How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS

[PlaysWithWolves]

Haha. Funny, sh3-rg. I guess we need to coordinate better... or at all.

 

I almost didn't even listen to it, but felt guilty about not verifying what the poster wrote. So, I sat there listening even though I'd rather have done just about anything else.

[roland p]

Jibbajaba, I can personally attest that Konami, Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco and a few others are NOT working on "new" titles in many key retro franchises.

Yeah, I was really dissapointed by this. Even a bit angry, (not too, I was sceptical of course) since those names represent the pinnacle of 8-bit and 16-bit gaming. Just marketing bs to get my attention.

 

 

I'll just add a bit to this: If we do away with cartridge collecting fetish altogether, getting online capabilities on these old systems would actually be a way of both distributing software easily and getting some new interesting games on these systems. Why not play online multiplayer on a Genesis? Why not use an SD card with an online steam-playstore-like market behind it? Software emulation would be fine if you want something cheap and don't mind waiting for compatibility updates.

 

 

I think the next iteration of the RetroVGS will be a downloadable client for your smart-tv / xbox360 / ps3 etc. (like netflix). This expands on the 3d renders of the console.

[Algus]

Well it is like I was theorizing in a previous post. You make your Colecovision game or whatever and put it out on CV but then you call up Mike and say, "hey can I put my CV game on RVGS as well?" then the RVGS team puts it on an RVGS cartridge and sells it on their store.

 

After they instruct you to deliver them a bug free version of your CV game.

[VectorGamer]

 

Mike Kennedy is trying to act like some kind of Steve Jobs of the retrogaming world. He's a nice enough guy, and I've been defending him to a degree in this thread, but as much as I understand him to love retrogaming, it is also obvious that he looks at this community with dollar signs in his eyes. How often does he come here just to shoot the shit with his fellow retrogamers? He comes here mostly to promote his latest ventures.

 

 

I said this back in May in this thread here in the subscribers forum.

 

He'll be back to hawk his next venture as part of his evil plan of building a classic gaming business empire. At least have the decency to subscribe to AtariAge if you have nothing else to contribute to the forum.

[PlaysWithWolves]

This is his attempt to convey some of the criticism of RVGS "Why would developers be interested in porting games over to this thing, this is shit". Well Fucking Done, gamester81, that's why this thread is 127 pages, because the concerns amount to that.

 

This is a good point. Much of what "insider" gamester parrots is what we've been responding to. It's like a gaming version of "The Emperor Wears No Clothes", except this time the clothes are nice but there's nothing under them.

[ninja_gaiden2015]

A few bits that stood out as ????!!!!!!

 

 

Other points aside from the NeoGaf synopsis:

 

- Mike says there are 100s of game developers ready, "including SEGA".

- He promotes the now-disproven idea that RVGS FPGA cores will emulate classic systems; even going so far as to give NeoGeo as an example. Also mentions adapters. We know that these would only happen

 

 

... although we knew at this point that Mike had ditched the FGPA cores plan by that stage and we now know that Kevtris had developed many cores, but a Neo Geo one was not one of them, how on earth does Mike say that sort of thing with a straight face? Especially when he had been called out about the Sega stuff some time ago and it was established that there was no contract with Sega and they had no items in development, or anything that could loosley constitute an agreement?

 

....- AoTN "... will be an exclusive for about a year-and-a-half, or so."

 

Like the NeoGaf poster, I wonder how gamester gets away with saying, "I'm not in this financially." Sure, he's not put money into it, but I doubt he's giving away AoTN for free. He mentions toward the end that Kennedy was thinking of not having a pack-in game, but CollectorVision offered AoTN "at cost". Err... didn't someone here say AoTN was funded via Kickstarter? And doesn't this mean he is in this financially?

 

 

The frustrating thing is that I am actually a really bit fan of Gamester81's other work. I really enjoy his channels and respect the stuff that he puts out. This whole debacle won't stop me being a fan, but it does mean that I am pretty dissapointed.

 

I thought that the graphics were not great for Tiny knight, but still respected that he was trying to bring out new titles for the SNES. The thing that I have trouble with is how one game can be involved in two seperate crowd-funding campaigns to be released? Surely that is against some rules or something of either kickstarter or indie gogo

[ninja_gaiden2015]

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the logic of someone designing a VCS or ColecoVision native game, and then publishing it on a RetroVGS cartridge that ONLY operates on RetroVGS.

 

To maximize exposure it would make sense to publish on the native format - a real VCS or CV cartridge and then make the rom available for lower cost in parallel with or for free once the game has sold X amount. That is how you touch every possible player. You get the original console owners and you get the emulator junkies and the multi-cart (harmony) users.

 

Crap.. RetroVGS doesn't come with SD capability, I can only interpret that to mean they don't want you running roms on it. Could be legal issues if it went retail, could be it would reduce sales of their carts. Dunno. Don't care now.

 

It gets more confusing when you add to the Mix the fact that they plan to add cart converters for other consoles, such as colecovision etc

[sh3-rg]

Updated my post after listening more (it went on longer than I realised at first) Some pretty WTF stuff in there and more questionable relaying of information.

[dj_convoy]

I really resent the idea that the negative reaction is from the fact that its "cool" to hate on the RVGS. It's purely from Mike's name dropping, disingenuous spin about a console that doesn't truly exist.

[leods]

The frustrating thing is that I am actually a really bit fan of Gamester81's other work. I really enjoy his channels and respect the stuff that he puts out. This whole debacle won't stop me being a fan, but it does mean that I am pretty dissapointed.

 

As I said before, I don't want to go too much into John's stuff, but I've been slightly disappointed for a while, because he has this Review channel for a Long time, and he started Publishing stuff, but didin't really Change his Format. He doesn't hide anything, but he sort of kept his Review Format although he has been showing a lot of stuff he's Publishing himself.

 

I think his role as a Publisher and spreading the word about Retro products is invaluable. I think he has a positive Impact, but sometimes the lines get a bit blurred wether he's doing journalism or simply selling one of his products.

[001 Influence Device]

 

Yes all that. And some classic machine emulation software has been in development for 20 years as of now. While some issues remain, a whole hella-lot has been worked out. And some emulator authors fix freshly reported bugs rather quickly.

 

FPGA is also emulation. Or synthesis to be more accurate. It does not transform its circuitry into a VCS or Intellivision. It configures an array of truth tables so to speak. And its accuracy depends on how well the author of the core examined the logic and signals coming in and out of the original chip(s).

 

With software emulation you will gain a whole host of features not currently found in other ways of playing the classics. And those ways include the original machines, web-broswer, fpga, cartridge converters. The huge advantage of software emulators is that any ol'PC can run them. Oh sure, "PC" is a boring box, full of tricky tedious setups, and all that. But it doesn't have to be that way! You can do loads of cool things with a small set-top-box housing a mini-ITX i7. Or of you're budget minded a Raspberry Pi - which has a full emulation-specific OS available for free. We're hobbyists and we can figure it out. Don't despair, software emulators are getting better and better every year. And multi-core processors have yet to be tapped!

 

I guess I'm a strong proponent of software emulation because I've had really good luck in setting up the displays just right and making everything work smoothly. Never met an emulator I couldn't tweak to perfection. And that is rewarding!

 

I'm with you. I'm a software guy myself! Last time I did truth tables and copying logic was in uni (Xilinx and Spartan FPGAs IIRC). Nothing on the scale of what Kevin is doing. And my career went the software way! I agree, software emulation is the way to go for the big percentage of retro enthusiasts. Most people really don't care if the Green Hill Zone song is not as bassy as a model 1 MD would play, nor about the difference in model 1 vs model 2 sound and stuff like that. But, there are a lot of people that would pay a premium to get that sort of accuracy, along with native HDMI out etc. And, (admittedly without knowing the specifics of software vs hardware emulation), I'm willing to bet that this sort of accuracy is a bit more straightforward going the FPGA route.

 

Having said that, the way I see it, there's a market for both hardware and software emulators. FPGA route would be the high price premium market (like the analogue NT) and the software route the "mass market" low cost route. The third road would be the original hardware with an online/SD cart adapter.

 

The problem with retro vgs is that from this niche market they jumped to retroland, where they believe that this is somehow mainstream. As someone said before quite correctly: Sony and Microsoft are afraid of the android freight train atm. And these are companies that can afford to sink billions in costs and sit failures out. I just don't see a "new retro" console getting the traction it needs.

[ninja_gaiden2015]

I really resent the idea that the negative reaction is from the fact that its "cool" to hate on the RVGS. It's purely from Mike's name dropping, disingenuous spin about a console that doesn't truly exist.

 

I do too because I actually wanted his crazy idea to be a reality, but then it comes to light to be an altogether different beast entirely (the FGPA cores etc) and how Mike has misrepresented both the tech and which developers/titles are actually locked-in to make games etc

[dj_convoy]

Realistically, if he hadn't flipped out at Kevtris... he probably still would have shot himself in the foot, but I bet the reaction would not have turned as sour. He wanted the campaign to go viral; I think it did... just not the way he envisioned. I vaguely knew about this idea, but wasn't aware the IGG had launched. It wasn't until I read about him flipping his lid at Kevtris (over at Sega 16) that I started following what was happening. His behavior there was bad, and has only got worse. He's facing "hatred" or whatever due to his own actions.

[ninja_gaiden2015]

.... more news from the All Gen Gamers podcast. More of interest than anything negative, but Gamester said that it was going to be $400 as a product on crowdfunding but he:

 

"reached out to Mike and they went back to the drawing board. Took out one of the controllers, then the FGPA, and made that as a stretch goal and decided to make the pack-in game at cost"

 

Gamester was more suggesting that he isn't making anything or much in any event from the tiny knight being released on the system as a pack-in.

 

------------------------------------------------------

Edit: Listening to further in the podcast, Gamester says:

 

"We aim to have about 20 [games] at Launch. If this thing grows you are going to get more big-name developers doing stuff for it too. You know, like Sega's, like the Capcom's the Konami's, or you know whatever".

Edited September 29, 2015 by ninja_gaiden2015

[Andromeda Stardust]

Realistically, if he hadn't flipped out at Kevtris... he probably still would have shot himself in the foot, but I bet the reaction would not have turned as sour. He wanted the campaign to go viral; I think it did... just not the way he envisioned. I vaguely knew about this idea, but wasn't aware the IGG had launched. It wasn't until I read about him flipping his lid at Kevtris (over at Sega 16) that I started following what was happening. His behavior there was bad, and has only got worse. He's facing "hatred" or whatever due to his own actions.

Yes but if anything, the flippant failure of RetroVGS has prooved that there is consumer demand for the tech Kevtris has been quietly doing for the past ten years. Without RetroVGS putting Kevtris in the spotlight, all that work he did may never have been released. Now the sky is the limit!

[leods]

"He wanted the campaign to go viral; I think it did... just not the way he envisioned."

 

I still only see a couple Videos released a day on oyutube about the RVGS, and mostly from smaller channels. So I wouldn't say this went viral at all. He probably thought having a Magazine with 30k Readers it shouldn't be too hard to get some 5k People out of that, but from what I've seen many People who own the mag don't even read the Thing anymore, much less would be immediately sold on this.

 

A 100 page Forum thread with 20 People talking to each other is really not going viral...

[Albert]

A 100 page Forum thread with 20 People talking to each other is really not going viral...

I know what you are saying here, but just wanted to state that 175 people have posted in this thread, thus far.

 

..Al

[leods]

I know what you are saying here, but just wanted to state that 175 people have posted in this thread, thus far.

 

Good to know, that's actually a bunch, and I'm sure some couple thousand People actually read the thread that was linked here and there. Still not even the ammount of People they Need to back this.

 

I think the most press they got was Pat's Video with 50.000 views, but they'd Need sort of 1/10 of those People to pledge to start getting Close to their Goal. That probably wouldn't happen even if Pat and Ian had said the System was amazing good.

[goldenegg]

 

It's just frustrating to see backlash go up when they actually start Fixing something in their campaign. Seems like they'd have done better if they had just ignored the criticysm. Wouldn't matter in the end, because I can't see their IGG campaign reaching it's funding Goals no matter what they did, I just think People should be rewarded properly for good and bad behaviour. And this community just doesn't give People/companies the apropriate Feedback.

 

What are you talking about? They've fixed absolutely nothing about their campaign and what they have done only makes things worse. They are definitely being rewarded appropriately. We've been giving tons of feedback, but they choose to view even valid constructive criticism as hate. They've also completely blocked access to providing feedback, as they block anyone with opinions different than their own from their Facebook page.

 

 

I can Bet you guys, if someone came out in a couple months, offered a worse product but much better Marketing they'd do better thasn the RVGS did.

 

 

The problem isn't one of simple marketing. They don't have an actual product or a reasonable business plan to get one released. All they have is a dream of something they'd like to build inside a Jaguar shell. They'd have had a very different response had they started their campaign with an actual prototype, finalized specs and a solid list of games. They'd still never hit $1.95M though, as the market for something like this is not that large.

 

The RGM interview has further solidified how arrogant Mike is and how disjointed the team is as a whole. I honestly can't understand how anyone could listen to that interview and still want to give that team $300+ for something that's still only in their heads. There's getting less and less reason to believe they'd ever be able to execute on their idea. This is why so many people are telling them to stop this campaign, regroup and figure their stuff out. They could come back when they have things in order. The problem is that they may be waiting too long to do that. Mike is losing more and more credibility with the community he needs in order to sell these systems, so it's becoming less likely that he'd be welcomed back. I know that I won't be giving him any more of my money, whether it's for his magazine or a game console.

[leods]

 

What are you talking about? They've fixed absolutely nothing about their campaign and what they have done only makes things worse. They are definitely being rewarded appropriately. We've been giving tons of feedback, but they choose to view even valid constructive criticism as hate. They've also completely blocked access to providing feedback, as they block anyone with opinions different than their own from their Facebook page.

They have put up the specs for the System on the IGG campaign now. Mostly. Still they have the Problem of the cartridges not being specified, but the ARM processor minimal spec is described.

 

On triverse's interview it actually also gets a lot clearer what happened and how much they've planned already.

 

But besides that I have to admit the whole Thing is too terrible. Even if you really want to see the good side of this Project it's still pretty much impossible to believe it could possible work even if someone was to throw 2mi Dollars at it. To have multiple People who are supposedly supporters or part of the Project come out either denying any involvement or saying that they're dissatisfied with the work that's been done is really serious stuff.

 

So yeah, I tried defending them, because some People (I don'e mean all People, or most People, I mean some people) are just having fun bashing somehting they don't even understand. But yeah, a ton of People are saying the Project is done for just because they clearly see it's done for.

[InnovaX5]

Alright, let me start this off by saying I am bias on this topic. I like Collectorvision games and I own a lot of stuff they had put out. I backed the IGG for the Gamester81 game and I gave it a pretty positive review. I backed Sydney Hunter and the Caverns of Death on Kickstarter for the "gold" cart version and the "crystal" cart nes port. I was also the winner bidder of the "Charity" auction that Collectorvision held for their NES cart 003/200 of the Game on Expo 2015 Championship.

 

I can tell you that I am certain that Adventures of Tiny Knight was not up on any form of crowdfunding site. It was announced around the time that Justice Beaver for Super Nintendo (which I did not back) was up on IGG. John is very passionate about the games that he and Collectorvision puts out. No, they are not the greatest games in my opinion. There are even better homebrew games out there. I've bought quite a few far superior 7800 games here on Atari Age as a matter of fact. However, I really do enjoy their titles for what they are.

 

This all being said, there is no way that Gamester81 has no financial stake in this project. Collectorvision is at this point, their first party developer. He stands to gain a lot if this console does well. No, it is not his only source of income but it most definitely is money gained for him.

 

Gamester81 has labeled me a hater because of this fiasco. Which is ironic cause I've done nothing but support his past work and I only really asked questions to the RVGS team. I have thick skin, I don't care. I'll still continue to buy Collectorvision's normal releases. No more bells and whistles editions in my future, that's for sure. Not because of his name calling to me but because of his moronic statements on this project. I really feel like Mike Kennedy is patient zero for some kind of idiot-virus. Look at how Gamester81 is parroting things he said at this point. He's infected with it as well.

 

Oh well, at least Retro Land will always have a place for Gamester81 and his Collectorvision characters to be adored and praised.

[+remowilliams]

I mean some people) are just having fun bashing somehting they don't even understand.

 

Who is bashing something they don't understand? Here at least it seems that the RVGS' problem is that people understand quite well...

 

The complete lack of understanding certainly seems to be coming from the RVGS side, and for quite some time now.

[goldenegg]

I've said it before, but I think it got lost somewhere in a sea of posts a few days ago, so I'll say it again.

 

I would have had absolutely no problem giving them $350 for the system they were promising prior to launching the campaign. For them to get my money, they needed to show me the system and proved that they are capable of getting it released. They did neither. Even now with released specs, it only goes to show that it's not the system they were talking about even a week before the campaign went live. It's a real shame things turned out the way they did.

 

It was also disheartening to hear Mike talk more and more about a mass market product, even going as far to make comments that he hoped to somewhat disrupt the gaming market as a whole. That only went to show how out of touch he is with his market and his product. I believe this is where all the talk of patents are coming in to play, as they're thinking the plan is to eventually sell hundreds of thousands of units and they don't want clones popping up. This is causing them to throw away a good chunk of money towards legal fees which aren't required.

 

At this point, we all know the campaign is going to fail. It think many of us are now interested to see how the end actually comes of the project. As many others have stated, I wouldn't be surprised if Steve leaves the team before the campaign finishes. I fully expect Mike and John to part ways after everything's over. I'm not sure how Mike continues after this though. He's lost a lot of respect from the community and even people who considered him a friend. I'd imagine this will not have a positive impact on his magazine and I really doubt he'll be welcomed to sell future products to this community after how arrogant he's been over the past week and a half.

[Greg2600]

I continue to take issue with the presumption many here are making that they cannot bring this to market (from a technical side). These guys are not idiots, they know how to build systems, dev kits, SDK's, etc. They have industry friends who know the same. They know what things cost, in that industry, unlike 99% of the experts here. This has really been what is annoying me here, everyone on AA suddenly has become a video game console design expert. No, those guys are the professionals. I think they could have gotten the project done. They're not going to get $2 million in crowd funding, that's for sure, thanks to their own fault. It's like on assemblergames everyone bashed the PSIO guys to no end, said they were vaporware over and over. Sure it's taken them awhile, but their product is ready for beta testing, it's not vaporware. I feel like the lack of specs here is not RVGS hiding things, it's simply a preference, based on industry experience, that they don't release them. Now you can say that is a BAD idea for a crowdfund, and it likely is. But to say the specs are just in their heads, I think that's really selling these guys short. These are NOT hobbyists, they are professionals. John nor Steve are going to do any major work on this without knowing they will be paid (in some fashion). Again, bad for crowdfund maybe, but their protecting themselves here. I personally have trust they would do it for the money stated. Whether it would actually sell, I have little faith in that, as I have since day one. I feel Mike grossly overestimated the true need or want for this project, backlash or not.

 

As I said yesterday, Steve seems totally uninformed of the backlash. John was too until the last week or so. Again, John and Steve are engineers, the whole crowd fund and public relations side was not their doing, that's 100% Mike. Both of them admitted they don't read social media. It's just really a shame that they've spent so much of their time and money on this project, only to be done in by an ongoing PR disaster. Clearly Mike has not been honest with either of them as to what's going on. As I said, if he weren't part of the ownership, I would have fired him. As golden just said, my fear day one was will this ruin the magazine's prospects, because I really enjoy it. I hope it doesn't.

Edited September 29, 2015 by Greg2600

[PikoInteractive]

Gamester81 was shilling for RVGS and blaming the "haters" (adult language) and blaming AtariAge for the IGG failure on a recent All Gen Gamers podcast. Good synopsis at the NeoGaf link.

 

At least this time he disclosed up front that he's got games and that The Adventures of Tiny Knight will be a pack-in (~ 01:27:00).

 

 

 

Of course he MUST have financial Stake on this.

 

We were promised to be a pack in game. So if the IGG funded we were going to have at least 5000 copies of a game sold. at 20-30 bucks (minus costs)? that's like 60K in funding. That is 3 times the funding he asked for Justice beaver.

 

Fortunately we were ruled out without notice and are not part of the clusterf*ck.