So it's Friday night and you're, you're broing out.
You got this great idea.
You're like, yeah, you know what, man?
We should play some retro games.
All of them.
Because emulation isn't dying
because of Nintendo lawsuits.
Oh.
Anyway, fortunately, you're a well-equipped retro gamer.
You got all kinds of controllers
for all kinds of amazing retro consoles.
N64, SNES, original NES.
Yes.
Coleco.
Wow.
But there's only one problem.
Even though you've got your emulation PC all set up
and you got your retro arch.
Oh, can he turn this?
Oh, wow.
This is terrible.
Everything is terrible.
You're going to have to come around.
You got your retro arch all set up
with all your games and everything.
Then you're like, oh, how do I plug?
How do I plug one of these into one of these?
If only there was a solution.
Oh, there it is.
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So this right here is the Bliss Box.
In the box, you get the Bliss Box adapter,
which has got one USB-B,
so a USB-2-B at the back.
Then it's got four HDMI connectors.
Now, here's a funny thing that a lot of people don't know.
There is a huge difference
between physical connection standards
and electrical connection standards.
And while you might see an HDMI port,
that's a totally normal HDMI port,
and go, okay, so that's for video, right?
You might not always be correct.
And I have seen HDMI used for all kinds of things.
I've even seen it used for PCI Express.
That was pretty weird.
In this case, all they needed was some kind of cheap,
standard connector that they could get
that had enough pins for everything.
For everything they could possibly want to connect to it.
And can you walk us through, what are all these?
Some of them are fairly recognizable.
I don't know if they're all labeled.
That's SNES.
This is SNES.
This is NES.
This looks like GameCube.
There's the Coleco.
They ship you the Bliss Box,
and then this entire bouquet.
Oh, thank you.
Oh, it's so cute.
Of adapters, so that you could have four controllers
for pretty much any retro console you would want.
And you don't have to go with,
even the slightly different experience
that you might get with something like
an 8-bit Doh controller.
Wait, is this from 8-bit Doh?
Oh wow, no, this is from a SNES Mini.
Yeah.
Oh, so this is first party.
Yeah.
All right then.
Does this have an adapter too?
No.
Oh.
That was a mistake.
We did not think of that.
So in terms of setup, honestly, there's not a whole lot.
You gotta configure these dip switches
to determine whether you want four-play mode
or single-play mode.
And then it doesn't require external power.
You just go ahead and pop that USB in the back.
It supports a hundred plus types of controllers.
So everything we've got here,
I mean, with the exception of maybe this,
is pretty mainstream from a retro gaming perspective.
And it even supports advanced functionality
like pressure-sensitive buttons on PS2 controllers
in games that support that.
And it has the ability to detect
what kind of controller is in what type of port.
So your emulator, just with a restart at worst,
should be able to pick up exactly
what all the button bindings are
without any dinking around whatsoever.
The last major benefit of this,
aside from that it's just
a single cable solution,
instead of having a bunch of dongles
hanging out of the front of your case,
is that it is extremely low latency.
So the idea, and we went and obtained
this mammoth of a TV specifically
so that we could evaluate that for ourselves,
the idea is that you should have
an as-good-as-original latency gaming experience.
But I'm not sure if I buy it yet.
Let's see.
One thing we missed,
apparently you need to reset the bliss box
when you change the controllers around.
I think there was a button here.
So every one of them has a button right beside it.
Not yet.
Oh, I see what's going on.
It's plugged into the keyboard.
Oh, well, we don't have it plugged in at all.
Dang it.
When you're trying to reset it and stuff,
it should say some kind of yellowy text
at the bottom of the emulator.
If that isn't showing up, maybe not plugged in.
There we go.
All right. Wait, what?
Hold on. I'm just doing mine too.
Is yours working?
It was working for like a second.
And then I touched it.
Okay. So we had some problems and we have re-equipped.
I went home.
I got my SNES controllers, like OG SNES controllers,
and my PS2 DualShocks.
Also, we figured out what was going on
with Luke's PlayStation controller.
It's Mad Catz.
There's also like a fray on the cable.
There's some detection issues there.
The N64 controller is trying to work.
Yeah. The N64 controller is trying to work.
Turns out that was a retroarch issue.
And then finally, the Coleco,
it looks like these are very simple devices.
There's nothing to really detect,
but there's a manual override.
So we're just gonna try again.
Can we just play some SNES games?
Because like the whole thing
is it's supposed to be really low latency.
Like there's some part of the USB standard that it's using
that mostly gets ignored.
That's supposed to allow it to be interrupt driven.
It's so, theoretically, it's like the best thing
ever.
Okay. So can we just do Super Mario World?
Yes, absolutely.
Okay. Because within a very short period of time,
I should be able to tell in this game.
This is my jam.
You probably have more experience here than me,
but I've also played this game a bunch.
Are you calling me old?
No, it's a classic.
Classic, shut up.
You just were, you know,
part of it when it first came out.
That's all.
This is feeling pretty good actually.
I kind of zoned out just watching,
but it looks like it's going well.
Oops.
Oh, why did I do that?
Dang it.
Stupid.
No more super high points for you.
Stupid.
That's feeling good.
Trying real hard right now.
SNES Super Mario World.
I'm impressed.
Works good.
I'm impressed.
Zero issues from my stance.
All right. Okay.
You pick the game this time.
You pick the game.
Pick a game where you know how to play it and I don't.
See, I'm not this old.
We're going to do this one.
You hyped me up on this.
Okay. We can play another Linus game.
I'm going to be cool.
I'm going to be hairy.
Okay.
Flatland is like,
I'm pretty into Flatland.
You have to do Flatland.
Which one even am I?
I'm up here.
What the heck?
Okay. I don't remember any of the controls.
Okay. I don't even know what just happened there.
I think having the AIs in here might've been a mistake.
Okay. What the heck, dude?
Wait, was that, is that you?
Yeah. There you go.
Eat that bone, loser.
That's right.
Now you know what's up.
Wait. Oh boy.
Oh, I just picked up a heart.
I think, I think I picked up a heart.
Oh. Someone threw a log at me.
Eat logs, loser.
Oh crap. I just got bombed.
I'm in danger.
Whoa.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Watch out.
Watch out. He's got the bomb.
No.
So anyway, this is-
We should probably move on,
but that's actually kind of fun.
This is a game that I used to play.
I miss games like that.
Yeah.
That are just like,
you can kind of figure it out kind of right away.
Stupid, dumb fun.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. That was cool.
I liked that.
Also, no problem with the controllers.
Yep. Everything seemed to work fine.
Yep. Feeling good.
Yeah. GameCube controllers are apparently like,
Yeah.
A thing now?
Yeah.
AudioCop.
Yeah. Thank you. I heard it.
Sorry. Which-
I don't care.
Yeah. Let's do Flower Cup.
Jeez. What a guy.
I'm funny. To me.
See ya. See ya.
Whatever. I have the crappy analog stick,
which actually is making more of a difference
than it was previously.
So I've been playing this game
with the classic controller on the Wii.
And, um,
I thought I sucked at this game,
but actually I don't.
That controller just is not actually very good.
So wait.
Because I'm perfectly good at this game now.
The jank N64 controller you have right now
is better than the classic one.
Oh, so much better.
I mean, part of it too, though, again, is muscle memory.
Like there's no way I would have been able to overtake
that truck on the classic controller.
There we go. Come on, baby.
Show me that first place.
Yeah, you got it.
I'm like gonna hopefully get six.
I got completely wrecked.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Ah.
Oh.
Oh, that was hard to watch.
I actually hated this controller.
Really?
I did not realize.
I didn't mind these controllers.
This fight, I just got tools.
I just didn't like how asymmetrical they were.
Like it's a weird ergonomic situation here for me.
Are you ready to play some burger time?
No, I want to watch you play first.
Oh.
I think I'm dead now though.
Yeah, super dead.
But I put one.
Okay.
So you have to step on something
and make it fall.
Go, go, go.
You're in.
Okay.
This seems like the place where I have the most options.
They're on you though.
I know.
I just, I want them all behind me.
Oh, that's a whole burger.
Here he goes.
Okay.
We get to see what this is.
Yeah.
It is.
It's free life.
That's awesome.
Yeah, that's right.
You all went that way.
Good trick.
Oh, no.
Very good run.
Okay.
I think we can make it.
Okay.
Yeah.
They had you.
What?
So I think really we can draw our conclusion, right?
Yeah.
If the objective of the foreplay from Bliss Box
is low latency, multi-controller support,
then I think they're a lot of the way there.
There's still some software niggles
that a lot of them are as much to do
with third-party software as they are to do
with Bliss Box's implementation.
But it does mean that the user experience
with what with the resetting controllers
and restarting your software every time is not amazing.
Yeah.
And there's the cost issue.
It is not cheap at 55 bucks for the box
and then $7 each for the adapters.
Especially when you compare it to something like this
that costs anywhere from 15 to 25 bucks
for a couple of controllers.
I mean, seven times two is a lot of that cost,
but the latency.
And the ability to have this sitting on your desk
and hot swap controllers,
as much as you want.
Even though you still have to have a lot of dongles
sitting in a drawer somewhere.
That's true.
So I think they're on a good path.
The retro gaming experience,
aside from our choice of titles,
actually a lot of fun.
Yeah.
So...
I mean, BurgerTime was pretty mint.
We're giving it a conditional thumbs up.
Yeah.
Conditional thumbs up.
Still some work to do on the software and the ease of use.
And luckily all the problems can be software
or firmware updated.
But controller support was actually pretty darn good,
across the board for us.
And we even got Dreamcast support, apparently,
which is pretty cool.
Yeah.
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So thanks for watching, guys.
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And Floatplane, you should join that too.
And you should probably get a ColecoVision controller
so you can play it perfectly.
You should probably not do that at all.
I am not endorsing the ColecoVision at this time.