Ouya


rob27

Still Fresh
Joined
Oct 1, 2007
Messages
15
Not sure if anyone has talked about this device yet.
 
I hear its a bit clunky. 
 
Anyone decided to try for an emulator on this?
 
A Atari Jaguar one would be nice, that would make me buy one :)
 
Rob.
 
If you want emulation, I'd go for a PSP. It's portable and allowes you to play a lot of cool emulators on a great screen.
 
I own an Ouya and i've found the emulation to be good enough to hold its own, The main selling point for me was being able to play old games on tv with a dpad. Every SEGA and SNES game i've played has worked flawlessly, as have GBA games. but a PSP or GP2X can pretty much do that anyway. For both N64 and PS1 you need to check the compatibility on the emulators website as the games it can run smoothly are quite limited. For N64 i'm pretty sure there is only about 10 games that are playable. I'm yet to try PSP games on it but i've heard good things. 
 
Not been on this site in years but its a shame GP2X games aren't ported to Android! I would love to play them on my tv :p  Especially with some of Ruckage's games (not sure if he's still active here).
 
Ruckage's work was amazing, I really hope we'll see more of it someday. The GP2X homebrew gaming scene was pure magic, its 2007-2009 heyday has yet to be surpassed in my opinion. It was also at a time before smartphones and tablets were everywhere, so gaming handhelds attracted more people than they probably do today.
 
I just picked up an Ouya for $60. I wouldn't have done it if was still $99 but the special they're running makes it worth it imo. The Tegra 3 gives the device some good horsepower but the weak point of the console is probably the controller. It's not terrible but it is a bit clunky and I definitely don't care for the dpad as it's pretty spongy.
 
Off topic, I agree that some games would probably do very well on the Android market. Ruckage's games for sure but sqdef should be included as well. It's one of the few reasons I still pull out my Wiz.
 
BTW, it's a shame the Caanoo's library never benefitted from a port of that game..... hint, hint!
 
I've got an OUYA. It's a pretty neat little machine. The pad isn't anywhere near as bad as the internet will tell you (OUYA have updated it two or three times so far - newer ones are much better). My only gripe is the convex analogue nubs. I always feel like my thumbs will slip off. The new white pads have fixed this issue.
 
It's not as powerful as I was expecting (for instance AquaVenture on OUYA is not that much faster than on Pandora or Caanoo, but it is rendering much more on a tv. However, it also look much better on a big screen).
 
There are over 500 games on OUYA now, admittedly some are very amateurish homebrew stuff, but there are some great games on there too.
 
It's definitely worth it's full asking price for what it does and what it can do and I just hope that OUYA continues to develop into a more mainstream cheap console than a homebrew/dev only machine.
 
I just got an Ouya (and even paid 99 pounds for it. I am not sure how 99$ translates to 99Euros if you are in a country on the Euro, and 99pounds in UK. I have seen this cheat with many devices).
But worth it. I like the big indie game collection. I don't care about big titles, I just like to have fun with indie and homebrew and community feeling. I think it has it. And maybe I'll try to code something for the Ouya at one point.
 
One negative impression I had, I have seen some games, even simpler to have horrible speed. But it could be just the exception. I thought, maybe Tegra 3 is good, but not good enough for 1080p. My dissapointment was when I tried some pure 2d games (Giana Sisters HD, which I loved on the DS) and the scrolling was not just jumpy, but more horrible. How can this be? Bad port??? But then, I tried Shadowgun with quite good 3d, it was smooth enough, maybe not 60fps but good. And even found some other 2d games with good scrolling. So it's not the norm. But I'd thought so, because even the games market menu was scrolling badly, how can even the main menu of the console scroll badly? Does it tell us something? I am still uneasy about this.
 
But fortunately, I tried some emulators (with the fear of seeing junky scrolling on my favorite 8bit/16bit consoles), and I was relieved. Yeah, absolutely good scrolling. And the best thing, the emulators have high degree of perfection, I think they are matching GCW0 here. SNES, which is always the culprit, perfect with heavy Mode7 games, even Star Fox runs ok. So much fun! GBA is perfect, so much fun! Mega Drive and the rest of course. And from the highend, PS1 is great, is like the Pandora version which it easilly reaches full frame rate in 3d games. The N64 is okayish, plays few games and some with slow down. But even in Pandora it wasn't really fast (unless you always show a video of Super Mario 64 and avoid showing other games). Mame seems to play great too, but I have to find newer version of ROMs (I copied mine from GP2X, hehe).
 
So, I'd gladly say Ouya is quite good for emulation, has an interesting indie community, scares me a bit with some bad performance games and scrolling (maybe one has to be cautious when programming/porting, some things might have to be optimized especially for Ouya). I didn't have any bad feeling with the controls, but that can be subjective.
 
The OUYA really is a nice machine, but as you have noticed, it is underpowered and requires devs to really optimize their code well. Emulation is pretty good on the whole.
 
BTW - If you are looking to play a good OUYA game, then why not take a look at AquaVenture... ;) :D
 
As hardware gets more capable, the attention most devs pay to detail and optimization goes way down.
 
For example, quite a few Pandora games are straight PC ports that struggle at the default 600MHz, where they should fly at half the clock speed. Some porters don't even bother to map the proper controls, so you have platformers that use the space bar to jump instead of action buttons, which makes them unplayable. I really miss the GP2X days :)
 
I really miss the GP2X days :)
Me too. But I also harken back to the glorious 8bit and 16bit days from time to time. So much innovation and original thinking. Of course innovation is still alive and well, but gaming felt so much fresher back then.
 
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