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The next Atari Flashback should have cartridge slots for Jaguar and earlier


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Yep. It is more complicated hardware. Although both the Genesis and Jaguar have a 68k CPU on the Jag it's just the coordinator between much bigger, awesomer processors. Also, Retron 5 is emulation which you said was retarded. I thought you didn't want emulation.

What? The Retron 5 has cartridge slots.

 

Unless you are referring to emulated hardware. I meant that emulated software was retarded.

Edited by NinSEGA
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The Retron 5 runs emulators even though it has cart slots, dawg.

I'm not following. So the cartridge you insert into the Retron 5 is just a "trigger" of sorts that allows a built-in emulated version to play? If so, that's uber-retarded.

Edited by NinSEGA
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Sort of. It reads the ROM inside the actual game cart and plays it back on its own emulator. So, yeah. You're running an emulator on an Android machine - BUT you ARE really reading the real game from the real cart.

 

Although emulation isn't the real deal at least you get enhanced graphics, cheats and save states. It's a matter of personal preference.

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The ROM image you load when you play a game is more or less perfect. Unless you got a bad dump or play with something that's been munched on by a hex editor, the imperfections you see are going to be coming from the emulator itself, not the ROM.

 

The ROM on the cartridge itself is identical to the ROM you would load on the computer. Some cartridges have the advantage of on board chips (Super FX, etc.) but again a ROM dump of Star Fox is still the same as the actual ROM on the Star Fox cartridge, the emulator just has to clone the chip too.

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  • 4 months later...

Flashback 4 is definitely emulation core (look at the included version of Space Invaders) and seeing as even today there isn't a single finished Atari Jag emulator for the PC you can forget that being squeezed into a crappy little FPGA this decade ;)

 

It's a nice idea but the best you could hope for is inclusion of Atari 5200 (and hence 800XL) cartridge games. So 2600, 5200 and 7800 in one box is quite feasible I think. Probably cost $200/£100 at best with mass production though *ouch*

 

The link for the flashback mod for a cart slot is for v2 of the hardware btw.

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Never going to happen(Jaguar inclusion). Atari 2600 was vastly a superior console with sales. Atari Jaguar did not sell well at all. The niche market that would want this would not offset the costs to make it. There also would be the subdivided niche that would not consider getting this due to not being "original hardware". I do think that there would be enough demand to make a new 2600 with a cart slot. Even this though, would have limited appeal and would have to be made in limited quantities.

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  • 8 months later...

Wow, I was just reading in the "Why no 5200 Flashback?" thread how the reason why the 5200 and Lynx systems don't have Flashbacks is because it's a really niche market, the systems didn't get enough popularity to justify the expense. The Jag, as awesome a system as you and I know it to be, is about as unknown as the 5200 and Lynx, maybe more, so you can't expect someone to make a Jaguar Flashback for retail sale.

 

But hey, what swlovinist said about limited appeal and limited quantities for the folks who come to places like AtariAge.. :)

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Wow, I was just reading in the "Why no 5200 Flashback?" thread how the reason why the 5200 and Lynx systems don't have Flashbacks is because it's a really niche market, the systems didn't get enough popularity to justify the expense. The Jag, as awesome a system as you and I know it to be, is about as unknown as the 5200 and Lynx, maybe more, so you can't expect someone to make a Jaguar Flashback for retail sale.

 

But hey, what swlovinist said about limited appeal and limited quantities for the folks who come to places like AtariAge.. :)

 

We had a 5200/Atari 8Bit computer Flashback planned next. It coming out or not had nothing to do with a niche market.

 

Price. It's cheaper not to have them.

 

The last flashback wasn't an emulator. A cartridge connector could also be added to it: http://atarimuseum.com/fb2hacks/

 

No, the last three were all emulators (that's what atGames uses). You're talking about the Flashback2 that we designed. It's currently up to the five, AtGames took over after we did the 2+ and went in the spam direction.

 

As for the original question of why no cart, that's already been covered fifteen times over. We gave them the option of a cart slot in the 2 and they didn't want the support nightmare of people trying to plug in 30 year old carts and call they weren't working. So we compromised and built in the ability to hack in a cartridge port (which also voids the warranty). AtGames doesn't really care about that kind of stuff (it's just another product in the lineup and they've already proven they're very unfamiliar with the subject matter).

 

Regarding the Jaguar, the original poster is obviously unfamiliar with the fact the Jaguar is multiprocessor system. AtGames' ARM based emulator chip would have an extremely hard time running an emulator for that, let alone even creating an emulator for it in the first place. There's not even a desktop based emulator that can fully handle or emulate the hardware.

Edited by Retro Rogue
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I really don't think a cart port is really necessary these days. I'll take a USB port or an SD card slot to add games to a system.

 

On a side note: I seem to remember reading some years ago that the Jag hardware was actually capable of emulating all Atari game systems that came before it. I'm not sure how actuate that is, but if the Jag can do this, wouldn't it make sense to make a Jag like flashback hardware? Put it in a 2600 looking FB system and call it something like "Atari Extreme Flashback", give it a couple new controllers (hint something like the 7800 joypads but with three buttons), and now you can play (in theory) any Atari game from any of their systems playable on one flashback.

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I really don't think a cart port is really necessary these days. I'll take a USB port or an SD card slot to add games to a system.

 

On a side note: I seem to remember reading some years ago that the Jag hardware was actually capable of emulating all Atari game systems that came before it. I'm not sure how actuate that is, but if the Jag can do this, wouldn't it make sense to make a Jag like flashback hardware? Put it in a 2600 looking FB system and call it something like "Atari Extreme Flashback", give it a couple new controllers (hint something like the 7800 joypads but with three buttons), and now you can play (in theory) any Atari game from any of their systems playable on one flashback.

 

No, not really. As I just mentioned, it takes far more resources to even begin to recreate Jaguar hardware whether in hardware or emulation. It makes far more sense from a commercial standpoint to use modern standard hardware and run a multitude of emulators on it (ala AtGames) or to simply recreate these older platforms in single chip format (like we did).

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Regarding the Jaguar, the original poster is obviously unfamiliar with the fact the Jaguar is multiprocessor system. AtGames' ARM based emulator chip would have an extremely hard time running an emulator for that, let alone even creating an emulator for it in the first place. There's not even a desktop based emulator that can fully handle or emulate the hardware.

Ahh, that explains that, technical feasability (along with potential market). Thanks for that insight which was not seen earlier. :)

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