Razieluigi

@-wc- Totally agreed. To some degree, of course you can spend money to get better sound quality. But as you note, you rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns and so much of what is out there is utter nonsense. I'm thinking of overt crap like the LessLoss Blackbody — a literal $800+ paperweight that uses the power of pseudoscience to transform sound by placing one (or more if you can afford it!) in the general vicinity of your setup.

Of course, that's an extreme example compared to the parade of more mundane but equally scammy high-end speaker cables and power conditioners and whatnot.

I'll give these Marseilles devices a modicum of credit — they at least do something even if it seems mostly to make the picture worse. But that's damning with some pretty faint praise, indeed.

@Gs69 I'm not sure they're fake reviews. I think that people are just very good at convincing themselves that they see and hear improvement after they've spent money on a product that's supposed to improve their experience.

Audiophiles have been buying useless snake oil products for decades now and swearing up and down they hear the difference. As the gaming industry matures and spins off sub-markets of niche enthusiasts, it would be surprising if we didn't see the exact same thing happen.

Just to be clear, this was not a "bungled venture". That would imply a legitimate project that collapsed under mismanagement.

This product never existed nor were there plans to bring it into existence. This was a scam, top to bottom, intended to collect money from its marks. This "venture" proceeded exactly as intended.

This is just a developer creating a story out of thin air to get some pre-release publicity.

Nothing to see here.

Ahhhh... the 90s console wars will literally never die.

Neither one sounded "better" than the other. They just sounded different and could accomplish different things in different ways.

It's like trying to figure out if a guitar is better than a piano.

This remains the only console I've ever regretted buying. It's a decent piece of tech and the screen was great (if a bit splotchy) for the time. But the support was atrocious, the "wobbly bubble" UI felt lazy and cheap, and the library just never materialized. All said and done, I'm not sure if I spent more than 50 hours gaming on mine in total.

I also may be in the minority with this opinion, but I always thought the PSP was nicer looking and more comfortable to use. I still preferentially reach for my PSP-2000 when I want to play anything from that library.

That's an exciting pedigree, but "plunder battle" means absolutely nothing to me. Is this some sub-genre I'm not aware of?

I've really enjoyed all the Castlevania seasons. Looking forward to seeing how they pick up from last season's cliffhanger.

It's wild how many hardware options we have for retro emulation now. I still don't understand how Ambernic can flood the market with so many different designs on such a regular basis, but choice is good.

Yeah, I was skeptical of this story from the start. The game does lean into ethnic and cultural stereotypes, but it's entirely playful and affectionate about it.

It makes more sense to think that Punch Out! is dormant for the same reason that other Nintendo franchises go dormant — their reluctance to revive IP if they don't have anything new to do with it.

All that said, this was a magnificent game — possibly one of the best franchise revivals I've ever played. I wouldn't mind an HD port of it, just to let those fantastic animations really shine.

It's a shame that, for all intents and purposes, YouTube is the only reasonable option for any of these creators to get their content out there.

You could argue that this kind of journalism wouldn't exist at all without YouTube making it possible, but that only makes it sadder that its policies — and moreover the impersonal and literally robotic way that those policies are enforced — are getting in the way.

@Hordak I can't recall the exact steps since I did it some time ago, but I used PocketSync to make it easier. Somewhere in that program is an "instance JSON" button that should take the bin/cue files on the SD card and make the appropriate JSON files. When you run the core, you need to chose those JSON files.

But I hear you. I have no understanding of how this stuff works. It's definitely more complicated than just picking a ROM from a list.

Always cool to see projects like this!

But the home version was definitely the better game.

On the bright side, it should take literally no time at all for Martín to fulfill SEGA's demand that all existing products be destroyed.

@bluemage1989 What are you on about? Nobody asked for or expects "slobbering credit."

But people deserve acknowledgement when their work is used, not just because it's the right thing to do (which it absolutely is), but because those credits are what artists use to build their resumes and careers.

This is uncontroversial common sense, not some dire sign of the times as you're bizarrely implying.

I hope there's a circle of hell where the people who greenlight and publish this predatory skinner-box trash are forced to play it for the rest of eternity.

"we want to deliver something new"

Now here's another five Yakuza games.

Honestly, though, a company can walk and chew gum at the same time. Nintendo (for all its faults) knows very well how to celebrate its history while continually churning out new and interesting experiences.

Utsumi does SEGA a disservice by predicating his decisions on a false choice. Just another reminder that CEOs are paid a lot of money for being surprisingly bad at their jobs.

Stories like this mostly make me realize I just don't understand the complexities and general insanity of music licensing.

His agreement with Paramount just allows them to use the music, then? And they still need to get separate permission from SEGA to use the lyrics?

And if Gioeli acknowledges he doesn't have the rights to the lyrics but maintains that the music belongs to him, I feel like this must cut both ways. Surely he's performed this song over the last few decades. Has he gotten permission from SEGA to sing the lyrics each time? Or has he just been performing instrumental arrangements?

I may have to finally get one of these. I've been happily using my standard GC controllers for years, but my new TV room layout (and new cat) make wireless a more attractive option.

Having just binge-watched all of these in October, I'm pretty excited for the next batch of episodes.

I know there's a lot of mixed opinions on both series, but I've loved all of it so far.

@Shiryu Their website does say that the carts work on a RetroUSB AVS, which makes me think it's probably using fairly standard mappers. But yeah, it's hard to say nowadays. A lot of these retro projects are impressive, but are loading the carts with so much modern tech that it feels like a little bit of a dodge to say they're running on original hardware.

The localization thing is cute, but is very consumer unfriendly if both versions aren't on the same cart and that immediately puts me off considering a purchase.

I'd buy the ROMs, though, if they were available.

I see the semantics police are out in full force on this one.

@NinChocolate I get that a lot of retro gaming enthusiasts are CRT fans and that's cool. I have one stashed away for when I need it. But you also need to recognize that CRTs are functionally endangered technology with a dwindling number of users, however devoted they may be. You are too niche an audience to be developing hardware for.

The vast majority of people interested in playing retro games are interested in playing them on screens they already have. Every extra port added to a board costs more and raises the asking price for a feature that most users just don't want or need. You can bemoan it all you want, but there's no mystery about why these devices aren't designed to support displays that are in a ever-declining number of households.

Great to have more options out there and I look forward to hearing about this one.

But at this point, I feel like the Pocket has effectively grown up to be an excellent MiSTer alternative with the additional benefit of portability. I'm not sure I need anything else!

@UK_Kev You can remove "by March 31st 2025" from that sentence and the answer will still be "no".

Shame. He seemed like such a nice boy.

Ha. He rolls up wearing a Cinemartin t-shirt — his failed "company" that is mostly known for its vaporware 8K camera.

I'll at least hand it to the guy. He's an expert troll.

Their custom mapper must be a beast to be getting images like that from the NES. Those enemy sprites are phenomenal (technically and artistically).

I need to look into this. I wonder if it will work on a RetroUSB AVS.

Pretty awesome. I really wish I had room for an arcade cabinet, but it's hard to complain to much given how easy it is to play all these old games on the screen I already have.

This really is a golden era for retro-gaming enthusiasts.

CWX's attitude is like that of someone who neglected a puppy and is now aghast that someone else rescued it.

Even if eadmaster's translation isn't up to snuff, at least they're making a good faith effort to finish the work that CWX left to die on the vine for an entire decade. Their umbrage about this is petty and absurd.

A proper response would have been to thank eadmaster for bringing this translation back into public consciousness and offering to help them complete the project.

I assume that you just need to fold your discs in half to fit them into that slot on the front left since I don't see anywhere else that one could possibly fit.

@UK_Kev They're hoping that the $3 buy in is low enough to pull in a lot of takers, but also low enough that none of them will come after them when this product inevitably fails to materialize.

Thank you for running this.

I'd prefer to not see anything else about these grifters until they release an actual product that can be reviewed for real (which, of course, isn't going to happen). But if any further updates are worth reporting on before then, they should be posted under this headline and not any of the prior ones.

@pomegran I feel like we should just get in the habit of saying "software emulation" and "hardware emulation", honestly.

@slider1983 You are giving him far too much credt. These aren't edits for time and clarity. A jump cut every single time a game starts is fishy, to say the least. There would be absolutely no reason to edit the video that way unless you're trying to trick the viewer. And judging from some of these comments, it's working.

Until this thing is in the hands of independent reviewers, which I give about a 0% chance of ever happening, it can be presumed to be a scam.

I really wish this site would stop reporting on this nonsense, much less credulously stating "prototype put through its paces" when it isn't remotely clear that's what is going on in this video.

I've said it before. I'll say it again. This. Is. A. Scam.

Ummm... am I the only one who thinks it looks like there's a jump cut in that video every single time he starts a game?

"the Sega brand isn't anywhere near as prominent as it perhaps should be, given the company's enviable history in the world of video games and the strength of its IP library."

The same could be said of Konami.

He's right to note that these are valuable resources. It's criminal how badly they're being squandered. A broad portfolio does you no good if it just sits in a dark closet while you churn out Sonic and Yakuza games because you can't think of anything else to do.

You want to elevate the Sega brand? Get Sega back to what it used to do better than nearly anybody else in the business — delivering unique and unexpected gaming experiences.

@nocdaes It's hard to pin real numbers on this since I'm not aware of any publicized sales figures for various Analogue products, but I think your take is a really optimistic view of how successful first-party cartridge-based devices would actually be. These are relatively niche devices that don't shift millions of units.

The brief flurry of mini-consoles doesn't prove anything. They were plug-and-play devices with built-in libraries of games that were made on the cheap and intended to scratch a nostalgic itch. They appeal specifically to people who don't already have a bunch of carts at home which, let's be honest, is the vast majority of people.

Releasing a device that can only play legacy media that is no longer in wide production does not make sense for a global corporation that can be making far more money on other ventures (even if one of those ventures is apparently a weird alarm clock).

It does make sense for a smaller company like Analogue that can shift a modest number of units and call that a big success.

This is a great game and I'm glad it's been successful enough to warrant all these ports.

But considering that it's fundamentally a twin-stick shooter, it's a puzzling choice for multi-platform release on all these machines that just don't have the inputs needed to make it work without compromise.

Shock of shocks that the same scam artist responsible for a vaporware 8K cinema camera can't shoot a clear video.

Stop. Giving. Them. Publicity.

@bluebonics No question, which is why I noted above that software emulation is still important and necessary.

@FurgelFrNurgle Okay.

@Blast16 They did just give us the Haunted Castle remake, which was a cool surprise.

Other than that, though, I don't expect anything great from Konami nowadays. It's sad to see such a storied developer reduced to what it is today.

Not really clear what "support" means other than to watch it, but sure. It's a great series — easily one of the best game-to-TV adaptations I've ever seen — so I do hope it keeps going.

Seasons 1 and 2 are must-see for anybody who loves Castlevania III. Season 3 ventures into its own (sometimes weird) territory, and I think it pays off but it definitely strays far from anything that appears in the games. And I've been eagerly anticipating Season 2 of Nocturne, which was just fantastic.

October is always Castlevania month for me, so I've been binge-watching the series in-between playing through Aria/Dawn of Sorrow. Once I'm done with those I'd like to finally finish Rondo of Blood, a game which I adore but have never seen through to completion.

@Scollurio I'm not sure it's a "craze." It's just a new technology that is, when done correctly, an improvement over old technology. And as it becomes less and less expensive, it will be easier for people to decide that it makes sense for them, too.

Software emulation will continue to be important and necessary. It's the easiest (and, for now, only) way to get old software running on things like consoles and PCs. And high quality software emulation can be extremely good.

But a good core running on FPGA gets you as close to the original hardware as possible without tracking down original hardware. And good cores are proliferating at a shocking rate. The sheer number of things I can play on my Analogue Pocket (thanks to diligent developers and not Analogue themselves) would make teenage me faint from jealousy. This thing has become every single console through the 4th generation and a portable mid-90s arcade — a feat that would have been impossible without FPGA technology. To see all of that on a $220 device is insane, right? Toss in a Dock and a controller, and you're in retro gaming utopia.

So for enthusiasts who really enjoy retro gaming, I'd flip your question around. Why not FPGA?

As a 46 year old, this speaks to me.

I don't think there's any such thing as "bad nostalgia" per se. I revel in many of the things I loved in my younger years, and have a fairly robust setup for enjoying retro games (among other retro media).

I do think that nostalgia can become problematic, though, if it prevents you from enjoying and engaging with new experiences entirely. The nostalgia itself still isn't "bad," but anything enjoyed without balance can still have negative consequences.

Do I find comfort in old games, movies, and music? Of course! And I always will. But I'll always seek out new things. After all, one day I'll find myself nostalgic about those too.

@Bonggon5 Maybe I'd feel the same but I can't justify the expense of seeking one out. The hard truth is that CRTs are destined for extinction since new ones aren't being made anymore and the manufacturing process exceeds the ability of even the most dedicated hobbyists. Once existing sets burn out, that's the end of that.

The only time I really miss CRTs is when it comes to arcade games. There was something about seeing Pac Man's phosphor glow against that jet black background in a dark room that is inimitable. But even that is hard to separate from my general nostalgia for golden era arcades, so who's to say?

All that said, people should definitely play whatever way makes them happiest! It's great that these old games continue to find audiences all these years later regardless of what screens they're being displayed on!

I definitely remember seeing some faint rainbow colors as a kid, but it certainly wasn't as pronounced as whatever that filter is doing. CRTs produced all sorts of color fringing artfiacts like this, and they'd vary in severity depending on the TV and the quality of the video connection.

I definitely break from most retro enthusiasts when it comes to CRTs, however. Even as a kid, I wanted to see crisp, perfect pixels. Media like Nintendo's wall calendars (and the "black box" era cover art) leaned hard into that aesthetic and I loved it. I remember my dad upgrading our Genesis to an s-video cable, and being disappointed that it didn't resolve the inherent fuzziness of our tube TV.

So for me, seeing these games displayed with every pixel clear as day across a ginormous 4K screen is finally the realization of what I always wanted. I'm in my retro gaming glory.

Cartridges feel like games in crystallized form. I understand the nostalgia for them.

Discs never had the same magic that a solid-state cartridge did.