Algus
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Posts posted by Algus
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If they think having a console shell and a controller is "half the battle" they are out of their goddamn minds and it explains everything about how they got here. Oh, ok, I have an empty LIAN LI case, so I guess I am 1/2 way towards constructing a fully functional artificial intelligence. Just give me $2 mil dollars and I guarantee to have it delivered in one year
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Well their 1.95 mil figure includes a "stipend" of 80k per team member to live off of, so they have something to support! Hell, I'd be happy making 50k lol
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Gunlord is a good game. It was a Neo Geo homebrew, originally. They're using smoke and mirrors by showing games they didn't develop and had no real involvement in and claiming that these are games that will appear on Retro VGS. Besides getting snippy with us right after the Indiegogo campaign launched, they haven't even really bothered to do much damage control. It's just getting worse now because pretty soon we're all going to get bored of picking on them and then just no one will pay attention to them at all.
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That's why I say the only thing that will save them at this point is a working prototype. Prior to this campaign, they might have been able to crowdsource the funds for a prototype if they had been more transparent about their hardware goals but after this nothing short of "This is exactly what we want to do, here's how it works, and here's a demo unit that we are ready to put to manufacturing" is going to save them.
I imagine they are hoping they will get more exposure like the Nintendo Life article and I'd further speculate that given how they've pressed forward with it, they are probably pretty blind to the reality of what a disaster this was. Really all this has accomplished is given Kevtris a ton of great exposure to the very people RVGS should be courting to make their console a success because "why not just buy it on Steam" is the prevailing opinion amongst most of these "casual retro" fans that the RVGS team seems to be pinning their hopes on at this point.
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Oh I don't disagree with you at all. Upthread a bit jaybird3rd pointed out that even if it isn't an intentional scam, it sure smells like one. That is part of the issue of doing something like this while obviously being so ill-prepared. If people didn't know Mike's reputation, they would just assume that (and many have!) I give him the benefit of the doubt from knowing what he's done in the past. There are plenty here and on Neogaf that don't know his reputation and are calling it like they see it.
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Oh Dead or Alive has always had lovely (*wink*) graphics. DoA 3 on Xbox looks just like an early 360 game.
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Well prototype in the sense that "this is the controller we are thinking of going with"
All Retro VGS has right now is marketing so you have to run a translation to go from what Mike is saying to what it means in English.
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If it came out as described (ie a "retro style" system that played new indie games on cartridges) I could certainly be persuaded to consider it. As things are now, well I've added my voice to the complaints and criticisms enough in the other thread
But yes, I would be potentially interested in the idea behind the system depending on the lineup it had. I dismissed it in the poll topic Austin started but I will admit, the idea has potential.
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A lot of newer TVs no longer support analog input (it was retired a few years back when they went to digital signals) so depending on the age of your TV, your oldest systems may not even work with your set! Options are to grab one of these modern clones or an older TV. A lot of us use an old CRT which is useful for compatibility.
Assuming you have the right TV, you can get one of these and tell that 70s switchbox to go fuck itself. My HDTV is old enough that it still has analog signals (bought it several years before the switchover) so I mainly use that. For systems that support composite and s-video hookups, you can get some pretty good images even on the newest sets. Light Guns don't really work right with newer TVs though so if things like Duck Hunt are your deal, you'll want that old TV.
Flash carts, like the Harmony Cartridge have become extremely popular because you can load the ROMs of every game ever onto them and still play them on the original hardware so they act as you might expect as opposed to emulation. Other systems have flash carts of their own so check around the web for the systems you want to play.
I highly recommend private forum trading. Long-time members on Atari Age and Nintendo Age are exceedingly reliable and the prices are much better than eBay. Nintendo Age has a fairly complex review system for sellers. We don't have that here but we do have a seller feedback thread so you can search a user's name and see what kind of reputation they have. I buy most of my controllers, dust covers, etc. this way to ensure I'm getting genuine stuff in good shape (lots of fakes/repros out there...especially for SNES). I still eBay from time to time. It can get pricey but the tradeoff is being assured of finding what you want.
I recommend the original hardware over stuff like the RetroN. At its heart, the RetroN is just doing emulation and while it ~works~ as most would expect, there are issues and sometimes game incompatibilities. If I'm going to go that route, I'll just use the emulators on my computer (which, to be honest, is how I do most of my retro gaming these days anyway). Really it depends on your budget, space, etc. Some guys here have monster setups for their hardware. I don't have a lot of room so I keep everything on my computer and only pull the real stuff out on special occasions.
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I've beaten MMX 1 with only the dash boots. I nipped a code from the intrawebs one time that cleared Chill Penguin ~without~ giving you the dash boots but IIRC there is a jump in Sigma's Fortress that is simply not possible without the boots. I've beaten all the Mavericks in MMX1 without upgrades of any sort (well besides Chill Penguin but I don't feel bad about that). It's definitely a fun game and one of the reasons I like the series is that once you master the game with the upgrades you can start working on doing it without.
The bosses in X2 are good, not as hard as X1 IMO, it is just the items that are bullshit. The heart tank in Overdrive Ostritch for instance where you have to perfectly line up and do a speed burner (and will still die). The internet claims you can get the hoverbike up there but fuck if I'm going to practice the stage enough to pull that off! You know if X2 had Chameleon Sting in it, almost all my complaints about it would go away.
It is still a good game just clearly in the area of "series veterans" as opposed to "accessible for everyone" like the first game is.
stardust, MM2 on Normal is great for noobies, easy game
Like MMX1 the robot master weapons in MM2 are ~really~ good. It's a big help vs some of the games that have shitty boss weapons. Metal Blade is so potent that once you get it, you'll be relying on it more than on the Mega Buster. -
Oh Kirby's Adventure is amazing. If it had more color depth it would be at home on the Genesis. As is, it looks like a TG-16 game.
I like games that are stylized or use something like cel-shading. It holds up better over time and doesn't seem to tax the system. Years later I remain impressed by Mega Man Legends, Robotech: Battlecry (looks like the show!) and other games of that nature.
This is not what this topic is asking, I know. I could see something like Suikoden III on a modern system though and that seems pretty good.
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Know this is about the original series but this thread got me playing the X games a bit again
Mega Man X: This was the first game I ever bought with my own money (oh boy, showing my youth and inexperience here) and it's still one of my favorites. Maybe the easiest Mega Man game but balanced really well with decent challenge and a lot of fun. I think one of the things that makes this game so easy is that the Maverick weapons are all really freaking good. Charged Rolling shield makes it so easy to farm lives and energy and Charged Chameleon Sting is just ridiculous (and so much better than the freeze and slow moves that are common to the series). I've got the final battle down to a science now and managed to take all three bosses without using a sub tank.
Mega Man X2: This game kind of pisses me off because the heart tanks almost all require stupid perfect timing over spike pits or other shenanigans. Most of the Maverick weapons are useless too. I do like Speed Burner, which is powerful and has a useful dash move as a charge shot. The X-Buster upgrade is super useful. One thing I don't get, everyone says start with Overdrive Ostritch. I fucking hate Overdrive Ostritch! He's a pain in the ass with strong attacks and you need quick reflexes (or a large energy pool) to deal with him. I'll take Wire Sponge (who is a total clown) any day of the week. Plus Wire Sponge->Wheel Gator will let you collect ~most~ of the items since you need Wheel Gator's weapon to get into several areas.
I was messing with Mega Man Xtreme as well. I have fond memories of it but playing it right after a full clear of X1 and man the controls are garbage! Dash to the d-pad or start? Ugh. GBC graphics have not held up well at all. I'll take plain old black and white GB any time.
Why are there no good emulators for messing with Super Gameboy to edit palettes and such?
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It's really a shame about all of this, as I like Mike and have listened to him on podcasts for years, and have supported his past stuff like Retro. I think in the end he just got in over his head.
And wow, has this exploded!
Yeah, pretty much. I dunno if his tech guys have misled him or if they've just collectively taken on more than they realize. It's a shame because some of the stuff they are talking about sounds cool. I'd definitely be on board for buying a system that played games like Shovel Knight, Gunlord, etc. and packed them on cartridges. All the issues talked about here and on Neogaf though pretty much burn through any goodwill these guys might have had.
Despite it all, I'd be willing to give them a shot if they shut things down now and came back in 6 months with a stronger vision and (most importantly) a working prototype. If they needed money to fund their initial prototype they should have shot for that first instead of trying to use crowdfunding to sell units of something that doesn't even exist.
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I actually won't question Mike's intentions. I don't think he is trying to scam anyone but he's a marketer (and honestly, a good one because the only thing separating Retro VGS from an idea peddler with a non-starter thread on a forum IS Mike's marketing) and this whole affair smacks of one of those Dilbert comic strips where the marketer is busying promising the moon to his client and Dilbert's stuck in his cubicle going "How the hell am I supposed to do that?! With my corbomite device?!"
The whole thing's falling apart now because all they have is the idea, not an actual proto or even a clue as to how to build it. They say they have the expertise to build one but they can't even answer simple questions about technical specifications. It really is a shame because it is a cool idea. But so was the Phantom.
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See now there are glimpses of vision in that post.
"Ahh, I see that many people are making 8-bit/16-bit style retro games. What if we actually had a console that used cartridges to play them on?!" is a great question to ask. If his team could build a working proto that did just that and wasn't promising the moon, they might have something. I can't imagine it would be a huge product (really most people are going to download Shovel Knight) but it would definitely have a market in the hobbyist community.
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Yeah, I only haul in 30k annually (and I live fairly comfortably, albeit my pad isn't very big) so when they are asking for that much money to support themselves, I don't have very much sympathy for them.
But really, even with how bad things look, they have still been able to drum up 60k in a day! If they can't afford to knock up the proto out of their own funds, all they need to do is get a few of their early backers, who seem extremely eager, to help them fund the cost of the proto!
Once they have a working proto, almost all of us in this thread go away.
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As we see from this topic lots of different people have lots of different ideas as to what they want. I think the poll is the right approach and I will be interested to see you develop an actual project proposal from the suggestions and ideas herein. For me if it is "just" a retro-game player (IE for NES, SNES, etc.) I would want a small box with 2-4 controller ports (USB so we could use our PC logitech controllers, etc?) and an HDMI connector. The front end would just handle the SD card and I could load the games I want. Ideally targeting N64-PS1 as the high end of what it could reproduce.
This would be a great travel device for me as I'm the "retro gaming guy" amongst my friends, since I still have all my stuff from when I was a kid, but carting around a system, controllers, and a huge stack of cartridges is a pain in the ass.
I basically use my PC as described above right now but that also cost $1200 and does a lot of things besides having an instant-startup easy front end. Plus I don't really like to unplug it from my desktop setup to take to a friend's house.
If it is to play new game, I imagine something quite similar (ie a small box) that reads the games from SD card. But at this point we are getting dangerously close to OUYA territory. Being able to purchase and own the installers or games in the style of GOG and load them onto my own physical media would be very appealing to me. Then I could use my PC to build my own archive and not be dependent on this proposed console's network capabilities.
This kind of thing seems like a hobbyist unit that only might ever sell a few thousand devices. Even OUYA, which was arguably quite successful for what it was, was only selling a few thousand copies of its most popular games. The audience for this stuff is just not very big.
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Your snark isn't appreciated Jay. We're lucky to have these veteran Captains of Industry on this project.
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2600 is such a thriving scene for homebrew IMO because the projects can be realistically completed by a single programmer who might be using a dev time 2-3x as long as the professional devs did back in the day.
With Nintendo (and newer) it's more work which means more dev time or people. It's tough. I've played some good stuff but nothing like what's on 2600.
Making good games is hard work. I can't blame people for wanting to be compensated for that work so why waste time on this old hardware when you can just get it on Steam or iOS or whatever
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Keatah don't use wifi though so we'll have to wait for his 2800 baud modem to phone indiegogo
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Lol well between the indiegogo page and the posts from the core developer, I think the smoke machine and mirrors got broken on this "project"
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"developers will be instructed to give us bug free games"
As simple as that, eh?
I will give them this, their sales pitch is good. If this thing actually existed, I'd be on board.
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Space Rocks is essential if you're an Asteroids fan. It is a brilliant game. If Asteroids is a staple official release than I'd say Space Rocks is a staple homebrew.
I'm quite fond of A-VCS-Tec Challenge (old but impressive) and Toyshop Trouble (holiday themed but fun year round!)
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The financials are a bit of a hurdle to get around. Who is this committee? Are they compensated? Where does the funding for approved games come from? The problem with doing something like this is the amount of money needed to make it work is not insubstantial. More, I think, than even crowd funding could handle.
IMO the most realistic approach to making "modern" hardware would be to include an SD port and a cartridge slot based on a pre-existing system (NES let us say) but I don't think a SoC clone with an SD port is what most are asking for.
Another possibility might be if competing groups posed as publishers and were responsible for vetting and fronting their own members releases. It'd work more like Atari Age and some of the NES home brew sellers than a traditional publisher though.
This would be fine if the system caught on but the original manufacturer would still need some launch titles to attract attention.
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How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS
in Modern Gaming Discussion
Posted
Why did they choose to roll the prototype into their initial crowdfunding campaign? Did they ever consider soliciting donations to build their prototype prior to launching the main campaign?