spacecadet

It's an interesting question, but I think the answer's probably contained in your post. The most likely culprit seems like illegal opcodes running on the 6502 that the 65C02 didn't support. The Apple IIe card and IIGS do not have the same CPU - the IIGS uses a 65C816 to emulate a 65C02, and the IIe card uses an actual 65C02. So my guess is that there's just something in the emulation of the 65C02 on the 65C816 chip that's allowing whatever illegal opcode that game uses to execute. It's possible that the 65C816 wasn't a 100% accurate emulation of the 65C02, but may have added back in some of the more common illegal opcodes for compatibility's sake. That would be interesting if true; and maybe it's common knowledge but I hadn't known about it. (Edit: in fact, reading a little more about the 65C816, it seems that it could emulate both the 65C02 and 6502.) I could be wrong but I just think it's probably not as weird as you think it is, since it seems like part of the premise you're operating from is that the IIe card and IIGS should act the same, but there could be minor differences just as there are between the 6502 and 65C02 themselves. I would expect the IIe card to act like a IIe (and IIc), not a IIGS. A IIGS is gonna act like a... well, like a computer with a 65C816 in it.

I remember it being kind of a faux pas to put your quarter on a machine if somebody else had theirs on it already. Maybe this was just where I lived, I don't know, but I remember people kind of rolling their eyes and muttering back and forth whenever somebody did this, which I don't remember being all that often. I feel like in my area, if you were already playing, then you were allowed to put as many of your own quarters on the machine and reserve as many games as you wanted - so sometimes you'd see 5 or 10 quarters on a machine, but they all belonged to the guy who was already playing as kind of a warning to other players saying "I'm gonna be hogging this machine for a while". I remember you weren't really supposed to ever reserve more than one game in advance (before starting play), because lots of people wanted to play more than one game and you'd quickly run out of room on a machine if multiple people could reserve multiple games. So you were supposed to wait until you were playing to reserve more games. Which meant that if multiple people could reserve in advance, you could never play more than one quarter. So that was the system; only the next guy could reserve in advance, and only after the current player had decided if he was reserving more games. Then you could put your quarter at the end of the line. The couple of times I specifically remember more than one person putting their quarter on a machine in addition to the current player, I also remember the people who had their own quarter on first moving back in to space them out so that it was obvious they weren't all in a row. It was like a supermarket checkout line when they don't have those little dividers. You just make sure there's enough space in between so it's clear there are two separate owners. This was always done kind of passive-aggressively; it wasn't out of politeness, it was to say "you put your quarter too close to mine so now I'm going to move it so everybody knows you don't own all these quarters and I'm actually next - see this inconvenience you've put everyone through?" They always seemed to make a little show out of doing it. Of course none of these were hard and fast rules, and people did break them all the time. They were just a system we'd collectively agreed on. But I do remember arguments occasionally breaking out, and I remember people getting annoyed at *me* sometimes for putting a quarter on a machine while they were playing even when there were no other quarters there. Pity the fool who put his quarter *in front of* the current player's quarters. I saw that happen a couple of times too. Usually those guys just ended up losing their quarters and never playing the game.

I think you may be thinking of PSP/PS3 Remote Play, but that's a question of playing certain PS3 games on PSP, not the reverse. And apparently only a very few physical games even support it; it's mostly used in lighter PSN titles. The PS3 version of Wipeout Pure/Pulse is Wipeout HD, which was downloadable from PSN and I think also had a physical release. But it's separate from the PSP; it's just that it is basically the same game. I don't think you really miss much by not being able to connect to a network. All PSP's have that same WPA2 limitation (at least the disc-based ones; I'm not sure about the Go), but there's not a huge amount you can't do by downloading stuff to your computer and then transferring to the PSP. For example, you can still get the free DLC for Wipeout Pure from one of the fan web sites and then just connect the PSP by USB and transfer it. There's online play in some titles, but I don't think you'd find many people playing those games online anymore anyway. (Though there might be some, depending on the game.) One thing you can do if you really want the PSP online is get an old WPA(1)-based router for super-cheap, hook it up to your current router as a second access point, and only turn it on when you want to connect the PSP. I wouldn't leave it on all the time because it's not very secure. But a router like that would probably be about $20 on Ebay.

I lived near a small mall that had an arcade in it called Game Time; it was one of those places that was basically just a long, thin storefront that just had games lined up against each wall. Made it very efficient to just walk through and play your favorites in one pass as you went - play all the ones on one side as you walk down, all those on the other as you walked back. In the back on one side they had about 15 pinball machines, which were still really popular. For a long time I can remember taking my allowance down there every week and spending all of it. I remember it being very crowded most of the times I went there. I didn't really know any better but it at least *seemed* like they got all the big new games, and they had all the staples too. Though once games got super old, it seemed like they'd either lend them out or sell them to the Bradlee's department store or the pharmacy in the same mall, both of which always had a few old games that I think came from the arcade. I used to go to Bradlee's to play Space Invaders sometimes, in the mid 80's. By then it was considered an old game that just took up space in a modern arcade, but I still kinda liked it. There was another mall near me that had a Nathan's hot dog place in it and it had a giant game room. I used to love going there, though I didn't go nearly as often as Game Time because it was further away. But the funny thing is when I moved to Long Island 10 years or so ago, I found out there was a Nathan's near me again and I went there and they *still* had a big game room! This was in like 2008. It was full of both new and classic arcade games. Unfortunately that location closed a few years ago and with it, the game room. They relocated to a new location that's still nearby but it's a bit smaller and does not have a game room. (I still go there to get hot dogs, though!) When I turned 17 and was able to drive, I used to go to yet another mall that was further away specifically to play Hard Drivin'. I remember just being floored by that game at the time. I don't know if there were different versions of it but they had the full sitdown version and I remember it being intensely realistic with the way the shifting, pedals and force feedback wheel felt. That was about at the tail end of my livin' the arcade lifestyle, though. Shortly after I went off to college and only went to arcades off and on as I found them. Game Time closed while I was in college.

Anything can be resoldered that was soldered before... Do you have a soldering iron? Just stick the wire back down and heat it up. Good idea to use a little fresh solder on it too.

After this post, I have decided I *need* to get a machine of some kind with a gas plasma display. I totally forgot those ever existed until seeing this here.

The screen is terrible, for one thing. I keep meaning to McWill mod mine but I bought it new and it's still in new condition and I'm afraid of scratching it up. So I'm sort of in the market for a used one to do it to, but just haven't pulled the trigger. It's gonna end up being like $180 to have a Lynx with a decent screen. That said, I do keep meaning to revisit mine even with the terrible screen; I just didn't get very far in any of the games I have because of that. I don't remember them seeming all that fun, and I have mostly the staple games that everybody seems to like. And I don't think it's *because* it's a handheld that it gets shorter shrift, but I think some of its shortcomings definitely stem from it being a handheld in that era. The bad screen that's also tiny by modern standards, the big bulky system that doesn't have very good battery life... I mean I personally don't like *any* handhelds from that period of time. But not because they're handhelds. The first handheld I really was impressed with in terms of design and usability was the Neo Geo Pocket Color, and the first one that I really built up a decent library for was the GBA. The PSP was the one that really made handhelds respectable compared to current systems (and I can't believe I didn't own one at the time), and that's continued with the PS Vita and Switch. But back in the Lynx's day, handhelds were always at least a generation behind and I didn't find them all that pleasant to use. The Lynx was more powerful than the Game Boy, for sure, but I still found most of its games pretty ugly at the time. But I may feel differently if I try it again now.

It's really a multiplayer game. I had a friend who loved it as much as I did, but we both only liked it multiplayer, so we'd play together whenever we saw it anywhere. It was a great co-op game, and it was fun trying to out-destruct each other.

A possible substitute is After Burner Black Falcon for the PSP, which was a physical release. It actually has more planes and a full story mode, though basically it's just After Burner. Graphics aren't as good since it's on PSP, obviously.

Well then I've got to have a pretty valuable collection, because not one of my US Saturn cases is cracked or broken. (As I said, many of my Japanese games have broken cases that I just haven't bothered replacing.) And I've only had to replace a few cases over the years, but then I've had to replace a few cases for every system I own.

Dammit, I'm tempted. But not ready to commit yet, so whoever else wants it, go to it. But argh. I have to keep telling myself that I don't really need this... Edit: Woops, sold anyway! I was just about to PM...

32GB will be more than enough to get you started. It's going to take you a while to get sick of all the games you can put on that. In the meantime, yes I would look for an SD adapter. 32GB isn't really the max the system will recognize. I have a 2 card SD adapter that I got off Ebay for like $3.99, and it'll take 2 MicroSD cards supposedly up to 256GB each. I bought it to use spare cards I have lying around so I have a total of 96GB in it right now (one 64GB and one 32GB card), but that's definitely enough. That's enough to put every single emulated system I care about with all of their games, *plus* more than 100 PSP games on it. And the PSP has a large and varied library but I doubt there are more than 100 games that I really want. PSP games themselves seem to range from about 200MB to 1GB, but most seem to be on the smaller side. There could be some bigger or smaller than that; that's just what I've seen so far. I'm sure the usual suspects of RPG's with a lot of cutscenes or FMV are among the larger games. UMD's max out at 1.8GB, but I personally have not seen games that big (that doesn't mean they don't exist, just that the games I've looked at downloading aren't that big). I really recommend collecting actual games for the system, because they're fun to collect and play that way. PSP games come in really nice, substantial feeling cases for their size, and usually have big, full color manuals. And as I think I said before, just the idea of using optical discs in a handheld is a novelty I just can't get over.

Well it's hard for me to tell what type of port that controller port is, but I'd be surprised if you could only use their own NGCD style controller with this thing. But also, I don't know why you'd assume even the *switches* would be the same on the new controllers. I'm sure these are an adaptation, not a recreation. As for the controls on the system itself, it's clearly too small for a straight layout. I'm not sure some of you guys are totally understanding how small this thing must be if these photos and the screen size are true. A 3.5", 4:3 screen is only 2.8" wide. There looks to be about another 1/2" on either side for the bezels. It's got to be about 4" wide in total. You're just not going to be physically able to play with your hand spread out. Bottom line for me is if you want everything to be exactly like an AES, go buy an AES. I never understand it when people judge something harshly because it's not exactly like some other thing they probably even already have. This isn't a re-release of the AES with all the games built in; this is a mini plug and play machine.

I'm not saying Saturn cases didn't crack, just that I don't think they cracked really any more often than other systems' games on sale at that time, or most other systems' games before or since. Tons of my Japanese Saturn game cases are cracked and those are just in regular jewel cases. I bought most of my PS1 games new so they're mostly ok, but I've got a lot of music CD cases that are cracked and those are the same jewel cases. The difference is just that you can pick up jewel cases all over the place, even today, so people don't complain about them as much. I think it's mainly the lack of supply for Saturn replacement cases that made them such a hot topic and forced people to treat them as if they were Faberge eggs. If you *did* crack one of your cases, there was nothing you could do about it short of buying a common game and raiding it for its case. But it's hard to find common games with really good cases (especially now that so many people have already raided them).

I mean, that's basically just the Neo Geo CD pad, as is the tabletop. It's not like this is new. It may not be your cup of tea, but this isn't some new thing SNK has come up with. It's just an adaptation of their second game console controls.

I have a feeling Nintendo just didn't plan for so many games and were caught a little flat-footed. Haven't watched the video yet - I will, but I'm hoping one or two of those are available as physical releases. I'm not buying anything from the E-shop.

You mean Neo Geo plays games other than Metal Slug? Bonus!!

Well, true - but I was really thinking in terms of 2-3 years from now. I think we will have small, affordable OLED screens before anything else, and those will be fantastic screens that solve the contrast problem. Lots of LCD screens these days advertise 1,000,000:1 or some crazy contrast ratio, then they get tested and you see actual results that show more like 1,000:1 in the real world, but even that's not really accurate because that's testing between the brightest and darkest parts of the screen. And that's important, but just as important is the contrast between a pixel that's lit and one next to it that's not. And measured that way, that same "1,000,000:1" LCD might really only be 10:1 because LCD's (even those with full array LED backlighting) can't turn off the backlighting for every pixel individually like OLED, plasma or microLED can. But OLED is the one of those techs you can buy now (unfortunately plasma is no longer offered by anyone), and it'll keep getting better, smaller and cheaper. It's almost mainstream as it is, so I think a lot of us will have an OLED TV in the next few years, and if you really want to have that *small* screen experience you remember, we'll probably be able to have that too. And the funny thing is all the contrast talk about any of these technologies is mainly just trying to get us back to where we were in the days of CRT. Standard LCD's just aren't ever going to get there. They've gotten better, but I have LCD, plasma and CRT in my house, and I've thought about why my brand new 4K LCD with its FALD and its excellent black level still looks flat and lifeless compared to either my plasma or CRT, and this adjacent pixel contrast thing is almost definitely a big reason why. There are other things about CRT technology that gave it its particular look, and I don't think any tech will be able to really reproduce all the effects of an electron gun lighting up a bunch of phosphors side to side and up and down every 50 or 60 seconds. But like most people, I'm willing to make *some* small tradeoffs in the name of higher resolutions, bigger screens, etc. It doesn't need to be an absolutely perfect facsimile, including all the warts of CRT too. But for me LCD is just not close enough to what I see on a CRT when playing 8 bit consoles. I know that plasma is close enough, so any of these other technologies that do similar things probably will be too.

The originals, you mean? In my experience, no - it's exaggerated. They *are* more fragile than some other case designs, but I think the main problem is just that a lot of people don't take care of their games. Look at games for *any* system on Ebay. I mean I'm pretty careful with what I buy, but still 3 out of the 5 Wii and Wii U games I've bought on Ebay recently have had busted up cases (you just couldn't see it in the pics). Look at how many NES, SNES, N64 or Atari games don't even have a box at all - either people threw them out or they wore out from use (or misuse). So the Saturn/Sega CD case thing has always been one of those gaming myths that's just gotten stronger as time goes by. It's kind of a groupthink thing. One person made a joke about it once, somebody laughed, then they made the same joke, and on it spread until it was accepted as fact. I think one problem is that the Saturn came in between some of the toughest case designs out there... after the Genesis with its clamshells and before the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube with their own version of a modern disc-based clamshell. Compared to those, yes the Saturn cases are very fragile. But even compared to the PS1's jewel boxes (and Saturn's in Japan), I don't think the Saturn's US big cases were any more prone to breakage. I think the big reason for this competition to make new cases is that these are totally proprietary - you can't get them any other way anymore - and the Saturn never sold well enough in the US for there to be a large number of spares floating around. That said, I did buy a 10 pack of original Sega blank cases just after the Saturn's demise in the US, and I still have 2 or 3 of them left unused after all this time.

To an extent, some of these things are probably unavoidable - you can never really predict how two different pieces of plastic are going to react, for example. Often they don't react exactly the same way and I don't know that anything can be done about that. What you *can* do, though, is continue trying to refine and brighten the darker half until it more closely matches the lighter half. (It's impossible to re-darken the over-brightened half, so you may as well get them to match the other way.) But other things can be improved with practice. It's probably too late for this case but you can practice a couple more times on any spare yellowed stuff you have that you don't care about, and you'll refine your technique. Retrobrighting is somewhat of a skill that does require practice and experience to do the best job. For example, things like minimizing streaks, protecting logos, and knowing when to quit before over-brightening are the types of things you learn by experience.

I think this is basically a variation on the CRT vs. LCD debate we have here every once in a while... I think there was just a 13 page thread or something about it again recently. We also had a thread on connection types, and whether people preferred upgrading/modding their old systems for modern connections or sticking with RF. But yeah, like with like. That's my preference. I still use a CRT for my 8 bit consoles, personally. The thing about CRT's is that people treat them as inherently inferior to LCD's these days, but they're actually not. There are certain things that even old CRT's do better, and I think these aspects are part of our memories of old consoles too. It's not like we all want crappier pictures to go with our old consoles. CRT's have better adjacent pixel/phosphor contrast (an LCD can have high contrast across its full width, but not with adjacent pixels), which makes the picture "pop" or have what a lot of people describe as "depth". To get a similar look today you have to look at plasma or maybe OLED, since they can switch off adjacent pixels entirely. I always feel like 8 bit consoles on LCD's look cartoonishly oversaturated but at the same time kind of dull because of the lower contrast. It just looks weird. Someday the price of OLED will come down and we'll have smaller OLED computer monitors at reasonable prices that can really stand in for a CRT and give you the best of both worlds. Of course it won't be *black and white* if that's really what you prefer because you remember it, but you can always just turn the color all the way down.

The linked article says it has a built-in 3.5" screen. That's not confirmed but neither are the photos, so there's no reason to discount one piece of info if you believe the other. Also, if they were going to make something non-functional, there's no reason for them to not just copy one of their more iconic existing designs verbatim and just shrink it down. We already have mini arcade games that fit in the palm of your hand and look just like the real thing (oh, and they do work!). The fact that it's got this kind of goofy looking but also kind of arcade-ish design suggests to me that the controls do work and they actually tried to make them somewhat usable rather than just there for looks. A 3.5" screen is like the size of a non-XL Nintendo 3DS; totally playable but it means this thing's not really a "bartop" in terms of modern parlance, it would be more like one of the old Coleco tabletop arcade machines, if even that big. It also suggests that it probably wouldn't be *that* expensive; an LCD screen like that is cheap these days. Personally I think it all sounds pretty cool. I don't own any of the "mini" machines that have been released so far (though I did buy the very first Atari Flashback, before everybody and his brother was doing that sort of thing), but if these rumors hold up then this is definitely something I want.

It's already happening. I mean I think literally since this thread started. Go to Ebay and look at the "sold" prices on cards like the GTX 970 and GTX 1070 (I mention those only because I have one and have been wanting to upgrade to the other myself). The 970, which is still a fully capable card for 1080p gaming, was going for about the MSRP of a 1070 last time I looked ($400-$450), but now they're almost always selling for under $200, and often around $150! 1070's were at around $700 for a while - now they're going for right around MSRP; sometimes a little above, sometimes below. But they're already no longer crazy ridiculous. As for whether you'd want a card that's been used for mining, well, two points I'd make: 1) It's more about what the crash of the used market will do to the new market. Once prices fall on used cards, sales of new cards will drop too, as will prices on those. 2) Even so, I wouldn't have much of a problem buying a used card because first, you don't even know if it was used for crypto, but even if it was, I don't see why that would cause problems. In fact, Linus of Linus Tech Tips tested this a while back, not specifically about crypto but just seeing if there was any truth to the urban legend about old cards being slower or less reliable than new ones of the same model. And his tests showed that no, there's no difference. Modern cards all have various throttling methods to keep them in safe territory. So unless they've been modified in some way to avoid those (I'm not even sure this is possible, or why even a crypto miner would want to do that), or they've just been used or stored in a particularly bad environment, I'd feel fine buying a used card. The latter is basically just the chance you take with any used product anyway. I think a card that's boxed and *looks* good is probably going to turn out fine. (That's how I sell mine when I buy new ones.)

That would be my point... like an actual dev kit Here's a video from a guy who has one of these: This is a debug console. You see in the video that to make a dev kit, you actually need a PC with some special hardware (that's what dev kits often are, and I've seen Genesis dev kits before and they just looked like PC's). Since the actual dev kit is more or less just a PC, the debug console is arguably a cooler thing to own if you just want something rare for display. But if you're planning to do actual development work, this is only half of what you need. Some dev kits *are* really cool looking, like the PS2 TOOL systems, but I guess the Genesis/Sega CD kits are just a couple of special PC boards. Anyway, I just hope whoever's plunking down $14,600 knows what he's getting and what he's not getting.

Thanks! Yeah I had always wanted one too, and just about crapped myself when I saw this one sitting boxed in a store (I got it at the Super Potato in Ikebukuro, Tokyo... *not* the one in Akihabara. Just in case anyone's wondering.) It was labeled "untested" but I couldn't not buy it anyway. It looked great so I figured what could be wrong with it? I'm really glad I got it working. Now that it is, the price I paid for it was a steal. (About $90.)