AndrewHyperkin

guppy, no USB interfaces out of the box because we wanted for this system to stay true to the concept of a retro console. But there is a readily available USB host breakout on the PCB for those who need this feature and want to tinker with it.

I want to thank everyone for welcoming us coming forward with the details, and embracing its open-source nature as the right step on our part. In spite of all the concerns, I am quite confident in this product, having my own 2600 memories and this community's feedback as the very compass of right and wrong. To answer your questions, yes - it does work with the original joysticks and paddles. From what my E3 guests could tell, with no noticeable input lag. Also, simultaneous joystick input (up+down / left+right) is possible. There are no hardware limitations to that. Generally, the system plays everything you'd expect Stella to run. We went for homebrew files support because of all the developers out there who might need a system with actual controllers and flexible testing environment at their fingertips; we fully understand that sometimes you need to test more than just one binary, so it's possible to load multiple binaries onto the SD card for convenient debugging. FPGAs are cool, and we did look into this solution. Honestly, there is no benefit to use it for this platform whatsoever. We went for a well-optimized junk-free core instead, and in our tests, with most games the hardware actually runs at 20-25% of its full potential. The system powers up and boots in seconds, there are no loading screens. While is true that any emulator experience (including FPGAs) will inevitably result in certain infidelities, let's face it: sticking to the original system has its inconveniences as well. Another thing that I think many people will hopefully like about this system is its overall build quality. Our Supa Retron HD is already quite firm and solid, but this one takes it to a new level. Perhaps because of the emulator core we cannot re-create 100% gameplay fidelity, but we wanted this product to feel just like back in the old days when things were made to last. Again, thanks for your support. It means a lot, and while I fully agree that it's impossible to satisfy everyone, we are truly glad to finally be able to make it happen.

"Standard cartridges" means 4k/8k/16k games. There may be exceptions because our supply of cartridges is somewhat limited. "Homebrew support" means the system will play .bin files placed on the SD card. Keatah, quite the opposite. The older version of Stella will not be used. We are fully aware of its limitations; that's basically why in spite of paying for that earlier version, we decided to go open-source with this project, and use a more recent version, and to share the source codes with the community.

Hi Everyone! First of all, our apologies for the delay and silence on our part. It's been a long wait, and we truly appreciate your support, as well as all the suggestions and ideas. The final hardware has been finally approved and submitted to mass-production, so it's not going to be a long wait from now on. We hope for the Retron 77 to be a good product; now it's time to answer your questions, and to say clearly what it is (and what it's not). Second of all, yes - we indeed licensed a very early version of Stella, but as many people here on this thread mentioned, re-inventing the wheel would be simply pointless, same as reaching out to every single contributor. That is why the R77 is going to be released as an open-source system with its source codes available for the community. Certainly, it comes with a stable and fully functional core that you won't need to tinker with, but if tinkering is your game, then we encourage you to do so. It comes with a nice yet simple GUI. We heard your thoughts on the amount of money that thing should cost, and of course we understand that it cannot be too much. We aim for this system to be affordable, and while I cannot tell you the MSRP just yet (it will soon be officially announced), we are being realistic and community-friendly. We know how much the Harmony cartridge alone costs, and we hope for this system to be not very far from that. Also, we expect to open pre-orders soon. As we promised, it comes with all the necessary switches. So if you want to toggle difficulty for both players, game mode, color and black-and-white picture, screen aspect ratio, quick-save and quick-load your game - all that is readily available. There is also a glitch switch that was added just for fun (you can change its purpose if you are familiar with coding). The system will ship with our new joystick controller which those of you who came to E3 last year had liked a lot. There will be an interesting extra feature for the left-handed people (or the right-handed people who want a challenge) - another Fire button. Certainly, other standard joysticks (like our Cirka controller for example) are also supported, as well as Genesis/MD gamepads. Standard paddle controllers are supported as well. On the top of that, we have another interesting controller that we expect to release at the same time or shortly after the system: it's a combo gamepad that has a little paddle built into it. We went through a lot of prototypes, including a few things suggested in this thread, and decided to go with this option. It has a toggle switch to enable left-handed mode as well. Certainly, there are many obscure controllers out there, but the system will not support any other types of peripherals out of the box. Again, in an equation where cost and development time (already long enough) are the main variables, we believe this to be a reasonable compromise... The system takes standard cartridges (all those we tested with my guests at last year's E3 and a few more types). Since it's an open-source system, we thought it would be a good idea to equip it with an SD card slot to make it easier for homebrew developers to get on board. That SD card will also conveniently contain the operating system (and Stella) for easy testing. We decided to drop Harmony support in favor of the SD card because supporting it requires some higher-end hardware, and we believe its homebrew functionality is basically replicated with the SD card. If you are a developer and you want your game to be included with the system (of course with proper credit given to you or your studio in the EULA file) - please reach out to our R&D team (developer@hyperkin.com) or me directly on Linkedin. Depending on how this goes, we might offer limited amount of devkits to a selected number of developers. It supports hot-swapping cartridges (you won't have to power down the system to change your games). Save files are good for keeping high scores or getting to see just how crazy some games like Missile Command get past a seven-digit score. So basically, we wanted this system to be a convenient way to play games off cartridges, with common controllers on an HD TV. It's homebrew- and community-friendly. It's not the ultimate all-in-one answer to just any request, yet it's a good way to put your games collection into some good use, and to preserve the legacy by introducing our kids to what we used to play back in the days. With all that said, we at Hyperkin and me personally want to thank everyone on this thread. Your support has made this project possible. Yours truly, Dr. Andrew Steel

I want to thank everyone for their input and warm welcome. Your opinions are truly important, both personally for me and for our company. We licensed an early version of Stella, and being fully aware of its certain technological issues, our software developers continue working hard to implement the promised features. We at Hyperkin fully understand that all the newer versions are subject to different license terms, and therefore plan to ship the product with our own build. Stefan, please contact us at developer@hyperkin.com, hopefully we can negotiate the opportunity to use your newer builds, for the sake of making the product better. What we initially plan to offer is basically a convenient piece of hardware, with a properly configured and licensed Stella (early version). It will not include any other proprietary parts of Stella code from further revisions (unless we negotiate that with Stefan). That build is expected to have the full set of features I listed in my previous post, and hopefully some more. As an additional tinker-friendly feature, we expect to leave an opportunity (for example in a form of a service port) to install other versions of Stella -- we honor everyone's IP rights, but since it's open-source, I believe users are free to rebuild and deploy any build of Stella they want. Also, many of you requested 7800 compatibility. I cannot really promise that at the moment, but we are working on it. Thanks again for your support!

Hi guys, I'm Andrew Steel from Hyperkin. First I want to thank you all for your support, it means a lot to our company and to me personally. I'm very excited to work on this project, aiming to make it as good as it gets. That's why I'm here to share my thoughts and hear your opinions. We did license Stella and obtained a custom build with a few important improvements. As many of you noticed, there is a 2-seconds loading screen when you hotswap the game. It is actually there only to ensure the hotswap procedure happens smoothly. It is only a prototype for now, and we didn't want any hiccups to occur at E3. In the final version the loading screen will be gone, because I think normally users wouldn't mind hitting Reset if the console occasionally attempts to read the cart earlier than it's fully inserted. It is a very challenging task to cover the vast library of games and homebrews. But I know that supporting certain things is cruicial, so we went an extra mile and developed a way to work with Harmony. I cannot guarantee that this feature will still be present in the final release due to certain potential legal concerns, but we all understand its importance to the scene and will do our best to keep it. Our primary goal is to ensure good compatibility with real cartridges because well, they are awesome, and the 2600 is actually a quite affordable platform to collect for. Please message us with your contact info if you are willing to jump on board and offer your help with testing the system for compatibility. Also, since we officially partner with the scene, I would actually prefer for the system to be open-source. In my envision, it will ship with our own Stella build, hardware-wise prepared to be tinkered with -- just in case if someone out there wants to remove or add any features they want. We understand that the system has to be affordable, so our target price is 50 USD, give or take. Too early to state it firmly and predict the costs, we are still working on the features. I think it generally would be a bad idea to add some extra hardware just to support a peripheral used in 2-3 games and make the system way too expensive, so we expect to go for a good balance of what it does and what it does not. Again, if you are willing to offer your help with that, even just an opinion, please don't hesitate and message me and our R&D department at developer@hyperkin.com. As it is for now, I can confirm that our newest build has the following working physical buttons that we plan to bring to the front: reset, select, save, load; a few buttons on the back: difficulty, game mode, color/bw/scanlines, aspect ratio, glitch switch. As most of people who came to talk to me and to try to earlier prototype, it plays games in clear HD without any noticeable issues. As for the controller to ship with the system, we expect to stick to the classic design with a paddle wheel on the side or perhaps just around the stick. It's our own design but of course original joysticks will work as well. I'd personally refrain from anything D-pad based because if you want one, you can use a Genesis controller, but please feel free to share your thoughts. Now, the release date, we will try to make it happen before Christmas. It is also a very challenging plan, but we work hard to make it happen. And for those of you who wonder in the previous posts, your humble servant is 32 :-)