I'm a longtime MiBox owner who has just discovered the world of retro gaming on Android TV. Although I'm generally happy with the MiBox, the discounted pricing that's now available on the Nvidia Shield has me tempted to upgrade. Can anyone tell me whether the retro gaming experience on the Shield is substantially better versus the MiBox?
I bought a shield for retroarch but I can't figure out how to set it up. Most tutorials online stink and still don't produce working games. Anyone care to share how to set it up? Looking for nes, snes, Genesis, psx and n64. Wii would be nice too.
Mi Box works great for classic gaming and its $70 price is much more reasonable than a $200 Shield. On my Mi Box have RetroArch installed (free on Google Play) along with the following consoles (called 'Cores' by RetroArch) and all the game thumbnails. Make sure to use roms from the "No-Intro" collection for best compatibility:
Emulator: RetroArch
File Manager: X-plore (copying roms, setting up folders, etc.)
Good classic style USB controller: https://www.amazon.com/Buffalo-iBuffalo-Classic-Gamepad-BSGP801GY/dp/B002B9XB0E/
Keep in mine the Android as a whole has a tiny bit of input lag, this is slowly getting better with newer versions, 8.0 being the best yet. Make sure your TV is set to 'game mode' or use a monitor to help, but overall it's unavoidable because of the OS. Raspberry Pi 3 /RetroPie (based on above RetroArch/libretro) is slightly better by about 1 frame, and a Windows or Linux PC being the lowest amount of lag typically only about 4 frames. Enjoy!
I bought the official xiaomi gamepad for the mibox and use retroarch and arc browserto play most dos,snes,sega,gba games i..can play n64 but it doesnt do it 100% smooth.
shield has a beefier processor and graphics chip, it most likely can run the next few generations without issue (n64,ps2,wii)
8/16/32 bit generation should all work fine on either device. 64 bit and on I'd go with the Shield. Ive had good results on the Shield with Dreamcast and Game Cube games on the Shield. Only tried New Super Mario Bros Wii for the Wii. Worked fine but didn't try any other games as I don't have Wiimotes or a Dolphin Bar and emulating a Wiimote (even with NSMB) is a pain, like when you have to shake it. You can emulate it but its not as simple.
I bought two xiaomi gamepads when they first came out to play some emulators. The input lag was absolutely horrible. They have been in a drawer gathering dust ever since.
On Shield you can enjoy GameCube and Wii games such as Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, NFS U1 & U2 and Rayman 3 with Dolphin emulator ( www.dolphin-emu.org ) with good support of Tegra chipset. This emulator does not work well on MiBox :( And I recommend you try also Happy Chick Emulator on Mibox before purchase Shield ( www.happychick.hk )