Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?

[Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?]

This has to be some cleverly planned social experiment.

 

It just has to be.

[Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?]

It's one hilarious joke after another!

 

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

Call it Bob.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

 

 

hah niiiice. I like that artwork a ton :-)

 

The picture was pinched off Asteroids. The logo I made to look stupidly 80s.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

I made this just because I'm excited how this might open new avenues for homebrewers to get their games out there.

 

And I had nothing better to do.

 

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

3D printed cart cases could be used perhaps. We used a 3D printed CD case for Atlantean on the PCE/TG16 so extending that to small carts that hold an SD card could work, depending on how much space there is when inserted.

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

I'd personally be happy with an 8-bit version and a 16-bit version sold separately if it brings the costs down. It would be great if it was sold with a certain amount of focus on appealing to homebrew developers.

 

Edit: I'd like to add a question. I know very little about the technical side of things, but could this be made with modes that allow increased sprites/less flicker, turbo (speed) modes and other (optional) hardware 'fixes'? Or is it a case of 'it works how it works' for accuracy?

[What it takes to make a retro-console moderately successful]

I like this idea and a lot of the suggestions here. I think the best approach would be to treat this as a hobbyist machine for individuals or small teams of homebrew developers who just want to tinker with something new for fun - as long as there are suitable dev tools and it is easy to code for. I do art for Aetherbyte and coding for the PC Engine is painful and long winded.

 

I can see why a part of the retro community wouldn't care about this - there are many for whom the 'retro' style is not enough if it doesn't come with the specific emotional attachment of the console they grew up with. But for some of us, it's a great 'what if...' scenario. Like 'What if <insert machine name here> had larger sprites/more sprites/a faster CPU etc while maintaining the visual aesthetic of the era, and being modern-day friendly with HDMI and downloadable games.' That kind of thing appeals to me more so than a lot of 'modern-retro' that has big pixels, thousands of colours and throws on visual effects that you could have never dreamed of back in the 80s.

 

I guess the hardest thing is knowing exactly where the sweet spot is, and this would vary wildly from person to person. Do you go for NES? SMS? VCS? PCE? It's quite a wide range and hitting it right would be important.

[How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS]

 

That's what classic gaming and genuine retro gaming is all about when talked about in context of new and modern hardware. How well can it do the old stuff. The original stuff. Not this fake neo-retro bullshit that seems all the rage among marketing types. Do they actually think we like that crap?

 

Sorry, I misposted this in the wrong thread because I'm a bit dim!

[FPGA Based Videogame System]

This thread seems to be weighted heavily in terms of just a clone system for playing ROMs but I'd be much more interested in this suggestion that kevtris floated:

 

A few more thoughts about some kind of new "retro" videogame system I thought I would throw out there:

 

I was thinking the other day if you really wanted to make some kind of "new" retro videogame system, the best approach might be to start with a retro-style video interface, including sprites, background layers, and all the usual trappings of say the SNES, genesis, etc. but the twist is integrating a modern CPU such as an ARM with it. Think 256+ sprites per scanline, any size, 8 background layers with 'mode 7' style rotation/scaling, and with 32 channel 16 bit stereo digital audio.

 

This would allow for retro-style games, done in a more original form but with a modern CPU to make coding it so much easier and faster. The sprite and background engines would be fairly decent, and more capable of either SNES or genesis, while still operating in a similar same manner. That would kind of "enforce" the look and feel of the games while giving it most of the modern day conveniences like fast CPUs and large storage capabilities and being able to write your code in i.e. C.

 

This would be especially great if there was a universal palette for sprites & backgrounds, or perhaps one palette for each. I do a lot of art for the PCE/TG16 and sorting palettes is just one of those headaches that makes development more painful than it should be.

 

 

If there was a new console that was somewhere between the NES and PCE in terms of resolution and colours, but had the extra bells and whistles mentioned and was easy to code for, I would be very interested (much more so than just a clone machine). Maybe it could have several 'modes' so that game devs could release a game for (for example) 'Mode 1' which would look like early 8-bit consoles or 'Mode 2' which looks more like the later 8-bits.

Stick a SID chip in there and you can take all my money.