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How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS


racerx

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The sheer amount of homebrewers and hardware makers that I've found because of the RETRO VGS fail has been great. Not so great for my bank account, because I've prolly spent around the price of a RVGS on homebrew games and such in the last week or two. That was my silver lining from this IGG abortion.

 

I don't wish anything bad on Mike, Steve, or John. Just, no matter what they come back with for round two - I won't support them. I certainly won't be telling my friends to support them either. Fool me once, shame on me. You don't get the chance to fool me again. My loss if its the coolest console in the world.

http://youtu.be/eKgPY1adc0A

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The sheer amount of homebrewers and hardware makers that I've found because of the RETRO VGS fail has been great.

 

I don't know if I discovered anything new or anything. But I did get to thinking more about FPGA emulation vs. software-only emulation. One common trend I noticed is that cores are highly specific to one piece of hardware kit. Not just the chip but the board and system too. And the classic system cores aren't updated as often or as feature-rich as I'd like. Make no mistake, I'm not talking about monthly updates just to have them for updates' sake. But updates to gain supporting features ranging from toggle-able on-screen information to supporting new banking schemes or video capture. All the fluff stuff that can remain in the background till you need it. All the stuff that puts finishing touches on software emulation.

 

With software emulation some emulators are 20+ years in the making this year! And over that time refinements which were considered luxuries 5 years ago are commonplace features today. Not only that, but accuracy has gotten so much better.

 

Software emulators can be passed down through the ages. If a developer no longer works on a project/emulator - for whatever reason - it can be handed off to someone that can.

 

Software emulators are often collaborative efforts while FPGA cores are 1-person efforts. Here it's a good thing to have several brains attacking a problem One need not look further than MAME to see all benefits of such methodology.

Edited by Keatah
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Ya know... If the auto tune the news guys got their hands on this... The RVGS folks could probably raise their 2 million with the resultant iTunes single.

 

That said, I honestly feel bad now for John. Videos like the one above are an introverts worst nightmare.

This video gave me a great slogan idea: "The Retro VGS: It's too cool to need fans!"

 

(Interpret that any way you wish.)

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I did get to thinking more about FPGA emulation vs. software-only emulation. One common trend I noticed is that cores are highly specific to one piece of hardware kit. Not just the chip but the board and system too.(...)

Software emulators are often collaborative efforts while FPGA cores are 1-person efforts. Here it's a good thing to have several brains attacking a problem One need not look further than MAME to see all benefits of such methodology.

 

I'd say FPGAs are where emulators used to be in the late 90s... lots of shareware/propietary implementations, with a (very) slow move towards open source. Some cores are open-source since the beginning (like MAME), others became so when the original devs got tired of actively working and opened them up to somebody else to pick up (like Final Burn Alpha). I do think the future is in OSS rather than closed solutions, but you can't blame devs not to want to work on something that, technically, allows anybody to use their work later without compensation.

 

It's slowly changing because there are now FPGA platforms where people can develop for accepting some HW design limitations (e.g. MiST and Replay), and the fact that a few projects opened their code (minimg, 1chipMSX). There is also some (less obvious) collaboration going on, such as the people working on the MiST and Replay both fixing the same code for 68000 CPUs.

 

These boards might be considered "homebrew" still, but they've come a long way and they're definitely worth digging into them, even just as a user.

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Now that this thread is dying out, I am trying to pull myself together and venture out on the other threads and subforums for the first time.

 

I wonder how it is out there.

About time! ;) Check out the homebrews for the Atari systems while you are at it in the store. If you buy a few, you would be supporting retro developers who have actually produced something for the community! And if you have a Mattel Aquarius, talk to Jay! (An honor to plug the Aquaricart, Jay!!!)

Edited by SumerNivek
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He's referring to the TI-99/4A subforum; it's just a little in-joke. Actually, it's the Jaguar forum that you need to worry about: things have been known to get a little heated in there sometimes.

Actually I was gonna say the rest of the forums are a lot like this thread. :)

 

That said the absence of Shatner gifs is kinda of unusual and alarming...

Edited by dashv
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Who the heck is going to make software in the year 2015 that only runs on 3DO specs? And how could they support themselves for $5 a game?

People do it all the time with lesser machines, I just bought a new Atari 8-bit game last month. How many new games have been released for the 2600 this past year?

 

The delusion is in thinking that a developer could support themselves with the retro community, it's just too small.

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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I love you RetroUSB.

 

http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=30&products_id=141

 

Absolutely priceless System Compatibility listing.

 

  • Does not work on stolen software emulators like the Retron 5
  • Does not work on RetroVGS

This year's Xmas game is really good too! And every order has a chance to recieve a golden ticket that can be used toward the purchase of the new AVS (720p HD NES running on FPGA). Amazing but he built the AVS without the help of crowdfunding! :o

 

 

http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=92557

http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=5&threadid=144937

Edited by stardust4ever
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