MaximRecoil

Your non sequitur is dismissed. First of all, you missed the point of the analogy, which was: something being wrong relative to industry norms. The analogy could have just as easily been: if a company makes metal water pipes intended for plumbing out of sterling silver rather than copper, that would be wrong relative to industry norms. Second, you aren't even correct in your attempted refutation of what you thought the point was. Moving the gas pedal to the left and the brake to the right (i.e., switching them around) is exactly analogous to moving the joystick to the right and the buttons to the left (i.e., switching them around). It isn't a case of turning anything, 180 degrees or otherwise. But again, that's not the point of the analogy anyway. "Yet to prove"? Is that a joke? No one in this thread has been able to name more than two arcade titles (both of which are Gauntlet games) that have a direction-control digital joystick on the right. I don't need to come up with numbers. Anyone who doesn't accept that arcade joysticks were normally on the left or in the center is simply out of touch with reality. Yes, it does, relative to the norm. That's a fact, simply by virtue of the definitions of the words I'm using. Facts aren't debatable. The rest of your post is yet another non sequitur. False, by definition. Say what? I didn't decide it exists. Do you know what a norm is? If something happens more often than not, it is the norm. I never said or suggested any such thing, and as such, this is a non sequitur from you. And of the ones which have a digital joystick, the vast majority of them have it on the left or in the center, thus, on the left or in the center is the norm, by definition. Any position that is not on the left or in the center is not the norm, by definition, thus it is wrong relative to the norm, by definition.

It is wrong relative to the industry norms, in the same way that a car manufacturer switching the gas and brake pedal around would be wrong relative to the industry norms. Some people may prefer the gas pedal to be "wrong-footed", but that is utterly irrelevant. It is wrong relative to the industry norms. That isn't an argument, that's a statement of fact. Yes, I have, i.e., the vast majority of arcade machines with a digital joystick have it on the left or in the center, thus those are the norms, by definition. Utterly irrelevant, as those thing have nothing to do with the definitions of "norm", wrong", and "relative to". The rest of your post is another non sequitur.

It is incorrect relative to the industry norm. I didn't invent the term "wrong-handed" with regard to arcade controls. It is used by people who work on, operate, or collect arcade machines, and usually refers to a case where an operator has "wrong-handed" the controls, i.e., when an operator has placed the joystick on the right and the buttons on the left. The most common case of this happening is when an operator mirrors the second-player controls. There's nothing special about that game which would call for placing the joysticks on the right. Gauntlet Legends is the same style of game, and Atari didn't wrong-hand those controls. "Wrong-handed" is fine, especially since it is a known term / has a known meaning. I don't doubt that it was intentional, but that's irrelevant. I already pointed out where Gauntlet and Gauntlet II rank on the list of highest-grossing arcade games. Plus it isn't even relevant because regardless of how much the game grossed, their joysticks are still on the wrong side relative to the industry norms.

Yes, unless you can name quite a few more arcade games with the joystick on the right. They're both pretty far down the list; #74 for Gauntlet and #108 for Gauntlet II. But regardless of that, the controls are wrong-handed because nearly all other arcade games which use a joystick have it on the left or in the center. How many can you name that have it on the right like Gauntlet and Gauntlet II? This is a non sequitur. Gauntlet's controls are wrong-handed relative to the arcade industry norm. The design team's reasoning would only be relevant if the joysticks in Gauntlet had an unusual function (like with Arm Wrestling's joystick), but they don't. They just make the player's avatar move in the direction the player wants to go, like in countless other arcade games.

You agree with what? I never said that. There is no meaningful difference in the amount of dexterity required for a 2- or 4-way joystick. Some 8-way joysticks requires a little extra dexterity because they don't have a restrictor to restrict your movement to one of the 8 directions; the most common exception being the Nintendo 8-way joystick like you'll find on Vs. system and Playchoice games. Those have a restrictor like this, so there is no way to miss the diagonals or any other direction. A digital joystick is just a lever-activated on/off switch, and all switches are activated from a central position with a short, straight-line movement, so it's even less "complex" movement patterns than shifting a standard transmission in a vehicle. Analog joysticks need a lot more dexterity than digital joysticks, because there are infinite directions and infinite graduations of movement that you have to control. All of the games I mentioned in my last post use a joystick, including Space Invaders: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/generation-grew-up-space-invaders-now-gaming-children-their-own-180951432/?no-ist Only the version that Bally/Midway was licensed to manufacture used two buttons in place of the joystick. It was Taito's game, and all of the machines they manufactured used a joystick on the left, as you can see in the above link. Actual directional control was on the left. The thrust button, which was on the right, is the equivalent of a gas pedal in a racing game, which requires so little dexterity that it can be perfectly operated with a foot. Your post #84 doesn't support this assertion. For one thing, you only mentioned Intellivision in that post, and one informal poll on a forum doesn't establish any facts. But regardless of that, the fact remains that they didn't commit the joystick to the right side for those systems. It seems that the only major console which committed the joystick to the right side was the Atari 2600. Gauntlet and its sequel are anomalies. You haven't named any others that wrong-handed a direction-control joystick. There's nothing debatable about the decision. The decision was to put the joystick/D-pad on the left; that's a fact. I've already confuted this false assertion of yours, but I'll repeat: in order for something to be "backwards", it has to be the opposite of the norm. There was no joystick-on-the-right norm, ever. With regard to digital joysticks, the norm for both consoles and arcade games, has always been on the left or in the center (and being in the center isn't the opposite of being on the left). They already had precedent for joysticks on the left, including the highest-grossing arcade game of all time (according to some sources): Space Invaders.

Atari apparently believed it to be a mistake, which is why they corrected it with the third Gauntlet game. And if right-side joysticks for player movement are such a good idea, why wasn't it like that on lots of arcade machines other than the first two Gauntlets? When they had room for it, and not even always at that (e.g., most of Nintendo's classic arcade games had room for an ambidextrous layout, but they put the joystick on the left; the same goes for e.g., Galaxian, Galaga, and Space Invaders). With the exception of the first two Gauntlets (and maybe some others that no one in this thread can recall), when they had to commit to one side or the other for a player-movement joystick, they went with the left side. NES influence didn't have anything to do with it. As I said above, when they committed to one side or the other, they usually went with the left side for player-movement joysticks, and that goes back at least as far as Space Invaders (1978), which was the game that kicked off the Golden Era of arcade games. Defender (1981) was one of the most successful arcade games in history, and its joystick was on the left. Donkey Kong (1981) was also one of the most successful arcade games in history, which was also pre-NES of course. Even if we look at pre-NES consoles, how many of them committed the joystick to the right side? There was the Atari 2600 of course, but how many others? the Intellivision, ColecoVision, Atari 5200, and Atari 7800 (which is technically pre-NES) all had ambidextrous controllers. The Vectrex (1982) committed its joystick to the left side, which was not only pre-NES, but pre-Famicom as well.

Which means they stick you with the "emulator on your PC monitor" look, which sucked even in 1997.

I'm interested in hearing the results of that. You will no doubt get a picture of some sort, but the question is: is the pillarboxing during gameplay part of the video signal or not? If it's part of the video signal, then you will get "gutterboxing" on your TV, i.e., the NES mini will send the TV an already-pillarboxed 16:9 AR video signal, which will then be letterboxed on a 4:3 TV. If the pillarboxing isn't a part of the video signal, then you will get a letterboxed menu and fullscreen gameplay, which would be perfect.

The Atari 2600 allows you to fine-tune the RF frequency from the console itself. I still get noticeable RF interference patterns with my "heavy sixer", no matter what. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about static/snow like you get with a loose connection or weak signal; I'm talking about subtle, random motion embedded in the colors of the graphics, with it being more noticeable on lighter colors, and not present at all in black. My TV was made in 2006 and has a digital tuner, but it isn't the TV's fault, because my Atari 7800 has far less interference patterns, and my front-loader NES has practically zero interference patterns. Of course, the front-loader NES has composite video output, so that's what I use, but I have tested it with RF on that TV, and it's almost as good as its composite output. The RF output from the NES is so good, that it's actually better than the composite output from most other consoles, such as the Sega Genesis.

You might be thinking of SED, which was abandoned. It would have been perfect for high resolution content, but it wouldn't have been any better for classic games than a regular high resolution CRT (such as a CRT PC monitor). The perfect TV for ~240p video games, from my perspective, would be a 32" or 36" standard resolution (~15 kHz) CRT with a standard spherical tube + shadow mask (not a flat tube + aperture grille), along with a full range of analog video inputs: RF, composite, S-video, component, and RGB. The TV I have is pretty close to that; it's 32" and the only thing it's missing is RGB input. It isn't a high-end TV; it is an RCA 32V430T that I bought new in 2006 at Wal-mart for something like $250. But it had, and still has, a beautiful picture straight out of the box: very sharp/focused, colors dead on, very bright/vibrant. It is still like new because I haven't used it very much. Mostly, I only use it when I'm in the mood to play old video games, which amounts to maybe a few weeks out of each year. It will never wear out in my lifetime (though premature failure is a possibility with anything). At some point I may have to re-cap the chassis, but that's no problem; I've done that plenty of times with old arcade monitors. Technically, I can fix anything on a CRT display, as long as I can find the parts (which is often easier said than done).

No. Movies are a recording; ROMs are not. The hardware interprets instructions from the ROM, and changes in hardware leads to changes in interpretation. As an analogy, if you watch a recording of someone playing e.g., SMB on an original NES, you are watching a classic game being played regardless of whether you are watching it in a VCR or on YouTube. As an illustration of how emulators introduce fundamental differences, even among themselves, try to play back someone's MAME INP file in a different version of MAME than they used to record it. In most cases, it will lose sync and you won't be able to see the game as it was originally played. You'll soon see the player's avatar start doing nonsensical things and then die. Re-edited movies constitute different versions, and only the original/official release will ever be the classic version. Picture and/or sound quality loss isn't a content/structural change, and it's not strictly a recent thing either. Most of the movies shot on 35mm film, in addition to the normal 35mm film prints, were also printed to e.g., 16mm film for certain venues, such as military bases and in-flight movies on commercial airplanes. 16mm film prints made from 35mm negatives obviously have substantial picture quality loss compared to 35mm film prints made from 35mm negatives. With ROMs running on emulated hardware, the changes to the game are structural/content changes. These changes are effectively no different than making a ROM hack and running it on original hardware; not the classic game either way. It's theoretically possible, though I don't know how anyone would go about proving it to be the case.

Since there's no such thing as perfect emulation of NES hardware, nor of any classic console hardware for that matter, there are inevitable differences in the game compared to the real thing, and those differences do affect "the journey or the destination" to varying degrees. And even if perfect emulation were achieved, it still would be emulation, thus, not the real thing by definition. The term "classic" applies to the real thing. Also, you shouldn't try to make analogies; this invalid one of yours shows that you don't understand the concept of an analogy. Furthermore, you especially shouldn't try to make car-related analogies. For example, if your engine is a high-compression engine such as an early Chrysler 340 (10.5:1) or any year of 426 Hemi (10.25:1), if you feed it today's pump gas, even the highest octane available, it will definitely affect the journey, because you'll have a bunch of pinging (detonation) going on and loss of power from your engine compared to the highest grades of leaded gasoline from the past. You'll also lose power eventually from wear and tear on your soft exhaust valve seats due to a lack of lubrication from leaded gas.

No, ROMs are not the game. As I already said, ROMs by themselves do nothing. ROMs + the hardware = the game. And of course it matters what it is being played on. If it didn't, everyone wanting to emulate NES hardware would still be using Nesticle, the first release, no less. A reproduction/simulation/emulation of a classic isn't a classic. The classic is the original. Do you really think that, for example, a reproduction of a classic car is also a classic car? You can build an imitation of e.g., a '32 Ford coupe, or a '65 Ford Mustang, or a '57 Chevrolet Belair, or a 1970 Dodge Challenger, from scratch, using all new reproduction or otherwise aftermarket / non-original parts, and that includes using reproduction frames / rolling chassis. Would they be classic cars just because they look a lot like one? Emulation, by definition, is not the real thing. The term "classic" doesn't apply to emulations/simulations/imitations/reproductions/etc., though some marketing departments may misapply the term. It properly applies to the real thing.

How about you establish your claimed sales figures? More comical irony, coming from the person who "fired the first shot" so to speak. Your tacit concession on the whole matter is noted. The ROM without hardware does nothing. In the case of emulation, the hardware is simulated. This causes differences in the game, some more noticeable than others. The "NES Classic Mini" delivers less-than-100% faithful reproductions of classic games. Since when does the term "classic" refer to reproductions, especially ones that aren't even 100% accurate?

Emulation is at odds with the term "classic games". Because it isn't running the real hardware, it is a reproduction of a classic game, and not a 100% faithful one either. It is like a reproduction of a classic car; it may look like a classic car, but it isn't.

Yet another non sequitur from you; consider it dismissed. Also, Monkey See, Monkey Do: Part II Same as above, and some more comical irony here as well. How do you know what their sales figures are? Selling in the millions over the past year would make AtGames a major force in the video game industry.

It has to do with the post I replied to, and it has to do with the NES mini's inability to connect to an SD CRT out of the box, which is how the topic of SD CRT vs. HDTV came up in the first place. You think there's millions of people still using classic consoles from decades ago on any sort of regular basis? If that's true, why aren't any major companies making new games for them? Millions of people represents a huge market.

By using a word according to your own made-up definition rather than a generally accepted definition, you are tacitly submitting a request to redefine the word. Your tacit request remains denied. Also, a cursory glance at the history of traditional drawings/paintings (i.e., non-CGI) will show that people generally prefer the aesthetics of ~realistic shading and curves to a collection of large squares aligned to a grid, to represent people and objects. Do you think you could find many people who think this is an aesthetic improvement?

Your tacit request to redefine the following terms ... "Odd" "Aneurysm" "Hipster" ... is denied.

Your non sequitur is dismissed (i.e., they aren't small differences, "narcissism" isn't even an applicable term in your sentence, and neither is non sequitur, much less "non sequitor"). Also, monkey see, monkey do. You don't get to redefine the terms "OCD", "meltdown", or "quirks". Yes, there are people who think that images that look like a collection of large squares on a grid look better than images that resemble traditional artwork with shading and curves. Their sense of aesthetics is odd, to say the least.

This is the first I've heard of QLED, but being an emissive display (i.e., generating its own light) is the right way to go. The backlit nature of LCDs is what causes their weird/unnatural image characteristics that I hate. It's too bad that SED was abandoned; that would have been an excellent HD display technology, at least in terms of image characteristics and longevity of the emissive material (it used red, green, and blue phosphors, the same as CRTs). But no HD digital display will ever look good with classic video games, because they are all inherently fixed-resolution, and that resolution is fixed at a point way beyond the ~240p of classic video games. That means that some sort of processing is required to make the low-resolution graphics fill a high-resolution screen. "Nearest neighbor" does the least amount of damage, because it simply multiplies the pixels without applying something like a bilinear filter, but it enlarges/magnifies the Lego blocks effect. All of the CRT effects I have seen are crap, because, for one, there is a lot more going on with the image from a CRT than just scanlines and/or "RGB triad" patterns, and for another thing, the ones I've seen are semi-transparent overlays, which dims the picture. LCDs already lack the brightness/vibrancy/glow of CRTs, and to dim the picture with an overlay makes it even worse. Convincing CRT effects would require a good emissive display technology to start with (it will never happen with LCDs), and would require the effect to be active, rather than a passive overlay. The easiest type of CRT to mimic would be monochrome ("black & white"), because they have no shadow mask / aperture grille. The shadow mask of a full-color CRT makes the image very complex, due to the way the RGB triad groups of phosphors interact with it. This is especially apparent when playing a classic arcade game, because you are so close to the screen, and its high-quality RGB connection gives the purest possible analog image. If someone can create a real-time processing algorithm that can faithfully mimic that, then hats off to them, but they will need a very impressive underlying display technology in order for it to be convincing. By the way, they would also have to take into account the optical effects of viewing through relatively thick spherical glass. Of course, the easiest thing to do, if you have original classic videogame hardware, is to simply use a 15 kHz CRT. A real CRT doesn't have any problems generating convincing "CRT effects", obviously. If building an emulation machine, there are also various ways to output a 15 kHz analog signal which is compatible with 15 kHz CRTs, such as the ArcadeVGA video card from Ultimarc, or various software solutions such as Soft-15KHz. You'd need an RGB CRT monitor for those solutions though, such as an arcade monitor or presentation monitor. The RGB signal can be converted to component (YPbPr) without doing any significant damage, but converting to composite is tricky; few people have ever come up with really good composite video circuitry. The best such circuitry that I've ever seen came from Nintendo with their front-loader NES and SNES. With regard to this new mini-NES, based on the gameplay videos I've seen of it on YouTube, it looks like they at least they took the non-destructive "nearest neighbor" approach with the upscaling to HD (except in the case of their crappy "CRT effect" display option), though it's hard to say for sure from YouTube videos, because open-air videos of a screen, with lossy compression, introduce multiple types of losses. So if you chose the "pixel perfect" display option you should have undamaged video output from the HDMI port to work with, which could cleanly be converted to 15 kHz RGB, YPbPr, S-video, or composite, with the right circuitry. If the pillarboxing is burned in, you'd need additional circuitry to deal with that (or, with TVs/monitors which offer vertical and horizontal width adjustments, you could deal with it by using those).

I remember that (I was 11 at the time). The commercials for the NES and the SMS appeared on TV at around the same time. A lot of people think of the NES as having been released in the US in 1985, because that's the year most commonly cited, but it wasn't released nationwide until September 1986. The late '85 and early '86 releases were only to test markets. Judging from the commercials, I wanted an SMS. Both systems showed impressive graphics in their commercials, far beyond any console graphics I'd ever seen, but the SMS was sleek and black; looked like a real console, while the NES was a boring gray box. If I'd had parents who would buy me expensive toys at the drop of a hat, I would have been an early SMS adopter. A couple of weeks after I first saw the NES and SMS commercials, I went to stay at my cousin's house for the weekend (he's the same age as I am, and lived a couple of towns away). When I got there my aunt said he was upstairs in his room playing video games, so I headed up there expecting him to be playing ColecoVision. Imagine my surprise when I saw him with an NES. At first I picked it apart, criticizing its appearance, the childish looking Super Mario Brothers game he was playing, and asking him why he didn't get a Sega Master System instead. But then I saw his Excitebike cartridge. That instantly struck a chord with me because Vs. Excitebike was one of the games I had been playing regularly at the arcade at the time, and I was quite good at it. I wasn't expecting much from it, because in my experience, arcade ports on home consoles had always been a big disappointment. When he turned it on and I saw that it was the same game, I was amazed (I didn't know at the time the story behind Nintendo's Vs. arcade machines, i.e., that they were just using the NES/Famicom hardware platform). Suddenly I had a whole new outlook on Mike's homely little NES. As I watched Mike play SMB, it started to intrigue me. This seemed like a big expansive game with hidden items and areas to explore, like nothing I'd ever seen before. I had a lot of fun just watching Mike play and suggesting different things for him to try. For some reason he never thought of doing anything other than going to the right. He had never even tried going down a pipe until I suggested it. He would hit the block which produces a vine, but then he'd just keep running; it never even occurred to him that he could climb it. He used to break bricks in the ceiling of the underground levels, but never tried jumping up there. My suggestion that he jump up there led to the most interesting discovery of all: warp zones. So after that weekend I wanted an NES in the worst way, and had forgotten all about the SMS. I didn't actually get an NES until '88, and I got an Atari 7800 before that. I've never actually played an SMS, nor have I ever even seen one in real life.

I'm not arguing with myself here. Every one of my posts has been a reply to, and relevant to, someone else's post on this thread. Also, you don't get to redefine the word "flaming", and your entire post is a non sequitur. No one is preventing you from "talking about how there's a serious risk that the NES Classic might get a really low print run".

A bad flyback transformer can cause the picture to jump or "snap", which happens if a crack develops in the housing. High voltage leaks through the crack to ground, briefly disturbing the picture as it does so. I replaced the flybacks in the pair of Nintendo/Sanyo 20-Z2AWs in my Super Punch-Out machine; they were both cracked and causing the picture to snap every 30 seconds or so. Fortunately they make reproduction flybacks for the Nintendo/Sanyo arcade monitors, though they aren't exactly plug-n-play. They just used a random flyback transformer housing which has been manufactured to be electrically compatible with the Nintendo/Sanyo chassis. You have to do some "hacking" to install them, but they work fine. The screen and/or focus pot can go bad too, which could cause a blurry picture and/or way too much brightness or not enough brightness

Yes, the lowest common denominator loves it, and from the perspective of cheap glorified calculator screen manufacturers, they are the ones who count.