Android Arcade
With Android Arcade, Android Central Senior Editor Android Myrick takes a weekly deep dive into retro gaming, emulation, handhelds, and every little thing in between.
Do you keep in mind the times of needing to go to the shop to select up a recreation information since you could not determine the best way to beat it? Yeah, that also occurs to me, besides I haven’t got to go to the shop, as the reply is only a Google search away. However I am not at all times taking part in video games on my laptop, and even when I am taking part in a handheld linked to the web, I do not need to sift by way of a bunch of hyperlinks which will or might not have what I am in search of.
Final month, the Anbernic RG557 was launched, and a current replace launched “Anbernic AI.” Basically, it is a chatbot that resides in your gaming handheld, designed to supply solutions and even translations. After a little bit of digging, I discovered that it is reliant on both Deepseek or Alibaba’s Qwen LLMs. That does not go away me feeling nice, nevertheless it acquired me questioning if I may simply make one myself.
With instruments like Gemini Gems and ChatGPT GPTs, I set out attempting to copy what Anbernic did, however utilizing AI chatbots that I belief a bit extra and attempting to get them engaged on the hand held. It did not fairly work out how I had hoped, however fortuitously, that is the place NotebookLM got here to my rescue.
My failed makes an attempt
No, I did not use Gemini to construct a web site and even an app. As an alternative, I made a decision now can be time to create a Gemini Gem. These had been launched final yr, with Google describing them as being “your customized AI consultants.”
My unique thought was that I might have the ability to create a Gem after which, after I wanted some assist or had a query, I may discuss to it utilizing Gemini Reside. With the current addition of display screen recording, it looks as if a no brainer, as I haven’t got to attempt to describe what I am seeing, I can simply present Gemini. Or so I believed.
Sadly, you possibly can’t but use Gems with Gemini Reside, which is a bummer. As an alternative, you are caught with “common” Gemini in the meanwhile, and whereas it is superb, I preferred the concept of getting a Gemini expertise devoted to gaming.
Initially, that is the place the story would’ve ended, as I used to be in a position to get Gemini working on my aforementioned RG557. Nonetheless, curiosity acquired the higher of me, so I needed to see if the identical factor could possibly be achieved with ChatGPT. The app will not run on the RG557, because it’s technically rooted, regardless of having a locked bootloader, and there’s no present manner round this hurdle.
Naturally, the following factor I did was hearth up the ChatGPT app on the Galaxy Z Fold 6. After a little bit of poking round, I discovered that OpenAI gives an identical characteristic to Gemini Reside, and it even instructed me it might share some lore concerning the Star Wars universe after I opened KOTOR II.
Sadly, it is the identical story as Gemini, as you are not ready to make use of the “Reside” expertise with created GPTs. Hopefully, this would possibly not be the case without end, as it might be good to see the characteristic parity between Gemini and ChatGPT proceed.
NotebookLM to the rescue
Then got here alongside one other tangentially associated thought. Google has been super-charging NotebookLM, nevertheless it’s a kind of instruments that I at all times appear to neglect about. There are a number of tasks that I’ve during which NotebookLM could possibly be helpful for me, however first, I used to be interested by how it might do as a gaming encyclopedia of kinds.
There are limitations with NotebookLM, as you possibly can add solely 50 “sources” to at least one pocket book. Nonetheless, due to being subscribed to Google One AI Professional, I will add 300 sources. I say “solely” as a result of the concept is to supply and add technique guides for quite a lot of retro video games.
For sure, there are lots of greater than 300 on the market, so I opted to take a special method. As an alternative, I made a decision to create notebooks based mostly on the sequence of video games, which means I will have one for Mario, Zelda, Last Fantasy, Fallout, and so forth.
Due to the gaming neighborhood, quite a lot of these previous Nintendo Energy and Prima technique guides have been archived. It was merely a matter of sourcing, downloading, and importing all of them to NotebookLM.
Nonetheless, there was the small drawback that many of those previous technique guides are saved in both a CBR or CBZ format. That is no good, as NotebookLM solely acknowledges PDF, TXT, Markdown, or Audio recordsdata when importing. On the intense facet, some fast analysis revealed which you could convert these CBR or CBZ recordsdata to PDF utilizing Calibre. And it is a lot sooner than attempting to make use of any of the “free” on-line conversion instruments.
With that out of the way in which, I began importing a number of recordsdata after which simply waited for that to complete. You would be stunned at how massive a few of these PDF recordsdata might be, and NotebookLM has a measurement restrict of 200MB per file, so preserve that in thoughts.
A short time later, I had a one-stop store for sources pertaining to some of the Tremendous Mario video games that I’ve performed through the years. Now, each time I can not keep in mind the best way to get previous Bowser, I can simply pull up NotebookLM and ask.
I do know that this took a little bit of a left flip, contemplating my unique objective, however the general level is to reveal that AI instruments might be helpful in methods you may not have thought of. I do not even know the place the concept to create these guides got here from, however I am certain glad it got here to me.
No, you are not ready to make use of it whereas you are taking part in like you possibly can with Gemini or ChatGPT. However I’ve to wonder if that performance might be carried out within the close to future. I might actually adore it if there have been a option to create a Gem or GPT that could possibly be used with Gemini Reside, however used NotebookLM because the supply.
Nonetheless, who is aware of what these corporations are going to carry subsequent? Perhaps one thing else will come alongside that takes all of this to the following degree, and we simply do not know it but.
