Lyonsden Blog

Category - Playstation

Checkmate Retro Monitor

A couple of years ago I backed a Kickstarter campaign for a new ‘Retro Styled Modular IPS Display for old and new systems” (from now on I’ll just refer to it as the ‘Checkmate Retro Monitor’). It was basically a brand new monitor using a modern IPS display that incorporated a ton of ‘old’ inputs for hooking up all the retro game consoles and computers we know and love.

I’ve been following the project closely over the past two years, tuning in to Steve Jones’s regular YouTube updates documenting it’s progress, revisions and refinements along the way. However the wait is finally over now and my shiny new Checkmate Retro Monitor is in my possession courtesy of DHL.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Monitor Box

 

It came double-boxed which ensured it arrived in tip top condition with the inner box not suffering any damage at all

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Checkmate Retro Styled Monitor Box

 

The monitor itself is protected by heavy duty polystyrene, further protecting it from damage.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor Manual

Colour manual tucked into packaging

 

A little recessed area houses the spiral bound full colour manual.

 

Checkmate Monitor Manual

 

After removing the top half of the polystyrene packaging the monitor is finally revealed. In true retro fashion, even though I ordered the white version (the alternative was black) it is actually beige. This is a good thing as I don’t own a single ‘white’ retro computer – they have all yellowed to some degree or other, even after retro-brighting.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

First glimpse of my new monitor

 

The packaging was hiding a few more things out of sight…

 

Just as well I didn’t toss the packaging straight in the bin!

 

…inside another box tightly wedged into a recess in the polystyrene.

 

Accessories box

 

This contained the remote control, PSU for the monitor and a couple of alternative panels for the bottom front panel of the monitor.

 

Accessories

 

There were a couple of noticeable omissions here, namely a set of batteries for the remote and an IEC (kettle) cable. We (the Kickstarter backers) were told not to expect these so this came as no surprise. I’m sure most people will have these things in plentiful supply if they’re anything like me.

 

Back Panel

The back panel is where all the magic begins and is where you can add and remove the ‘pods’ that give the monitor its unparalleled versatility,

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Ports galore

 

Out of the box none of the ports are labelled – this is a little DIY job for the user!

 

Sticker Sheet

 

Tucked inside the manual is a small sheet of stickers which need to be aligned correctly and stuck to the relevant areas on the back to identify each group of connections.

 

Labelled ports.

 

I used a pair of tweezers to carefully position the stickers followed by a blast from my heat gun to ensure they were firmly attached.

 

Pods

All the monitors come with the bottom ‘Pod 0’ which leaves two bays to fill. I opted for (Appy’s) Retro Scaler with GBS Control and a Raspberry Pi pod. I could also have chosen a MiSTer Pod but I already own a few Raspberry Pi’s so that was the more appealing option. I do hope to pick up a MiSTer at some point in the future, funds permitting, but for now I’m looking forward to setting up either PiMiga or AmiKit on a Pi 4 housed inside my monitor!

 

Contents of the Raspberry Pi Pod Kit

 

The monitor includes a fully functioning tilt and swivel base, stereo speakers, an OLED display panel on the front, a remote control and of course more inputs around the back than you can shake a stick at.

 

Powering On my Checkmate Retro Monitor for the first time

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Screen with light bleed

 

The monitor powered on without issue and displayed a very natty ‘Checkmate’ logo. However I was a little bit disappointed to see quite a lot of backlight bleed down both sides of the screen which is definitely something I wasn’t expecting. I put up with it for a week or so before deciding to tinker with the bezel screws and managed to greatly reduce the issue thankfully.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Screen without the light bleed issues

 

I basically had to slacken the side bezel screws off almost to the point were they came out completely but this did pretty much eradicate the bleed as you can see in the photo above (taken a week later after I had rearranged my desk). The bezel is a little loose both sides now but it’s not going anywhere (there’s other screws holding it in place) so it doesn’t bother me too much.

 

OLED Screen for the GBS Controls

 

Underneath the screen is a tiny little OLED panel that provides access to some of the GBS Control features/pre-sets on the Scaler via the jog dial. You can use it to check what the current settings are and also reset the scaler without having to power it off and on again. Changing pre-sets (stored custom configurations) is as simple as selecting a numbered pre-set from the menu and pressing in the jog dial.

 

Hooking up stuff to my new Checkmate Retro Monitor

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Amiga Workbench via HDMI

 

My Amiga 1200 is fitted with an Indivision AGA Mk3 board so I was able to hook this up to the Checkmate Retro Monitor directly via HDMI. After a (good) few minutes playing around with the Indivision config tool (and some pointers off a helpful soul on the discord channel) I was able to achieve a beautifully crisp, rock-steady Workbench display running at 1280×1024 resolution that filled the screen from edge to edge.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Roguecraft running on my new Checkmate monitor

 

This also gave me a good excuse to boot up Roguecraft for a quick blast which displayed just fine straight out of the box. Such a great game too – I don’t need much of an excuse to fire it up!

After a few goes of Roguecraft I decided it was time to hook up a few different systems to the monitor to see how it performed with those.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Sega Rally on Dreamcast via Composite cable

 

I tried my Dreamcast first and hooked it up via a Composite cable and got a really nice picture.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Sega Rally on Dreamcast via Composite cable

 

Next up I hooked up my OG Xbox and had a blast of Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb. This was hooked up via an HDMI adapter cable and I had no issues with picture quality.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Indiana Jones on Xbox via Composite to HDMI adapter

 

I fired up my trusty Commodore 64C next with an (admittedly cheap) composite cable and got a pretty decent looking picture. It was a little soft but perfectly useable. There were some very very faint vertical lines but I’m sure I could eradicate those if I spent some time twiddling with the pots on my LumaFix64 board.

 

Commodore 64 via Composite cable

 

SCART Test

I thought I’d give the Scaler inputs a test next. I hooked up my pretty ancient Matsui VCR (which used to belong to my Grandad back in the 1990’s) using a SCART cable and popped in a copy of the greatest movie of all time…

 

I’d buy that for a dollar!

 

…and then proceeded to spend the next hour and a half watching the whole movie. Picture quality was really good considering the source and sound was great too with some very meaty gunshot and explosion effects coming through the built-in speakers.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

ED209 vs Robocop

 

It’s probably been 20 years or longer since I’ve watched this with a PAL 5:4 aspect ratio as all my subsequent purchases have been in widescreen. To get this to display I had to select AV3 as the channel but other than that it just worked.

 

Dick Jones really does live up to his name…

 

Getting an Amiga to display an image via (RGB) SCART proved a little trickier. Initially I just couldn’t get an image at all. After going on the Discord I realised that there are basically multiple ‘hidden’ VGA channels that you can access by pressing the channel up and down buttons on the remote. After doing this a few times (pausing for a few seconds in-between) I eventually got an image to appear. Not very intuitive for sure but at least my monitor wasn’t faulty and now I know! The colours were washed out but I’m putting that down to an issue with my Amiga SCART cable as I’ve had it for donkeys years and not used it for a long time. The colours from my VCR were just fine.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Amiga via RGB SCART (think I need a new SCART cable).

 

Component Video Test

Thought I’d test out the Component video input next so hooked up my PlayStation 2 slim via Component, making sure to select ‘Y Cb/Pb Cr/Pr’ for Component Video Out in the PS2’s System Configuration. Again I had to jump VGA channels blindly until I stumbled across the correct one. I also needed to spend a bit of time messing around with the settings to get a decent looking, centered image as the default one was over to the far left and was ghosting quite badly. I did get a terrific picture in the end though and made sure I saved my GBS Control settings into a special ‘PS2’ slot which I can easily select from the OLED control on the front panel in future.

 

GBS Control Interface

Some of my GBS Control Pre-sets – including one for my PS2

 

Unfortunately there are no red/white RCA stereo inputs which you would normally expect to find with component cables. Thankfully I discovered in the manual that the VGA audio input will accept audio for the component input so by using an RCA to headphone jack converter I was able to get the sound working as well.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

PS2 Config Screen

 

Playing Media Files via USB Ports

Not really Retro related but there’s a couple of USB ports on the back so I thought I’d give them a quick try and see what sort of media files I could access through them.

 

USB Media Access Screen

 

Turns out quite a lot! I put a bunch of music, photos and videos on a USB flash drive and popped it in one of the ports. There are two of them and you have to select the correct one from the on-screen menu via the remote.

 

Checkmate Retro Monitor

Audio Player

 

I had no problems dealing with audio files and was able to play back both high bit-rate MP3’s and FLAC files. You can have it play them sequentially, randomly, utilise playlists and access track info – it’s got quite a lot of functionality for a tacked on feature.

 

Image Viewer

 

Likewise pictures were no problem at all and the monitor helpfully displays them as a slideshow automatically complete with random transitions.

 

Video Player

 

I didn’t fare quite so well with video playback. It doesn’t like MOV files and although I had better success with MP4 files it is quite fussy about the resolution of them. I was able to play back some (very) old home movie footage in MP4 format successfully though so it’s just a matter of working out the resolutions it likes.

Other Video Devices tested with my Checkmate Retro Monitor

I didn’t bother taking pictures of all the systems I tested out but I can confirm I successfully hooked up all of the systems below without any major issues*.

  • Amiga 500 (via HDMI – Vampire V2)
  • Mega 65 (via HDMI)
  • Spectrum Next (via HDMI)
  • Evercade VS (via HDMI)
  • Analog Mega SG (via HDMI)
  • Mini Pet (via RGB)
  • Mac Mini G4 (via VGA)
  • WiiU (via HDMI).

 

*I did discover one thing during my testing of the above. If you have anything plugged into the VGA port in slot 0 then you won’t get an image from anything you plug into the scaler (in my case it was my Mac Mini G4). It doesn’t seem to matter if the device you have connected is powered off either. It’s not the end of the world but it is a bit annoying to have to reach around the back and keep plugging/unplugging the VGA cable. I might investigate whether a VGA switch box will solve the issue as it does reference using an ‘isolation switch’ when designing pods that require VGA in the manual to avoid issues.

 

Evercade VS

Evercade VS with 16:9 aspect ratio enabled in monitor settings.

 

Another small thing to bear in mind is that modern stuff, like my Evercade VS console for instance, are designed for Widescreen TV’s and thus produce a vertically stretched image on the Checkmate display. I found that to get the aspect ratio correct I needed to select ’16:9′ in the monitor settings but this came at the expense of chunky black bars top and bottom. This is to be expected though and if it bothers you then it’s probably best to use such systems with modern TV’s and monitors.

 

Final thoughts about the Checkmate Retro Monitor

This is a great monitor and I’m really glad I bought it. It works amazingly well with all my Commodore machines, especially my Amiga via HDMI. Workbench was never meant to be displayed on a 16:9 display and it’s great to be able to enjoy a lovely, crisp and vibrant image in the original aspect ratio. The quality of sound from the speakers is impressive and the huge variety of input options is a retro collectors dream come true. It does however make me regret not purchasing the extra S-Video/RF expansion and also the HDMI splitter to make use of those unused HDMI ports and the blank holes in the back of the scaler. Steve from Checkmate has said he’ll be offering these for sale separately soon so I’ll be ordering those as soon as they’re available.

It’s not without its drawbacks though and most of those are related to the complexity of using the scaler. There’s frequently an element of ‘fiddling’ required to get something to display on the screen. Once you’ve got an image you often then need to ‘tweak’ it to get it displayed optimally. This is exacerbated by the fact there are actually two ways to adjust the image size; the panel has it’s own built-in adjustment via the VGA menu and then there’s the GBS Control which offers a myriad of customisable features on top of this. It’s quite easy to mess up when adjusting things to the point where you think the monitor is broken so it’s best to make small incremental changes rather than wading in clicking everything in sight! Thankfully you can save GBS Control settings into ‘Presets’ that you can load up in future for each device.

The issue with light bleed (even though I have now sorted it) from the bezel being too tight didn’t create an amazing first impression. The lack of RCA audio inputs for the component cable was also a bit disappointing as most consoles have these connections when you get a component cable, although once more there was a solution which involved purchasing a suitable adapter.

The instruction manual, whilst well made and very interesting, doesn’t really do a great job of actually explaining to a lay person (i.e. someone who wasn’t involved in making the monitor) how to use it. It’s more of a technical reference really. Thankfully there is an active and helpful bunch of people on the Checkmate Discord and Steve himself is quick to respond to issues by email.

This is very much an enthusiast project – a product made by a hardcore retro fan, for other hardcore retro fans. So long as you are happy to tinker, mess around with configurations, menus, twiddle knobs, experiment and learn as you go along then I’m sure you will love the Checkmate Retro Styled Monitor just as much as I do.

Fusion Issue 4 has arrived

Fusion Issue 4

This morning the latest edition of Fusion magazine, issue 4, dropped onto my doormat. There’s quite a variety of interesting gaming content including a look at the Picade, PlayStation Classic and reviews of Spiderman and Hollow Night. There’s also articles about the Robocop arcade game, the history of Super Monkey Ball and even a ‘Retro Man Cave’ article looking at the Pioneer LaserActive.

There’s quite a bit more I’ve not covered too, but despite all that, I can’t help but feel short changed by the complete lack of Commodore related content this month. There’s simply nothing about my beloved machines at all. The most relevant thing I could find was an article about joysticks. Still, that’s the chance you take with any multi-format publication I guess. Hopefully in the next issue they will redress the balance!

Should any of those subject areas I’ve mentioned sound interesting then you might like to visit their website to order your own copy. However, if you’re mainly interested in reading about Commodore related stuff then I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to skip this issue.

If you’ve never heard of this magazine before then you might like to take a look at my overviews of the previous 3 issues here: Issue #1, Issue #2, Issue #3.

 

Fusion Issue 4

Interesting article about retro Joysticks

Fusion Issue 3

Fusion Issue 3

The latest issue of the relatively new retro/modern gaming mag, Fusion Issue 3 arrived this morning. Had a quick flick through and there’s lots of suitably ‘christmassy’ themed stuff in it to enjoy. The ‘Guide to gifts of Christmas past ‘ looked especially interesting. A great trip down memory lane for any kid that grew up during the 70’s and 80’s. Plenty of other stuff too including a review of the new NeoGeo Mini, a look at some of the best games you can get for the PS Vita and loads more. Definitely looking forward to reading it over the weekend in front of the fire!

 

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Fusion Issue 2

Fusion Magazine Issue 2

Just received Fusion Magazine Issue 2 in the post. If you’ve not heard of this yet it’s a great little UK produced A5 magazine that covers a mix of retro and current generation gaming.

 

Fusion Magazine Issue 2

Aliens Arcade Game

 

It contains almost 60 pages packed with articles and reviews about games old and new and hardware too. I particularly enjoyed the review of retro joysticks and was glad to see that my favourite joystick of all time (the Zipstick) got a much deserved 9/10 here!

 

Fusion Magazine Issue 2

Retro Joysticks Review

 

There are a great many interesting articles and features in the magazine but I especially enjoyed ‘A Sensible Tale’. This describes how the Amiga Format coverdisk ‘Cannon Soccer’ came to be made. This really took me back to Christmastime living with my parents in the early 90’s. It also brought back very fond memories of getting coverdisks in the age before everything became instantly available over the Internet.

 

Fusion Magazine Issue 2

A Sensible Tale

 

Another great article covering a more recent game was the ‘Last of Us Revisited’. I remember this really pushing my fat PS3 to the limit – the fans used to run at full pelt while playing this game and made my PS3 sound like a vacuum cleaner!

 

Fusion Magazine Issue 2

The Last of Us Revisited

 

This really is a great little magazine and I’ll definitely make a point of subscribing now that they offer this as an option. Anyway if you haven’t yet got your own copy and would like to know more then head on over to the Fusion website.

Issue 1 of Fusion Magazine

This has just arrived in the post – the very first issue of ‘Fusion’ a new gaming magazine that covers everything from old school 8-bit classics right up to the current 4K consoles.

Fusion Magazine

Fusion Magazine – Contents Page

I spotted this on Kickstarter and pre – ordered it – it’s only £3.99 plus postage per issue. It’s A5 in size, really well produced in full glossy colour and contains 52 pages.

Fusion Magazine

Fusion Magazine – Atari VCS Article

There’s a good mix of content and although I’ve not read the whole thing yet the quality of writing of the stuff I’ve actually perused has been great. The Atari VCS article (a project I’ve been following for a long time) particularly rang true. There’s a great review of Hyper Sentinel and even Far Cry 5!

Fusion Magazine

Fusion Magazine – Hyper Sentinel Review

I must confess – at first glance I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more coverage of retro games. However that was before I’d actually read through everything on offer. There’s a really nice mix of old retro games, brand new ones and a lot of stuff in between. I really liked the spotlight on new games that have a strong retro feel to them. Hyper Sentinel, Horizon Chase Turbo and Celeste for example. Those last two games I’d never heard of before but after reading about them in Fusion I couldn’t wait to add them both to my collection!

I’ve already placed my order for issue 2 and can’t wait for it to arrive. If you’d like to find out more about the magazine or order yourself a copy head on over to their website here.

The Last of Us: Joel Edition – My copy has arrived!

Shopto have done me proud as always – my limited Joel edition arrived today! Can’t wait to start playing it…

Here’s what you get with this Special Edition: