Newsdee

Maybe you could do the ipposite, create one core and open source it with a license you choose. That way you show developers how to port to the Zimba 3000? Unless you don't plan to allow third party cores (I don't see any downside but as you say there could be licensing issues).

I'm being nice but time will tell. If people really want cartridges they could go and buy a Nintendo 3DS. Also rumours of the upcoming Nintendo NX suggest a convergence of portable and living room systems, so maybe it will use carts too. The cart themselves aren't upgradeable but the machine receives updates to patch specific games sometimes. I believe it is possible to flash the firmware to go back to a previous state though (as least once "jailbroken") . This also works for discs btw. Where they might have a niche, but not sure how big it is, is to offer a platform for indie devs that target old systems which e.g. are selling Neo Geo MVS games for 500 bucks right now. But then their hardware has to be competitive vs. buying a consolized MVS.

True courage is not being fearless, but getting up every time you fall even if you're shitting your pants. I hope them the best, if they succeed more power to them and if not there will be lessons learned for others that come after.

Yeah, at least HDMI won't (shouldn't) degrade the image so we wouldn't have to go back to tapping RGB to feed whichever new standard comes afterwards. I might eat my words later, but migrating all machines to HDMI seems a safe bet right now.

I have TVs where the composite input is much worse than upscaling composite via an XRGB-Mini Framemeister. You'd think a basic input like that wouldn't be hard to handle, but I really suspect companies are being super cheap in supporting "legacy" inputs. Not surprisingly, newer sets seem to only support HDMI now.

Astrocade is available for the Arcade Replay and was ported to the MiST. You can check out that source code for a port.

Definitely focus on the main features first. This has the potential to be the reference in console FPGAs covering the Retron5/Retro Freak niche. Computers are covered by other boxes; and anyway are more fiddly to setup/debug, so you'd have much more support questions on them. These can be added later by porting cores.

FPGAs are good at parallelizing; but the challenge would be sharing the same RAM and video between the two cores.

You know what would rock with a high res screen? The ability to run two (or more) gameboys at once and implement the link cable betweem them. Basically two player mode :-)

They're just building the shell, not promising a prophet console to save us in Retroland from our sins of using DLC.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is undistinguishable from magic...

The story is higher up on this thread

Nothing stops Kevtris from compiling and releasing cores for it without giving out the source. I'm sure several people would pitch in to get him a board if he was willing to take that route. But I guess its more fun to design one own's box, and in any case its good to have diversity.

More relevant for us in Retroland, the XRGB-Mini Framemeister is an FPGA inside, the Retron5 has a tiny one to handle the multiple cart connections, and the Everdrive/SD2SNES are FPGAs inside. There's quite a bunch around

How many here own a MiST or have used one? The setup is extremely easy; and the system turns on instantly so it feels like the real thing. I have several SD cards so I can change systems like switching carts, but I also havd cards with multiple systems for convenience when I only use a few games. The cores on it are not perfect but thats down to it not being a commercial product. Kevtris or the Everdrive guys have wider support of the NES (for example) but their code isn't open source and free for all to use (and expand). I've recently tried a Retropie setup, and while its more compatible I still feel like I'm running a PC/Linux box. but it is cheaper. I guess everybody has their own tastes. If anybody has any questions on it or would like me to try some game I'd be happy to check and give feedback.

Just wondering, what would be Atari's view of hacking ET to change sprites and call it "Alien" or something like that? That way they remove the movie tie-in?

Speaking of cases there's a Kickstarter right now for molds to make an Amiga 1200 case, which can also fit an RPi or a MiST. Maybe the RVGS can pursue something similar for consoles: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/a1200housing/new-amiga-1200-cases-made-from-new-molds

Ah what I was suggesting is just having the connection points on the motherboard. Leave it to us crazies to mod the connectors/cables in :-) Shouldn't impact final sale price, unless they are reusing the same moterboard fro previous manufacturing.

That's very interesting... I guess it makes sense Atari is worried. How about having a way to mod it for higher video quality? S-Video is probably not difficult, HDMI probably too expensive (extra components) but maybe expose RGB+Sync for people to mod?

Would it be too expensive to add an SD card slot to it? Or just have the connectors for one inside. That way the hard-core minority can mod it, but the general population will still buy a new version with more games.

How about the fixed E.T.? http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/ Although probably hard to license...

I can see the ads: "IGG does what KickStopped"

That's kind of what the Retro Freak guys are doing; they have one emulator box that receives the SD card and the main hardware, and that tiny box can be installed into a bigger one with cartridge ports. We need to wait until it comes out to check if its any good (it seems like a Retron 5 done right), but the idea of decoupling brains and cart connectivity makes a lot of sense.

I couldn't agree more with a few points made here on retro gaming. A lot of what we find interesting just won't transfer to future generations unless we somehow create a link or make things accessible. Nintendo is kind of doing that by shamelessly recycling their inventory. Their latest gimmick is to have figurines which unlock some emulated games with save states that you can play for a couple of minutes after loading. Like or hate it, it is an interesting way to make people directly experience parts of games they might never see (and conveniently point them to the full version). Carts/Discs have some charm as a way to select games to play... relying on the luck of what you'll find in a store, or choosing one on the shelf because you like a label. But for that to happen they have to be accessible to play; having them framed because its a super rare cart won't help. I guess there might be a niche to sell popular recent games on a cart, which could be done after the game is mature (think "game of the year" editions).

Shhh don't let marketers get involved or they're going to start releasing one machine per core with the same innards