Jagasian

The Neo Team is developing a new SNES / Super Famicom flash kit. It can write SNES and Super Famicom games written to special game cart by attaching the cart to your PC via a USB cable and selecting a SNES or Super Famicom ROM. Multiple ROMs can be written to the cart at the same time, and the cart can be rewritten over and over again. Various models will be available, from 128Mb up to 1Gb in size. From the looks of the picture, the card can have a DSP1 game attached to the back, in order to support DSP1 games: Super Mario Kart, Pilotwings, etc. More details can be found here.

I am going to buy an Xbox 360 just for Oblivion. Of course, I am going to wait until I can walk into a store and buy both, without pre-ordering or waiting in long lines.

Didn't Sony just announce that BluRay will not downsample on analog HDTVs? If something is so close to completion, why is the specification not finalized? http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060314-6377.html

Sony still hasn't even finished designing the specification for BluRay. There is no way in hell that the PS3 will hit stores earlier than 2007. It is simply stupid to believe that something as complicated as the PS3 can go from a design on paper to store shelves in less than a year.

It depends on the quality and accuracy of the emulation. When a system has a really good emulator, such as the NES with emulators such as Nestopia and Nintendulator, I am more willing to play an emulator. But most systems have terribly inaccurate emulators, and therefore for the rest, I usually play the real thing.

Your best bet for NES emulation, as of now, on Linux is Mednafen, which is based on FCE Ultra. Even better, the emulator supports other systems: Atari Lynx, GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, NES, PC Engine(TurboGrafx 16), and SuperGrafx http://mednafen.com/

I'd recommend waiting for Neoflash's upcoming Genesis flash kit, as it will be USB-only, and support more features than Tototek's cart: http://www.neoflash.com/

The Messiah wireless controllers for the NES have a useless D-pad. I was an early adopter of their wireless controllers. Tests show that the NEX has not improved compatibility or accuracy in any way compared to the Yobo aka Neo Fami, which cost half as much as a NEX. Messiah is just like all of the other pirate NES clone making companies, except that their company is founded in the USA, even though all production is done in the same factories as the Asian pirate companies. Furthermore, apparently Messiah's marketing is better than said pirate companies, because there is a hardcore camp of die-hard NEX supports that fail to see any issues with the way the system was marketed or any issues with the technical aspects of the system.

Is that why Messiah uses the same crappy NES-on-a-chip designed and sold by the aformentioned Chinese pirate companies? Why would you claim that they care more about the NES platform, when they are doing the exact same thing as other Famiclone manufacturers? Both use the same core part, both manfacture in China. Oh and don't bring up the fact that the NEX looks cool because there have been many mini-toaster NES looking clones in the past. They occassionally pop up on Ebay.

I tried to remove the circuit board from the plastic case, but it is very tightly bolted, not screwed to the case and I was unable to even get the bolts to budge. Do you have pictures of your mod? Exactly where did you cut the original video cable to do the splice? Do you still have to use an RF switch box? Is it possible to replace the cable with an RF coax cable?

How is the original video cable attached to the system's circuit board? Is it soldered? I think that I will just attach an entirely new cable to the system... a really long one, so that I can sit far back with the system. Can it be powered off of batteries alone?

I was born in 1979, so the Odyssey 2000 is a bit before my time. However, I bumped into an Odyssey 2000 in a thrift store today and it only cost $5 USD, so I figured I would see if I could give it a home. The box came with the system and nothing else, no power cable and no RF switch. It apparently can use large D sized batteries for power in addition to an AC/DC power adapter. The thing that worries me is the video cable. The end tip of it doesn't look familiar, so either it is broken or it is missing some kind of an RF switch box. Can somebody please help me out? I need pictures and directions for hooking this baby up to my television. I am eager to experience true retro gaming, and I am willing to do the work to get this up and running, as that is part of the fun. Does anybody have pictures of the end tip of their Odyssey's video cable, as well as pictures of the RF switch box?

Nesticle had many advantages, but accurate emulation of the NES and high game compatibility was not one of them. In order to achieve these things, you need more processing power, which is why many of today's best emulators require power PCs to run at full speed - they are doing a better job of accurate emulating the NES.

Long live Nestopia!

You should send your NES into Omne's OSG shop to have it fixed. Hell, you could try to see if Nintendo's official shops are willing to fix your NES, as they use a better quality 72-pin replacement part.

It is still a NOAC based clone, so it will have worse game compatiblity and accuracy than a modern emulator for your PC. Hence it is no replacement for a real NES.

Randall and Scream and Fly, Post your suggested improvements over at the Nestopia forum: http://nestopia.sourceforge.net/ That way the developers are sure to read the suggestions.

Nestopia isn't becoming one of the best NES emulators out there. It is one of the best emulators out there. The only other emulator that rivals Nestopia is Nintendulator. I just wish Nestopia would get an official Linux port because us Linux users are still stuck with FCE Ultra

I remember a similar review of the guts of the Yobo. Thanks for posting it. The main problem with all of these unlicensed clones really has to do with the buggy NOAC. The poor built quality of cheap Chinese electronics is what makes these clones break easily, but if it doesn't break, all of the other problems it has are basically due to the NOAC.

They need to start selling these things at Gamestop, I guess. Though honestly, if somebody would spend the time to make a new accurate NOAC, we could all be buying a $15 new top loader with perfect audio, video, and game compatibility. NOACs are cheap to produce because the fabrication process itself is very cheap: the chip is fabricated directly ontop of the circuit board and then a glob of epoxy is placed ontop of it. Furthermore, everything is accomplished inside that inexpensive chip. So a NOAC isn't necessarily bad, the problem is that all NOACs currently in existence are apparently based on the same buggy design. If only somebody would hire Kevtris to make a new NOAC design, then we would be free from this mess. In the beginning, I honestly thought that Messiah was creating a new NOAC design. Hence the sense of betrayal.

NES World updated their front page again, with another comment regarding the NEX and yet another NOAC based clone, the $15 Retrocon mentioned above. They also comment on the fact that some pro-NEX crusaders have been sending him emails defending the NEX. Hey, don't look at me, I agree that the NEX was a flop . Why hype up what is nothing more than yet another NOAC based clone? Until then, here is the latest NES World update quoted below:

I remarked earlier that slick0 from NESDev is working on a do-it-yourself mod for fixing one of the problems with the NEX's audio. However, Kevtris replied to the thread over at NESDev yesterday, explaining how such a mod is impossible for NOAC based systems. http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=698&start=90 The only way to fix the problem is to fix the internals of the NOAC itself, which would require refabricating the NOAC, and since the NOAC is a glop-top chip that is fabricated directly on the surface of the printed circuit board, this would mean that all of the internals of the NEX would have to be scrapped.

Try to get a new official Nintendo replacement connector. Also, do NOT throw away your old connector, even if you don't want to use it anymore. Ebay it, give it away, whatever. There are people that will work their magic until it works correctly. The unlicensed replacement parts suck compared to a real Nintendo connector.

Do you have a working NES or clone to test out your carts with? It takes two to tango, so to speak, and hence the system and the game need to be functioning properly.

Somebody at NESDev was working on a do-it-yourself hardware mod to fix the sound channel problem. I haven't heard anything yet though. The guy's name is slick0 and his post is the second from the bottom: http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=698