The ouya or how to lose many hours without trying...

mjnurney

we live as we dream. Alone.
Joined
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We all know the Ouya , the humble and cheap Android console from the kickstarter project. Its been around about a year now and i had planned to buy one at launch but as always i forgot and life took over.

But.. ive just bought one and here are my on going first impressions , games, software, side loading and all that jazz, so sit back with a coffee and slip a moody LP on the gramaphone and stay a while.

Ive bought my ouya from Amazon and it arrived after a couple of days , the ouya is small and square but comes with USB and ethernet and that wonderful connection - the hdmi , wifi and bluetooth too.

The OS menu is basic and easy to use. The games selection is pretty large , 900 or so at the moment and a fair selection of apps too. Now this is not a MS or SONY machine and the quality of some (a lot) of software is pretty dire so you will be hitting the uninstall button often.

SO whats good?

**Games.

The cave , Clarc, dubwars,bomb squad , canabalt and many many others. The games selection is excellent and there are some great adventure / rpg / arcade games to be found.

**Emulation.

im currently trying lots but here are my findings so far...

Dosbox - works great. fast but the sound isnt always spot on. im playing Dark Forces at the moment,

UAE4droid. - works well , few options and AGA seems to fail but A500 mode is excellent and works better than my old dual core laptop.

Reicast - Dreamcast emulator - still to try this.

FPSE - playstaion one - works great on Meatl gear solid.

any many others , Sega, nintendo , atari etc

**Sideloading...

whats sideloading? well basically its loading software thats not in the market place (the ouya market)
So how do i do it ?

Option one, use the web browser in MAKE and save the android .apk files
option two - use AIRDROID , download it as above and then use your mac or PC to copy files over. you will need to register and it has a 100mb limit without payment..but its cheap.

option three- USB , now you would think this is the easy option , copy to USB and play? but no. The ouya expects new softare to be on the internal memoey and not on USB so installs will ususally fail unless copied to sdcard0/downloads.

**Essential software:
Filepwn -basic file manager- download it on the ouya
ES file explorer - file manager / unzip / cut / paste - sideload.
Airdroid - copy files oner wifi like ftp but with a nice GUI - sideload.

with these you can download anything really ...i might not work with the ouya controller but it will usually run.

**notes / bad points

You will need a keyboard and mouse at some point , yes you can use a controller but hair loss and drink will follow.

The controller , lots of people moan about it but its pretty good and seems to work well enough, the touch pad is a bit jumpy so playing games with it is unlikely.

Over all the ouya - its excellent but you will loose hours of your life!!! its not perfect , yes its old tech now and the intenal ram is too small , the tegra is a bit slow but them most of use use the Amiga and that was slow in 1994.

I would recommend a mouse and keyboard on the ouya to really make life easier , the controller can be slow to respond in some heavy CPU/GPU situations.

SPECS:

tegra3 Quad cpu
1gb ram
8gb internal flash
hdmi
wifi bgn
bluetooth LE 4
Android OS
wifi controller with centre touch pad.

mike.
 
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I've had one for awhile, even put it into a custom case with a red led fan. However it's now sitting in a box gathering dust, games are okay even bought a couple. Towerfall being one of them. However the Controllers, which I have two of are terrible. They loose sync now and then, they lag on occasion.
If you hook up an Xbox wireless controller to it, it's like day and night. The Xbox controller is 100% better.
Might just sell it, the problem being I'll have to work out how to transfer the games :-/

BTW the controller uses bluetooth not wireless.
 
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