Koopa64

Really? a 7800? I thought it barely had any games, much less against the 1900+ game juggernaught that is the A8. Or has 7800 homebrew and indie development really changed that much in 10+ years? Thing is, I already have a couple Atari 2600s.

Well, do you like your Atari XL/XE or such more than the Apple //e or C64?

So I already have an Apple //e and a C64 breadbin. Does the Atari 8-bit series offer anything interesting or better than what the Apple //e and C64 can do? Any exclusive games? Actually, I do know of one advantage, the A8 primarily used cartridges for games. I am not much of a cartridge collector anymore so I'd go with an AtariMax cartridge. Any disadvantages?

The only real difference between a USA NES and a Famicom is the cartridge slot, they run the exact same software otherwise. An AV Famicom + pin adapter is overall the easiest option that involves no modding. It's not perfect (expansion audio is imbalanced) but still, it doesn't need modding to get composite or controller ports or disabling of the lockout chip. Honestly, aside from nostalgia, there isn't a particularly good case to stick with an NES. The Famicom platform overall is far superior. It has access to generally less expensive games, tons of exclusives, it's readily compatible with the exotic Famicom Disk System, supports expansion audio without any mods, has access to 15-pin controllers and accessories, the AV Famicom in particular can use NES-style controllers, all the Famicoms lack the stupid lockout chip and you even get official licensed choices like the Twin Famicom which is a great Famicom and FDS combo system with composite and it's still only as big as a front loader NES. And if you're overly concerned about too much moon language in your games, keep in mind that many NES and Famicom games simply didn't have a lot of ROM space for tons of text. Most action-y and arcade-y games don't really have that much text in them, heck some of them have English even in their Japanese versions because it was cheaper and exotic-sounding. Super Mario Bros 1- 3, Kirby's Adventure, Wario's Woods, Yoshi no Tamago (aka Yoshi), Yoshi's Cookie, Dr. Mario and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out are some examples of Nintendo-made Famicom games that barely have any moon language in them. If you want to cut down on the chance of having to look at moon language, get an Everdrive N8 for Famicom and dive deep into the English fan translations, it's a life changing experience man.

I have a Turbo Grafx-16, a Core Grafx II, a PC Engine Duo (original black model) and a PC Engine Duo-R. I do also have a Turbo Everdrive.

NTSC is a video standard, not a region. Most game platforms don’t put NTSC on the game packaging, that’s only a thing in regions that use PAL.

So, it’s now 2021. How is jaguar emulation these days? Is a PC still a requirement or can we now emulate the jaguar on console?

the Wii U is compatible with composite, S-Video and component video cables, using the same custom connector as the Wii. Those are Still NTSC video standards. that said, I do agree using NTSC to mean USA or North America is misleading considering Japan and many other regions of the world also use NTSC.

Sonic 1 was released two years after the genesis launch, I’d hardly call that a launch title. you weren’t impressed by anything upon the N64 until 4 years after its launch with Perfect Dark in 2000? Man that’s harsh.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/164618286025 This doesn’t have new capacitors but the seller has board pictures and it’s a VA1, fairly inexpensive too.

There's a shortlist of SMS games that don't work properly with a Genesis pad, it's recommended you get a real SMS pad. https://www.smspower.org/forums/12093-ListOfIncompatibilitiesAmongSMSGamesHardware Or, if you want, inside the official Genesis 3-button pad is a grey colored wire that is the select signal. If you disconnect this wire, the controller will behave exactly like a SMS pad, just a D-pad and 2 action buttons. If you connect the grey wire to a small SPST toggle switch and carve a hole in the plastic shell for the switch to mount in, you can have a Genesis and SMS compatible controller. A good place for such a switch is near the cable. I'm not sure what could be causing unresponsive inputs on the controller ports. It could be the sockets, maybe the soldering is cracked on the PCB, or it's the resistor packs near the controller ports. You said one of the pins inside the controller connector is bent? It's possible to bend it back, but it will be weaker than before. If you have damaged controller sockets, you should buy new ones and replace the broken ones. You could get new DB9 sockets from eBay, console5, probably tototek or other places.

Has anyone here tried Family BASIC on the Famicom? Technically the BASIC included on the cartridge is called HuBASIC (Hudson BASIC).

It's not like it has any expectations to meet or any real competition to speak of anymore.

Yeah no, TG16 stays in the discussion. The PC Engine has absolutely nothing to do with the failure of the TG16 in the USA. It couldn't even clear 100 Turbo Chip games, with about 20 on CD-ROM2 and another 20 some on Super CD-ROM2. The card games were even region locked so you couldn't easily import games, not that imports have EVER been a major selling point for any console. The vast majority of people don't care about imports at all. The TG16 was its own system and its own failure, it did play a role in the eventual decline of NEC and Hudson Soft's home console effort. The PC Engine is a success, it even did better than the Japanese Mega Drive. That is true. The TG16 had nothing to do with that success and it ended up costing NEC and Hudson a ton of money. Also, that Wii U figure is really flawed. That is counting all retail and digital game releases. For most of the past 10 years, retail games remained what people usually buy, digital has only recently come out of niche status. According to this list (see below), the Wii U had only 162 USA releases on physical disc. That paints a far more accurate picture of the system's 13 million worldwide sales figure. The Wii U is Nintendo's worst selling home console, behind the NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii and Switch. Not counting the tabletop Virtual Boy which isn't strictly a home console as it officially supports batteries and has its own screen and speakers. 13 million puts the Wii U in the neighborhood of the Dreamcast and Saturn. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EqWL5tfSUjJIxrHQFLdPDRaMUhqf0HqydPSVRgcIqmo/edit?usp=sharing It's just a shame the consoles have gotten so overpriced in recent years. Even the CD-i is a hard system to find for under $300. The amount of upfront cost on a system one has never tried before does make a big difference in perception and willingness to give it a try. Going by the 50 some retail games, $300 for a Jaguar is really stiff and many of the games are very underwhelming. 3DOs can still be had around $100 - $150 in some cases, Japanese systems are very affordable and there's over 250 games worldwide for it with many great home computer ports and games that started on the 3DO.

That is impossible for 249,800 consoles to still be floating around. In the many years I've hung around here on and off, I've seen a lot of reports of dead Jaguars. Not only that, but rough estimates of sales are often far above what actually sold. 250,000 units could have been how many were shipped to retailers, who knows how many sold. I know one thing for sure, given how rare Jaguar systems are, it must have sold extremely poorly. By comparison, a common ship/sale figure for the Sega 32X is "500,000", way less than that actually sold. The TG16 shipped 750,000 systems to retailers. According to that gamasutra article "Stalled Engine", the vast majority of that 750,000 did not sell and were exported to south american markets or were possibly destroyed.

Then feel free to talk about a clone Jaguar console, because I'd buy one just to play Doom. I understand such a thing would be prohibitively expensive, but it's really surprising to me that it seems there's been no efforts to make clone Jaguars. Isn't it hard selling new homebrew to a crowd of well below 250,000 consoles sold?

The Jaguar and 3DO aren't even in the same league. Just look at these lists of total released software (not counting recent homebrews) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atari_Jaguar_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3DO_Interactive_Multiplayer_games 50 Jaguar vs 162 3DO USA releases 50 (?) vs 263 worldwide releases That figure puts the Jaguar in the league of the 32X, even below the TG16. That is a huge failure of a dedicated home console. 50 some games really puts things into perspective. The 3DO being somewhere around 162 to 263 games, depending on included markets, puts it pretty close to the Sega Saturn and kinda the N64, which weren't that much of a failure honestly, the consoles are quite easy to come across. It wasn't until recently I took a closer look at the 3DO and honestly it's nowhere near the levels of failure seen in other consoles. The 3DO is a success compared to the Jaguar. But then, I own a 3DO and a big stack of CD-R games for it and no Jaguar, so I guess my interest is biased there. And yes I know "50" Jaguar games is probably wrong, depends entirely where you put the goalposts between retail releases while the console was supported by Atari Corp. and homebrew games.

So the real crippling of the Jaguar was 4th rate software developers being the only ones interested in the system.

Uh, wow, can't say I've seen anything like that before. It could be capacitors, but that kind of digital corruption looks more like a potential ram issue to me.

You misunderstand me, I've been told before that many Jag developers relied on the 68000 as much as possible as the main CPU instead of using primarily the Tom and Jerry chips as intended. By that I mean the other custom chips were used, but not at their full potential because lazy developers just used the 68000 as the main CPU, making the Jaguar more of a 16-bit machine in practice. Is this not true?

On paper, the Jaguar might be more technically advanced than the Neo Geo, but the Jag is handicapped by its complicated and buggy hardware design with those special custom chips. The Neo Geo was much simpler with just the 68000, Z80 and the few other processors, all specifically designed to quickly throw around sprites on the screen. The Neo Geo has no bitmap mode or anything, it just draws a ton of sprites of varying sizes as needed by the programmer. I understand the Jag can run code with just the 68000 and ignoring the custom CPU, but that cripples any power advantage the Jag could have had.

They don't, Neo Geo games just have a ton of ROM. The Neo Geo graphics and sound hardware is fast enough to pretty much just stream data direct from the cartridge, constantly paging in new data on the fly. The other big advantage in the Neo Geo is every processor has its own data bus on the cartridge slot. One for the 68000, one for the Z80, one for the YM2610 and three for the graphics chipset (16+16+8 bit). Consoles like the SNES, Genesis and Jaguar all have one data bus that everything in the system has to share in one way or another, that makes things slower at the cart slot.

Meanwhile in Canada, they are extremely hard to find and very expensive. Even in the USA it seems, Jaguars are very uncommon.

So there's quite a thriving homebrew and indie game scene for the Jaguar, lots of cartridge stuff being made, there's even an SD cartridge coming one day. But the consoles are getting more and more scarce, they're extremely expensive on places like eBay. I haven't been around in forever. Is there going to eventually be a new clone Jaguar system so the rest of us can get one and play some new Jag games? Is there any hope for a Jaguar clone? Is there a legal or technical limitation?

Honestly, that SpaceWorld 2000 tech demo looks more like a promotion for Super Smash Bros. Melee. The models for Link and Ganondorf look practically identical.