[store stuff]

PM Albert

[Which games have you spent the most time playing?]

Probably Final Fantasy VI

 

Ive played that game A LOT over the years, heh.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

After reading and listening to Carl Williams interview I think these guys are all over the place with ideas. Many things you could argue for or against. The 3 that would give this a chance seem drowned in a sea of awkward communication. This system has to do striking and unique things in order to succeed:

 

A. Focus on fostering a game making community. Those people who could mod a game but never grasp C or assembly. Ooya had their chance but instead catered to the me too Android crowd.

 

B. FPGA equals real hardware. Our original systems are dying. Our livingrooms are crowed with too many gadgets. You give me one system that can play real 2600, 7800, SMS, Inty, Genesis, Nintendo, etc.. carts and you've got a guaranteed customer.

 

C. If you must go ARM/Android then give me unique titles I can't find anywhere else. I don't want to purchase Tiny Solar Shoveled Knights yet again.

 

Lots of good ideas have come out of this topic on different ways to take this project. I'm really liking the hobbyist-target game making console and the right technical support staff could make it a really cool project. Dunno if Mike and his guys are gonna be the ones to make something out of this (kevtris is already on a roll) but I think how heated and ongoing this thread has been shows there is definite interest for this kind of project.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

 

Is that kinda like how Wal-Mart assumes they will make more sales on Welfare\Social Assistance cheque day?

 

Hah! We do, period. I schedule more cashiers at the beginning of the month. Big sale days for me. WIC checks tend to come due the same time too and they take longer to process so I have to assume for longer wait times at the lanes. It is very rare I have a slow beginning of the month. My store is right near a retirement community and a lot of them clear out when the summer hits, so June-August we might not get hit as hard.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

I'll definitely have some money earmarked for Kevin's system. I want to see his full proposal first but some of the stuff he's talking about in his thread, like USB controllers already has me on board since it means I already have everything I need to use it.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

yes indeed. That is where we got "Developers will be instructed to deliver bug free games" and "Simple as that" from. It is funny but I guess not surprising that they weren't prepared to respond to that.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

Oh it makes me so mad.

 

GAMES WERE BUGGY AS SHIT IN THE OLD DAYS

 

Every time I read about how they're gonna be bug free like the "good old days" I think about this. I mean, my entire approach to Final Fantasy is abusing and work around the bugs in the game's mechanics to beat it.

 

This QA "plan" seems to derive from the fact that they don't like being required to download patches when they put their games in the console. Fine, Xbox 360 yeah it was annoying if you just wanted to get online and game for a few minutes but it was also a convenience in that it fixed broken shit. This hypothetical console of theirs won't really be going online for matchmaking (I guess) so it seems like a nonissue. If you don't want auto-patching just put in a toggle in the firmware or something.

 

Now if you don't want to patch and are just going to want to live with whatever skirts past QA fine, I can respect that. YOU WILL HAVE BUGS IN YOUR GAMES HOWEVER. That is how it was in the "old days" and that is how it is going to be.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

European retailers will be instructed to lobby against socialist European politicians so that VATs may be eliminated. Simple as that.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

Alright thoughts:

 

Steve: He just seems completely out of touch, like woefully. What exactly is he contributing to the project? He seems to think the console will do different things than Mike and John and he didn't know about kevtris. Do they keep this guy in the closet? Some of his comments like, "I don't understand forums," etc seem pretty out of touch too. I'm not particularly convinced he understands the community he is marketing things for.

 

Mike: John's assessment in his notes was spot on. Mike comes across as an over-enthusiastic dreamer that doesn't really understand the technical aspects of anything and is just John's personal hype machine

 

John: He actually seems like he kind of knows what he is doing but his goals seem contrary to what Mike (and Steve) want or expect. I feel like he's just building his own thing and hoping Mike will come through with the money. He certainly seems like the power behind the throne.

 

They're talking about crap like writing contracts with their game developer and the contracts will stipulate that the games are bug free but then they see developers will be free to do their own games for the system. Yeah, they just don't have their shit together. John seems to think that they are going to turn this venture into some fancypants high-end corporate gig but for the love of god, they're talking about maybe 5 to 6 thousand units!

 

I just, I don't even....they need a business guy to bring all of them down to earth. ~Bad~

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

Oh dear god, Steve DIDN'T KNOW Keven was off the project until your interview with him?! This certainly is an eye-opening look into how these three guys are working with each other.

 

Thank you for all your hard work Triverse. This is a very illuminating interview

 

edit: Also I love how he is trying to compare Kevtris's project as if it is a competing cartrige-based system. That isn't what Kevtris is talking abot making at all and this interview just goes to show that they haven't even bothered to look at it and are just trying to sling mud, probably based on what they've heard from their facebook page.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

You should have just told the dogs to take it outside and eat the neighbors

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

Does it really make sense to patent something these days? Even more so for one guy and a small hardly there company? It's not like he invented something that will change the world. I just don't get it.

 

If he's only ever done big time corporate work and never run a small business, he might not be experienced with the differences between the two. I could certainly see how a corporate lifer, especially an engineer that hasn't had to handle some of the financial aspects, might fall into that trap.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

I delight in the fact that Atari Age is receiving credit for ruining RVGS. "If it hadn't been for those stupid old guys who are still playing a console from the 70s, we'd be fine!"

 

How much stuff have we supported Parrothead on over the years? GTFO, makes me sorry I was still trying to defend him up thread.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

I've been trying to collect my thoughts on John's post, especially regarding

 

 

 

#7: We don’t need an outside vendor to supply FPGA cores.

 

This whole section bothered the hell out of me. I don't know the guy and I don't want to sling mud at him. But goddamn

 

 

 

We thought we had a good vendor to delegate some of our work to and/or from whom we could leverage existing work. Clearly it didn’t work out. Although I’m disappointed by his apparent lack of professionalism

 

Just....goddamn

 

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

I don't even know what to think after reading John's comments. Alright so Mike isn't being misled by his hardware guy. His hardware guy stopped telling him things because he doesn't have an off-button. That actually does make sense to me but if you're not telling the project lead anything because he can't or won't understand it, that's a bit freaky. Did they ever stop and go, "Hey Mike, this is what we got but maybe you shouldn't announce it yet because X"

 

Alright so apparently they have some sort of prototype that works (despite early claiming it would costs tens of thousands to build or whatever) and they didn't think it would be a good idea to sit Mike down and discuss what they did and did not have for the sales pitch? There are only three guys on this team. How the hell do they expect to raise almost 2 million dollars if they can't get together and present a unified front?

[When you buy games do you get the Standard or Limited\Deluxe release?]

Standard

 

I put a stop to that deluxe nonsense after a couple years and ending up with drawers full of "bonuses" that I never really take out or look at. I am a sucker for soundtracks however and still buy more expensive sets if those are included.

[Original XBOX BUYING GUIDE & Top Games]

Oh Jade Empire is beautiful. It might be Bioware's best game.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

I'm willing to bet most of us didn't actively collect and think about preservation when were teens or pre-teens. Those of us lucky enough to still have our original hardware from childhood seemed to have kept it by happenstance.

 

At least it was that way for me. I was hesitant to throw out and let go of all the Apple II paraphernalia because I worked so hard to get it. Mowing lawns and running errands for the seniors. Sweeping the sidewalks, hauling trash.. And somewhere between those days and today this stuff became important keepsakes. But I sure as hell didn't keep the stuff because I thought I could sell it and make bux deluxe or be a savior to some poor sap looking for a bit of technical knowledge from a manuals. Or even for future nostalgic purposes. No - that stuff just sort of creeps up on you.

But it has been shown time and time again if you allow for patching for bugs in a consumer system.. Somehow, someway, the system will be perverted into allowing for microtransactions and online verifications from temporary servers.

 

Yes. I don't think I ever really started thinking about "collecting" the stuff until 2006 or so when I went out and bought a Genesis and got into the whole collecting thing. My stuff from when I was a kid is in good enough shape (dust sleeves, stored on shelves, etc.) but I never thought about saving manuals or boxes or anything. Which seems to suggest another issue with RVGS, is the collector market large enough to support a device like this? Seems like those casual somethings and kid gamers would still be important demographics to bring it out of the hobbyist community and into the mainstream.

 

Others have said it in this topic but RVGS is probably targeting a market that doesn't actually exist. Gamestop has built its business around people trading in their stuff when they got bored of it...how many are like us and horde the damn games?

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

All they need at that point is to be instructed to make bug-free games. Simple as that!

 

Is....is..that possible with Jaguar shells?

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

Well they knocked up that price tag from feature bloat. I've no doubt the quoted price is based on at least some degree of research because if they were pulling it out of their ass, they'd still be telling everyone it was $150-$180. That's the problem with something like this, you've got to have a real good, specific, vision in order to bring it to market at a price that most people are going to bite on.

 

If my retro console is going to cost as much as a mini-PC that could do all the same things, it better be able to replicate beer as well.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

 

Not having a prototype wouldn't be too bad if they showed a drawing of a routed PCB and/or schematics. That would be the least they could have done the last few months and would at least give an impression that they thought about the design and that they are ready to build a prototype. They must already have the design software as they showed a rendering of a "unrouted" PCB created in Altium so it can't be the costs.But they didn't even show a simple block diagram of the system.

 

Robert

 

Yes indeed! If they at least had a blueprint of somethng that looked real, it would kill a lot of criticism.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

I know Mike, I don't know the other guys so that is where I am coming from...though I am inclined to agree with Greg2600 about misleading being to strong a word. Obviously something is broken somewhere. Is it just that they are out of touch with modern practices? Could be since they want to build a 90s era console.

 

BTW I don't absolve Mike...there is plenty of blame to go around for this train wreck. But yes, I do think his hardware guys are giving him unrealistic expectations. Why would they stay on board after everything that has happened if it was all Mike?

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

I stand by my theory that his hardware guys are misleading him. Someone must be telling him, "oh it'll be easy once we have the money" if he really thinks just having a case is 1/2 the battle. The case should be the least of his concerns. I'm assuming he isn't a hardware guy (some of the breakdowns here have definitely been over my head!) and doesn't get the work that needs to go in what he is asking for. It doesn't help that the project goal is some sort of nebulous "can play homebrews and new style retro games too"

 

Having a goal like "it needs to run Tiny Knight and Gunlord flawlessly" is a good starting point but what specs are you shipping and what do those specs offer developers? How the hell can he have any serious developers lined up if they don't even know what specs they'll be working with?

 

See if the hardware goals were even remotely defined, I could be down for helping to get the prototype off the ground. Small benchmarks instead of this big campaign all in one go. It is to much trust to put into people that are still in the planning stage.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

I noticed that, too. Showing other failed Kickstarters doesn't help make theirs look any better.

 

Interestingly, they were doing that as a defense of launching on IGG, sort of like "see, people on kickstarter fail too!"

 

I actually don't think IGG is the problem as a lot of people are insisting. Fine, whatever, it is just a platform. How many donations are they going to solicit from people stumbling upon the kickstarter page? With the right marketing and something to show it will spread just fine on IGG.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

Caught this gem from their facebook activity this morning

 

 

 

 

Game support is the least of our problems. We have developers in line wanting to make games on this. Our problem is we can't over saturate the market early on or our early developers won't make any money.

 

 

 

 

Oh boy. It's a good thing Piko backed out, otherwise they might inadvertently lose money because their game would be lost in the mix. Retro VGS, leading the way to the next video game crash!