RextheSheep

These have long been two of my favourite developers, so I'm very intrigued by what they could do together!

@Razieluigi Yeah, that's a fair point and I think where I start losing interest myself. It is arguably emulating a fictional chip that could have been developed back then, but that doesn't change your argument at all. (If anything it means it took about 30 years for "SuperFX 3" to become commercially viable, lol.)

It's still very cool either way. No doubt a dream project for Randy Linden.

@Exerion76 The cartridge is designed and developed by Bitmap Bureau, who made Xeno Crisis, something stated in both of Time Extension's articles. Bitmap Bureau have a good and proven track record with this. It's not just "LGR".

I had a feeling people would hone in on this. :/

I guess my angle is how putting a modern off-the-shelf microcontroller on the cartridge any different from any of the helper chips of the era? It's no less "real SNES" than the Super FX and SA-1 were back then. – This product is not for me, and even I can admit it's not that different.

And that's the other thing, it's not "a Raspberry Pi" as in the fully-fledged computer. The RP2350B is a microcontroller, essentially a teeny-tiny processor. This is something you could easily Google instead of doing the internet knee-jerk reaction thing.

Literally as I'm reading the article.

Me, out loud to my partner: "Wow, it's come a long way. Wonder if they've got audio yet."
The article: "only thing left is the audio."
Ayyyyy!

@PKDuckman Okay, that's promising!

I just hope they've improved the emulation performance and image quality. The old QuByte Classics do not run well especially on Switch, but I haven't tried their supposedly "improved" engine from the newer collections yet. I do really want these to be good.

Just as I've been thinking about going back to give Compile's early games like Guardic and Zanac a proper go, another option arrives.

I think it would be interesting to see that prototype, but I'm glad we got the game we got instead.

Goodness, what a great selection of games! These are all gems honestly. Well, Re-Loaded is maybe just okay.

Very nice! And I continue to be glad to see Ratalaika Games and Shinyuden start to put their games on Steam too.

Fool me 51 times…

@axelhander These comments are weird and unnecessary.

And I don't have any strong feelings about the subject, before you start making personal assumptions about me. This just isn't a horse you need to be spending time dying on.

Oh that themed M30 controller looks cool!

Man that's awesome. Very early of course but very cool.

I've been a long time subscriber of his. If he can pull it off, I'm here for it.

Although admittedly I don't completely get the idea that all these great aftermarket products we have would be better with the nostalgic legacy brand slapped on them, I do at least agree there's value in having this brand in the hands of people who get it. Much better than slapping it on cheap smart phones or random electronics.

This keeps looking better and better! I've definitely got to try this

I've heard such mixed things about I-Ninja, but I definitely wouldn't say no to it getting another shot.

Oh, I saw this one when it was first shown off! Definitely one I'll keep an eye on.

@PZT I imagine the features will mirror the other releases from this publisher. They did another GBA game recently, the GBA remake of Aero the Acro-Bat, but I haven't checked it out.

(I have some of their Sega and Turbografx games on Switch though and the experience there is good quality.)

I think I actually knew a kid with this special edition back in the day.

I live for the development stories where something isn't as trivial as it sounds, but you're in too deep and have to see it through. I may have to give this game a try now.

I can definitely say we're in very exciting times in the N64 development community! Thank you for the article!

By their own admission a little early, but hey, it's running smooth.

If it happens, I'll be here for it!

That grappling mechanic looks really fun!

Furthermore, these decompilation projects tend to slow down in that last 10-20%. You often see rapid progress early on as all of the simpler functions are blitzed through and merged with the main repo, but the more complicated stuff takes longer to work through.

And having completed, binary-matching functions is one thing, but actually having that code documented and readable is an ongoing process. The Banjo-Kazooie decomp is a good example where the documentation is currently lacking.

As for Paper Mario, for reasons I don't fully understand, I'm told that due to some complexities specific to that game, you shouldn't expect a multiplatform port any time soon if ever.

"100% decompiled" really doesn't mean anything when it comes to the possibility of a port. And just because we have frameworks like Libultraship and N64 Recompiled to make translating that code to other platforms easier, it doesn't mean that creating a port isn't still a lot of work. – It would help everyone involved these projects so much if people took the time to understand what actually goes into them and why the distinction between all these terms matters.

All this to say: if a port were actually in development for Diddy Kong Racing, you would hear about it.

Please stop reporting on decompilation as if it directly means a port is in development. That's rarely the goal of reverse engineering console games, and perpetuating this misconception places undue pressure on the people working on these RE projects.

Awesome news! I'll have to pick this up at some point.

Sadly it appears to have the same garish filter on everything that the old Mega Man X5 PC version did. Although I think I read that you can turn it off here?

@KingMike I guess depending on your perspective that's kind of just part of the story – they actually did want to get the Urusei Yatsura license for the arcade version of Momoko 120% too but weren't able to, so it only happened later with the Famicom version that came out as a licensed game. Releasing it without the license is a shame for sure, but it's almost a full circle moment in a way.

GBA puzzle platformer? You've got my attention!

Sounds right up my alley!

I've been in the market for a new PC controller. This could be a solid contender!

I didn't play this one, but I loved Commander Keen and the original Duke Nukem growing up, so I have a lot of nostalgia for Apogee-style games in general.

I love this! It's great to see new ports of classic games in the Atari+ catalogue.

Man, I don't know what I'll do, but I can tell you I was excited for this game before and this has just made everything feel incredibly weird.

Huh! I learned something today!

Bless Damien and the photos he takes for these articles.

@GhaleonUnlimited I guess it wouldn't be any different as long as it's all clean room and you're not distributing their copyrighted code/ROMs. It's pretty common in the arcade world for there to be custom hardware designed for just one game, so it kind of just comes with the territory.

Honestly, I dig it!

Huh, well I'll be damned! I was expecting just the classic MiSTer menu, but this looks quite special!

@PinballBuzzbro I don't blame you for feeling the way you do. However, it paints a picture of exactly what I was afraid of to have all these controversies hitting at once. It really puts a damper on the entire hobby, and the worst part is I don't know how to reassure you that it's not all like this, especially when you and many others have already been burned. A lot of people's trust has been broken by companies that were once doing an excellent job, but have really dropped the ball – myself and my partner included.

@slider1983 They'd have to update a lot more; they haven't traded under the "Koch Media" name in a long time, instead going by Plaion these days.

God this game looks so cool.

Dang, they just keep delivering more than I ever could have asked!

(I guess it's not that unexpected given that the two games' reverse engineering projects share a common codebase, but still. Wild!)

A game so nice it fits on a single side of a Famicom disk.

@spysmily Oh, also, save states and suspending your game are possible on FPGA, and even on original hardware with certain Everdrive models, but it generally works better on software emulation. – That's actually one of the main reasons I still sometimes use software emulation over original hardware, even if I prefer hardware.

@spysmily Rather than thinking about it in negative terms, consider this: software emulation is still really good for enhancements – i.e. resolution, frame rate, or adding new features on the emulator level, particularly for newer 3D consoles. You can definitely do enhancements in FPGA too, but software is still king there in my opinion.

It's also still not really viable in the consumer space to do FPGA implementations of something like Nintendo GameCube or Xbox 360/PS3 yet. That's another reason why software emulation is still relevant.

(I also considered netplay, particularly for arcade games, which hasn't been done on FPGA systems yet to my knowledge. I'm not sure if that's even possible or not; it feels like a huge challenge, but I don't feel certain enough to say it isn't possible.)

Of course, when it comes to Japanese game history there's also a language and cultural barrier to contend with. Things have been "uncovered" by westerners that could have been common knowledge in Japan this entire time. But that's not always the case – plenty of media is at risk of being lost to time as well.

@HammerGalladeBro No, you're absolutely right. There is a real issue where much of gaming history is only told from an English-speaking and often USA-specific perspective.

I'm from Australia and it's even similar for us – we also had our own computer/gaming history and our own magazines that are difficult to find today. So I totally sympathize.