this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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Anbernic RG DS "Plus" was recently announced, what do you all think of it? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) by sbeak@sopuli.xyz to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
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The main improvement seems to be the larger 1024x768 4.3" screens (compared to the 640x480 4" screens on the RG DS) and the inclusion of a built-in stylus (still one of those rubber nib ones though), as well as some minor changes to the hinge and other bits. However, it uses the same chip, has less RAM (from 3GB to 1GB), and ships with a Linux-based OS instead of a barely-runnable Android version. It also has a single stick instead of dual, but the RG DS was never powerful enough to run most dual stick games anyways (PS2, GC, etc.), so that probably isn't an issue. The internal eMMC storage has also been removed in favour of another microSD slot (one for the OS, another for ROMs)

It's a little weird they called it the Plus, since the only improvement is the screens and maybe the stylus, while having downgrades to the memory.

It comes in pink, black, and blue (navy-ish), while the RG DS had the red/black, turquoise, and white colourways.

What do you all think of this RG DS "Plus"?

edit: announced, not released!!

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[–] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

With some clever code, I would think integer scaling would be relatively low impact on RAM. Instead of storing multiple of each pixel, you'd query the same pixel multiple times to create the displayed frame, so the main source of new RAM consumption relative to 1x size would be storing and building the latest frame. That's a 4^2^=16x increase, but it's still just one frame.

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think that's how scaling works. I believe Drastic (and other DS emulators) use interpolation for their scaling (i.e. linear, bilinear, etc. instead of nearest neighbour). You also have the difference between the scaling of 2D and 3D elements, meaning sprites and textures are handled separately (and therefore they need to be stored somewhere: RAM!)

But the original RG DS already underperformed when it came to DS (I believe Russ was able to run 2x with Drastic on the original in some games), having a third of the RAM certainly won't help for playing 4x integer scale DS. I highly doubt that Anbernic will make it work with their "NNDDSS" emulator

[–] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

None of that matters if and only if you're merely scaling the image. I don't imagine them making an image 4x the size with 4x the detail. I imagine them just cleanly scaling the image up. Produce an image of normal DS game quality and scale that. Power users can try to scale that up if they want, but the base experience will probably just be base quality, just on a screen that scales it cleanly.

[–] sbeak@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Again, interpolation is how Drastic and other emulators scale up their images (this is to reduce jagged edges I believe), and you also have the upscaling of 3D textures too (which can be significant in some DS games)