blzmarcel

Yeah, that looks like the one I was thinking of.

Or perhaps something like that screen magnifier add-on that the GameGear had.

Thanks, my mistake. I could have sworn I had seen 8 button controllers back in the day, but I might have been remembering a different system platform.

There were also 8 button controllers, similar to how the Genesis/Mega Drive had 3 and 6 button pads:

I loved my Nomad. It just needs a dang reset button.

I still have my original Nomad along with my first gen Gameboy, both of which still work, though I haven't really used them in quite some time.

Yeah, I admittedly overlooked / forgot about that, and just mistakenly ran with the assumption that it would be meant playing for all sorts of retro consoles and maybe classic arcade systems, which I don't feel was a totally-way-out-there assumption, especially with Genesis which has the Nomad, but it was an assumption nonetheless, which might have been fueled in part by posts I had seen in previous weeks or months that seemed to allude to a rather wide array of system support.

IIRC, NeoGeo supported controllers with up to eight face buttons (arcade pro and such), and there are many other arcade systems that used around 6 main action buttons. As for everyone copying the 4 face button design, unless you're making a SNES/NES/GB specific unit instead of more general mlti-platform system, it's difficult to understand why two more face buttons couldn't have been added while keeping the shoulder buttons, allowing for near native configurations for most classic Nintendo, Sega, Atari (2600/7800 mainly, not sure how the Pocket would deal with the Jaguar's number pad, or 5200/ColecoVision/Intellivision for that matter...), NEC, and such. And assuming there is some capability to remap buttons for specific games, being able to use 6 face buttons is useful for fighting games on the SNES/SFC where using shoulder buttons on the native system/controller, which Sega's six button pad had a real advantage over back in the day.

Looks nice, though I do wonder why they went with 4 main face buttons instead of 6. This will make playing many six-button Genesis/Mega Drive games difficult, as well as the likes of NeoGeo and others. Feels like an odd oversight for something that is supposed to be a multi-platform classic gaming system. Even the Sega Nomad had all six buttons. Not the end of the world, still looks awesome, though I just wonder why they made this decision.

This is my biggest gripe with (in general) wanting to use Discord as a replacement for message boards. Discord is a fine platform for real time text and voice communications, but afaict, there is no way to easily search it from outside of Discord (e.g., from a web search engine) the way a lot of public forums and news groups can be.

Where exactly has their been "mudslinging" in this thread? I'm genuinely curious. I recall seeing pots where people were frustrated, sometimes understandably so, but I don't remember any posts where anyone out right put them down. There have been posts where comparisons to Mister and other devices were made, but none to my recollection that pushed the idea the Analogue was in any way inferior or worthless.

Thanks for your reply. I mainly went by this thread, so I fully accept that my I may be wrong I'm glad he has some help. It's easy from following this thread to get the impression that it has been all him. What discord server and room is this? It might be nice to start hanging around there and and getting fresher information. That said, not everyone sees discord as a viable replacement for a message board or mailing list and I think it's fair to say that over the past couple years since this thread began, people had become accustomed to seeing info here. I 100% agree. They have made some fantastic products thus far and look to be continuing that with the up coming Pocket, and I too hope to be able to get one. I just hope availability will be better, as that's what I've seen mentioned the most here. It would be nice to see them sold through the more well known retro sites, like stoneagegamer and others. It was never my intention to be negative, as I harbor absolutely no ill will towards Analogue or Ketris. I was just trying to give an objective look based on what I've seen people talk about here. If I'm wrong about something, I want it to be pointed out, much like you did. Thanks. Maybe this is true for basic televisions, but smart TVs tend to get much longer support. My friend's Samsung 6 series from mid-late 2016 is still getting updates every now and again (saw it pop up during a recent visit.) Game consoles also typically get much more than just a year of support.

I understand what you guys are saying, and thanks for taking the time to reply. What it looks like is Analogue wants to be like Apple, making their own hardware and software for it, which is fine and great. But they have nowhere near the kind of resources and man power that a company like Apple has. They have one real engineer afaik, Kevtris, who seems to be the sole person handling new product design, repairs, and updates. That really doesn't seem to be very sustainable unless more help is bought in. I'm only going off of all the reports in this thread and elsewhere on the web about how slow support responses are, how high shipping costs are, and fairly low product runs. If I'm missing something please correct me, by all means.

No, just things like the firmware. Sort of like Apple did [here] and [here]. And yet they still have their own walled-garden ecosystem. Analogue's core focus is hardware, and it clear that they are struggling on the software side due to being under manned for those tasks, especially with getting out updates. Their one and only main developer, as great as he is, is just one person. So this is not just another "wah, opensource everything, close source sucks" tirade, but just an objective observation, from which it appears they could really benefit from leveraging the skills of others, while still maintaining control, and not having to incur the costs of hiring more employees. So if managed correctly, it would be a a very real win-win for them and their customers and help them build a community and who knows, maybe possibly even attract some MiSTer contributors, since the window would be wide open for that.

This is why they should at least allow other people to contribute. Like for example, releasing the firmware to github or similar, so people can submit pull requests / patches that can be reviewed and where Kevtris can weigh in. Closed source with just one person doing all the work clearly isn't an optimal approach here. Compare this to a project like the Pyra at DragonBox, where people from the community are able to help and contribute (which has helped working out hardware and software issues that otherwise would have taken a hell of a lot longer to sort out) so it isn't just one guy (Evil Dragon) doing everything. Analog really should just open up on the software side. I suspect this would help lower their overall development times and costs.

Good point. Those distinctions do seem sensible.

How about "logic clone" for FPGA systems, such as Analogue's, that replicate the logic of the original systems at the electronic level, as that would accurately describe what an FPGA is doing and it also kinda sounds cool, imho :)

I disagree. Discord isn't a replacement for a message board. It's a live chat. It's much easier to be able to read and search a thread for information, to bookmark and always know where it is, than trying to scour an endless Discord backlog. Message boards still have a good place.

I would image that you could have one set of controller ports and adapters for others that could properly map the pin outs and which could be left connected to each controller that you use making swapping easy. Also wireless controller support could also help here.

I think RetroArch and it's derivatives is a good example of OSS that works rather well from a usability standpoint and even feels quite mature. There is no getting around the fact that you need to add rom files, but one would know that going in. Scanning from within the stock interfaces and controller detection has improved a lot. I tried it on my phone and was up in running and less than 5 minutes) with an M30 that was auto recognized and all the buttons worked (only had to map the menu button, which was also simple.) In other words, OSS and being nicely polished are definitely not mutually exclusive these days.

Isn't this essentially what Kevtris wanted to do with the Zimba 3000 that was mentioned earlier in the thread from time to time?

Yeah I was talking about on the Mega Sg. I know that the pin outs are a little different, but I recall they were somewhat compatible, in that a Genesis/MegaDrive controller would work in a CV, which was only useful for games that didn't require the numpad to start; I remember doing this with a three button Genesis/Megadrive controller to play Pitfall! on my CV. I also know that a Genesis pad can also be used on an Atari 2600 and Master System, so there seems to be at least some commonality. I would be really surprised if the Mega Sg wouldn't be able to use a CV controller at all.

Shouldn't it be possible to connect a real ColecoVision controller directly, seeing as used same connector? The Super Action Controllers were actually quite nice (much better than the stock ones) and I'd be really surprised if Kevtris wouldn't have supported that.

Review embargoes??! What is that all about?

Thanks for that demonstration, which helps a lot.