jferio

Doing the proprietary trick, yet using GPL code, would be my guaranteed line in the sand, the guaranteed "I'm NOT buying it, nor anything in the future." If they go proprietary, with no GPL? I'd need to see what the product can actually do. But it would have to be pretty stellar and on track out of the gate for me to get one in lieu of my combination of Real Hardware and RetroPie here.

They don't want to release the code with their changes, which the newer version mandates by license. They probably want to keep people from doing their own firmware changes (signed updates like they did with the Retron 5), which the newer version disallows by license. They probably want to lock you into using actual cartridges, which the two aforementioned things would make harder by preventing the security around firmware changes and providing enough code that some people could figure out how to get a different emulator on it that allows one to, say, run ROMs off SD card or internal memory rather than the cartridge dump. Basically, they learned the lesson from the Retron 5, and decided out of the options of obey the terms of Gnu Public License, or go with an older base that would require work to upgrade but not have the licensing entanglements, they would prefer to go with the older base that they can proceed with the specific business model they did with the Retron 5. Or it could just be a smokescreen; get the license from the developer of the pre-GPL version, and just use the GPL version anyway. That would definitely fall into "no sale for me" territory. And I'm waiting for reviews on units "in the wild" before I make the determination if that's the case.

Yes, the best choice indeed. The problem with some of these "multi game" power supplies is that they're meant to get a quick buck from people who don't know any better. A big problem when they're light is that they're likely not designed for longevity... and might even burn your house down when they fail. http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html Granted, that's USB chargers, but considering that they're just scaled down and miniatured-to-the-point-of-pain versions of what we plug into our consoles... buyer beware.

Regarding an earlier comment about "toxic repurcussions" to what Hyperkin has done... I would agree, when one takes in the issue of the Neo Geo X, which also used an emulator in direct violation of the licensing terms of said emulator. Granted, licenses got pulled before that could publicly go very far, but people do still remember it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... even if it is an unrelated company doing it. There's probably going to be a slice of the retro gaming market that will now actively distrust any commercial emulation product that the company isn't absolutely completely transparent about what they're doing. In other words, wait and see, likely never buy anyway just in case. And some of those will join those who are vocally anti-emulation in trying to convince everyone else to go original hardware, or those who are vocally against paid emulation. For some, this will even extend to apply to software compilations, which would be even more of a shame. Again, we're not losing sleep over here over having bought the Retron 5. But we are disappointed in Hyperkin, regardless of how active they were (whether they did the software fork in-house or farm it out). And we will probably be in the "silent waiters" category for any future product.

We're not losing sleep over it over here... but Hyperkin had better be prepared to release all the source code (my understanding of the GPL3 legal "design" is that they'd have to basically do a clean room redesign of the front end to avoid releasing the source code if they started with RetroArch), as well as update to replace two important emulators inside it (the guy behind RetroArch has made it rather clear that, because they didn't ask in the first place, he won't grant a license exemption for SNES9x NEXT), and to remove any locked patching mechanism (basically, allow you to load your own firmware choice). It is disappointing that they seem to have been forced to do something only because it's become public that they've done this thing. Will I buy another one to supplement/replace the one we have here? Probably not. Will I get rid of the one we have? Pretty much keeping it, it's already been purchased, water under the bridge. Plus, overall it's still an excellent meld of hardware support and emulation, especially now that we can load ROM patch files and even Nintendo would have a hard time telling us we're doing it wrong in the legal sense. Also, this, plus the NeoGeoX having a similar issue, should be fair warning to be aware that a great commercial emulation system, particularly if made by a third party, may be coming with a less than clean boardroom pedigree. We'll probably hold off on such devices in the future. I'm pretty sure that there are some out there in the "emulation is free, you should never pay money for it ever ever ever" camp that are gleefully jumping up and down with this "proof" that they're right.

Less screen blur on Sonic. It's literally a night and day difference, because of the improvements in LCD tech between the original and the Majesco unit.

So my partner struck out at the Centennial location... but lo and behold, our friend Mike snagged one of the Colecos for me... and reported to me that, at the TRU up his way (Thornton/Westminster), they did indeed sell him the product (he picked up the complete pair for himself as well), but then went to stuff the remaining quantity into the back room to await the street date.

Yeah, with modern flat panel televisions, any internal upscaling they do is really only meant for you to hook up, say, an old VCR or DVD. Live action video playback has VERY different needs compared to retro gaming, and sadly retro gaming is a considerably more "niche" market than the video playback is. Your only real two options are to take an old, barely compliant system to your local electronics place and test until you find a television that makes you happy, or buy a higher grade external upscaler. We have a MiniXRGB/Framemeister here right now, currently connected to one television in the living room. It's a pretty nice piece of kit. Although to warn, like all specialist hardware, it can be mildly finicky depending on your source.

I snagged one tonight at the Lakewood CO TRU. My partner's going to go check over at the Centennial location for me tomorrow to see if we can get the Colecovision one. Yes, I'll admit, I'm a vulture. The guy who came over to look was "wow, that's a far out date there" with regards to the "not supposed to sell" message that popped up on the terminal, but they sold it to me anyway.

OK, applied the update. Super Street Righter II for the Genesis now works. It is finicky, two attempts, the first didn't load, the second did, so it's certainly not perfect, but it's also a good sign when I can set off Chun-Li's fireball without too much hassle. Yes, I'm going into training for Street Fighter, so learning the special moves, and how to execute them consistently, is a big part of that. Also, verified that Sonic 2 with Knuckles the Echinda works. I did download the latest cheat database, but in Sonic 1, and SSFII, the cheats caused it to fail with an orange screen. Haven't tested it with anything else.

For the record, as of Sunday, to my knowledge the Broomfield, CO 2nd & Charles location had "more than 3" Retron 5 units. No specifics on count, but my friend Mike got himself a unit there. When we went Saturday, the Aurora, CO location had 3 units on hand. And yeah, elbart, we were looking online, definitely scalper pricing going on. $200-250 easy on parts of Amazon and eBay. I agree with my friends on TG256, not really worth that sort of money.

It depends entirely on the inks, and the coating, and where the coating was applied or not applied. In this case, I think it's because the faded area would have been printed in what is called "spot color", where a mixed color ink is loaded into the press. This was probably done because of sheer coverage of ink, some colors look better than others in solid "four color" than others (because of the dot patterns of the builds), and running it as a spot would have fixed it. Plus, it might have ultimately been cheaper to do that, the yellow, and the black, than to try to do a four color build of the whole label.

We were fine on the first try here with the Kirby games. And yes, we've had some carts take 2-3 inserts to actually "read" correctly. No, we don't blow on them between insertions, that's generally not a good idea anyway. Regarding "UNKNOWN CART" and still being playable, I suspect it's just dirty carts not being read 100% correctly. One can probably wind up with minor single-bit errors in non-vital areas, enough to throw off the identification via checksum, but not enough to fatally break the game. We did see some black Retrons in the wild today when we were out trading some DVDs for other stuff. Mild temptation to buy one at $140 and "flip" it online for $240, but we came to our senses pretty quickly.

Also, we did something a little crazy, just to test it. We plugged a Famicom adapter into the NES slot, a Famicom game into that, and let it rip. It played the cart just fine, complete with recognizing it. But it did display that the NES part was active. Not really surprised it worked, but always worth trying out.

Well, on the other hand, that wasn't why I was arguing about copyright. Copyright is merely the reason they don't want to allow ROM file loading via SD card. SD card in the system's own built in slot. This is the point I thought we were discussing earlier. And regarding that, the ATGames Sega Genesis was mentioned for allowing load from SD. As I recall, that system was actually licensed by Sega as an "official" product, so it does get to follow different rules. The Retron 5 isn't licensed by anybody, so they have to take a much more careful path. Regarding older style multicarts, we've seen that it has trouble with bankswitching schemes if it doesn't know WHAT those schemes are. Newer style multicarts, like the Everdrive, would probably be a lot more difficult, and would certainly relate to how isolated the loading system is. And shall I assume that your beef is specific to design decisions that specifically affect the Everdrive?