Recalbox 7.2 – released on April 23 at 9pm (GMT+2)!
Hey peeps, here is some awesome news that the Recalbox folks have shared with us – this Friday, April 23rd, at 9:00pm (GMT+2), they will finally launch their long awaited 7.2 update, packed with heaps of new features, new systems, functionalities and optimisations!
source: Recalbox via YouTube
To recap what is new and improved in Recalbox 7.2, which there are many, we thought we’d share the major highlights right here:
MAJOR NEW FEATURES:
Light-Gun Games!
Play more than 250 lightgun games on many different systems (Arcade, Megadrive/MegaCD, Dreamcast, and Playstation to name just a few), no configuration needed! Now gathered under a new “LightGun” virtual system.
Better 3D performance on Raspberry Pi 4!
The team has optimised Recalbox, allowing almost all N64, Dreamcast, Naomi & Atomiswave games to run at full speed on Raspberry Pi 4!
Overclock the Raspberry Pi 4!
And for even more performance, we’ve tested and chosen 4 optimal overclock settings on the Raspberry Pi 4. Overclocking your Pi will increase the frame-rate on CPU and GPU intensive games.
Improved PSX/N64/PSP performance on ODROID-GO Advance/Super
Play almost all PSX, N64, and PSP games at full speed on both ODROID-GO Advance & ODROID-GO Super!
NEW FEATURES:
New systems!
5 new supported systems are added to the nearly 120 systems already supported in Recalbox:
- Watara Supervision: This cheap Game Boy clone was manufactured by Watara in 1992. It was later licensed to several third-parties, and released under many different names. 69 games have been officially released.
- PICO-8: A virtual console similar to the TIC-80 with over 4000 games available, largely popularised by the incredible success of “Celeste”, the famous platformer initially developed by Noel Berry and Maddy Thorson on Pico-8 in 2015, before being released on all modern platforms in 2018!
- Pocket Challenge V2: A Japanese handheld console that specialises in educational games.
- Elektronika BK: BK (БК), Russian abbreviation for “бытовой компьютер” – “home computer” is a series of Soviet 16-bit home computers, developed under the brand Electronika by NPO Scientific Center. Elektronika BK was the only “official” Soviet home computer. The BK-0010/BK-0011 and Terak 8510/A were manufactured from 1984 to 1993 and sold at the price of 650 Rubles, which was… almost 4 months of average salary!
- EPOCH SuperCassette Vision: The 2nd generation EPOCH console released in 1984 and counting a total of 30 officially released games and 3 unreleased. The porting of this Japanese emulator to Libretro is a Recalbox exclusive!
Dual JoyCon support (Nintendo Switch controllers)
Recalbox now supports both left and right JoyCons! In addition, you can use both JoyCons as a single combined controller!
Bluetooth Audio
Connect your Bluetooth headphones or speakers! (just pair them like you would a controller, for now).
New cores
3 new emulators are also available, depending on your hardware:
- Libretro NeoCD added as NeoGeoCD core: loads CDs so much faster!
- Libretro DOSBOX Pure: Don’t struggle with complicated DOS setups anymore! These games
have never been more plug & play! - Libretro-craft: A Minecraft clone available on x86 & x64 platforms only.
Hide pre-installed games
Pre-installed games are no longer copied into the user share. They stay on the system and can be hidden/shown using an option from the settings menu.
IMPROVEMENTS:
Main menu
The main menus have all been rewritten. They’re now faster, consume less memory, and are more intuitive. The most useful options have been moved so they’re faster to access. Reboots can now be delayed. This way, you can configure everything you need to before having to restart.
New options have been added:
- Swap A & B buttons: change the way you validate and cancel actions.
- Factory reset: reset all configurations (only keeps your games, saves, and scraped data)
Sound
In-game video sound/music is now available! You can choose between the following sound mode:
- Background music only (EmulationStation music)
- Video sound only (scraped videos)
- Background music AND video sound mixed
- Background music OR video sound (when playing videos in the new Gameclip screensaver)
Internal Scraper
The internal scraper has been greatly enhanced:
- Improved menus. Now more intuitive, less clicks required to get things done.
- Better region priority management: get better metadata for your region.
- Ignore file referenced from .cue/.m3u and other multi-file roms: no more scraping the same
game twice!
System
- Check image integrity when updating Recalbox
- Added a new Reset to Factory Settings option to reset all Recalbox & emulator settings
without losing any user data: games, saves, screenshots, music, etc.
Emulators
Many emulators have been updated and/or reconfigured for new features, or to achieve better performance.
- Dolphin updated to version 5.0-13178.
- Stella (A2600) updated to fix lots of bugs (eg: Pitfall II)
- Supermodel updated to version 839
- UAE updated to support CHD
- Np2Kai (PC98) updated to fix several issues
- Odyssey² updated to add Europeans/French models (new RetroArch options)
- Mupen64plus-next updated for better compatibility and performance! This core is now available on almost all platforms and performs very well!
- FBNeo updated to support latest game additions
- Libretro Duckstation is now available on all platforms!
- Beetle-Saturn updated to improve compatibility (PC only)
- Amiberry updated to version 3.3 for better performance & new options
- Libetro-Parallel-n64 updated and fixed on almost all boards (except low-end PIs)
- VIC20 is now shown as its own system, instead of only being available under C64
- Videopac+ is now available as its own system, instead of being available as Odyssey² sub-model
- Libretro MAME has been optimised to run full-speed on low-end PCs.
- ScummVM updated to v2.3.0 and merged with ResidualVM
BUG FIXES:
Lots of bug fixes, as usual:
- Fixed the ODROID-GO Advance v1 controller
- Fixed the 8bitdo NES30 Pro rev1 controller mapping
- Fixed missing BIOS MD5 & other minor errors in BIOS database
- Removed useless BIOS files (PalmOS)
- Fixed the Retroarch shortcut on ODROID-GO Advance
- Fixed shaders on ODROID-GO Advance
- Fixed lost support of open and WPA-PSK-SHA256 WiFi keys
- Correction a fan problem with the NESPi 4 Case
TECHNICAL FEATURES:
Buildroot
Buildroot has been bumped to version 2020.11.
Kernels
Linux kernels have been bumped to:
- 5.4 for the ODROID XU4
- 5.8 for both x86 and x64
- 5.10 for all Raspberry Pis
- Both ODROID-GO Advance & GO Super use a special Rockchip 4.4 kernel.
PulseAudio
We’ve moved from a purse ALSA audio backend to PulseAudio! Recalbox now supports more audio devices — and even Bluetooth audio!
image source: Recalbox
There you go peeps, to say we can’t wait for Recalbox 7.2 would be a massive understatement!