Android Arcade
With Android Arcade, Android Central Senior Editor Android Myrick takes a weekly deep dive into retro gaming, emulation, handhelds, and all the things in between.
Do you bear in mind the times of needing to go to the shop to choose up a recreation information since you could not determine tips on how 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 all the time enjoying video games on my pc, and even when I am enjoying a handheld linked to the web, I do not wish to sift by way of a bunch of hyperlinks that will or might not have what I am searching for.
Final month, the Anbernic RG557 was launched, and a latest replace launched “Anbernic AI.” Primarily, 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 depart me feeling nice, nevertheless it bought me questioning if I might simply make one myself.
With instruments like Gemini Gems and ChatGPT GPTs, I set out attempting to duplicate 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 luckily, 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 a substitute, I made a decision now can be a great time to create a Gemini Gem. These have been launched final 12 months, with Google describing them as being “your customized AI specialists.”
My unique thought was that I might be capable to create a Gem after which, after I wanted some assist or had a query, I might speak to it utilizing Gemini Reside. With the latest addition of display recording, it looks as if a no brainer, as I haven’t got to try to describe what I am seeing, I can simply present Gemini. Or so I believed.
Sadly, you may’t but use Gems with Gemini Reside, which is a bummer. As a substitute, you are caught with “common” Gemini in the meanwhile, and whereas it is tremendous, I preferred the thought 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 operating on my aforementioned RG557. Nevertheless, curiosity bought the higher of me, so I needed to see if the identical factor may very well 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 method round this hurdle.
Naturally, the subsequent 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 provides an analogous function to Gemini Reside, and it even informed me it could 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 in a position to make use of the “Reside” expertise with created GPTs. Hopefully, this would possibly not be the case ceaselessly, as it could be good to see the function 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 all the time appear to overlook about. There are just a few tasks that I’ve by which NotebookLM may very well be helpful for me, however first, I used to be interested by how it could do as a gaming encyclopedia of types.
There are limitations with NotebookLM, as you may add solely 50 “sources” to at least one pocket book. Nevertheless, because of being subscribed to Google One AI Professional, I will add 300 sources. I say “solely” as a result of the thought is to supply and add technique guides for quite a lot of retro video games.
For sure, there are a lot of greater than 300 on the market, so I opted to take a unique strategy. As a substitute, I made a decision to create notebooks based mostly on the collection of video games, which means I am going to have one for Mario, Zelda, Last Fantasy, Fallout, and so forth.
Because of the gaming group, plenty of these outdated Nintendo Energy and Prima technique guides have been archived. It was merely a matter of sourcing, downloading, and importing all of them to NotebookLM.
Nevertheless, there was the small drawback that many of those outdated technique guides are saved in both a CBR or CBZ format. That is no good, as NotebookLM solely acknowledges PDF, TXT, Markdown, or Audio information when importing. On the brilliant facet, some fast analysis revealed you can convert these CBR or CBZ information 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 best way, I began importing just a few information after which simply waited for that to complete. You would be stunned at how massive a few of these PDF information might be, and NotebookLM has a measurement restrict of 200MB per file, so preserve that in thoughts.
A short while 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, at any time when I am unable to bear in mind tips on how 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 aim, however the general level is to show that AI instruments might be helpful in methods you may not have thought-about. I do not even know the place the thought to create these guides got here from, however I am certain glad it got here to me.
No, you are not in a position to make use of it whereas you are enjoying like you may with Gemini or ChatGPT. However I’ve to wonder if that performance will likely be applied within the close to future. I might actually find it irresistible if there have been a solution to create a Gem or GPT that may very well be used with Gemini Reside, however used NotebookLM because the supply.
However, who is aware of what these corporations are going to carry subsequent? Possibly one thing else will come alongside that takes all of this to the subsequent degree, and we simply do not know it but.
