spoonman

To be clear, I wasn't suggesting there wasn't anything to play on the Pocket.. Just the opposite. I haven't even caught up with all of the cores! I should have been more clear. I was wondering primarily about Analogue firmware updates, and more specifically when we will see Analogue update the Pocket so we can get the filters on openFPGA. I guess we still didn't her this supported on the latest update. I also found it kind of funny that there wasn't any Analogue updates in months.. I ask, and a few days later, *poof!* there it is.

1. They do. The Analogue systems (Mega Sg, Super Nt, Nt, and Pocket all read the data directly off of the cartridges. Unlike something like the Retron5, which first dumps the rom and them reads it like most software based emulation. 2. SGM support is included on MiSTer, Kevtris' Mega Sg ColecoVision core, and multiple CV emulators. The Mega Sg works great with all of the SGM supported games that I've tried. PS. The Mega Sg has an SG1000/SA3000 core which can output at supported resolutions.

Things are pretty quiet on the Analogue Pocket front, eh? What cores are people still hoping to see show up on the Pocket? I'm personally still hopeful we may see a Philips CD-i core, but since there isn't a MiSTer core for it yet it may be a while.

This is something similar to what I've wanted for the Analogue Mega Sg for years. Would this work with the Sega SMS adapter on that? Also, would there be a way to bypass that and design a ColecoVision cart to Genesis pintpout that would trigger it to load games within the ColecoVision FPGA core on the Mega Sg? Maybe that would require an update to the CV core as well? Just a couple questions since I am interested.. 1. Will it load the larger CV roms? 2. Will it work with SGM games? 3. Would it work while connected to a SMS to Game Gear convertor? For portable CV gaming. 4. Do you have an ETA time or price on the converter yet? Thanks.

Sorry, I don't really want to dig all of that up. There were a few good documentaries on the hacking/cracking scene of the 80' and 90's. I think it was called BBS: The Series. Some of my releases actually show up in it. Luckily it flashes by in about a tenth of a second. I know most publishers wouldn't bother to go after anyone this far down the road. No reason to kick those hornet's nests though. Most of the cracking I have done was very simple level stuff. I learned what to look for based on the work of much more skilled people than myself. With a hex editor I'd search for SRAM protections and patch them out. Then I'd create an IPS of the difference. Primarily with SNES games I should add. My skills with that era were mostly with designing graphics for cracktro/intros, making NFO files, including ASCII art, and so on.. but I'll leave it there. Sorry I couldn't be more informative.

I'd love a Neo•Geo cart adapter. It would proabiy look more like a Pocket and cart holder. My AES recently stopped reading any of my carts, so this would be helpful for me.

Question... Since OpenFPGA developers can access the cartridge slot, for things such as DS Rumble Paks (GBA cart), and for accelerometer carts (Yoshi, Kirby, Wario, for example). I wonder if it's possible to create cartridge adapters, to be used for playing actual Genesis, NES, SNES carts with the cores. I saw the post about using SNAC controller adapter via this slot. Having both working would Essentially turn the Pocket into the Zimba 3000.

Name an unlikely openFPGA core that you'd love to see on the Analogue Pocket. I'll go first.. The PHILIPS CD-i We almost always see the popular stuff released, which is awesome, but the CD-i, has neither decent software support, nor cheap, and readily available, hardware. Most systems also have issues with their game saving, and other issues, due to its Time Keeper battery being implanted within a silicon chip. It requires some delicate surgery to separate the two and replace the battery. Risking damaging a $500 - $1000 system. The CD-i gets a much worse reputation that it deserves, I feel. This, due to such YouTube videos as the AVGN, showing them trying to play educational and documentary titles, as well as the countless YTP Legend of Zelda (My BOI!) videos/Memes. They were no great games, ecu when comped to the flawless Nintendo games, but they still had some interesting things.about them. (Link: The Faces of Evil, and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon anyway). There were a handful of worth while titles released for the CD-i, and like most other technology systems, they really needed to be experienced in its time in order to truly be appreciated. After all we're talking about the very first all inclusive CD multimedia system meant for the living room, in 1990 (12/1990). It would go on to play CD Audio discs, CD+G (standard CDs with (some times hidden) graphical bonuses of 8-bit color images, lyrics, trivia, and more), CD-i (of course!), Kodak Photo-CD (display developed camera film, via gold PCD CDR discs, on your living room TV), and Video-CD (precursor to the 5" DVD video disc). It had the best LaserDisc home ports, of games such as Dragon's Lair 1 and 2, Space Ace, Brain Dead 13. ALG titles such as Mad Dog McCree, which could even use a light gun, which operates with a sensor bar, (Nintendo stole this for the Wii.. Quite literally.. They settled with Philips, out of court) so these will work with HD displays. People tend to enjoy the version of TETRIS, with it's laid back OSTand FMV background animation. I personally enjoyed Hotel Mario, Burn Cycle, Name that Tune, The Apprentice, Jeopardy!, Thunder in Paradise, Flashback, Lemmings, Pac-Attack, Mystic Midway, Palm Springs Golf, Escape From Cyber-City, Laser Lords, and many of the non game stuff as well. It's hard to convey just how mind blowing it was to insert the Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia into the CD-i in 1992 and browse through an entire set of encyclopedias, which is all hyperlinked, with FMV, digitized audio, and thousands of photos from a single 5" CD. This was well before Wikipedia. I have to admit a good deal of my love for the CD-i is nostalgia-based, and I also worked for Philips between 1991-1993. Did I do a good job selling it above? Haha.. Probably not. I dozed off a couple of times while typing! (That really happened). So anyway I'd love to have it available as a Pocket core. The best emulator doesn't have very good compatibility, and the titles it does play tend to have a lot of flaws. I always wanted the Sony portable CD-i unit (yes, that was a real product!) So playing it on the Pocket would let me live that dream.. And what glorious dream it would be! 😂

Also, I forgot mention that the official Analogue NES core was released. I'm pretty certain that's what it is anyway, as Kevtr.. er "Spiritualized1997" has released it on his Github. It's pretty full featured, with FDS (Famicom Disk System, PC-10, VS. Arcade support, Kevin's awesome NFS player (that shows the channels+notes being played), tons of mappers, special support for older Chinese multi-cart (from SuperVision, MegaCom, etc..), and so on. I only hope it supports Memories (save states) some day. Spiritualized NES Core (read the Changelog for complete details) https://github.com/spiritualized1997/openFPGA-NES Other new things from the past few days.... Q*Bert Arcade Core From Eric Lewis. https://github.com/ericlewis/openfpga-qbert This is fitting since it's his 40th anniversary. I loved this game as a 10 year old kid, when it first showed up at our local Barrel of Fun arcade. So it's nice to have on the Pocket! The core still needs work, but it's off to a great start. Watara SuperVision Portable System Core From Boogermann "Booger!" https://github.com/opengateware/console-supervision It was obviously heavily influenced by the Game Boy, but still has some interesting games on it. Any new cores are always welcome. Also, here's my updated, but useless Analogue Pocket Flyer. I just keep updating it with systems supported, dates, and logos, and it's usually already out of date by the time I save the file. I'll update it every so often and add it here, along with core links, etc.. http://www.videogameobsession.com/videogame/electronicgames/analoguepocket/ 😅

My guess FWIW is that Analogue will announce a single home system, with modular cart adapter + controller port design. Sort of like the PolyMega, which I believe may have been inspired by Kevin's Zimba 3000. An add-on disc drive could also handle TG-16 CD, Sega CD, Neo•Geo CDs, PSX, SAT, Amiga CD32, Philips CD-i (!) CDs. Maybe they'll release a Neo•Geo AES/MVS/NGP/NGCD console (Analogue•Neo) I'd be interested in that, possibly. I just can't see them re-releasing individual consoles yet again. Not with the Analogue Pocket + Dock (eventually) covering so much. I love the Mega Sg + Super Nt, though I'd like to see them as polished as possible before they are discontinued. Adding CopyGEN/CopySMS/CopyGG to Mega Sg would make sense. Fix any existing bugs, etc.. That's sort of another reason why I'm more comfortable sticking with the Analogue Pocket. OpenFPGA cores can continue to be updated by people until they are perfected. Where as Analogue will have limited resources, and time to work on this. It just is what it is. So yeah, the only two Analogue products I'd personally be excited about now would be a Neo•Geo console, with physical AES/MVS/NGCD/NGPC cart/CD support, and a Zomba 3000 type console which has, cart, and maybe controller adapters for as many consoles as humanly possible.

Yeah, same. It's why I feel it might be next. The ColecoVision was one of my favorite consoles so I'd love to see it on the Pocket. 🤞 I also have a strong feeling that "Spiritualized 1997" has access to a polished ColecoVision core.

Any guesses as to which openFPGA core we'll see pop up next? I'll go with, either the Atari Lynx, or the ColecoVision. I'd be very happy with either. (Or both) 😁 Also, an updated openFPGA flyer (v3). Hopefully this will be so full of game cores someday that the logos will need to be micro-sized. Hehe

The games that are being made available by companies rarely release the more obscure, hard to find games, and instead release the same games over and over again (while expecting you to pay multiple times). Not to mention they often make changes to the original games. Sometimes people don't even realize it, but they feel that something is off about it. Sometimes companies replace the music too, like with Sonic 3 on Sonic Origins, for example. There has also been quite a few games which have been found on devkits, and by other means, which would have been lost forever. Nintendo also likes it when people dump games with iNES.

That's debatable, but yes, it was largely the scene uploaders, who provided for everyone else. I used to dump/release/package/crack/upload, back in the late eighties, early nineties. Many of those releases are still floating around in archives today. The MAME team truly does god's work. Some of those boards were extremely rare, and were literally dying as they were dumping the roms. I believe there is a high road when it comes to all of this stuff. I used to treat the downloading of games in the 80's and early 90's like demos. "Try before you buy". When possible, I always bought every single game that I thought was worth playing. I know not everyone does that though.

If it wasn't for piracy, many.. MANY games, would have been lost to time. Most game companies can't even keep track of their own game history. It was common for them to throw away their source code, and re-write over tapes, and floppy media. Just having some fun...

Oh, yeah, that makes a big difference. I guess I wasn't clear on their wording. It sounded as I f they were only allowing OFPGA developers to develop on the 15K LE Cyclone 10... Analogue:"We added a second dedicated FPGA just for developers to develop & port their own cores.". It would be neat to see perfect Neo•Geo AES games running on a portable. The RAM might be tight for larger Neo roms, but if Kawaks could pull it off on an original Xbox with 64MB of SDRAM @200MHz, or NJ's Neo•Geo emulator, running on a PSP, with 32MB of RAM, there's hope for larger roms.

I wonder how cut back the OpenFPGA chip is when compared the FPGA chip which Analogue uses. Could 7 it be possible to port the NeoGeo core, Sega CD core, 32X core?

Are those based on the same cores included with the Pocket? I wish we could get the Lynx, NGPC, and TG16/PCE cores released for it. It seems like it'll be a very long time before we see those cart adapters released.

"FPGA Development" I wonder if this is where they might start allowing developers to work on porting FPGA cores to the Pocket. I'd personally like to see the Memories beta, but I think this is more appreciated with a jailbroken Pocket, which we need.. Especially since there is still no ETA on the Atari Lynx, Neo•Geo Pocket Color, or PC Engine/TG-16 cart adapters.

I just wish Analogue had better support for their products. They started out strong, with Kevin addressing almost every bug and request with a fix within days, if not hours, but I think maybe he burned out on all of the new products and cores Chris had him working on. I recall hearing that Analogue hired more people to help out, but it seems like since that day there has been less updates. IIRC, there are still bugs on the Super Nt and Mega Sg that seem to have been abandoned. I know it's still far better than a company such as, say, Retro-Bit would do, but if Analogue is going to advertise "perfect simulation", or however they are wording it, they need to eradicate everything so it's 1:1 with the original. I'd also love to see a jailbreak for the Analogue Pocket, since my Everdrive flashcart doesn't work on it. The same accessory which works flawlessly on all of my Nintendo Game Boy systems. So that's a bit disappointing. As well as the support for all of the 8Bitdo 2.4g controllers. I bought extras of those in preparation for receiving the Pocket/Dock. It just seems like they should be much further along on the front end/settings, with all of the hardware delays. I'm hoping Kevin hasn't moved onto the Analogue Duo, or just "moved on".. Which would be a major blow to Analogue.

I have to admit that the lack of updates for the Analogue Pocket, and especially the Analogue Pocket Dock, is rather disappointing. I assumed it would be feature rich by May 2022, with the whole Analogue Memories front-end, but as it is my 8Bitdo 2.4g controllers aren't even supported. Controllers which were said to work with it. I also understand that they aren't expected to release a jailbreak, even secretly, but when the cartridge adapters aren't yet available for the ATARI LYNX, NEO•GEO POCKET, TG-16/PCE, It would be nice to at least have the cores available via JB, so we can play them while we wait for these to come in stock.. (In 2022, 2023? 2024??). It would also be nice to have someone at Analogue actually communicate with their customers on Twitter, or even on here. Aside from the strange animated GIF of a portable game, every few weeks, it's just radio silence. They've never been great with customer relations, but maybe it's time for that. Finally. Does anyone know if there will still be a way for developers to port their own FPGA cores to the Pocket? Or was that a pipe dream to lure people into thinking this would become something of a portable MiSTer? I know I've thought that it would be pretty amazing to have various 8-bit and 16-bit console cores show up on the Pocket. Perhaps even Kevtris would be nice enough to bring his 20 or so cores over to the Pocket. It would certainly make this portable even more desirable.

Which settings do you prefer on the SNES to make scanlines look best, while filling more of the screen?

My order is #54409. I checked out at 11:01AM and it was stuck for several minutes on the shipping calculation screen. At around 5 minutes in I opened a remote desktop window on a second PC and hit F5 + Ctrl a few times and it finally went through on that one, while the other remained stuck. I was expecting $40+ shipping, so that was a decent surprise.

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.