FPGA Based Videogame System

[spoonman]

2 minutes ago, XtraSmiley said:

I'm really interested in the Pocket and want it to do very well, but I'm passing for these reasons:

 

1. Pay now, get it in a year, maybe?

2. Probably a cool limited edition coming, they did it with all the other systems.

3. How does the plastic feel? Not so important on a console, but very important on a handheld. We only have their consoles to go by so far.

4. How do the d-pad and buttons feel? See #3 above.

5. Does the screen really perform as they claim? It's easy to claim it, but I need some actual hands on reviews first.

6. Orientation does suck worse than horizontal, but I made due with the GB and TurboExpress, I can make do here, but again, need a review first.

7. Price. Actually, I think the price is good for what you get!

 

I think I want one, but I'm not willing to pay now to get something mid-next year. I'll wait, I'm sure if it's popular, they will do a second run. Probably fix a lot of the bugs (hardware wise) if there are any.

 

To those of you pre-ordering, GOOD LUCK ON MONDAY! AND, I'm jealous, I hope it's as awesome as it looks, enjoy it when you get it! I'm not a hater, I want it to be great!

Good points, and it's not a bad idea to wait. I'm curious to see the reviews on it, and if they actually make enough cart adapters this time. 

 

 

 

[blzmarcel]

6 hours ago, SegaSnatcher said:

Imagine if Analogue wen't full nostalgia and offered a magnifying glass add on lol.  I actually owned one of those for my OG DMG.

Or perhaps something like that screen magnifier add-on that the GameGear had.

[Swami]

1 hour ago, SegaSnatcher said:

The problem with that is these retro games are not 16:9 aspect ratio, so you'd be losing most of that screen size by black bars anyways, unless you do the ugly stretch mode.  

Also, don't forget the Pocket's LCD is a perfect 10x integer both horizontal and vertical of the OG GB/GBC which means no interpolation needed for GB and GBC games and grid lines will work perfectly. 

There is a reason they chose the LCD they did.  They wanted something that was native to GB/GBC games and also worked good enough for GBA.   It's all about finding the right compromise.

Also VRR is a very important feature of this LCD as it might allow for native frequencies while in handheld mode.  

 

That's why it's deleted. I realized it would still suck to me. 

[SegaSnatcher]

52 minutes ago, blzmarcel said:

Or perhaps something like that screen magnifier add-on that the GameGear had.

LOL!!!

[SlCKB0Y]

15 hours ago, Swami said:

Still sucks for 2020. Waste of surface area. $300 by the time your done and an Evercade is less than $100. Who needs buggy stuff.

Clearly this system has been designed around the screen. Go on, find us another screen with the same pixel density which is an integer multiplier of the original game boy screen. Oh, that’s right they don’t exist.

[SlCKB0Y]

11 hours ago, Swami said:

Screen is still way to small. Maybe I'd pay $50 for something with a 3 inch screen in 2020.

The wholesale price of the screen is around $50 because of its stupidly high specs.

[SlCKB0Y]

11 hours ago, Swami said:

your a known troll banned from multiple threads. This must be your bridge. I'll just round-file your opinion.

Nothing they have said is trolling. You’re the one in this thread aggressively arguing about things you don’t seem to know a lot about.

[spoonman]

8 minutes ago, SlCKB0Y said:

The wholesale price of the screen is around $50 because of its stupidly high specs.

Where did you see that? If that's true then they should have gone with a lower res. Most games will be 240p and less. You can get lower res screens for around $4 ea in bulk (1,000+)

 

The higher resolution is the hardware equivalent to an emulator's bilinear smoothing filter. You are losing the natural dot pixel style of the original handheld's display matrix. If they are going for authenticity, they should try to match the original resolution as closely as possible.

[SegaSnatcher]

15 minutes ago, spoonman said:

Where did you see that? If that's true then they should have gone with a lower res. Most games will be 240p and less. You can get lower res screens for around $4 ea in bulk (1,000+)

 

The higher resolution is the hardware equivalent to an emulator's bilinear smoothing filter. You are losing the natural dot pixel style of the original handheld's display matrix. If they are going for authenticity, they should try to match the original resolution as closely as possible.

Any screens with that low of resolution will likely be really low quality screens with bad contrast, lack of color saturation, weak motion and definitely no VRR.    Having all that extra resolution gives you lots of freedom for high quality filters and such.  Gridlines can look really good.

Even the IPS Screens for modded Gameboys are double the resolution.

Edited August 1, 2020 by SegaSnatcher

[XtraSmiley]

SegaSnatcher, 

 

You've made some great points, but really, until this actually comes out, we've only got their marketing to go on. We won't really know until some independent reviewers have a whack at this thing.

 

And IMO, you're not trolling here, I think you're really enthusiastic about the Pocket and your posts have been fine to read by me!

[afx_acid]

I'm just wondering how easy it will be to swap out the battery on the Pocket when it inevitably starts dying.

[SegaSnatcher]

1 hour ago, XtraSmiley said:

SegaSnatcher, 

 

You've made some great points, but really, until this actually comes out, we've only got their marketing to go on. We won't really know until some independent reviewers have a whack at this thing.

 

And IMO, you're not trolling here, I think you're really enthusiastic about the Pocket and your posts have been fine to read by me!

Sadly we have to wait a lot longer.  

[SegaSnatcher]

32 minutes ago, afx_acid said:

I'm just wondering how easy it will be to swap out the battery on the Pocket when it inevitably starts dying.

There was a recent interview with Taber and he said its very easy, but will void the warranty.    

Basically you just remove 4 screws from the back and the battery is right there. 

 

GamesBeat: How easy is it to replace the battery?

Taber: Technically, easy. Remove four screws on the back of the unit and the battery is directly below. It’s connected via a plug, so simply unplug it and a battery can be swapped out. We don’t suggest users do this themselves — it will void your warranty — but the battery is designed to be exchanged with ease.

Edited August 1, 2020 by SegaSnatcher

[afx_acid]

50 minutes ago, SegaSnatcher said:

There was a recent interview with Taber and he said its very easy, but will void the warranty.    

Basically you just remove 4 screws from the back and the battery is right there. 

 

GamesBeat: How easy is it to replace the battery?

Taber: Technically, easy. Remove four screws on the back of the unit and the battery is directly below. It’s connected via a plug, so simply unplug it and a battery can be swapped out. We don’t suggest users do this themselves — it will void your warranty — but the battery is designed to be exchanged with ease.

Thanks, that's pretty reassuring and I'm sure the warranty will be long expired by the time the battery needs to be replaced.

[blzmarcel]

14 hours ago, SegaSnatcher said:

LOL!!!

Yeah, that looks like the one I was thinking of.

[blzmarcel]

11 hours ago, SlCKB0Y said:

Clearly this system has been designed around the screen. Go on, find us another screen with the same pixel density which is an integer multiplier of the original game boy screen. Oh, that’s right they don’t exist.

Does the screen really need to be an exact multiple of the original GB screen? I recall that most hand-helds from around time didn't perfectly fill their screens, leaving a minimal border around. This was true of the GB, GG, and others that I remember seeing back then.

 

Another thing is that different hand-held consoles ran at different resolutions, so what is a perfect multiple of one platform might not be for another (e.g., GB vs GB vs Lynx vs TurbleExpress vs NGCP, etc) so at least of these aren't going to have a 100% perfect fit, so one way or another there will be a border, unless some stretching and filtering is being done

 

Who knows, maybe they have some clever solution for that, though in general, I don't see having an image that's slightly smaller than the screen itself as an issue, as that's how it was many of those original systems. Heck, I've seen many smart phones and tablets that don't go completely to the very edges of the panel.

[blzmarcel]

Quick question: From what I've read and understand thus far, the Analogue Pocket is designed to play carts rather than ROM files, but are we able to assume that the "jail broken" firmware will allow ROM files to be played under the various cores? I ask many out the desire to play the ROM-hacks that I've been collecting for sometime, such as the plethora of SMB1/2/2J/3 ROM-hacks, that offer new challenges to old favorites.

 

I am assuming there wouldn't be cart adapters for NES, SNES, Genesis/MD and such since the carts would be a bit too big, especially NES carts, so it seems logically that were would need to be a way to load ROM files, and if I'm not mistaken, the Analogue's full size consoles have this capability.

 

I also find it fair to surmise that many people aren't going to want to carry lots of carts with them on the go, especially carts for full size classic consoles.

[SegaSnatcher]

1 minute ago, blzmarcel said:

Quick question: From what I've read and understand thus far, the Analogue Pocket is designed to play carts rather than ROM files, but are we able to assume that the "jail broken" firmware will allow ROM files to be played under the various cores? I ask many out the desire to play the ROM-hacks that I've been collecting for sometime, such as the plethora of SMB1/2/2J/3 ROM-hacks, that offer new challenges to old favorites.

 

I am assuming there wouldn't be cart adapters for NES, SNES, Genesis/MD and such since the carts would be a bit too big, especially NES carts, so it seems logically that were would need to be a way to load ROM files, and if I'm not mistaken, the Analogue's full size consoles have this capability.

 

I also find it fair to surmise that many people aren't going to want to carry lots of carts with them on the go, especially carts for full size classic consoles.

Let's put it this way.  A GBA Core doesn't need 96MB's of ram just to run a game via the cart slot lol.  There is a reason why that amount of ram was chosen.  For future "fun" stuff.

[Atariboy]

3 hours ago, blzmarcel said:

Quick question: From what I've read and understand thus far, the Analogue Pocket is designed to play carts rather than ROM files, but are we able to assume that the "jail broken" firmware will allow ROM files to be played under the various cores?

While there's always the chance it won't happen, we haven't been disappointed yet.

 

Myself and many others are working under the assumption that we're preordering a machine that not only offers full cartridge compatibility with the supported platforms, but also can serve as its own multicart within a few days of release.

 

I'm not worried. The Nt Mini, Super Nt, and Mega Sg leave me confident that history will repeat itself.

[Sho]

I agree with Atariboy.  They have a history of putting out quality products when it comes to build, UI, and aesthetics.  The total accuracy they claim can be argued across all of their products, but even then almost every single issue currently are all very minor aside from FDS functionality with the original Nt Mini.

 

I'm very confident they will work on the Pocket until they have something that will please the userbase.

[GarrettCRW]

On 7/31/2020 at 6:51 AM, vanfanel said:

And I hope less and less people will fail for Analogue's next incomplete and bug ridden iteration: seeing how they release the next big thing while they abandon previous implementations with bugs is really infuriating. You guys are in time to save yourselves that feeling.

 

But after all, it comes to this: community-driven projects are way better in the end, because no greedy private business leaves the bugs in CLOSED cores unresolved: we can solve them ourselves. None of the annoying bugs that plague the MegaSG are in the MiSTer Master System, MegaDrive and MegaCD cores at this point. And I have my right to say so here, in this thread, as a MegaSG, SuperNT and MiSTer owner.

This is a lesson I had learned a lot of time ago with software, and I had to learn it again with FPGA hardware. Thank you Analogue for the lesson, it just cost me like 800 Euros in wasted hardware and abusive shipping rates. Never again. Only opensource projects from now on.

If Kevtris is not going to do it himself and/or Analogue isn't going to provide him with the time and/or resources to implement these fixes, then maybe the community will have to step in, as is the case with the PowerPak, which Bunnyboy abandoned development on WELL before Krikzz came on the scene, and has since been improved greatly (to the point where it's still a viable flash cart option).

[Osgeld]

20 hours ago, SegaSnatcher said:

There was a recent interview with Taber and he said its very easy, but will void the warranty.    

Basically you just remove 4 screws from the back and the battery is right there. 

 

GamesBeat: How easy is it to replace the battery?

Taber: Technically, easy. Remove four screws on the back of the unit and the battery is directly below. It’s connected via a plug, so simply unplug it and a battery can be swapped out. We don’t suggest users do this themselves — it will void your warranty — but the battery is designed to be exchanged with ease.

no, removing 4 screws wont void your warranty, at least in the US, they made that unenforceable and companies can face fines if they try 

[Steven Pendleton]

15 minutes ago, Osgeld said:

no, removing 4 screws wont void your warranty, at least in the US, they made that unenforceable and companies can face fines if they try 

I think it's replacing the battery that voids it, not removing the screws, unless there is some legal precedent that specifically involves replacing the battery.

[SegaSnatcher]

4 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

I think it's replacing the battery that voids it, not removing the screws, unless there is some legal precedent that specifically involves replacing the battery.

And honestly, how would they even know if someone opened the Pocket up?  Their other consoles didn't have void warranty stickers.

[Steven Pendleton]

5 hours ago, SegaSnatcher said:

And honestly, how would they even know if someone opened the Pocket up?  Their other consoles didn't have void warranty stickers.

Well, if you take Analogue's battery out and replace it with a battery that isn't Analogue's battery, I'm pretty sure they'll notice it...