I keep getting this feeling that Retro is going the way of Rare and will get spun off. DK Tropical Freeze was their last big release in 2014 (the port was good but didn't add much). And we don't really have an idea of what they are working on so they don't seem to have anything coming out soon.
I'm not sure if you are being serious. Nintendo owned 49% of Rare and sold it in 2002. Stake when it refers to stock refers to an ownership in a company. They weren't majority owner, but they were an owner. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/equity-stake.html
Here is it directly from Nintendo. -Page 12 " Rare Limited, Rare Inc., and Rare Toys & Games,
Inc. are excluded from consolidation as the stock of Rare Limited and Rareware Limited have
been sold. "
Here's another site since this is easy to find on the internet.
"But Peter MacDougall, executive vice president at Nintendo of America, confirmed to CNET News.com that the sale was part of Rare's acquisition by Microsoft, which now owns Nintendo's 49 percent stake and Rare's majority share."
"And it was not designed as a portable, but as a tabletop, which is something ENTIRELY different."
A 3.5" screen can't be a tabletop to me, it's a handheld since your eyes would ideally be no more than about 18" away and two players in tabletop would be impossible. You'd have to slouch uncomfortably to make that look decent on a tabletop or have a 6' high table. That's about the size of the original DSi top screen. I just don't see the point of a nearly unusable screen without a battery. It could have included a slot for AAs or something if they didn't want a battery. And I don't think the camparison to the Nes/Snes mini is fair either because they don't have screens. If they did they wouldn't hit the nastolgia itch since they weren't what most gamers had in their homes, and I don't think tacking on the $40-50 would have hit the sweet point for an item like that. But if they did have screens, like if Nintendo releases a GB mini, I'm guessing they'd put a battery in it. But to each it's own. Some people will see the benefit in the features and purchase it. I don't think it will become the NES mini that led the US console sales for a month in 2018 .
"Criticizing this unit for not offering an option for portable play is rather unfair, in my opinion, seeing as Nintendo's mini consoles don't have that option either, and equally, they also don't have an internal battery..."
Why have a screen, small controller, and a premium price then?
I'm still skeptical they are using the fpga for playing games. Kevtris speculated that they were using a small fpga to dump the cartridge and send the feedback from the cartridges. He was skeptical they would need emulation if they were using a big enough fpga board for the systems. I guess we'll know what their plan is when they release it. I'm just not sure the benefit over using pc if it's primarily emulation. Really surprised thet can't get superfx working. I was playing super fx on my original windows xp computer via emulation. I'm also dissapointed that this article implies the controllers are lag free wireless. Such a thing doesn't exist.
Yeah, I guess I lost interest when they called the Super NT a good interim solution and Kevtris responded how he hasn't seen anything to indicate it's more than vaporware and what they are trying to accomplish is a good deal harder than what he's done with the Super NT thus far.
Here's a quote from Kevtris which may know a thing or two about FGPA development.
"I still am curious how they are going to get around the whole BIOS ROM problem (among the 2000 other issues they will have). It's pretty hard to run CD based systems without the BIOS ROMs. I guess they could take a stab at rewriting one but it's a big job and compatibility will be suspect. It sounds more and more their "hybrid emulation" ™ is basically a retron 5, where it uses a simple CPLD/FPGA to read the carts and stuff and interfaces it to an android system running emulators.
There's zero way to get a software emulator to actually run a cartridge without dumping it IMO. They could theoretically run a CPU emulator, but it cannot do anything else, because running the cart bus will take all available CPU cycles, and it cannot be sped up (because the cartridge can only be read at the "usual' rate and it cannot be sped up to help do bulk processing)."
From the best I can tell, the system bios in CD based systems is covered under software copyright protection. So it would be illegal for them to copy the PS1 bios and include it in the system. Much like a person can't copy the original Super Mario Bros and start selling it (legally at least). Versus clone consoles which the hardware would fall under patent protection and would be expired for most retro systems at this point. So the options are to have users get their own bios which is messy because they could the wrong one and maybe still be illegal if the only way to use your product is to have the end user find something illegally. Or play without the bios which I guess is possible. But it's glitchy and won't work with all games.
From my experience, modern TVs are terrible at handling interlaced content and often view old 240p consoles as interlaced. But the ones I've used all handle 480p without adding any significant lag. I have a frameister and love it but I've ordered one of these. I also have a CRT set up too. I really enjoy retro games and enjoy them in a variety of settings.
Certainly the Frameister has its benefits. It has s-vid/composite inputs as well for consoles that aren't modded. It has scaling options like the 5x scaling which allows a zoomed in view on games and allows zooming for PSP/Game Gear as well as other options to adjust the picture. And 20 ms processing is pretty fast especially for interlaced content. I'm not selling the Frameister even if I love the OSSC.
The OSSC still looks pretty good as displayed above. The only real advantage the OSSC has is basically lag free vs. 20 ms on the Frameister. But if that works well on my TVs it'll be worth the cost to be able to beat Mike Tyson on them. Mylifeingaming on youtube has a pretty good review on it. I'm not going to knock someone wanting to keep on CRTs for lag free performance, but this is an excellent alternative for those looking to drop CRTs either due to difficulty lugging them around, space needed for basically just a retro setup, or difficulty finding one that still has a great display.
Comments 58
Re: Feature: Take A Peek Behind The Curtain At Rare With This New Exhibit
I keep getting this feeling that Retro is going the way of Rare and will get spun off. DK Tropical Freeze was their last big release in 2014 (the port was good but didn't add much). And we don't really have an idea of what they are working on so they don't seem to have anything coming out soon.
Re: Feature: Take A Peek Behind The Curtain At Rare With This New Exhibit
@MegaVel91
I'm not sure if you are being serious. Nintendo owned 49% of Rare and sold it in 2002. Stake when it refers to stock refers to an ownership in a company. They weren't majority owner, but they were an owner. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/equity-stake.html
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2003/030522e.pdf
Here is it directly from Nintendo. -Page 12 " Rare Limited, Rare Inc., and Rare Toys & Games,
Inc. are excluded from consolidation as the stock of Rare Limited and Rareware Limited have
been sold. "
Here's another site since this is easy to find on the internet.
https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-buys-game-developer-rare/
"But Peter MacDougall, executive vice president at Nintendo of America, confirmed to CNET News.com that the sale was part of Rare's acquisition by Microsoft, which now owns Nintendo's 49 percent stake and Rare's majority share."
Re: Feature: Take A Peek Behind The Curtain At Rare With This New Exhibit
@MegaVel91
In 1994 Nintendo bought a 25% stake in Rare. That gradually increased to 49% before they sold in 2002 so Microsoft could purchase Rare fully.
Re: Hardware Review: Does The SNK Neo Geo Mini Outclass Nintendo's Classic Editions?
@ThanosReXXX
"And it was not designed as a portable, but as a tabletop, which is something ENTIRELY different."
A 3.5" screen can't be a tabletop to me, it's a handheld since your eyes would ideally be no more than about 18" away and two players in tabletop would be impossible. You'd have to slouch uncomfortably to make that look decent on a tabletop or have a 6' high table. That's about the size of the original DSi top screen. I just don't see the point of a nearly unusable screen without a battery. It could have included a slot for AAs or something if they didn't want a battery. And I don't think the camparison to the Nes/Snes mini is fair either because they don't have screens. If they did they wouldn't hit the nastolgia itch since they weren't what most gamers had in their homes, and I don't think tacking on the $40-50 would have hit the sweet point for an item like that. But if they did have screens, like if Nintendo releases a GB mini, I'm guessing they'd put a battery in it. But to each it's own. Some people will see the benefit in the features and purchase it. I don't think it will become the NES mini that led the US console sales for a month in 2018 .
Re: Hardware Review: Does The SNK Neo Geo Mini Outclass Nintendo's Classic Editions?
@ThanosReXXX
"Criticizing this unit for not offering an option for portable play is rather unfair, in my opinion, seeing as Nintendo's mini consoles don't have that option either, and equally, they also don't have an internal battery..."
Why have a screen, small controller, and a premium price then?
Re: Hands On: Exploring The Future Of Retro Gaming With Polymega
@ThanosReXXX
I'm still skeptical they are using the fpga for playing games. Kevtris speculated that they were using a small fpga to dump the cartridge and send the feedback from the cartridges. He was skeptical they would need emulation if they were using a big enough fpga board for the systems. I guess we'll know what their plan is when they release it. I'm just not sure the benefit over using pc if it's primarily emulation. Really surprised thet can't get superfx working. I was playing super fx on my original windows xp computer via emulation. I'm also dissapointed that this article implies the controllers are lag free wireless. Such a thing doesn't exist.
Re: Video: Polymega Gears Up For Marketing Blitz With Footage Of PCB Creation
Yeah, I guess I lost interest when they called the Super NT a good interim solution and Kevtris responded how he hasn't seen anything to indicate it's more than vaporware and what they are trying to accomplish is a good deal harder than what he's done with the Super NT thus far.
Here's a quote from Kevtris which may know a thing or two about FGPA development.
"I still am curious how they are going to get around the whole BIOS ROM problem (among the 2000 other issues they will have). It's pretty hard to run CD based systems without the BIOS ROMs. I guess they could take a stab at rewriting one but it's a big job and compatibility will be suspect. It sounds more and more their "hybrid emulation" ™ is basically a retron 5, where it uses a simple CPLD/FPGA to read the carts and stuff and interfaces it to an android system running emulators.
There's zero way to get a software emulator to actually run a cartridge without dumping it IMO. They could theoretically run a CPU emulator, but it cannot do anything else, because running the cart bus will take all available CPU cycles, and it cannot be sped up (because the cartridge can only be read at the "usual' rate and it cannot be sped up to help do bulk processing)."
Source: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/242970-fpga-based-videogame-system/page-347
From the best I can tell, the system bios in CD based systems is covered under software copyright protection. So it would be illegal for them to copy the PS1 bios and include it in the system. Much like a person can't copy the original Super Mario Bros and start selling it (legally at least). Versus clone consoles which the hardware would fall under patent protection and would be expired for most retro systems at this point. So the options are to have users get their own bios which is messy because they could the wrong one and maybe still be illegal if the only way to use your product is to have the end user find something illegally. Or play without the bios which I guess is possible. But it's glitchy and won't work with all games.
Re: Hardware Review: The Open Source Scan Converter Is Every Retro Gamer's Dream Come True
@GravyThief
From my experience, modern TVs are terrible at handling interlaced content and often view old 240p consoles as interlaced. But the ones I've used all handle 480p without adding any significant lag. I have a frameister and love it but I've ordered one of these. I also have a CRT set up too. I really enjoy retro games and enjoy them in a variety of settings.
Certainly the Frameister has its benefits. It has s-vid/composite inputs as well for consoles that aren't modded. It has scaling options like the 5x scaling which allows a zoomed in view on games and allows zooming for PSP/Game Gear as well as other options to adjust the picture. And 20 ms processing is pretty fast especially for interlaced content. I'm not selling the Frameister even if I love the OSSC.
The OSSC still looks pretty good as displayed above. The only real advantage the OSSC has is basically lag free vs. 20 ms on the Frameister. But if that works well on my TVs it'll be worth the cost to be able to beat Mike Tyson on them. Mylifeingaming on youtube has a pretty good review on it. I'm not going to knock someone wanting to keep on CRTs for lag free performance, but this is an excellent alternative for those looking to drop CRTs either due to difficulty lugging them around, space needed for basically just a retro setup, or difficulty finding one that still has a great display.