Razieluigi

That is absolutely stunning.

The Saturn is probably the biggest hole in my retro gaming lineup. I'd love a good way to finally dip into that library.

Seeing as like 80% of the FPGA cores on my Analogue Pocket are courtesy of Jotego's work, it's hard for me not to read this all as Somashekar spouting off with some childish beef.

That thing was designed as if they were afraid it might fit between the shelves of your AV console.

@BulkSlash This has been the least essential generation since the Atari 5200 so I don't blame you.

I've gotten by well enough with a Series S for a few years. It was cheap and it gave me access to new games (even if very few of them seem like they couldn't have been pulled off on last-gen hardware), but Sony has a lot of exclusives I'd eventually like to enjoy and I finally have a TV that would benefit from the horsepower.

I plan to get a Pro, but only becuase I never bought a PS5 to begin with. If I had an OG model, this would be an insane price for such a marginal upgrade.

In honor of Walz's breakthrough viral moment, I feel like this mod should be called Weird Taxi.

@Poodlestargenerica Cannibalize is arguably the wrong term, but any sale of one unit likely prevents the sale of another one since most people don't need a whole slew of these things.

And since it costs money to develop each new unit, this winds up seeming like an inefficient business model to me, pouring resources into multiple products that all preclude the sale of the others. So I disagree that having your own products competing with each other is a desirable scenario at all, much less an "ideal" one.

Obviously Anbernic is doing well enough to keep churning these things out, and good on them. I have an RG Nano and I do like it (even if it's a bit of a novelty). But this can't be sustainable in the long run.

Options are nice, but surely Anbernic must be cannibalizing its own market at this point. It must take some amount of R&D to churn out each one of these designs, and they can't all be mega-sellers when the market is so crowded. I don't understand their strategy.

I think they'd benefit from maintaining a few clearly delineated product lines with consistent feature sets (orientation, size, compatibility, etc) and just updating those lines on an annual basis.

@PopetheRev28 Yeah, I still consider it a kind of emulation even if it's operating at the hardware level without a layer of software so simulate the environment. But the results are essentially perfect if the core is solid. I spent my morning beating Steets of Rage 2 on my Mega SG over a cup of coffee

@PopetheRev28 I definitely plan on building a MiSTer soon (I was also hoping the Taki Udon thing was for real), although the Pocket's FPGA development scene has been so active that it's been doing a good enough job in the meantime. I honestly can't believe how much stuff I have emulated on that little thing, and the dock makes it a pretty solid MiSTer alternative.

I'm surprised we haven't seen NGPC and Lynx cores released yet now that the adapters are out, though.

@Steel76 We really do need that. Anything trapped on WiiWare is being wasted.

This is a cool (and unexpected) inclusion in a package that probably would have been worth buying regardless.

I feel like this would have been better paired with a (much needed) re-release of Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth, but I'll take it anyway.

@PopetheRev28 Yeah, I hear SCART is brilliant and I've enjoyed learning more about it from MLiG, but I'm not willing to go down that path. I've pretty much cast my lot with FPGA devices for the vast majority of my retro gaming and rarely use original hardware anymore.

That said, I need to look more closely. I never noticed the Akura doing that, but I may not have been paying enough attention.

@InfinitysEnd Convenience, really. I wouldn't expect component or HDMI to offer an inherently better (or worse) picture than VGA. But most TVs don't accept a VGA input, so I think you just have a really unique situation.

@PopetheRev28 Yeah, I was one of those people until recently. My receiver had component inputs and the GCN cable was used pretty often. But I recently upgraded to a 4K set which required a 4K receiver, and I just couldn't find one with component inputs. So now I'm looking for new solutions and will probably just grab a Carby for my GCN.

I had purchased an Akura from Behar Bros to get HDMI out of my Dreamcast and that works great, but I found the connection a little fragile and the video would cut out occasionally. Eventually I got one of those cheap Pound HDMI cables and if I'm being honest, my eyes can't tell the difference. Haven't tested it on the new setup yet, though.

Kind of cool, despite Voultar being sketchy as hell. I've treasured my GCN component cables for ages now and there was a time when I'd have loved something similar for my DC.

But it's honestly getting harder to use component inputs. Modern TVs and receivers just don't often come with the jacks anymore, so unless you intend to pair these with additional solutions like an OSSC or RetroTink, I imagine it's a vanishingly small number of people who would be a target audience for something like this.

@Poodlestargenerica I agree that the collection is pretty lackluster and unnecessary, but I'm baffled as to what makes you say "there's not really a console less well set up to play Tetris on than the Switch."

I can't imagine what current console would be better matched to Tetris than the Switch.

Healthy skepticism, indeed. Unless there's a really concrete plan behind this announcement rather than just some vaguely stated tweet, I'm expecting a paltry number of overpriced old carts and discs, and maybe some banged up hardwere on some shelves in the corner.

I'm lucky to have a great locally-owned retro gaming store in my city. I'll stick with them.

This looks fun and the cup holder on the dash is a fantastic touch. But despite the mech trappings, the gameplay and overall vibes seem more Doom than Mechwarrior.

If I were to compare this to a classic mech game, it would probably be Shattered Steel, which traded some of Mechwarrior's slow and deliberate pacing for a more action-oriented approach. Although even that game had some sim elements to keep things feeling mechy.

I don't find this hard to believe at all, especially since we now know, with several decades of hindsignt and convergent evolution, that 4 face buttons has become industry standard across platforms. Whether this decision came from external pressure or internal deliberation, they wisely concluded that human thumbs struggle with more than 4 face buttons and that additional inputs need to be offloaded elsewhere (like triggers).

When it comes to paying homage to Bach, it doesn't hurt that the GameBoy sound chip didn't sound like most Earthly instruments but could do a pretty solid impression of a harpsichord.

I can definitely see myself grabbing this. I bought the physical NES carts from Limited Run a few years ago, which I regret. The carts don't work on my RetroUSB AVS and it's a little bit of a hassle to connect my OG NES, so I don't get much use out of them.

But what I've played of them has been pretty cool, and a nice tidy ROM collection on a portable console would be a better way to enjoy them.

Honestly, if the best that "official" attempts to preserve this media can accomplish is to lock them up in a building for nobody to see, then there isn't any point in preserving any of it at all.

As ever, the real work of preservation will be left to the emulation community. Say what you will about the legality or morality, but it's literally the only way.

@RetroGames Definitely an enthusiast-level device, although I'd argue the "regular" Pocket already was so this revision is aimed at a niche within a niche.

I could see myself considering one of these if I didn't already own a Pocket, but the metal shell isn't enough of an upgrade to swallow that price. The OG unit already felt pretty luxe.

I also have a lot of ongoing reservations about Analogue as a company. After a strong start with their earlier consoles (I adore the Mega SG and Super NT), they've become concerningly evasive and consumer-unfriendly. And while the Pocket has turned into a really nice device, that's owed largely to fantastic support from external developers doing amazing things with that second FPGA. Analogue's own support has been slow and, in my opinion, inadequate. I'd honestly be hesitant to ever buy anything from them again, which makes me sad to say after being such a fan of their earlier hardware.

Very cool fan project! It's always nice to see this game getting appreciated because it's a classic and had some really fun ideas.

I bought a copy of this after EGM gave it a pretty decent review back in the day. We were a Genesis household, and I was desperately craving a Zelda-like.

Stupidly, I sold it on eBay a few years later. I was in school and was just scrounging money where I could. Made sense at the time but when it comes to collecting, this is easily the dumbest thing I've ever done. This was before the price skyrocketed so I probably only got like $50-60 for it. A loose cart is 10 times that nowadays, so unless I'm feeling really splurgy someday, this will forever be a hole in my collection.

Yeah, this is sketchy as all hell and requires more than a few pinches of salt until they show it in action, which will never happen. Just look at those ridiculous "renders"! I wouldn't trust this team to design the shell, much less the guts inside.

The bit about Sega is just headline bait. These guys fired off an email (if they're even being that honest) knowing it wouldn't get a response so that they could disingenuously suggest there was some kind of actual discussion going on. There isn't. There won't be.

This "project" will vanish into the ether as soon as it gets the chance to bilk some gullible crowdfunders out of their cash. No matter how many scams like this come and go, there's always another herd of lemmings lining up for the cliff.

For me, this would be worth buying even it were just MvC2.

I'm not an avid fighting game fan. I'm just there to have fun. And MvC2 is easily the most fun I've ever had with a 2D fighter. Can't wait to have it on Switch.

The name is definitely confusing, as is Udon's suggestion that the word "pi" just suggests any generic SBC. In principle, a name change would be wise. But I'm also not sure it matters for something like this. This isn't a mass-market consumer grade product.

The kinds of people that are out there looking for MiSTer FPGA alternatives are enthusiasts that do their research. It's not like grandma is going to buy some kid the wrong one for Christmas.

I feel like my issue here isn't the USB stick or even the quality of the USB stick. It's that this particular item underscores the absurdity of "archival physical copies" for certain kinds of media. You archive a digital file by saving it and backing it up, not by putting it on its own little physical flash drive and stuffing it into a box.

You really want a Switch cart because it makes your collection pretty? Have at it. But if you're playing this on PC, there is literally no reason to buy a "physical" version of the game. It's wasteful and the DRM-free file on that drive could have been just as easily downloaded to provide literally the same experience. You can copy that file and back it up to your heart's content — it's not going anywhere.

People have gone too far with the physical media obsession. And LRG is becoming a really sad company.

"Emotion Engine" always just seemed like a natural counterpoint to Sega's "It's Thinking" campaign for the Dreamcast.

This kind of stuff is always nonsense. Another point in a very long line of console makers making silly claims for the sake of marketing.

Although regardless of what cutesy name they gave it, at least this was an era in which new console generations felt like actual improvements over the prior ones. Nowadays, we still get the rose-tinted marketing and overhyped promises but the games barely look or play different than the previous generation.

I hacked a 3DS a few months back so I'm looking forward to messing around with this a bit.

This is all super exciting. I've been itching to build a MiSTer, but I'll keep my ear to the ground about this alternative.

As a side note, while Udon's assessment of Analogue's products is correct, I actually preferred them when they were single-purpose. The Pocket has finally grown into its skin, due almost entirely to the efforts of external developers rather than Analogue itself. But it still feels half-baked to me compared to the comparatively simple but excellent Mega SG and Super NT that will forever be gems in my hardware collection. They were products that did one thing extremely well, and I think there's a lot of value in that.

Man, I've wanted a LED calculator for ages. This fits the bill, and having it double as a numpad is a nice perk.

I hope they sell the ROM as well. I'm a little wary of buying cartridges nowadays unless I really trust the manufacturer to make them correctly.

Assuming they do, I'm looking forward to playing this once it's released.

I'll definitely be grabbing one of these when it's available. Mine is still working, but I don't know how long that will be true and it sounds like this is genuinely well made. Even RetroRGB gave it a nod, and he's usually pretty wary of aftermarket PSUs.

The hangup about hints and cheat codes is especially bizarre since discovering those secrets was such an essential part of gaming culture back then. I was always on the lookout for those bits of information, whether it be from magazines or just passed around by word of mouth.

The slow trickle of hints and tips gave games very long tails in that era. You didn't buy games and polish them off in a week. They were played for months, and often left unfinished due to their frequently brutal diffiuclty. If anything, hints and tips kept the games relevant and increased their value. They made me eager to go home and try those tricks and to see and do things I hadn't been able to do before. This culture was so widespread and intense that all these years later, I know tips and tricks for games I didn't even own at the time!

Things honestly don't look "destroyed" so much as "on the floor."

Vandalism or not, it's hard to imagine this would be that expensive to fix, much less a business-ending catastrophe.

@-wc- Ha. I hear that.

My digital library is meticulously organized and backed up. Movies, music, games, photographs... Hell, my current PC is still home to high school homework assignments done on a Windows 3.1 PC back in the mid-90s! I back everything up locally to labeled hard drives at least once a month or after a major change, as well as to the cloud using iDrive. And when I migrate to a new machine, literally everything comes along for the ride.

Which, to your point, is a lot of work compared to keeping some LPs on a shelf

@-wc- Yeah, also agreed. I'm not a big vinyl guy, but I get why people like it for analog music. I do also appreciate the extras like cover art and wahtnot.

But for archival purposes, it seems that the ideal way to archive chip music is digitally. It has the potential to be 100% accurate and can be infinitely reproduced with zero loss.

Honestly, with chiptunes the biggest obstacle to accuracy is the hardware used to play it, because the data itself stands a very good chance of being flawless.

This is all really unfortunate. I hope LRG responds clearly and gets its act together, but they've shown little intention to do so.

That said... I do not understand the idea of purchasing chip tunes on vinyl. Say what you will about vinyl when it comes to analog music, but there isn't even a valid argument to be made that this is the intended way to listen to music specifically written to be generated by a chip and pumped directly to speakers.

What a fun connection!

I'm not even a big Godzilla fan, but Godzilla Minus One was astonishing. It wasn't just good or enjoyable or fun, although it was certainly those things. It felt real and powerful. I left the theater feeling like I had watched something important.

Nice. Always good to have more FPGA NES clones out there since Analogue has discontinued theirs.

I have a Retro AVS and absolutely love it. I have yet to run into an emulation issue, and it works perfectly with an Everdrive. It's a high quality product despite the rinky-dink webpage you order them from.

This might be a nice alternative if I needed the additional outputs, but I'm good with HDMI only.

@Steel76 Different strokes and all, but I love having the two markets merged. I loved the GB, GBA, DS, and 3DS, for sure. But portable gaming had been losing its identity anyway as devices started delivering increasingly "console-like" experiences, and the competition from tablets and phones makes it harder to sell a dedicated hand-held gaming device.

And given that the Switch has been an unmitigated success for Nintendo, I don't imagine they have plans to rock this boat any time soon.

@Poodlestargenerica Yes, that part of the "everything else you said."

I appreciate you expanding on the thought, though! It did a good job of confirming that it is most definitely nonsense.

@Poodlestargenerica What a silly comment.

It's fine to not like the series. Everything else you said is nonsense.

I find projects like this technically interesting, but don't love the idea of "fixing" the music from older games.

One of the pleasures of classic console gaming is the unique fingerprint that the hardware left on its software. The sights and sounds of a SNES game were fundamentally different than the sights and sounds of a game — even the exact same game — running on Genesis.

Again, super cool as a tech demo. But once you start robbing these games of those hardware signatures, what's the point of running the software on that hardware to begin with?

This is awesome. Great article.

Sometimes I miss the golden age of passwords before save games. They allowed a whole playground subculture of code-sharing and secrets.

And a few years ago I was playing through Demon's Crest on my Super NT, and appreciated the ability to pick up playing my game on Switch.

Despite being a Sega fan in general, this is a console I really have yet to explore. I loved my Genesis, but then I went off to school and kind of just missed the entire 5th generation. Studying and parties played a role, but so did the fact that it was a golden era for PC gaming and our dorm was wired like one big LAN.

It was eventually the Dreamcast that pulled me back in to console gaming again.

One day I need to find an old Saturn to mod and give it a shot.

Cryptocurrency exists primarily to prove that "there's a sucker born every minute" was a spectacular underestimate.

Baldur's Gate 3 may be a brilliant game, but the notion that it has not one but TWO characters deemed more "iconic" than pretty much any major character from the Super Mario franchise is preposterous.

I'd argue that any run-of-the-mill Goomba is more globally recognizable than Astarion.