Newsdee

What I dislike is gamers dressing and acting like "dudebros" on YT videos. Bring back the well-dressed nerds with glasses and pocket protectors.

MiSTer is more faithful to the original machines and can work directly with CRTs. That is a good thing in my book. And I had no problems with various displays I've used so far, I just notice a difference due to a slightly longer sync time when resolution changes. At the end its about tradeoffs. If one wants to just play ROMs, it would be hard for me to recommend an Analogue over MiSTer. But for using carts, the Super NT and Mega SG are the best option out there.

The lag problems of MiSTer from a while back have been resolved now. MiSTer and Analogue really are for different audiences. There is overlap if somebody wants to use the JB firmware instead of an Everdrive/SD2SNES, but the game coverage of the JB falls short of both flash carts and the MiSTer cores. It never was intended as a full solution anyway. That being said, both the Super NT and Mega SG remain fantastic products. I want to see them on shelves instead of the crappy emulation boxes that are everywhere in retail these days.

I give credit to the Kevtris + Analogue partnership for proving a high quality FPGA console is commercially viable at a decent price point. It's a bit inaccurate to say the open source people "woke up", though, as the people behind MiSTer have been very active since the beginning. What has changed is that there are much more people involved with it now. And yes, probably a few of then found out about MiSTer while wondering if open source corrs exist for another machine. So in a way it is also thanks to Kevtris' work (and comparison with it) that gave extra motivation to some new developers. Both approaches can perfectly coexist. Analogue keeps their niche of running original carts and hardware for specific systems, and you have MiSTer as a more general platform with more systems supported, but limited to ROMs/disk images.

They could just sell the case with internal cabling for an RPi and a prepared SD card. Then offer a little option to assemble it for the clueless.

I never finished the PS3 version... great game though!

It bothers me that it does not handle the controllers. If it did, I could consider it as a standamone cartridge. There must be a way to do it...

This makes me think of JAMMA. One can basically have a system that is only a display, controllers, and power supply, and the rest is handled by whatever plugs into it. I suppose one could build a "micro JAMMA" where carts provide digital and analogue video out, but it seems redundant. The only upside I can see would be compatibility with older arcade cabinets. So that cart of "Super Hombrew Fighter" can run in an arcade and a portable system at minimum effort.

I picture them at E3 trying to get a crowd and failing... because on center stage there is a comeback Mike Kennedy hired by Steam to promote PC gaming and making a killing. That's a movie I'd pay to see.

The inverted castle blew my mind. Especially since I thought I was finishing the game. It didn't feel like backtracking to me, but rather an interesting way to make the game richer. They did change enemies and bosses if I remember correctly. In fact I suspect it may be another map altogether, but they created it by inverting the original one. Not sure. What I mean is that it's not some lazy programming trick, they visibly put effort in it. The only other time I was so pleasantly suprised was Infinite Space. I didnt know from reviews the game was so much longer than it seemed.

Could it be an attempt to sell a fake to the undiscerning?

It looks like one of those Edutainment spinoffs such as Mario Teaches Typing or Mario is Missing

A nice way to use FDS games is with an FDS RAM adapter plus an SD card dongle that replaces the magnetic drive. That will give expansion audio and load faster than a real FDS drive. My personal favorite Famicom games need translations. Digital Devil Monogatari: Megami Tensei (without "Shin) is interesting to try. Final Fantasy III (JP version) has more depth than the first 2. And if you feel masochist you can try the infamous kusoge (lit. "shit game") Takeshi's Challenge, created with Takeshi "Beat" Kitano, an early example of game built with/for celebrities. Thing is aside from the gameplay, the concept/story is pretty crazy as an 8bit game, it feels like a massive trolling from Beat Takeshi.

We can only fantasize that a guy (or lady) at LG or Sony or similar gets promoted, and then it turns out he/she is a huge retro gaming maniac, and so orders production into LCDs that can act like CRTs with a high level of fidelity, those guys from market research be damned...

The GPD Win 1 has an Intel x7 processor, it's the faster version of the x5 used for that board. Granted, the GPD Win costs 10 times more (about 350 bucks) but it does ship with Windows and everything else already.

I used a few European BBS back in the day, and wrote and uploaded a few .txt files on various topics. They must be still around somewhere... I don't remember what editor I used, but it could have just been regular plain DOS edit. Years before that, we had an assignment in elementary school about a pet or animal and we had to write in the style of "Platero y Yo" (a lyric prose novel a out a man and his silver donkey). So I wrote about my Apple II. Teacher liked it so much that my entry ended in the school newspaper.

Yeah because video games are for umwashed geeks who will turn violent after playing that Mortal Battle game. Turns out she blames the divorce on the kid's dad playing Xbox all day, as the man was merely trying to unwind in the weekend after a 60-hour work week. He was exhausted trying to support the lifestyle the stay-at-home mom had become accostumed to, after she refused to get a job to share the load. Famicom guy didn't know it, but he got lucky to avoid a similar fate.

I dug out my GB Boy Colour yesterday to try the Super Mario Land DX mods (1 and 2). It's cheap and the DPad is mushy, but it has a very nice screen. I have an AGS-101 screen modded into an original GBA shell, but I wouldn't bring it everywhere with reckless abandon as I do with the GB Boy...

Mods also always have a risk of breaking due to aging hardware. I have a modded Famicom which I loved, but had to stop using when the PPU chip stopped working. Before FPGAs the clones always had some kind of caveat, and we had to live with it since it was baked in their chip (e.g. many Chinese clones were composite only with no way to mod, unlike an original FC). The AVS (and others) offer a high level of compatibility and enhance the original in significant ways. And for me, since I am not living in the US or UK, I feel less concerned about not having access to people who can repair old hardware (shipping gets expensive).

I agree that 20 GBP is a good price especially if you like the design of the case. There are mere Raspberry Pi enclosures that are more expensive than that. However I don't think it invalidates the value of the more expensive options. I have a Retron 5 (with broken SNES pins) and a Retro Freak. Both have significant input lag compared to original or FPGA solutions. For some games it doesn't matter and the RFreak was my main "alternate" console for a couple of years, before FPGAs got better.

Right, but having an FPGA on board does not automatically mean this kind of "hybrid emulation" is being used. Whoever came up with that idea for their marketing department(/person) doesn't seem to know much EE... it's one thing to interface with lower speed hardware (e.g. a gamepad controlled by a human) but you'd need a very beefy processor to interface with the data rates of a ROM chip or RAM. An FPGA core is not subject to that problem as it can use paralell processing. This video shows an example of that: https://youtu.be/CVq_jzj_u8U I wonder, it's possible the maker/idea guy of this thing saw that FPGAs could interfave directly with carts, but then had trouble finding FPGA developers that would work for him. So perhaps he made up the term while looking for a software developer (the term does exist already but is not limited to this use). I can imagine said developer probably told him it wasn't viable (rightly so), and then they dropped the term and pretend they never used it.

If one doesn't care about carts, putting money into getting a MiSTer (or MiST) may be a better investment over buying these other clones. Not only you get a NES FPGA core with zero lag, but also it is open source code that is being constantly updated by various people (e.g. MiSTer now has HDMI light gun support via Wiimotes if you use Dolphinbar). If one does care about carts, the real difference is whether you are getting an emulator on a box that reads (dumps) carts, or a fully compatible hardware clone. If you do not care about HDMI, an AV Famicom / NES 2 may be best since it's the original. Otherwise, there are various cheap Chinese clones that work with the Everdrive. The reason the Retron 1 does not is that they dump the cart (similar to the Retron 5). Also the Retrons rely on a DB of known games (last I checked) so they are not compatible with all carts. The AVS is a NES/Famicom fully compatible with everything, including the Famicom Disk Sytem expansion hardware. It only lacks lightgun support. So in my opinion there are much better options than the Retron 1 at various prices.

It's lovely, but to be honest I think the screen is too small for DOS games. It is still very impressive, and I'd buy one at a reasonable price. The closest thing that comes to mind is the Oregon Trail handheld.

I grew up with an Apple II... so DOS was just the way to launch games, and I figured eventually one could use small programs (basic or .bat for PC) to make launchers that started at boot. Not to mention Norton Commander and similar file managers thqt came out later. That said, back then these computers came with hefty thorough technical manuals from which all this could be learned. It's undeniable the Mac and Windows mouse interface were more intuitive, though.

If I am not mistaken, the Retron 5 and the Retro Freak both use an FPGA (or CPLD? can't remember) to help dump the carts. A Retron that doesn't suck... that is basically the Retro Freak