any.

[Kilren]

I definitely have put a lot more time into building this than I have playing this so far.

I think that the majority of people on the forums are adults who have jobs, family, and responsibilities. I doubt anyone has plugged in a solid (put ridiculous amount of time here) hours into playing it because of life. With that said, I think this GBZ will have a long life for me, and many of the forum members who finish a build, as I play a little tiny bit waiting for an appointment here, on lunch break there, etc. I'll get to 80+ hours on it, it just might take me a long time to get there.

[wermy]

Definitely all about the build for me. I played a fair amount on mine but nowhere near the time spend building it. I'm ok with that though.

[dirtybeagles]

lol... this one is pretty funny to see but yeah. I have built 2 games so far. I am a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to things so I have spent probably the last 3 months perfecting my builds. And with people like Helder coming out with all-in-one boards, that helps a ton. Some days I would spend like 6 hours building things. I have a pretty good build process now with a zero or a pi2 so I can build one in probably 10 hours or less as long as I have all the parts.

Remember, most of this was A) waiting on parts to arrive, B) upgrading parts (VGA screen, Helder Audio board, glass cut out screen, stickters, etc...)

I pretty much take mine everywhere I go now. It helps a lot when I am forced to go shopping with my wife and I am going on a trip soon so I will probably take it with me. But I really only have time to play for about 30 minutes in any given sitting. I am older and I just do not have much time to play games anymore.

I would agree with Chiz. You really have 2 options in builds. You can build a Zero (no heat problems), but you are limited to 2nd - 4th gen consoles. It does not play GBA, Playstation, Arcade (MAME), Dreamcast, etc well at all. If you are cool with that then you can build a zero and pretty much play it all day every day.

With a Pi2, we are having heat problems. The build needs a fan and we are working on different designs and build processes to get a good process down. With a Pi2, you really cannot play it as long. When we figure that part out, I can assure you the hours will start to accumulate.

Plus, most of us live on this forum and we try to help the communitee as much as we can which also takes time.

[wermy]

I would agree with Chiz. You really have 2 options in builds. You can build a Zero (no heat problems), but you are limited to 2nd - 4th gen consoles. It does not play GBA, Playstation, Arcade (MAME), Dreamcast, etc well at all.

Hmm, how much have you tried in the way of GBA and Arcade games? I tried several GBA games and they worked fine for me. Plus lots of older MAME games work great, as well as NEOGEO games using FBA (Metal Slug is a favorite of mine). Sort of off topic but yeah, the Zero might be more powerful than you think, especially if you overclock a bit!

[dirtybeagles]

When I started playing some GBA games, it was a tad laggy in controls for me and the sound seemed a little distorted.

MAME games do work, do not get me wrong, but I like playing rom set MAME2010 and it will not install on the GBZ because of not having enough memory.

Overclocking? What? When I went into my emulationstation settings, I saw nothing about being able to over clock. It just says that this model is not available for overclocking. What am I missing smalls?

[Ganreizu]

Yeah i was under the impression that you couldn't overclock the pi zero.

[wermy]

Yeah i was under the impression that you couldn't overclock the pi zero.

For some reason it doesn't work from raspiconfig on retropie, but you can edit your /boot/config.txt file and do it from there.

[Ganreizu]

For some reason it doesn't work from raspiconfig on retropie, but you can edit your /boot/config.txt file and do it from there.

Huh. I referenced the config.txt documentation and thought i read something about it not being able to be done but i guess i imagined it. Do you mind sharing your config file settings when you get a chance? I really want to play a bunch of GBA games so i'll be heartbroken if the zero can't do it.