avcrypt

IIRC this game was free on it's original release. I remember it being ball-bustingly difficult, and I don't recall ever beating it. I'll check out the remaster and see if it's maybe a little more approachable.

Neat!

> Beach says it's a "shame" that people can't "separate their opinions about Palmer from what we're trying to do here at ModRetro."

It benefits Palmer, so no, I can't separate it.

What's the biggest shame to me is how the whole conversation is so unbelievably toxic to the point where I've even gotten borderline death threats for mentioning I didn't like Lucky Palmer. I have a small following out there, and for whatever reason, when I'm asked about it directly or indirectly, I make the most dry statement about why I won't buy one, and then get a handful of people "colorfully" wishing me a less-than-great-day.

Should you care where your luxuries come from? I think you should. If Lucky doesn't bother you then that's fine. You do you. I'll do me. It gets harder when it's something you need, but nobody needs this, so if you do have a moment, look up who's involved with the treats in your life.

@jesse_dylan that's at odds with Microsoft's own statement which positions it as a way to prototype game ideas and "preserve classic games" by making it easier to bring it to more platforms.

That's only a slightly paraphrased statement from the Muse AI event back in February. They're very adamant it's supposed to aid in game creation.

@HoyeBoye not that I'm aware of. Hackaday sometimes plays a little fast and loose with technical reporting, so I'd chalk it up to a bit of a hallucination.

Great! I'd heard murmurs of this but not more than a rumor.

Looking forward to what other high profile people in the scene like XL2 think as well.

Edit:
Also this bit: "A custom CRAM manager allows for easier management of 16, 64, 128 and 256 color palettes." is pretty awesome. CRAM palettes are just tedious to work with.

If Randy Linden was involved, I'd be super interested in this. The guy is awesome in both being a pretty cool person, but mainly how incredibly clever he is.

(For those not in the know: Linden created Bleem, but also wrote the Amiga port of Dragon's Lair, and the SNES port of DOOM.)

...but he's not. So if I take away the Bleem name, this is just any other sad retro revival Kickstarter. Bleem, to me, can't exist without Randy.

I remember being in a hardware mod discord when someone asked a question, got a community answer a day ish later, and was followed by some other person going on a long tirade on how the creator didn't care and that the clones were going to finally put them out of business.

Just entirely antisocial, uncalled for behavior. I don't know what provokes people to do this.

If they'd change the screen to OLED, I think this would be a solid, solid choice. For the price point it'll carry, I think that's a letdown for most consumers.

And to address the top comment: I'll take an android handheld over an FPGA one any day.

@HammerKirby oh no, I'm aware. The story takes place in an island region that relies on boats, has a criminal organization named "Team Aqua", on a game box and advertising that emphasizes the water nature. It'd be like complaining a pepperoni-lovers pizza had too much pepperoni.

To me, it's a super silly criticism. I can't really read the review without laughing a bit at it.

> The standalone IGN review from 2009 scored it 3/10 stating it's: "Little more than pointless. I don't get it, and neither did most Americans in the '80s. Japan likes it, though."

Straight up no due diligence on the IGN author's part; a massive journalistic red flag. However, it is the publication dunked on for ranking a Pokemon game lower for "having too much water," so I guess that isn't surprising.

This story touches on a common myth/misnomer of Japanese game players of being much more hardcore than the West and likewise preferring more difficult games. Some were, absolutely. That's where the FDS really shined as it allowed players to inexpensively get access to harder games, and SMB2 was that FDS game.

In reality, both sides of the dateline preferred roughly the same difficulty overall, with the West tending to get the harder games to offset the impact of rental stores. (Looking at you Lion King and Astal!) The only real difference was the genre appetites. It's no mystery that Japan held up the RPG market singlehandedly throughout the late 80s and very-early 90s.

As such, it shouldn't be a big surprise that Crash may have been too difficult for the Japanese market. There were definitely the hardcore players who sought out the harder Western version, but the larger market needed some gutter-bumpers too at times.

I see Taki listening to the swan song that is distributor upsells. Here's the big problem: you need a Quartus Prime Pro license to generate Agilex bitstreams. A fixed pro license is around $4,000. That will SIGNIFICANTLY limit who is able and willing to generate cores for the platform.

@Cyber_Akuma I 100% agree with your comment and has been my general opinion of it. By the time it released, it would have either been a letdown via the strained performance characteristics, or completely lost any benefit of cost reduction by games requiring pack-in carts that bundled the disc system software and the requisite enhancement chips.

@greenwichlee I was avoiding talking about that as well as I was getting really ramble-y. You can see the "scar" of the crash in a UK barcode (and in the US too). There is a clear line where US arcade machines stopped and Japanese cabinets ruled. It is a ripple in a market that is close enough to feel it.

@Crecca I've thought about this and I think it's because Europe never had an appetite for consoles. Generally you'd need to punch out of your own market, and I don't think any of the usual culprits (CDTV, CD32, C64GS, GX4000) were able to do that.

The CD-i arguably might fit that criteria, but I don't think Phillips ever thought of it as a game console.

I'm an American, so hold that against me as you see fit, but the reason I feel that we never talk about the Japanese and European markets is fairly simple, if a bit silly:

1. The US swings markets around the world. It's a big chunky beast that demands attention. It's the elephant in every room everywhere. People tend to see European markets as echoing whatever the American market is doing, generally as a consequence of whatever the American market has done.
2. Talking about how Europe and Japan were fine isn't great story telling. A behemoth market where the video arcade was pioneered, smote by greed, burnt to ashes, and reborn into something stronger thanks to an unlikely hero that impacts everybody to this day is fun to read about.

The European market matters, and I don't want to dismiss it. Rare is involved in some of my most fond childhood memories. However, saying "computer video games did well in Europe and spawned a generation of elite bedroom coders" is interesting to me, but without really expounding on that with some drama and character growth sounds a bit like describing FCOJ commodities growth in the late 80s; probably interesting, but not captivating. Same goes for Japan's market.

I care, I think others should care, it's just not enough of struggle or growth to captivate more than nerds like me who deeply care or academics.

@Muppets4 when the article was originally published a year and a half ago, the name wasn't known.

I want one so bad, plus a Chromatic, but it's got so much baggage attached. Palmer Lucky, in my eyes is not someone I would enjoy being around and honestly someone I wouldn't feel safe being around. Additionally he chose his audience very clearly and openly when he got Logan Paul to attach his name to the Chromatic.

Those things make it really hard to want to own one. I don't like Analogue for their business practices, but their products have fallen into my lap, and I'll accept them, and I have legitimately enjoyed them. Palmer's products, as honestly great as they are, just have a "funk" about them that I can't get past.

@Bod2019 it's the exact same hardware as the SNES but it includes some additional audio hardware for CD playback and an extra 256KB of memory to help with buffering data from the CD unit.

@Lorfarius I agree and it's the biggest fuel for my skepticism around them having a model ready to ship. I'd bet they're having a rough time getting the nuanced pieces like custom RSP microcode working right now.

I won't lie, I was hoping a bit for some of that garish rainbow that the PS1 had

Well now now we obviously need two top loaders forming a tower of power.

So I was really hyped to get one of these. I was ready to put down the cash the moment the preorder started. However, the recent "limited at 200 units" debacle has given me pause, and I think I'll wait to make sure they work on release first.

@Razieluigi as a homebrew dev, it's quite honestly the dream of mine. I've been using the Satiator over micro-USB for now, but I've been watching the Fenrir Wi-Fi update closely. Having to swap SD cards constantly to debug issues on real hardware is tiresome, and being able to just replace the file over the network would be ideal.

@ruiner9 the onboard ESP32 is only capable of 2.4GHz under the C5. My Fenrir is definitely not a C5. The space/underscore issue is also a very well known issue with the ESP32 that Espressif has not indicated desire to fix. So on both points, these are both hardware/firmware issues you won't be able to bypass.

Limited to 200 units? I wish I could play the "I'm only going to be responsible for like 5% of the ones I broke, your honor" card.

I'm looking to pick one of these up, since they do truly look pretty slick.

My one qualm with it are those in-line shoulder buttons. Having to arch my finger over to reach the R2/L2 buttons has never felt very comfortable. I'd like to see more work on redesigning that portion, but otherwise a very very slick little gadget.

@Lowdefal they're the same people. CEOs are just politicians that don't work in government. Same goes for heads of charities too.

The skills needed to interview politicians and heads of businesses/charities are nearly identical, save for a little nuance.

I really hate when corporate speak ends up being "great question, let me answer the one I want to answer." I doubt they still hold many rights after their liquidation and they're still in step 1 or even 0 of working out rights. I'm very used to working inside these sort of pop-start-ups that have nothing but the greyest ideas of where to go.

@jesse_dylan totally agree. I'd hazard these were always pretty inaccurate. Heat tends to throw these off way more than age.

@Sketcz first off, hi, I'm an electrical engineer with around two decades of professional experience in systems design. The ceramic resonator will be one of the last things to completely fail. They lose about half a percent of accuracy every decade, and from the majority of responses, it's been even more favorable. (For instance, 7Hz is 0.0000284% off reference)

If you're a TAS runner, that's a problem, and honestly replacing it with a high quality crystal oscillator should help. For normal people, the electrolyte in your capacitors will dry up long before the ceramic resonator becomes too inaccurate to maintain stability.

The six button variant will be a must-buy for me. I've wanted a six button in this form factor for a long time and GoRetroid has always made really great handhelds. Super stoked.

@DanijoEX-the-Pierrot from experience working around ARM ports of emulator codebases, the JITs in these typically don't enjoy the same level of optimization as x86_64 platforms do. The wizards of the arcane magic of efficient JIT design seemingly don't exist in the numbers for ARM as x86_64 does in games emulation.

@GravyThief it's a little goofy and small, but I dig it for tate mode games. If I really wanted something to do tate mode on the go, I think this would work well enough. While I could get the original cabs over this, it's much cheaper just to buy the ROM chips from them and dump them myself, and I can't pack a DoDonPachi cabinet in my luggage. (Though I can try)

It's probably good to remind people that this isn't your normal plug and play retro system. This is a heavy duty recreation of the original X68000 system. You can plug in a SCSI CD-ROM drive and a Roland SoundCanvas and have largely the same experience as the early 90s. You also need to have some familiarity with the OS used on these. It's a serious bit of kit.

Do I want one? Yes. Can I afford one? Unsure. Can I get my money's worth? I doubt that. I think a lot of international customers will fit in that box with me.

@Mario500 2018 when Trump's first tariffs hit and retaliatory tariffs were also enacted.

Wasn't sure what to call 2010-2019, so took a guess with "teens". It was a shot : P

Had to inform clients of the impending rate increases from their partners once our current buffer in the chain runs dry. I'm sitting in about a hundred emails of people going through the five stages of grief.

A lot of these companies produce goods you need indirectly, so not something you'd buy, but something needed for other products and services you do buy. Most of these I wouldn't consider luxurious at all, addressing an earlier comment, but all of them keep B2B going.

It was kind of like a shockwave where I'm informing the next ring of the process about the hit. And like a shockwave, everybody felt it.

@HoyeBoye the problem is that no hard-ARM core has the raw power to do it. I'm not sure what they're aiming for. (Besides being a scam, obviously)

@Danrenfroe2016 so in good news, that's not what happened here. However, if the guy here had lifted from the fan translations, he would have committed copyright infringement. Even if you make an unauthorized translation, it's still yours and others still need your permission to duplicate or distribute it or parts of it.

This is so incredibly uncharacteristically EA it's astounding. Good move on them though. I think they've largely moved on from C&C, so giving the community this gem is honestly such a great move. My inner archivist is incredibly pleased and honestly pretty thankful.

@slider1983 You should definitely read into the Paprium drama more, because I think you're missing a ton of turns that made it super sketchy.

To the article itself, I just imagine this guy writing this and honking his huge red nose, because what a clown. Good job losing all good will and business you have.

@ScalenePowers While I understand that to a degree, there have been many very reasonable takes in this comment section regarding serious quality lapses being put forth by their own customers. I have trouble categorizing that as blind hate.

I've still got a couple bones with this:

First, was LRG not worried or bothered by shipping D on burnt discs? It should be obvious where LRG exists in the market as a niche, almost boutique supplier of retro games. That quality doesn't rise above cheap repros.

Second, why didn't LRG have the carts of Rugrats and PioPow inspected by an engineer? It's very common to inspect every aspect of a device you receive from a supplier to make sure it meets the expectations of them and their audience. The fact it shipped, just like the D debacle, is an LRG problem. The buck stopped there.

What I'm reading is that LRG lacks the right people to identify quality issues before they reach consumers. Somebody should have pressed the metaphorical E-stop before any of these issues ended up with a shipping label.

@mootint that's not what I'm referring to. I mean if you create something that takes advantage of this carts' extra capabilities (a la the included RP2350) then your creation is locked to this cart. No emulator is going to go out of its way to include support.

@KingMike I imagine, like all RetroN consoles, this is just a Linux system with an open source emulator and a cart dumper attached. The emulator itself should do the bit flipping once the dumping software makes a game image on the internal filesystem.

The cart dumper aspect is also why flash carts aren't supported.

Virtual Hydlide.

@RetroGames a case this brings to mind is Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC here in the US circa 2010. This is the case that killed limewire. Even though limewire didn't store or ever hold copyrighted material themselves, their platform "induced copyright infringement" for its users as a core part of its product. Even though not every download they offered was bad, the court found that it was overwhelmingly used and considered a tool for piracy.

That case is still referenced decently often, and I imagine it'd be one of the more relevant. Not that this matters, since Anbernic took it down, but just mentally golfing here

I'll buy it. I've got a sense of adventure.

However, it has a huge problem of vendor lock-in. It's not like these ROMs will work in any conventional emulator. Maybe that's what commercial entities want, but at the same time, what commercial entity is developing for the Genesis?

@RetroGames yes, it does. They wouldn't necessarily need to shut down, but they would need to remove the content they haven't secured permission for. If there was one ROM with multiple copyright holders, they'd need permission from all holders for that one ROM as well.

@RetroGames the "store" (in this context) needs to be authorized by the copyright holder to distribute their work since they effectively need to generate copies to distribute.

The core of all this boils down to the question "can somebody else distribute something I made without my permission, even if I release it for free?" That answer is generally no. If they wrote on, say, their itchio page "feel free to share this thing with whomever you want" then there's no explicit permission necessary.