Hello everyone. I feel like I should address some major issues with this new toy we’ve been given. In this post I will attempt to highlight what my frustrations are, as well as features I’d like to see.
I’m almost offended that I’m being sold an emulator that’s in such terrible condition. No save states, no keymapping, core support is nil, and even when some games do load, it’s not long before our friend the black screen shows up and I have to relaunch the game to continue. It’s also a shame they missed the mark to make this work on game consoles.
Complaint the first: save states and keymapping. Even the most basic of emulators out there include these two options. It’s massively disappointing that I can’t even see what buttons to push with an N64 core to begin to play the game on a keyboard. Save states may not be critical to most, but there’s a market out there for this functionality, and it really detracts from this really neat feature of Plex.
Complaint the second: Core support (or the lack thereof). The only core that works with N64 games eventually causes me to be met with a nice black screen while the rest of the game continues to function. Let me tell ya, there’s nothing that makes me more sweaty than when I lose my visuals in the heat of the action. At this point, I’d load up a different core and see if it works, but that doesn’t seem to be an option here. We get one core, and one core only. And if it doesn’t work, we can just suck it, right? As long as this remains a feature of Plex Arcade you really shouldn’t be adding this as a selling point to try to get us to fork over money for a monthly subscription. In the sales business, this is what’s known as false hope and can be considered giving me a lemon.
Complaint the third: Hitting the mark (when you’re not aiming down sights.) In my early days of being a lowly server owner, I did a lot of troubleshooting for people on consoles. I can’t for the life of me fathom why Plex Arcade wasn’t even considered for gaming platforms when it seems to be the most obvious choice. You’d market the product to people with controllers already in their hands. It’s a no-brainer guys.
My experience with just a few days of playtime has left me sad, frustrated, and waiting for more. I have no choice to agree with other members of the community when I say I’ve been duped into paying to be a beta tester, when the product has been billed as a “full release”. I feel like “beta” is being very generous. My hope, as well as many other’s hopes, is that this will be heavily supported in the future and bring in more features. The only redeeming feature of this product is that I can stream my retro arcade games remotely, if they even work in the first place.
