Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
- Neo'nate
- Posts: 498
- Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 2:52 pm
- Location: UK
- eBay: fleebay
- Initials: NJP
Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
As already discussed the first blue elf is handy enough in that its a small MVS sized cart that doesnt require an additional power supply and has all the typical games you would expect installed from MVS to CPS2. The trouble is with the system is that it doesnt run fighting games at all well, I think someone quoted everything is 30FPSecond and therefore the fighters suffer as a consequence. The Blue Elf 2 is now out boasting 300 games at the same size, and includes CPS3 games in the line up and shooters (flipped though to run in hori). SF3 3strike is in the lineup, and I am wondering if the same flaws apply to the Blue Elf 2? Has anyone play tested this or seen any impartial reviews anywhere? I know im probably hoping too much, but if it can run SF3 this may be worth a look.
- d123456
- Please Continue...
- Posts: 298
- Joined: September 24th, 2008, 2:54 pm
- Location: Almere, Netherlands
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Thanks for the 30 FPS info on the bleu elf, wow how I would've crushed the internet if I would've bought that
Curious about your question, blue elf then.
30 FPS destroys everything!
Curious about your question, blue elf then.
30 FPS destroys everything!
-
- Please Continue...
- Posts: 2
- Joined: July 30th, 2009, 9:23 pm
- Location:
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
I bought a Blue Elf 2 pcb just for the Streetfighter 3 games it's got all 3 versions of SF 3, (1st,2nd,3rd) these games play brilliantly i am pleasantly surprised it's also got some other great games like DODonPachi, this game plays using the vertical screen position.
- yosai
- Windy City
- Posts: 4061
- Joined: August 17th, 2008, 5:00 pm
- Location: London
- eBay: yosai
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
You played the games on the original hardwares?kungfumaster wrote:I bought a Blue Elf 2 pcb just for the Streetfighter 3 games it's got all 3 versions of SF 3, (1st,2nd,3rd) these games play brilliantly i am pleasantly surprised it's also got some other great games like DODonPachi, this game plays using the vertical screen position.
According to this thread here they are crap. Also wired 6 buttons through JAMMA, no kick harness support. Games list looks okay though.
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthr ... e7&t=91978
-
- Please Continue...
- Posts: 2
- Joined: July 30th, 2009, 9:23 pm
- Location:
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
I used to own the original cps3 kits so i know also with this multigame pcb no more worries about the dreaded suicide battery because arcademultigame pcb's do not have any suicide batteries fitted.yosai wrote:You played the games on the original hardwares?kungfumaster wrote:I bought a Blue Elf 2 pcb just for the Streetfighter 3 games it's got all 3 versions of SF 3, (1st,2nd,3rd) these games play brilliantly i am pleasantly surprised it's also got some other great games like DODonPachi, this game plays using the vertical screen position.
According to this thread here they are crap. Also wired 6 buttons through JAMMA, no kick harness support. Games list looks okay though.
http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthr ... e7&t=91978
Kick harness not a problem i just soldered the extra wires from my jamma connector for the extra buttons only took me about 10 minutes to do.
It makes me laugh people slagging off hardware they have never seen working just because someone says it is crap does not mean it is crap i recommend to these people play streetfighter 3 1st, 2nd and 3rd on Blue Elf 2 and see for yourself.
- yosai
- Windy City
- Posts: 4061
- Joined: August 17th, 2008, 5:00 pm
- Location: London
- eBay: yosai
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Suicide is one thing.. but how does it play.
I'm not slagging it off, if it runs well then it'll be a great purchase. The reseller in that thread I linked to (apparently) stopped selling them due to complaints that the emulation was ****.
I'm not slagging it off, if it runs well then it'll be a great purchase. The reseller in that thread I linked to (apparently) stopped selling them due to complaints that the emulation was ****.
stopped stocking them had to many complaints slow load times,choppy graphics,ect
You say they play brilliantly, can you verify that there no slowdown/judder and all of the timing is perfect? There no way in hell I'm going to fork out to try one of these considering how crap the Blue Elf 108 in 1 was.kungfumaster wrote:It makes me laugh people slagging off hardware they have never seen working just because someone says it is crap does not mean it is crap i recommend to these people play streetfighter 3 1st, 2nd and 3rd on Blue Elf 2 and see for yourself.
- trmatthe
- -
- Posts: 433
- Joined: April 21st, 2009, 8:35 pm
- Location:
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Hi guys. I bought one of these as something interesting to tweak if the games turned out unplayable; I'm currently hacking the SDHC boot to turn it into a mini-MAME so you can tell my thoughts straight off.
Pros:
The simpler NG stuff plays fine.
Cons:
It's way underpowered for CPS2 and pretty much everything else. 30fps is optimistic. I've got a plan to film it using my HDTV camera so I can see precisely how often it redraws, but it's absolutely, definitely not 60fps. Even some of the 68000 NG stuff is grody.
I've played a some of the games on original hardware which is why I can state my observations with a high degree of confidence. I've also played some of the CPS2 on MAME on a properly specced PC and the Blue Elf doesn't even come close to the imperfect PC/MAME benchmark.
And to really **** on my bonfire, they've got some freaky SDHC storage going on. I can't mount the card under any operating system so I can't even update it to a low-spec-game-only MAME box. I'm currently soldering logic analyser test clips to the cart to watch the bootup process so I can maybe modify the kernel and games. I'd like to build a setup with some of the early (aka lightweight) NG games along with some very early arcade stuff that the onboard Xscale CPU can handle. From a hardware point of view it's entirely integrated to the Xscale. No separate frame buffer so I'm guessing it's one of the intel onboard types.
Buy it if you are very keen on hardware hacking. Don't buy it to play CPS2 shooters. And who-t-f would buy this to play fighters - where's the fun there ?
cheers
tim
ps If I ever get past the card IO I'll post a link to my results.
Pros:
The simpler NG stuff plays fine.
Cons:
It's way underpowered for CPS2 and pretty much everything else. 30fps is optimistic. I've got a plan to film it using my HDTV camera so I can see precisely how often it redraws, but it's absolutely, definitely not 60fps. Even some of the 68000 NG stuff is grody.
I've played a some of the games on original hardware which is why I can state my observations with a high degree of confidence. I've also played some of the CPS2 on MAME on a properly specced PC and the Blue Elf doesn't even come close to the imperfect PC/MAME benchmark.
And to really **** on my bonfire, they've got some freaky SDHC storage going on. I can't mount the card under any operating system so I can't even update it to a low-spec-game-only MAME box. I'm currently soldering logic analyser test clips to the cart to watch the bootup process so I can maybe modify the kernel and games. I'd like to build a setup with some of the early (aka lightweight) NG games along with some very early arcade stuff that the onboard Xscale CPU can handle. From a hardware point of view it's entirely integrated to the Xscale. No separate frame buffer so I'm guessing it's one of the intel onboard types.
Buy it if you are very keen on hardware hacking. Don't buy it to play CPS2 shooters. And who-t-f would buy this to play fighters - where's the fun there ?
cheers
tim
ps If I ever get past the card IO I'll post a link to my results.
- yosai
- Windy City
- Posts: 4061
- Joined: August 17th, 2008, 5:00 pm
- Location: London
- eBay: yosai
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Thanks for the impressions. Sounds like you'll have some unintentional fun with it.
- Neo'nate
- Posts: 498
- Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 2:52 pm
- Location: UK
- eBay: fleebay
- Initials: NJP
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
A video would be awesome should you have the time.
Cheers
Cheers
- Rossyra
- Supermod
- Posts: 7902
- Joined: February 12th, 2009, 1:24 am
- Location: UK
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
I have one of these...
Like trmatthe I tried to mount the SDHC on Vista, XP, Ubuntu and OSX, and three different SDHC readers, to see if it was tweakable, but it seems to be running a custom file structure as he suggests because it wouldn't mount on any of them.
Some games are pretty playable, I was just playing Blazing Star on it last night for example which seemed decent to me.
I don't think games are running at 30fps, I think they are running at 60fps but with frameskip on. If it was flat 30 fps they would run in slow mo, no?
The likes of Viewpoint etc I reckon would run perfectly without the frameskip, but it seems to be on by default, it's like they picked a point somewhere in the middle and set frameskip for every game to be the same
The CPS 3 stuff is fairly bad, the likes of SF3 runs slow even with frameskip, the hardware isn't up to emulating these.
If you do manage get into the file system I'd love to see the results, I reckon with a few tweaks the cart could be bettter
Like trmatthe I tried to mount the SDHC on Vista, XP, Ubuntu and OSX, and three different SDHC readers, to see if it was tweakable, but it seems to be running a custom file structure as he suggests because it wouldn't mount on any of them.
Some games are pretty playable, I was just playing Blazing Star on it last night for example which seemed decent to me.
I don't think games are running at 30fps, I think they are running at 60fps but with frameskip on. If it was flat 30 fps they would run in slow mo, no?
The likes of Viewpoint etc I reckon would run perfectly without the frameskip, but it seems to be on by default, it's like they picked a point somewhere in the middle and set frameskip for every game to be the same
The CPS 3 stuff is fairly bad, the likes of SF3 runs slow even with frameskip, the hardware isn't up to emulating these.
If you do manage get into the file system I'd love to see the results, I reckon with a few tweaks the cart could be bettter
- Red5
- Posts: 500
- Joined: August 14th, 2009, 6:31 pm
- Location: Congleton, Cheshire
- eBay: dazpaulhill
- Initials: DAZ
- gargoyle67
- The movie topic guy!
- Posts: 5083
- Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 11:33 am
- Location: Clacton-On-Sea init
- eBay: gargoyle1967
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Is there an option to use BLUE ELF 2 with a vert monitor ?
"Yeah lets all get ponys instead, wait no lol trendy cabs" Err I think you meant Ponies didn't you ?
- gargoyle67
- The movie topic guy!
- Posts: 5083
- Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 11:33 am
- Location: Clacton-On-Sea init
- eBay: gargoyle1967
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Yes but if you want to tate the monitor for vert shooting goodness is what I'm asking
"Yeah lets all get ponys instead, wait no lol trendy cabs" Err I think you meant Ponies didn't you ?
- gargoyle67
- The movie topic guy!
- Posts: 5083
- Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 11:33 am
- Location: Clacton-On-Sea init
- eBay: gargoyle1967
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Don't think or don't know
"Yeah lets all get ponys instead, wait no lol trendy cabs" Err I think you meant Ponies didn't you ?
- Bingo83
- Please Continue...
- Posts: 788
- Joined: August 28th, 2008, 6:02 pm
- Location: Glasgow Scotland
- Initials: KRS
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
No tate mode in any of the menus's. All vert games are played on a horizontal plane with borders.
Any other Q's and I will fire mine up tomorrow for you.
Any other Q's and I will fire mine up tomorrow for you.
Check out my SoundCloud and my profile at House-Mixes for my latest DJ Mixes
- gargoyle67
- The movie topic guy!
- Posts: 5083
- Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 11:33 am
- Location: Clacton-On-Sea init
- eBay: gargoyle1967
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Cheers Bingo, Looks like I'd be better with pc setup again if I go mame route with my new cab then Prob be better emulation tbh anyways and all I've goto do is clone my other mamed HD with nice Hyperspin FE
"Yeah lets all get ponys instead, wait no lol trendy cabs" Err I think you meant Ponies didn't you ?
- gargoyle67
- The movie topic guy!
- Posts: 5083
- Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 11:33 am
- Location: Clacton-On-Sea init
- eBay: gargoyle1967
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Dam your Kerrrrrrrrn, You winz this bout....But I'll be back and in greater numberskernow wrote:
"Yeah lets all get ponys instead, wait no lol trendy cabs" Err I think you meant Ponies didn't you ?
- caincan
- Posts: 127
- Joined: August 30th, 2008, 7:13 pm
- Location: France
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
... do you have news about hacking / installing more games ?? an arcade operator said me this afternoon he could "delete" some of the games :!: (sounded easy... but now i read you that it's custom protected)
- Cadpipe
- Please Continue...
- Posts: 64
- Joined: August 17th, 2008, 5:35 pm
- Location: Leeds
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Do not buy this as ive just got one and its poor, the sound is almost un-listenable no vert mode and frame skip is enabled on all games.Its like playing mame on a amstrad cpc 464
It's all in the reflexes!
- gargoyle67
- The movie topic guy!
- Posts: 5083
- Joined: August 22nd, 2008, 11:33 am
- Location: Clacton-On-Sea init
- eBay: gargoyle1967
Re: Blue Elf 2 now out - impressions?
Yes but what are the games like ?
"Yeah lets all get ponys instead, wait no lol trendy cabs" Err I think you meant Ponies didn't you ?