elmer Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 It would be neat to see a 3-way split screen with Retroblox vs Retropie emulation vs the real thing. Fixed that for you ... It would be neat to see a 3-way split screen with Retroblox vs Retropie emulation vs the real thing. of the systems that they've mentioned, actually running off of a cartridge. They're promising a whole lot of systems, using a new and unproven technology, written from scratch in a year, by a bunch of busy professionals with day-jobs, and yet they couldn't show any of this running last weekend, and only had one cartridge-adapter prototype board to show (not running). These guys are so full of shit. lol I'm not quite prepared to say that, yet. But someone on the team is definitely writing a lot of cheques that they've not yet shown they have the ability to actually cash. It just doesn't smell good. If they've got all of this stuff in place, then they should have been able to show a lot more stuff actually working, even if it's not fully-polished. I want to see stuff running, and I don't care about the glitches. Slap a big banner on there that says "prototype, 50% of final speed" or whatever other weasle words they want. But show something that actually gives a flavor of what the end-product will be, and stop making empty promises about how f*cking great everything is. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godslabrat Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 Video showing someone putting a disc in and it playing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oVvxAX4fAH0&t=72s Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StopDrop&Retro Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 Sooooo our only update is that they apparently invented alchemy, forgot to tell everyone about it, but didn't forget to hype up their imminent Kickstarter? Yeah, that's never happened before. Their techno-PR is vague enough to where it leaves a little bit of doubt that they could pull it off but I find it unlikely that such a complex device geared towards such a niche market could spring up overnight and work so well while hiding so much. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 From their forums. These guys are so full of shit. lol Is "low level" emulation even possible on an ARM box? I mean, HiGAN needs a 3Ghz CPU to run on x86... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elmer Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 Video showing someone putting a disc in and it playing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oVvxAX4fAH0&t=72s Don't folks remember that lots of emulators have run stuff from real CDs before??? I remember Bleem! coming out back-in-the-day, and lots of early emulators *required* the CD because gamers didn't want to rip large 600MB games onto their < 1GB hard drives. Up until recently, Mednafen also *required* that you use original CD media. That side is nothing new, and putting in a game CD and starting a game doesn't show anything about whether the CD is actually being used, or just randomly accessed, or what emulator they're running, or whether they can actually fulfill any of their claims about playing directly from a real cartridge. It's the playing-from-a-real-cartridge that's the new-and-unproved tech. Where's the demo of that? Everything else so far could be, but certainly needn't be, just running on any of 1000 off-the-shelf boards with a bit of custom programming for the front-end. They haven't been exposed-as-fakers, and they could easily just be hyping something that totally-justifies the hype. But they still haven't offered any reasonable proof to be excited. Just buzzwords and promises. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 Also from the forums: – SNES / SFC (Super Gameboy will work fine for play only – but you won’t be able to back up GB games individually to Richter) http://retroblox.com/forums/topic/what-consoles-will-be-supported/ If this is true, they have really done their homework. There is currently no method to dump Game Boy games through a Super Game Boy device because the Super Game Boy itself runs the game, pumping audio into the SNES via the expansion pins, and translating the sprite data into something the SNES can process. In essence, the Super Game Boy plays the game and "streams" the audio and visual data through the SNES GPU. So if the hybrid "low level" emulation thing is real, then the various NES homebrews and other odd peripherals will work just fine. I've yet to see an emulator that can run the Space Invaders SNES ROM off the original Game Boy cart for instance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 Don't folks remember that lots of emulators have run stuff from real CDs before??? I remember Bleem! coming out back-in-the-day, and lots of early emulators *required* the CD because gamers didn't want to rip large 600MB games onto their < 1GB hard drives. Up until recently, Mednafen also *required* that you use original CD media. If you have ISOs, you can "mount" the ISO as virtual drive and point the emulator to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godslabrat Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 Don't folks remember that lots of emulators have run stuff from real CDs before??? I remember Bleem! coming out back-in-the-day, and lots of early emulators *required* the CD because gamers didn't want to rip large 600MB games onto their < 1GB hard drives. Up until recently, Mednafen also *required* that you use original CD media. That side is nothing new, and putting in a game CD and starting a game doesn't show anything about whether the CD is actually being used, or just randomly accessed, or what emulator they're running, or whether they can actually fulfill any of their claims about playing directly from a real cartridge. It's the playing-from-a-real-cartridge that's the new-and-unproved tech. Where's the demo of that? Everything else so far could be, but certainly needn't be, just running on any of 1000 off-the-shelf boards with a bit of custom programming for the front-end. They haven't been exposed-as-fakers, and they could easily just be hyping something that totally-justifies the hype. But they still haven't offered any reasonable proof to be excited. Just buzzwords and promises. I find it concerning that after a two-day media event, there's precious little actual data available. What photos we do have are released by retroblox themselves and seem to be angled and posed so as to not reveal the aspects of the tech that we find most interesting. That's a ball-blowingly familiar approach. Second, it runs counter to what you'd expect from a convention. I've worked my share of cons as a vendor... if it were me, and I had something I wanted to promote, I'd have dozens of photos on social media. These guys have... three? If it was a busy con, there should have been lots of attendees taking photos and posting them online. If it was slow, then retroblox should have had time to post more photos and answer more questions. This seems off. It seems very, very off. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elmer Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 (edited) If you have ISOs, you can "mount" the ISO as virtual drive and point the emulator to it. Yes, you can certainly do that instead of using a real CD. With more-recent Mednafen builds the whole real CD thing is dropped, and they read directly from a .cue/.bin image on your hardrive, which is (IMHO) much more convenient. Is "low level" emulation even possible on an ARM box? I mean, HiGAN needs a 3Ghz CPU to run on x86... There's a lot of wasted cycles in a C/C++ emulator that's running on top of someone else's OS. Do I believe that some smart bastidge could do it? Sure. Just customize your linux kernel so that it's limited to one or two of the four cores, and then carefully write a VirtualCPU emulator for each system that gets its own dedicated 1.7GHz ARM core in order to access the cartridge and run the CPU emulation. If you do that, and write it in assembly-language, then you should be able to control the emulated-cartridge access and emulated-instruction-execution timings tightly enough, even if you are bit-banging the I/O ports to read data from the physical cartridge. Then dedicate another core to doing the VDP emulation, and sync what it is doing on a line-by-line-or-less basis to the other VirtualCPU core with semaphores or even lockless programming. Then you've got one or two cores left to do the sound emulation (not very expensive), and to draw the emulated screen onto the real SoC screen with all of that eye-candy and upscaling and shader effects. With a 1.7GHz ARM core for running the CPU-emulator, you've got plenty of instruction cycles for emulating any of the old 33MHz-or-less (maybe more) CPUs. That's how I'd approach the job. And I *suspect* that it would work. But I don't *know* that it would work, and there could easily be a whole ton of practical problems that would crop up down the line. That's why I believe that these guys need to show some proof. Sure, they claim that they've got some low-level hardware hackers on board who could do that sort of assembly-language programming. And perhaps they do. But have they actually *done* the job on this project, and does it really *work*??? Edited February 8, 2017 by elmer 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enoofu Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 A lot of the wasted resources in a PC emulator is making it compatible to a lot of different GPU's CPU's Memory and OS and so forth Video showing someone putting a disc in and it playing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oVvxAX4fAH0&t=72s Yeah and note that all their Hybrid emulation stuff basically relates to the SNES/NES/Genesis and they are playing a CD Game 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 A lot of the wasted resources in a PC emulator is making it compatible to a lot of different GPU's CPU's Memory and OS and so forth Which leads to their popularity through versatility. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xiaNaix Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 (edited) Is "low level" emulation even possible on an ARM box? I mean, HiGAN needs a 3Ghz CPU to run on x86... If you look past the attempt at technical gobbledygook what I take away from their comments is a preemptive excuse for when people realize they are just using currently available emulators. Note how they mention having received permission from emu authors but basically had to re-write everything due to "hybrid emulation technology." Uh huh. Then they brag about how the "people doing the emulation work include several of our team members who are not contributors to the open source community but work on low level hardware for console manufacturers professionally." In other words, we had permission but our project will be completely closed source so you'll never be able to prove what code we're using or not using. I'm betting the "hybrid emulation technology" is nothing more than an FPGA to read the cartridge (or CD) and then pass the data to the emulator. As for the video linked above apparently showing a game running from CD, there is no proof whatsoever. For all we know that game was already backed up onto the system like every other rom they clearly have loaded on there. Sorry, but I'm just not seeing anything new here at all. I know the authors of Libretro are watching this project closely so I hope for their own sake they truly do have 100% original emulation code. Edited February 8, 2017 by xiaNaix 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philyso Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 (edited) From their forums. These guys are so full of shit. lol Indeed, 'full rewrite' is either a big lie on their side or they have no idea about how emulators (including all those 'open source' ones they claim to have secured) work. At most, it only requires patching CPU read/write memory handlers which were initially used to access cartridge area, all the stuff that emulates plain system hardware should normally remain unchanged. Off course, it requires additional work to develop APIs that interact with original hardware interfaces but cartridge (or even controllers and CD) hardware interfaces are only a small part of what need to be emulated: they still need to emulate the original system and they likely won't write CPU, PPU, APU, etc cores for all these consoles from scratch, they will use existing open-source cores, I'm 100% sure of that. Edited February 8, 2017 by philyso 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godslabrat Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 Sure, they claim that they've got some low-level hardware hackers on board who could do that sort of assembly-language programming. And perhaps they do. But have they actually *done* the job on this project, and does it really *work*??? This, right here. It's not that I don't believe this could be done. I do. What I don't believe is that it could be done in the space of a year, done in secret, and done to the level of sophistication that would result in a sellable product. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philyso Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 (edited) That year was more likely spent developing that frontend so they could have something to show off and promote their kickstarter campain. Maybe taking some time developing hardware specifications and that 'hybrid emulation' concept but I believe those are still very virtual at this point. I would be curious to know what kind of system they are using for their demo but I suspect this is simply a mini-PC (or a raspberry Pi) running a few recompiled open-source emulators, with minimal modifications to interface with their frontend. Edited February 8, 2017 by philyso Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyperboy Posted February 8, 2017 Share Posted February 8, 2017 New info up on the news section of their website. http://retroblox.com/news/ Sent from my non beer holding hand. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godslabrat Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW by RetroBlox | Feb 8, 2017 | NEWS | 4 comments top_games1_clean_low_cc Hi Folks, we’re coming in off of a very exciting and crazy week with last week’s announcement of RetroBlox, including the first live public demos of the system at Socal Retro Gaming Expo on the weekend. Our team received a tremendous amount of feedback from the retro gaming community, all of which is being taken into consideration as we work towards the launch of the RetroBlox Kickstarter in April. home But first, our team wanted to use this weeks post to clarify various questions about the system from attendees at the show, and from some of the users in our forums. – What is RetroBlox / how does it work? – What systems will RetroBlox support? – Is RetroBlox an emulation box or FPGA? – What’s Hybrid Emulation? – What are the system specs? – Can I install games / ROMs to RetroBlox? – Can I sell games digitally on RetroBlox? – How much will RetroBlox cost? – How can I get one? WHAT IS RETROBLOX / HOW DOES IT WORK? RetroBlox is a Modular Multi-System Retro Game Console. The Base Unit includes a CD/DVD optical drive as well as the motherboard, Blox Bus Interface to the Element Modules, and various ports and connectors which will be detailed later in this post. It also has the Element Module Eject Button on the side which detaches and releases the Element Module, if one is inserted. Element Modules are removable modules that include the cartridge connector and at least 2 controller ports for various classic video game systems. The modules are interchangeable, meaning RetroBlox can support a virtually unlimited amount of cartridge-based video game systems, even if they are not available day 1 to back on Kickstarter. Modules are packaged in such a way that they will fit neatly onto your bookshelf, so you only need to pull them out when you want to exchange modules. 6_rbxpress_web WHAT SYSTEMS WILL RETROBLOX SUPPORT AT LAUNCH? Via Element Module (for Kickstarter launch – there will be others after launch) – NES – SNES / SFC (Super Gameboy will work fine for play only – but you won’t be able to back up GB games individually to RetroBlox) – Genesis / Mega Drive (J) / Mega Drive (E) / 32x / SMS support via Power Base Converter – Atari 2600 (7800 is currently not confirmed for support, but will be vetted and confirmed before KS campaign in April) – PC-Engine / TurboGrafx-16 / SuperGrafx Via CD/DVD Drive (more TBA) – PSX (PSOne) – all regions – Sega CD / 32X CD / Mega CD (J and E) – PC-Engine CD / Super CD-ROM / Arcade CD-ROM / TurboGrafx-CD Note: Some people have asked about N64 support. N64 is technically very doable today on RetroBlox, but Nintendo (correctly) filed many, many patents for that system, some as recently as 2001, so it’s not something we’re targeting at the moment unless Nintendo were to provide us with permission to do so. On the bright side, the great thing about having a modular system is that we’re always capable of supporting additional consoles in the future without replacing the base hardware, so you can bet we will be there first when a legal opportunity to support N64 presents itself. retroblox_blox_8_grey IS RETROBLOX ONE OF THOSE EMULATION BOXES OR IS IT AN FPGA? (For non-technical people, you might want to skip ahead a few sections.) RetroBlox is neither a pure emulation box nor an FPGA system. When developing the original version of this console back in 2015 (when it actually was an FPGA-based PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16) – our team discovered a new method of emulation that provides the advantages of an emulation-based system with the broad compatibility of an FPGA-based system. That new method is called Hybrid Emulation, and it was submitted to the USPTO as a provisional patent back in July 2016. Realizing its potential benefit to fans of all retro gaming consoles, we changed the direction of the console to be what you see today with a modular design. RetroBlox_sketch A few of the early concepts immediately after the switch to modular WHAT’S HYBRID EMULATION? Hybrid emulation is a completely new way of tackling emulation, providing the cost-effective and future-friendly advantages of high level emulation as well as the accuracy and compatibility advantages of using clone hardware or FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays) to model the original consoles. Hybrid Emulation is unique in that it requires software emulators to function at a much lower level than the ones you can simply download for your PC, Phone or RetroPie / RetroArch / LibRetro box. RetroBlox’s proprietary RBXOS and Richter UI environment are built from the ground up in Linux, fully optimized for our system so that we can access the architecture from the bus-level and I/O from cartridge interfaces and controllers directly via high level emulation on the heart of the system, the Rockchip RK3288. This means we don’t have to rely on software emulation of memory mappers and/or co-processors that may not be fully optimized, which in turn frees up valuable resources to ensure other aspects of the machine run smoothly. This is especially important to the homebrew community where many developers have created their own bank-switching and mapping mechanisms to extend the abilities of the original platform far beyond the manufacturers original intent. With Hybrid Emulation, we do not need to be privy to the intimate details of how the cartridge expansions function to have their software run on RetroBlox. It just works. While this may sound like a magical, do everything under the sun console – some discerning folks recently asked what it WON’T do. Right off the bat, you won’t be able to play games that purely rely on light gun controller input. The limitations of light gun technology vs. HDTVs have been a constant struggle for those that enjoy the genre (including us!). However, we would like to address this issue sometime down the line after RetroBlox launches. For the moment, we are 100% focused on delivering what we have committed to above. Please note that light-gun type games that support controller D-Pad input will work fine on RetroBlox. WHAT ARE THE SYSTEM SPECS? – CPU: Quad-core ARM Cortex-A17, 1.8GHz (Rockchip RK3288) – GPU: Quad-core ARM Mali-T764 GPU 600MHz – Environment: Linux – Framework: RBXOS – UI: Proprietary (Codename: “Richter”) – 2GB RAM / 16GB eMMC onboard Flash – 1x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, 1x MicroSD (SDXC supported up to 512GB) – 1x HDMI 2.0, 1x Gigabit Ethernet, 1x MicroSATA – Internal Bluetooth Antenna, DC Power, 20-pin JTAG – DVD-ROM: 11.08 Mb/s (8x) max – CD-ROM: 3,600 Kb/s (24x) max – 1x Blox Bus Connector – 1x Wireless Bluetooth Gamepad dialog CAN I INSTALL GAMES / ROMS TO RETROBLOX? Yes and no. RetroBlox is primarily made for people who own physical copies of games. You will not be able to simply load up an SD card full of roms, plug it in and suddenly have a huge library available as we do not support or advocate for piracy, no matter how ubiquitous it has become. However, in the interest of minimizing the use of and further preserving classic games, RetroBlox does allow you to back up the games you personally own on physical cartridges or discs to the system in an iPod / iTunes type relationship. This allows you to have a nice, modern experience with your installed games without having to worry about wearing your cartridges down. For cartridges that have specialized chips, mappers, and co-processors that must be read actively (eg; StarFox and its SuperFX chip), the user interface will prompt you to insert the cartridge to play so that it can run under Hybrid Emulation compatibility mode. Otherwise, installed games will run under normal emulation rules. The games that you install on RetroBlox are placed either on the onboard eMMC flash memory or they are installed to the SD card if you have one inserted. However, you will not simply get a bunch of dumped ROM and ISO files after installation. The SD card is encrypted and signed to the individual user of the system so that they are exclusively useable on that one account. While this may be an inconvenience to some players, we may never be able to move retro gaming forward if we don’t comply with the completely fair and reasonable request of IP owners to not use their games without permission. In turn, they should acknowledge the need to make classic games more accessible for players in the future. CAN I SELL GAMES DIGITALLY ON RETROBLOX? Yes. If you’re a developer or publisher of games for retro systems that wants to publish the titles that you legally own the rights to on RetroBlox, we’re going to offer you a simple solution to do so. However, every game submission will need to follow the same technical and legal requirements standards that are in place for the major game consoles, and will be thoroughly vetted and tested prior to publishing, same as Nintendo or Sony would do. If you have a sprite hack that puts Sonic the Hedgehog in Mario 3, don’t even think about submitting it. More info before Kickstarter on this. HOW MUCH WILL RETROBLOX COST? We used last weekend as an opportunity to take surveyed feedback from show attendees and the community on this matter to ensure that our targets are in line with your expectations prior to announcement. Happy to say we were very much on target. Like other companies who strive to provide excellent design at reasonable prices, RetroBlox is going to come out at a price that is very affordable while advancing the way you play significantly. We’re not confirming prices today, but we can tell you that RetroBlox, including 1 Element Module and controller, will be much less than a base Nintendo Switch, and additional Element Modules will vary in cost depending on complexity (both software and hardware), but won’t cost any more than a new video game. The final pricing will be announced before the launch of the Kickstarter Campaign in April. HOW CAN I GET A RETROBLOX SYSTEM? RetroBlox will be doing a Kickstarter pre-order campaign in April 2017 that will include a number of different core packages you can back / select from. Base Unit + 1 Bluetooth Controller + 1 Selectable Element Module for a set price Base Unit + 1 Bluetooth Controller + 3 Selectable Element Modules for a set price Base Unit + 1 Bluetooth Controller + All 5 Element Modules for a set price In addition, there will be multiple controller packages and other options and ways to support the project on the Kickstarter page which will be announced closer to the start of the campaign. WHAT’S NEXT? In addition to other demos we’ll be performing for various press and media between now and the launch of our Kickstarter, we’ll also be doing another live demo at one of the upcoming major retro game conventions. Feel free to bring any cartridge to the show that works on a real console (for one of the above-listed modules, of course) and see if RetroBlox lives up to the hype. Keep an eye out here on our blog and social feeds (Facebook, Twitter) for more information about the upcoming shows we’ll be attending in your area. 4 COMMENTS TheNeck TheNeck on 2017-02-08 at 11:17 AM Will the retroblox come out this year? I’m excited for the kickstarter! REPLY Mike Mike on 2017-02-08 at 11:40 AM My experience with FPGA systems is that games seem to have no input lag and “feel” just like they do on original hardware. My experience with any and all emulation so far is that the lag becomes very noticeable making fast paced games frustratingly unplayable. Could you provide some lag tests on your machine and perhaps compare them with other popular emulation boxes like the Retron5, RetroFreak, or even RetroPie? “Hybrid Emulation” as a new method will need to be proven with hands on testing and proof to your customers, and not explained away as something “different” and “better”. I can’t stress how important proving your system to be lag-less will be when it comes to the retro community accepting and adopting the console. Awesome looking concept and wish you all the best! REPLY Colin Colin on 2017-02-08 at 12:33 PM I’m glad to see some solid answers for the many questions we have had. I hope the price stays where you are hinting, well under $300. Though I wish the Kickstarter started earlier, I’m on board. You will have my support from the get go. REPLY Oriol Oriol on 2017-02-08 at 12:59 PM What about neogeo emulation? REPLY SUBMIT A COMMENT CONNECT WITH: Facebook Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Username Password Remember Me Register WHO’S ONLINE There are no users currently online GROUPS Newest | Active | Popular Group logo of The Official RetroBlox Community Group The Official RetroBlox Community Group created 1 week, 1 day ago RECENT TOPICS Translation Patches Please include Neo Geo! Intellivision? Also on board with this Curated online game rotation? FORUMS ATARI COLECO/MSX NEC NINTENDO SEGA SNK SONY CONNECT 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cybercylon Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 hmmmm... Giving the benefit of the doubt, can some explain in less technical terms what their choice of CPU and GPU can and cannot do? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xiaNaix Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 (edited) hmmmm... Giving the benefit of the doubt, can some explain in less technical terms what their choice of CPU and GPU can and cannot do? The same as any netbook or Kodi box that uses the same hardware. The upcoming $70 USD Asus Tinker Box also has the same specs. Edited February 9, 2017 by xiaNaix 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanooki Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 Over on Racketboy they said shooting for just under $300 for the system, and under $60 for each module. This thing is going to get expensive fast. Will that first element module with the basic Nintendo/Sega/TG systems on it be bundled with it? I can see them adding a full Gameboy(color/advance) module for a charge. Yet another for the SMS(and under)+Game Gear for another charge, perhaps tacking on 32X. But they also said they have 5 modules planned?! Well if we guess the one with the basics is a pack in at the $300 entry price, that's another $200-240 for the others. Suddenly if you have to get em all you're over $500 for an emulator box. You can get a far less crappy computer for that price that'll run every inch of that and well do what a computer does too as a bonus. How do they really expect this to get a lot of buyers? I could see the usual kickstarter suckermoney roll in, but would it be enough? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elmer Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 (edited) This thing is going to get expensive fast. Will that first element module with the basic Nintendo/Sega/TG systems on it be bundled with it? ... But they also said they have 5 modules planned?! You're misreading the spec. Here are the first 5 modules. You only get to pick one of them for your $300. NES SNES Genesis Atari 2600 PC-Engine And "yes", since it's locked down so that you can only put ROMs on it that you physically plug in and dump using an "Element Module", it's going to get very expensive, very fast. I don't think that they've said how-on-earth they're going to get the Sega CD BIOS on there, either. With the PC-Engine, they could very-well expect folks to plug in a PCE System Card to provide the BIOS. That should help drive up the prices even further for those of us that run real hardware. Edited February 9, 2017 by elmer 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 (edited) So if those are the specs, and there is no custom FPGA board doing the emulation, then we're pretty much back to running software emulation. Along with all the suckyness, lag, incompatibilities and general inaccuracies. They're going to have to get their emulation cores from someone, somewhere, someplace. And all I see this whole project being is an interface to those cores. Not anything new other than the way the data is supplied (to the cores). Edited February 9, 2017 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enoofu Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 "RetroBlox does allow you to back up the games you personally own on physical cartridges or discs to the system in an iPod / iTunes type relationship" Legally this device is against the law in the US and some of Europe do to the DMCA even if they encrypt the data by user ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "our team discovered a new method of emulation that provides the advantages of an emulation-based system with the broad compatibility of an FPGA-based system. That new method is called Hybrid Emulation, and it was submitted to the USPTO as a provisional patent back in July 2016. Realizing its potential benefit to fans of all retro gaming consoles, we changed the direction of the console to be what you see today with a modular design. " --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If Synopsys isn't a partner in this project then they are Plagiarizing Synopsys which makes FGPA solutions that turn it in emulation software (Just google Hybrid Emulation such as this link http://www.techdesignforums.com/practice/technique/hybrid-emulation-development-validation-verification/) They would also be making a fake claim to the USPTO for a Patent ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Considering that retroblox is a new company Push-Run Holdings, LLC LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY CALIFORNIA 609 S. Grand Avenue, Unit 1204 Los Angeles CALIFORNIA 90017 (APPLICANT) Push-Run Holdings, LLC LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY CALIFORNIA 609 S. Grand Avenue, Unit 1204 Los Angeles CALIFORNIA 90017 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 I guess it all comes down to whether "hybrid emulation" - exists; - actually performs demonstrably better than traditional software emulation; - is significantly more compatible than software emulation I'd love for someone like Kevtris to weigh in on this. It still smells like magic beans to me. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted February 9, 2017 Share Posted February 9, 2017 hybrid emulation can mean a lot of things. We still do not know what it means when talking about retroblox. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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