CatPix

Your belt may be loose and gripping occasionnally. I'dd definitively start by this, checking if the belt is nicely fitted and doesn't slide on the drum.

I think it was kiinda predictible. The 3DS was built upon the DS line, which is from 2004. Sure the 3DS is more powerful than the DS, and the N3DS improve on, but basically, at core it's a 15 years old system with tiny screens (in resolution) a dual-display system that most developers don't know what to do with, and a 3D function that most people never got interested about. Plus DS games are priced low so they sell (save for Nintendo games); that mean less money put into development. And ironically the skills to make a readible game into a 400*240 resolution are getting lost because.. well who, save for Nintendo still use such low resolution in 2020, or even back in 2016? Also, the Wii U failure probably pulled many people from developing for Nintendo, assuming that they would either pull off the console market completely, or that it would force Nintendo in renewing their portable console (their strong point) early. The N3DS was a kind of improvement in that way, but of course as of 2016 the news about the Switch hybrid status was in the news so most developpers decided to halt any work on the 3DS to wait and see. The Switch Lite is the ultimate nail in the 3DS coffin; it's on life support....

Definitively sounds like your drive belt broke and the motor is running empty-loaded.

500 terawatts blue LED smells "100% Chinese conceived" at 100 kilometres... Yuck. That and cheesy white transparent plastic.

A material that need to be flexible and keep tension? Barely possible. Your best bet to make this part of the FDS failure-proof would be to replace the belt with a train of gears. About that, I had replaced my belt about 4/5 years ago and had to replace it. Though I gave my Twin to a guy so he could RGB mod it and he kept it almos a year, so it's possible that the belt took a bad shape and then snapped when I tried to use the FDS again.

Have you cleaned the remains of the old belt? Sometime small bits get stick, or melted gunk remains and cause such jams. Also if it's clean, make sure to push the belt all the way down on the larger spool. There isn't any groove on it so if your belt is a little low on the spool it will slide out.

It's not the color even if I think the grey one is really dull. But the general design.

I always find the GC cute, and that gamepad, save for the near useless D-pad, is excellent... but the system itself, while not bad at all, is just... strange. It lack a bit of finish and polish to me. I mean it's well done, well built, but it's like someone stepped in the design bureau, looked at a prototype and said "Stop now, I want that".

Tastes and colors heh. I find the fat PS3 super classy and deluxe looking, contrary to the dull dust-gathering second model and the Atari-like super slim. The Xbox 360 looks clunky and toyish, and the Chinese fake redesign didn't help. The difference in sales for this generation might be simply explained by the price difference at lauch and later (I mean 600€ for a PS3? WOW? the PS2 was something like 450€ at launch and merely 2 yers later it was sold for 299€) and the hectic launch failures that probably detered many people, and PC hardware getting several time better than console so much that even a budget PC would beat the not-even-yet-released consoles. I remember that PC gaming took over again around that time, with more and more games series that were once console exclusive coming to PC and/or more games that would come to PC; ironically Microsoft making their Xbox360 gamepad Windows-compatible also helped alot by finally providing PC with a definitive standard for gamepad (although in the years prior, pseudo-PS2 pads were kinda standardized). Not counting the Xbox and a few PS2 HDD-compatible games, this was also the first generation of console with a storage buil-in and allowing to game and system updates. And combine this with slow connections at the time meant that people also though that, if they had to go through updates for their system and games they might as well got those on PC, since most games (save for purely online games of course) won't prevent you to play the game until it's upgraded.

Yes, that's it. It's un full working order, despite what I read that the backlight or digitizer might be faulty. I do'nt have the fancy case or the better stylus for it but heh. I mean the topic says "PDA" and all the systems named are more "emulator consoles" so far...

I found a Palm Vx in a bin recently. It's pristine. Even the support was threw out with it. And the battery still decently works I need to set up a computer with a COM port to load games on it.

Yeah, it's possible that on weaker systems the game designers may have set up pre-made patterns to make sure that each game was winnable in some way. Designing a randomizer that will check if the game is alway winnable is time consuming and running it is time consuming too (for the player). And running one that is random is easier, the programmers counting on the fact that people would assume they chose a wrong path instead of running into an impossible game.

Here my own collection. Not alot of games for I mostly buy them in lots and most lots are filled with unsellable disks (random sports ones). I got out and picked up interesting neat box ones as well tho.

As if we were THAT kind of people. Really? How little you think of us.

My father played some Pong with us, and that was the end of it. Granted we never had much 2 players games on the NES that could interest my father and by the SNES era well neither him or us were interested in playing together. My grand mother played Duck Hunt for she liked watching the dog laughing but that wasn't really 2 players.

I need to replay it. I got stuck in the very first ice labyrinth, couldn't get to find the exit even with a soluce. I ran and ran and ran in the level for about 10 minutes, gave up, put it back on the shelf, never touched it since. I do'nt mind difficulty in a video game but heck a good first level must guide you so you understand what you're supposed to do. I'm not a fan of the survival-horror genre where you have force chase sessions (exception might be SH Downpour, but those parts are short and rather easy and progressively getting harder, giving you ample time to understand them) either, so that didn't help me getting into it.

The PC-Engine sales in France were from a private importer, Sodipeng (an emanation of either UbiSoft or Guillemot (same family 😛 )) and had little relationship with NEC-Hudson other than them aknowledging they existed. But NEC-Hudson couldn't give any order to Sodipeng, and they were going "You're on your own, we will not provide any guarantee or support on you in any way shape or form".

I find the Wii to be okay... as long as games didn't relied to use motion detection to death (And yes, Skyward Sword counts... Damn that last boss fight.. I had to CHANGE HAND to keep playing and beat it.. and I just ended up wiggling the Wiimote like a dumbass). It had a nice share of decent games and many accepted either regular controls or GameCube controllers so props to that. It's still a console I have an abysmal lack of games for it, probably the lower number of games for it of all the mainstream consoles I own. But the few I picked up were good. It has surprisingly good survival horror games, save for the Silent Hill one.

You got the general picture right, tho, the SNES did okay here. But again it's a "country by country" basis, but general figures for the Megadrive and SNES in Europe are about 7 millions (MD) to 8,5 millions (SNES) so it was far from "poorly" globally. But some countries got it more than other. If I recall right, the Megadrive had a strong headstart in France but ultimately sales figures were 1/3 Megadrive and 2/3 SNES, so there are probably countries in Europe with the opposite figures. Though it's likely that SNES sales picked up late; Sega cut all Megadrive supplies here in 1996 while Nintendo kept selling SNES games as late as 1998 (pretty sure to have seen a few sold under cheap blisters in 1999 or early 2000 but those may have been destocker sales).

It's... difficult to sum up, probably because each country has their own story. For example in the UK the NES went under the radar, selling shy of a million consoles. In France, while it didn't sold wonders, Nintendo announced in 1992 having sold 3.5 millions NES. One console that worker wonder, even surprising Nintendo themselves, was the Game Boy, that sold like hot cakes in France. Not sure about other countries. The computer era in Europe pretty much died around 1990. 8-bits computers were affordable, but 16 bits weren't; and by the time they were cheaper, well it was 1990 and they were going outdated (for the ST, with too little too late efforts put in) or were going even more expensive than before (Amiga). So there was a SNES vs Megadrive fight. Though it was probably less heated than in the US, as the Megadrive arrived later, and Nintendo rushed the SNES to Europe (as so much as (thankfully ) using the Japanese shells for the PAL market -they didn't had enough capacity to produce US shells for the US and Europe). And since the Master System was a thing here, there was no Nintendon't ad (the fact that it only works in English doesn't help either ) Basically it was a rather short fight between 1991 and 1995 when the Playstation came and steamrolled over everyone. Sega didn't alienated any seller in Europe like in the US, but as you pointed out, Sega basically booted themselves out of competition by keeping expected games in Japan. European gaming magazines were featuring Japanese games which filled people with hope... and disapointment later.

Yeah, but the LED display says "PC" and that is cool

Does it come with a mini Mega-CD and 32X or are those third party add-ons/decorations? This is cool!

Gotta say it does. I'm not a huge fan of skeleton cases usually because most consoles are just huge hunks of metal, but the Saturn isn't. And it's not hollow either, there is stuff everywhere. So that's a good point to it, and yeah, the "This is cool" Tetris-like shaped text is the kind of cheesy design thing my brains goes "Awwww that is cute, they tried". Also, that's the second version with the round button. Much better

Indeed. XT, AT and ATX would be "good enough" bounds too. We have to refine more because really 32 bits goes from 1985 (the 386) to 2000 (Pentium 4; though really 64 bits CPU were more a thing around 2005 form what I recall) XT being basically 8086 based, original IBM PC tech. AT spawns the whole 286 to 486/early Pentium era (though for the sake of separating things we could say up to 486). Then after that we delve into Pentium I and II era, then Windows 95/98 then 2000 and XP.

I think there was a thread about computers on the computer side of things. So... The Micral 80-22 Who doesn't want a Star Trek computer at home? now you can! The Nordmende Teleplay European licenced Channel F with a mad twist on the US Woodgrain style LEMZ AGAT This Soviet computer designed around 1985 was nothing but an Apple II clone. Despite this fact, the Soviet Union worked to sell it internationally through ELORG (the State company that also sold Tetris to the world). The projected price of 25 000$ was seen as a deal breaker, even with the few improvements made. The red (HAH) version here was the first model and it's basically unseen outside of BITD pictures; the more common models are gray or black which isn't as cool as this (The logo is less Trekkie too) The Radofin 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System : First European-made console. Like the Nordmende, you can see that BITD for "advanced" electronics, Woodgrain was banned , and white 70's plastic was more the thing. Small is cute, they say : I agree. The 2600 with the metal band and rainbow stripe all along is very cute and pretty! And no cheesy woodgrain Some may see it as clunky. I agree. But my nerdy side says that it can be good-looking too : A suitcase of 8 bits fun! For further consoles... weeell I think that it's gonna be a tie with the usual suspects so... Might stop here for now.