How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS

[dj_convoy]

Lots of name dropping in the interview, too. Much like suggesting Garry Kitchen had something to do with the campaign (in reality, he was simply a backer). "We've talked to Michael Katz and Howard Phillips... Seamus Blackley was on the team and he skipped a meeting with JAMES CAMERON! I was talking to Simon Jeffrey the past couple of months..." There are over 200 companies expressing interest, etc.

 

Mike seems to think that speaking to someone about this thing is exactly the same thing as jumping onboard and pledging support. Well wishes of good luck are not the same thing as actual, physical support. Worse yet, he's using this name dropping and apparent pledges of support along with a wee bit of fear mongering ("We have to do this now or no one will ever attempt it again! We have to protect these games for future generations!") to get people to support him. Not to mention the false equivalencies ("It costs Sony thousands... hundreds of thousands of dollars to prototype!", etc.) and cries of internet meanies holding him down.

 

I get the feeling he's the kind of person that would tell you to embellish your resume. "Don't say garbage man; put sanitation engineer down there, instead." I didn't think he was intentionally being disingenuous at first; now I'm not so sure.

[goldenegg]

Now I'm really interested to check out the Gamester81 video. Wonder if he'll be removing negative comments, like Mike has been doing this afternoon on Facebook.

Edited September 25, 2015 by goldenegg

[tcdev]

And to complain that the campaign has been damaged by people... asking valid questions and pointing out the flaws with the campaign!!!

[+madman]

Mike's arrogance is amazing. Truly. I love his "simple as that" philosophy. Instruct developers to make games without bugs. Simple as that. If we had $2,000,000 we'd have a prototype. Simple as that.

 

Well, Mike, we see through all your BS and we realize your team has no idea what they're doing. That's why your fund raising campaign is an enormous failure. Simple as that.

[SoulBlazer]

Wow, I have to wonder what Mike is smoking to say something like this:

 

"Cartridge gaming thrived and we all loved it for nearly 20 years. It can happen again."

 

Whatever it is you're on, man, I want some, cause that's some good stuff!

Edited September 25, 2015 by SoulBlazer

[godslabrat]

In light of the recent attacks, Mike has announced a new game, confirmed launch title for the RVGS.

 

Knight Rider.

[phoenixdownita]

I truly believe he believes he MUST make this campaign successful or there's won't be another round for HIM.

At that he's trying to do everything he can to getting funded.

I believe if he could get the funds he will try his best to deliver something.

 

None of the above though makes him good at PR or conducting this campaign, pity as he's pouring his heart on it, just the wrong way.

Edited September 25, 2015 by phoenixdownita

[dj_convoy]

Now it's all Pat's fault, I guess. He's thrashing away on the Facebook page about it right now. I'm not the biggest Pat fan in the world, but I don't know that right now is a good time for Mike to pick fights with someone who's pretty popular in the kind of vague gamer community he wants to appeal too. In fact, he shouldn't be picking fights at all.

[kevtris]

re: that latest interview video.... my thoughts:

 

25:15 - "up to neogeo sized cores" this is basically everything I told Mike about my Zimba 3000 back when I first was in discussions with them and showed them the prototype Z3K stuff. It's pretty amusing hearing my specs now being referenced on the RVGS project. This is basically everything I told them, except unlike before, my name has been left off :-) That's fine though, it doesn't bother me.

 

31:20 - "they (sony, et al) spend hundreds of thousands of dollars prototyping these things" Yes, they might. But that's Sony. They got a few billion in the bank. And their protos are probably bristling with custom made ASICs. They aren't using commodity off the shelf hardware for the most part. They also probably have 10, 20, 30 or more engineers working on everything at once as well.

 

37:25 - "you go through 3, 4, 5 iterations of a board. and the first one never works. that's what I been told. I have no reason to doubt that [...] there's a science to this, it takes awhile to get it to work" This is fairly hilarious. My track record's been pretty good I guess. I have yet to make a board that "never worked". There might be problems, but I have been able to get the board to work on every project, even the most complex FPGA based ones. Does it work perfect the first time? Heck no. But it usually is good enough to debug most/all functionality. If you had to make 2-3 prototypes before the damn thing worked, you need to get a new engineer, IMO. This also brings up another parallel to me. So hardware's hard to make and get bug free, but it's a simple matter to tell the programmers to make bug-free games?

 

40:25 - "no one can make an FPGA system cheaper than we can" Sure you can. Just make the boards in china, get them stuffed in china and assembled there. It'll be half the price of what can be done locally in the US. It sucks, but it's pretty much the long and short of it. Not counting the freight train of costs cited in the IGG campaign to pay for everything from office space to $80K * 3 worth of salaries.

 

42:00 - calling my project a "board only" again, which is never how I would sell it. I just showed the parts I had finished and not what I'd consider a sellable end user product, just the actual hardware that makes it work vs. the packaging to make it look nice. I simply had not gotten to that point in the project yet because the PCB is going to be changing, so designing an enclosure is the least of my worries right now. He also mentioned something about the plethora of analog outputs it's going to have vs mine (if I heard that right). I touched on that several times already on my separate Zimba 3000 thread.

[goldenegg]

Good lord .... (Again, from Mike on FB)

 

"No PR campaign could fix the underming of this project (from the beginning) from the haters in the world in this hobby. We've all seen it countless times before and this is just another one one of those times. These same haters are there dissing anyone that wants to go out there and make the gaming hobby a more fun place and I can't for the life of me see where their motives lie. One thing PR people would do is ban people and keep these public attacks at bay, and that is one mistake we've made in the beginning to show transparency. Big mistake and one we are learning from."

[phoenixdownita]

Q;

How come Woita has not posted one single thing? Comment or otherwise.

[tcdev]

I know there's vey little enthusiasm out there for playing new games on cartridges, and a lot of valid points in support of that viewpoint, but the thing is that if they did produce an FPGA-based system that was capable of playing legacy cartridges for classic systems, then you'd get the aforementioned capability for free!

[tcdev]

Transparency? Transparency? Is he kidding? I guess the specs are 'transparent' because there's nothing to block the light coming through!?!

[CGQuarterly]

 

I look forward to hearing Triverse's interview, which I suspect will have more meat.

 

Same here. Gamester has a vested interest in the VGS, so how do you expect that interview to go? I don't have any kind of problem with Gamester81, but I also think that he is in the whole YouTube celebrity thing for the money so I really don't have much of an expectation that he is going to be impartial about much of anything.

[Sek]

Now it's all Pat's fault, I guess. He's thrashing away on the Facebook page about it right now. I'm not the biggest Pat fan in the world, but I don't know that right now is a good time for Mike to pick fights with someone who's pretty popular in the kind of vague gamer community he wants to appeal too. In fact, he shouldn't be picking fights at all.

 

Agreed. Pat's usually spot on with his assessments of things going on in the industry, and he even was going above and beyond not to take a complete dump on it due to his relationship with Mike. Ian of course had nothing holding him back, which fits his role of being the uncensored id of the show. The company's response has all the professionalism of a toddler not given the toy he wants and having a tantrum over it.

[PlaysWithWolves]

 

Same here. Gamester has a vested interest in the VGS, so how do you expect that interview to go?

 

Well, I do realize that integrity is a bit much to ask at this point.

[CPUWIZ]

Q;

How come Woita has not posted one single thing? Comment or otherwise.

 

I am glad he is staying away from this mess, he is a great guy.

[+CyranoJ]

Mike needs to be a bit careful hitting that delete key so hard. He might accidentally delete the specs of the machine....

[Keatah]

This might entertain you

 

That was quite the laugh. I'm happy to have been there when Quake and Doom first came out. We even had "graphic card parties", similar to lan parties except we'd be switching between PowerVR, Matrox Millenium, Riva 128, Riva TNT2 Ultra, Voodoo Graphics, S3 ViRGE, Voodoo Graphics 2, GeForce-1, GeForce-2 GTS Ultra! We'd do that to try and get the most optimal performance, and these parties were all weekenders. Packed with non-alcoholic beverages to prevent stupidity from creeping in. You don't want to swap AGP cards with the power on.

 

Just watching this was painful in that the modern-day elements automatically made the game much more linear looking. And they dumbed it down to where I was insulted. And I swear I hated the opening screens showing the one-off dev studios' titles. To a gamer they are irrelevant, they mean nothing. And oftentimes confusing as to who made the game in the first place.

[StopDrop&Retro]

Q;

How come Woita has not posted one single thing? Comment or otherwise.

 

He posts on Facebook a few times. Usually it's just a "hey cool! Thanks for the support!" not really anything important. The most he's done so far is the RGR interview that had all three of them.

 

His wife also posted in the visitor posts once. The both seem like very nice people. I'm sure he's talented and I hope he does something great after this.

Edited September 26, 2015 by StopDrop&Retro

[sh3-rg]

Not sure if this has already been posted ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmapDzXBA70&feature=youtu.be

 

Have yet to read anything here regarding this, will catch up soon, but as I made notes as I listened through I've thrown some words together.

10 minutes in and the discussion is still outlining the empire and the history of his team and their experience. I was afraid of this.

Finally on to something else - a retro-style games discussion. It's a genre now, he says. Games are getting lost because they are digital onlly. Mention of Resogun - an interesting one to bring up. If that was a cart game, it'd be a nice reimagining of Defender, with voxels and particle assplosions. Thing is, Resogun had additional free content. It also had paid additional content IIRC. It also had user-created content. And online leaderboards. And... why would this game be better held inside a piece of plastic and not on my ps4 hard drive again? Bad example, but not unique in modern games, retro styled or otherwise.

"I want to play Axiom Verge, but I don't want to buy a ps4 to play it on, I want to buy a cartridge version of it". He could wait for the Vita version, that's a cartridge and it'll play on VitaTV (like everything else now thanks to some trick), make do with a steam copy in the meantime. Problem solved!

Pricing question - it seemed like a politician's answer was in play, scooting off at tangents and leaping from one thing to another and saying nothing of substance regarding the question. Then asks what the question was, OK fair enough, he's excited to talk about his console. But then again he goes off all over the place once more discussing everything except the leap from $150 to $300/$350. Then it's on to cardboard prototypes and more love for his two great partners. Finally some pricing reasoning: Made in USA. High quality. Not China. Cart connectors from California not Chi... not foreign with no gold on them. So USA + gold = expense. Then a blast for Myst and another FPGA project because no shell, no ARM, no pad, no power pack, no game... and they are around the same price. Problem here is not the price of RVGS vs Myst - problem is price of RVGS vs price of RVGS given back when people's interest was piqued.

Then some loose chatter regarding FGPA and cores, kind of highlighting that he doesn't really understand this side of things, not that he's ever claimed to. Only interesting point being he mentioned that he *thinks* it's OK to simulate these old consoles, but he's got an attorney looking into it. They are expensive. He's a famous one. He knows even more famous people. And again with how great his team is. We should all be thankful and they are discouraged. Whole segment is fluff.

Kickstarter/Indiegogo stuff. Nothing new. Usual Ouya booyah, IGG because they didn't want to confuse people and couldn't, in good faith, let KS give them a pass. A big up for IGG. And more on prototyping "we're half half done - pad and shell". Same old stuff once more there. Plenty of people disagree.

Directly asked why no proto exists. Answer: they cannot afford it. The first one never works, so he has been told (sounds like someone buttering him for a potential fail already). Sony spends hundreds of thousands! His guys are good and they're all ready to go.

A guy on AA says he can make a cheaper FGPA system - "not going to stoop down to the level of people over there". Well played. His main argument vs kevtris' comments here seem to be saying "yeah, but if he then threw an ARM in there and this, that and the other..." which is a blatant straw man. RVGS went one way, but it's not the same path others will have to choose.

Who is the intended audience? "we had kids come and pick up the controller..." Kids do that - set up any console anywhere and kids will be curious and want to push buttons, anyone with a family has likely seen this. They aren't going to want an RVGS over a PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo, so why talk about kids? Who is the intended audience? "Kids these days are very smart...". Who is the intended audience? "They asked intelligent questions and collect SNES carts". Who is the intended audience? Maybe if his bud wasn't interviewing him we'd have gotten an answer. I don't think they'd find it easy to define their intended audience or maybe wouldn't want to risk upsetting those with early interest as they are not the kinds of people they are now chasing.

PEOPLE WANT TO MAKE RVGS GAMES BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT MAKING MONEY ANYWHERE ELSE! Said with a bit of spirit this time. But the industry is not dead. People are making money. Companies are making money. Certain sectors are struggling for various reasons be it over-saturation in some markets, aggressive pricing, sheer scale of projects, all sorts of stuff. RVGS is not an answer to these problems. As an indie box, look to the Vita, see how hard they tried (for a time) and see what it got them.

"Someone said you only have 6 games. If we have 6 or 7 thousand backers come out of this campain, we don't want 20 or 30 games because that means our developers, none of them are going to get any money". That's some crazy logic. Games sell systems. Buyers need to be confident they will have choice and scope. They claim to be artificially limiting the amount of games available to make sure devs can earn money... that's directly at the expense of the consumer's enjoyment of the system they receive, isn't it? What kind of developer is going to put effort into making games for a system where the overlords either give you the nod or the finger? Would devs be willing to sit on their stuff waiting for a window RVGS decides their game can release in?

In the vacuum of his team and industry celebrities friends, the project and vision probably seem untouchable. It's clear he's pretty angry that the support he thought he had in the classic gaming scene hasn't transferred into backers for the campaign. He knows where to point his fingers for blame: Dragons.

"an extra $50 or $100... why limit this?" Why - because you have to in order to create a product that meets a whole series of criteria, not least of which cost - that's brutally important especially with the average savvy classic gamer, instead of trying to tick dozens of boxes and second guess yourselves with another $10 here for this and $15 there for that, expansion ports and redundancy. All consoles are designed within strict limits, it's always a trade-off between power and price. ps3 failed massively, Team RVGS should read and watch interviews with Mark Cerny detailing his and his teams journey designing the ps4 with a new approach and aims, not sit around in restaurants planning a gaming de-evolution.

Dragons. This thread is not full of Dragons. The RVGS dragons are closer to home.

[Flojomojo]

 

You'll come crying straight back to the Retro VGS when the next iOS patch takes your game away!

Heh heh, of course.

 

But seriously, that's one of the many perks of modern digital gaming. Unlike the bad old days, there's plenty of stuff from which to choose, and it's all affordable and cheap. I no longer need to guard my precious $60 cartridges because there are so few games to play. I literally have enough amusing things to last a lifetime if I could only settle down and find the time to play it all.

 

On a side note -- hey Keatah, you know that every generation thinks that their music/comics/movies/etc from when they were teenagers was the best, and that kids these days don't have any taste, right? It's a well worn cliche because it's true.

[Amstari]

The most modern console I own is a Wii, so I admit that I don't have any experience with automated patching and patches "breaking" digital downloads. Is this a serious problem with modern gaming? That is, are there well-known cases of titles that have been broken by automated patching or have disappeared from your account?

 

I'm asking because this is a problem that would in part justify the existence of the RVGS. The RVGS as imagined would be the solution to a known problem. But what if it's not really a problem?

 

Patching is not some big evil thing they are saying it is. It can be annoying to wait sometimes but it depends on the size of the patch and your internet speed.

 

Some games are so big now that it would be impossible to test every scenario, so if something is found once the game has been released then I'm glad they can fix it. The other thing is indie games made by a small team may not have enough staff to thoroughly test the game, so a quick patch might fix something they missed in testing.

 

Their comments about old games having no bugs is bull. There were lots of bugs, sometime they were useful bugs too, just look at how bugs get exploited for speed runs.

 

However, some games companies will rush out a game to meet the release date and then they will be a big day one patch to fix it.

[Amstari]

On a side note -- hey Keatah, you know that every generation thinks that their music/comics/movies/etc from when they were teenagers was the best, and that kids these days don't have any taste, right? It's a well worn cliche because it's true.

 

Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters, Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Pacman, Iron Maiden tour, Black Sabbath tour. It's like my childhood is coming back again for this generation.

[goldenegg]

However, some games companies will rush out a game to meet the release date and then they will be a big day one patch to fix it.

Unfortunately, this is the case they keep focusing on.

 

I buy about 30 modern games for consoles every year and more on PC. If I look at my collection, there are less than 5 games (not counting online only games) that are broken to the point of being unplayable without a patch. The rest of my collection will play just fine in 20+ years, when the patches are no longer available. In most cases, the remaining bugs are no worse than what can be found in many classic games.