tamesala slaven scorpeo
Kennedy Tadder
The RG405M has the same internals as the Retroid Pocket 3+ so, in terms of performance out of the box, you might expect it to be the same between the two devices. However, when it comes to higher end emulation like the Gamecube or PS2, the Retroid Pocket 3+ has a slight advantage with a recent firmware update.
A recent official update to the RP3+ firmware improved the performance modes on the device as well as included an experimental update to the GPU drivers which gave it better performance on those higher end systems.
Given that the internals are the same between the two devices, it should be expected that a similar update to the firmware could be made to the RG405M however, Anbernic has released no such update as of the writing of this guide.
The development community has luckily stepped up and a custom firmware called GammaOS was released for the RG405M which adds similar performance modes as well as the same GPU drivers which improves the device over the stock operating system brings it mostly to parity with the RP3+.
So, between the RG405M (with GammaOS) and the RP3+ (with the latest firmware), the performance between the two devices is pretty similar. That means that your choice between the two devices is going to come down to the external design with the main differences between the two devices being that the RG405M has a 4:3 aspect ratio screen (vs a 16:9 on the RP3+) and the RG405M has inline shoulder buttons versus the stacked shoulders of the RP3+.
Overall, I would consider the RG405M to be more pocketable and with a 4:3 aspect ratio screen, it is great for most retro systems that you will be emulating. However, the Retroid Pocket 3+ has the stacked shoulder buttons and a 16:9 aspect ratio screen making it better for PSP emulation and game streaming.
First you will need to plug in a fresh SD card into the RG405M. The android system will ask you how you wish to format the card, as portable storage or as internal memory. You will want to format it as portable storage.
Once the card has been formatted to be read by the android system, you can eject the card from the device and plug it into your PC with a micro SD card reader and it should be picked up automatically just like a USB drive.
From there, simply create a folder on the SD card and start copying your ROMS over to the SD card. To simplify and organize your files, I recommend creating a folder called ROMS and a series of subfolders inside this with the names of each of your systems that you plan to emulate (e.g. Sega, SNES, GameCube, etc).
The second method to add games to the RG405M is to connect directly to your PC via a USB-C cable. Once connected, you should see an item appear in the shade that says it is charging the device via USB. You can swipe down from the top of the screen on the android device and select this item and change it to File Transfer.
This should make the device appear in your file manager on your PC then you can select the Internal or SD Card drive on the device and begin transferring files as you would similar to a USB thumb drive.
The third method to add games to the RG405M is to simply download the ROMS directly to the device via the built in internet browser. Simply navigate to your favourite ROM source and download the files directly onto the device.
The RG405M currently only has one supported custom firmware option called GammaOS. This custom firmware is based on the LineageOS operating system and adds a number of additional features over the stock operating system.
Some of the additional features include added Performance Modes, a fix for the over sharpened display, corrected mapping for the L2 and R2 button mapping in android apps, and an updated GPU driver which improves performance on higher end emulated systems like PS2 and Gamecube.
Emulation on an Android device unfortunately does not have a one stop shop solution. Each emulated system will have its own app which is sometimes available via the Google Play Store and sometimes available only to be sideloaded. Additionally, each app will have its own setup, settings, and interface.
With the RG405M being a 4:3 aspect ratio screen and the original PSP resolution being 16:9, one trick to minimize the black bars on the top and bottom without stretching the image too much is to set the aspect ratio in PPSSPP Display layout & effects menu to be 0.85. This uses an algorithm to stretch the image slightly around the edges while making the display take up more of the screen.
Setting the Graphics Renderer to Vulkan will generally have better performance than OpenGL though it may vary by game. Also, while in the Graphics menu, set Threaded Presentation to On.
If you need to tinker with settings to find better performance, try setting the EE Cycle Rate or EE Cycle Skip to a lower value in the System Settings menu though your results will vary by game.
Last tip to try to get better performance is that some games will have much better performance when you set the Hardware Download Mode to Disable Readbacks or even just Disabled in the Graphics Settings Menu.
AetherSX2 is no longer being actively developed but the NetherSX2 fork is attempting to patch out and potentially improve on the original app. The NetherSX2 patching process requires the AetherSX2 apk but luckily, it also downloads the apk for us before patching it.
As a new emulator, there are still issues with compatibility for many games. If you plan to emulate using the Vita3K emulator, be sure to check out the official Vita3K compatibility list to make sure the game you want to play is even able to run.
My recommended settings for Gamecube and Wii emulation on the RG405M is to set the Video Backend to Vulkan and the Shader Compilation Mode to Hybrid Ubershaders. Set the Compile Shaders before Starting option to On to minimize stuttering in game if a shader needs to compile.
While in the Hacks section, make sure that GPU Texture Decoding is set to Off as i found that this causes error messages to appear in game and occasionally crashes the game. Other useful settings are to set Skip Presenting Duplicate Frames to On and Disable Bounding Box to On.
Many of the other settings in the Graphics -> Hacks section will have varying affects on each individual game and so you will need to tinker with them on a per game basis to find the best combination.
You can download the Dolphin emulator from their website. I recommend scrolling down to the Development version and downloading the most recent version from there. This section updates regularly so check back occasionally to get a more up to date build.
The RG405M is capable of emulating a few of the lightweight Nintendo Switch games (think Indie 2D pixelart titles) but this device is definitely not powerful enough to do much more than that. Even when it comes to these lightweight games, it will be very hit or miss which titles will actually even boot or run in game at all so there will be a lot of trial and error to figure out which games will work.
My recommended settings for 3DS emulation on the RG405M are to set the Graphics API to Vulkan for the best performance. Additionally, turn On Asynchronous shader compilation.
While Vulkan development is still relatively new to the 3DS emulators and will have some instability issues, it definitely offers performance improvements over OpenGL making some games actually playable on the RG405M.
The RG405M is easily capable of emulating Nintendo DS games. As an android device with a touch screen, it can also emulate the touch screen of the original DS. No special settings or tinkering is really required to play any Nintendo DS game on the RG405M.
The only downside in using the RG405M to emulate Nintendo DS games is the lack of dual screens which is true of every retro handheld emulator on the market currently. Additionally, with the 4:3 aspect ratio screen, there is no really good way to show both screens at the same time without either losing a lot of screen real estate or overlapping screens.
Drastic is a paid emulator which will set you back around $5 USD. There is a great free emulator available for android as well called MelonDS. Drastic is slightly more feature rich and specifically why I recommend it over MelonDS is the ability to bind a hotkey to toggle between single and dual screen displays. This feature allows for you to maximize a single screen to fullscreen for those games that concentrate the gameplay on just one screen at a time like Mario Kart DS and then back to both screens displayed at once with a press of a button.
The RG405M is easily capable of emulating Dreamcast games. Additionally, with a native 4:3 aspect ratio screen, the RG405M is a perfect fit for the native resolution 4:3 aspect ratio of the original hardware.
Retroarch is an all in one emulator capable of emulating many systems all the way up through 4th generation consoles. The Yabasanshiro core is also only one of a few cores in the Retroarch package capable of emulating Sega Saturn games, however, I have had the best compatibility with this core.
It is best to download Retroarch directly from their official website as the Google Play Store version seems to have issues working on the RG405M in my testing. When downloading Retroarch from their website, be sure to download the Retroarch Android 64-bit version.
There are many free Retroarch cores available that are also good for emulating N64 games if you prefer a free option but I find the features and ease of use of M64Plus FZ just so much more convenient.
Ultimately, with a dozen different apps required to take care of your emulation needs on Android, I recommend installing a good emulation frontend to help organize everything into a single, easy to use interface.
With a frontend app like Daijisho, you can organize all of your games into a single interface and launch any of the games directly from the menu. With Daijisho you can even select which emulator app you want to use on a per game basis as well as customize themes and other UI elements to make a more console like experience.
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