godslabrat

January 28

25 minutes ago, Malrinth said:

I guess the Amico just wasn't enough for them...

Well, to be fair... the Polymega is aiming to play games people actually care about. I think that's why P&I gave it a pass for so long.

January 27

Oh good, I really needed another way to play the Atari 100 pack, AND pay a monthly fee for the privilege.

January 27

5 minutes ago, imstarryeyed said:

Just to add to this.. I just got off the online chat with Walmart.com about my order. Now take this with a grain of salt, as the support person only knows so much, but to the best of their knowledge after checking on the order they are on track to deliver in March and have been given no directive to cancel orders or even say their are any problems.

I have not cancelled my order on Walmart as I am interested to see how this may turn out in a few weeks and see what happens.

I will continue to keep this thread updated as I hear from my order and walmart's developments.

Of course a frontline agent knows nothing. Not only are they usually the last to know about such developments in their own company, there's no way they'd have insider info on what's going on with an outside company.

That said, if you think it's in your best interest to keep your pre-order, wal-mart is your best bet. If this project goes south, you can count on Wal-mart to give you a refund.

January 26

41 minutes ago, youxia said:

Lol...I never watch these vids but love the intro screens...they crack me up. Like school drama production, only with 40+ geezers hammin' it up

It's not some terrible "conspiracy" buddy, just Atari being Atari, nothing new or particularly shocking. Get yourself a cup of tea and calm down.

Well, it isn't like l'Atari has been honest about... ANYTHING throughout this whole ordeal. "Conspiracy" might not be the best word, but they've been actively covering up a lot of their own ineptness.

January 26

1 hour ago, Cosmic Owl said:

Suspicious development:

https://www.retrorgb.com/cancel-your-polymega-walmart-orders.html

This is just my speculation, but to me it feels like polymega needs the money from these preorders to meet prior obligations. I suspect Walmart will not release to polymega, preorder funds until the products are ready to ship or at least sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

TLDR: Polymega is asking exisiting pre-order customers to cancel Walmart orders and re-order Polymega directly through them. This includes a price hike of $50 and no clear benefit to the consumer.

I agree with Cosmic Owl... Polymega likely NEEDS the money to fund the production and has no way to get it otherwise. I suppose the Angel Investors, assuming they ever existed, have decided not to foot the bill anymore. It seems like a REALLY REALLY BAD IDEA to be encouraging customers to not use the retailer of their choice, especially when being on Walmart.com was a source of bragging rights for Polymega for so long.

Also, as a rule, small businesses shouldn't try to pick fights with Wal-Mart. The chances of it ending well for them are very not good.

January 26

31 minutes ago, cybercylon said:

Didn't someone find a way to do with the last one, or I am getting it confused with the Retrofreak?

My last experience with a Retro 5 was my last experience with a Hyperkin product. Others have had more luck than me I guess.

The way I feel about these consoles... they are kind of neat when you are first getting back into playing older games. If you are more of a casual player with these games or only play some games where lag isn't an issue, then it is fine for some. For others, the neatness starts to wear off when you realize things are not what you remembered. My Retrofreak is pretty much a paper weight...

The Retrofreak was able to store games on an SD card and play them right out of the box. The R5 could sort of do the same thing, if you loaded the ROM as a save file while playing another game.

This all came about because Hyperkin had needless paranoia about getting sued by Nintendo for selling an emubox (which is perfectly legal). Of course, when the system was first released, the emulators weren't properly licensed (which is not at all legal). In more ways than one, corners were cut on this machine because Hyperkin was worried about the wrong problem.

I'm just mildly curious to see if they'd take the obvious opportunity to release a better system. I'm sure I'll be disappointed.

January 26

7 hours ago, NeonSpaceBeagle said:

I don't see anything about it, but does this new berry retron5 support everdrives? i remember the last one I had didn't support multicarts, but it broke before I got into everdrives.

Nope. I mean, I haven't seen any specs, but it's built to be a software emulation machine, so it can't work with Everdrives.

It's possible, but unlikely, that the SD card could be used to load roms directly, eliminating the need for an ever drive.

January 23

Just saw this. The Retron 5 might have been hot when it came out, but it's a tough sell in 2021. Would be really curious to know if they did more than change the color scheme and add a wired controller.

Personally, I think they should have cut the wireless controller entirely and tried to rebrand it as a budget system

January 23

On 1/21/2021 at 4:09 PM, mr_me said:

The rfid stores the license information. Since that is digital storage, it is technically physical media.

But not physical media of the game.

January 19

15 minutes ago, Paul Slocum said:

FYI: This was posted on Reddit, emphasis mine: "Atari has said in the official Discord that users should not use 4k mode right now because it is causing OS corruption. Until an OS update is released they ask that you do not use my 4k mode."

"Please don't use this extremely common, advertised feature because you might screw your entire system."

I guess that's where the "play and stream like never before" came from.... because it's true, I've never heard that before.

January 16

Just now, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Cart port or emulator? And which firmware version?

Cart port, but latest firmware

January 16

What's the current compatibility with games from the AA store?

January 16

1 hour ago, Scotterpop said:

What a callous thing to say! 😆

I was mildly interested in this controller but looking at the build quality I have to give it a hard pass. Looks like another example of aesthetics over practicality. But then again, that’s been their obvious business acumen all along.

"We got the angles right!!"

January 15

5 minutes ago, Oscar Manuel Rojas Maillo said:

Speaking of videos... Here's the latest in the oven

Mine feels fragile and cheap too, have to treat it like a delicate flower, for fear of breaking it

I'm sure with proper care, they'll be fine.

January 15

21 minutes ago, Keatah said:

It's an absolute for me. And I like it that way.

As far as this Tommy Tellarico stuff goes. Whatever happens happens. If it fits my philosophy and has games I like, I'll buy it. But for now it's all speculation. It isn't on the shelf yet. It isn't at retail yet.

And seeing as we're now looking at August at the soonest, a lot can change on the software front between now and then.

January 15

There really isn't a shortage of extremely cheap ($10 or less) games available. Looking at my Switch library right now, I have seven of them. More if you count re-releases of games from other platforms. None of them have ads. They're all really good games, too. I'm certain the other systems have a similar number of cheap, quality, ad-free games. Mobile too.

I realize digital marketplaces are crowded spaces, and it takes effort to read reviews or watch gameplay videos. But if the central point is that you have more time than money, that's covered.

I hate ad-driven games, but from what I can see, they're only a problem if you want them to be.

January 12

24 minutes ago, Oscar Manuel Rojas Maillo said:

In wikipedia entry for the VCS, every bit of information is linked to official sources, yet...

Oh boy... These negaducknists

The only misinformation and slant I ever remember hearing came from the project itself.

January 11

On 1/8/2021 at 9:36 AM, justclaws said:

it's not ideal.

The Ataribox gets its new slogan!

January 5

24 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

Do you really think, there is going to be a second version? They haven't even made the first one available for purchase.

"From the fanboys who brought you 'Dreamcast 2'...!"

January 5

3 minutes ago, mr_me said:

Insignificant? perhaps. Atari SA knew what to expect through the igg campaign. They could have cancelled and returned everyone's money. They chose to go ahead with it knowing the numbers. If that's not good enough for some of the people here, that's your problem.

I don't even know what you mean by that.

January 5

26 minutes ago, mr_me said:

Sure but I'm talking about sales expectations. As far as what people think of the product, thousands of people spoke with their wallets while I only see a handful of people here complaining.

"Thousands". Lol. What they sold was insignificant.

January 5

23 minutes ago, mr_me said:

What do you think their expectations were for the atari vcs? Doesn't matter what the fans or critics think.

What the fans and critics think means a lot. They're the ones with the money.

January 5

4 minutes ago, zzip said:

When is marketing/messaging ever completely honest and transparent? There's a reason I skip straight to the specs and ignore that fluff. In the beginning they said it was going to be an open PC.

Negative. L'Atari did not get specific about what the device would exactly be until very late in the process. A huge amount of the buzz they did generate centered around the complete lack of definition of the project. Again, even Atari themselves didn't know.

9 minutes ago, zzip said:

In the end, consumers have never been particularly hot for games streaming, Stadia didn't exactly set the world on fire, and PS5/XBsX are selling like hotcakes, so gaming on real hardware is the cool thing again.

Stadia is a red herring. Streaming was never going to take the gaming world by storm, and anyone who could look at a map and do basic calculations about bandwidth could tell you that. It's irrelevant to the conversation.

11 minutes ago, zzip said:

If I was in charge, I could maybe make the people on this board want one, but I'm not sure my messaging would have resulted in a more successful crowdfunding campaign because the people here aren't representative of the general public. I know the people here hate the viral 21st century marketing tactics, but they work. The VCS generated a lot of media buzz ahead of it's crowdfunding.

I'm going to take a bit of a leap (not much of one) and suggest that, beyond the logo, the single most compelling thing about the VCS was always its case design, and it's for a combination of those two things that most people made their crowdfunding pledges. Those are also the two things that require the least amount of technology, so really, they could have been included in any device. If the logo and case were the same regardless, I doubt I could have done *worse*.

Personally, I say the first change that needed to be made was the price. That $400 needs to take a flying leap. $100-$200 was the range here. And Atari really should have embraced the product that actually sold well-- the flashbacks. People like them well enough to keep buying them, even if there seems to be a slowdown as of late. Ideally, they should have taken a FB, given it a beefier architecture, something that could have supported Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+, and that likely wouldn't cost a whole lot more than what an existing FB cost. If you could add an app store for semi-modern games, you'd have something that would not only appeal to the people in this forum, but maybe a modest number of people on the street as well.

Remember, Atari got less than 11,000 people to support the VCS. Outdoing that is not really a high bar to set. I think it's safe to say that, if you could sell the same logo and the same case, but with filling that actually provides real value to people, at half the price, there's no way you don't sell more. A lot more.

You and I can disagree on the value of the "Open" aspect all day long, as well as how much the world at large is asking for a PC in an Atari shell. There's room for discussion there. But I think it's clear that Atari had the chance to provide more value for a lower price, and had they done that, the product would have been more popular.

January 5

8 minutes ago, zzip said:

The current Atari doesn't have the resources to do anything else. They can't take on the Big-3. They can't produce something like the Amico because they don't have the portfolio of IPs to make it compelling. The best they could do is make an open system that is still useful even if the company stops supporting it.

I'm actually going to agree with you here: they can't compete, they shouldn't, and the Box as it stands is the best l'Atari can expect to do. Then why is their messaging running completely counter to that? This wasn't branded as a novelty PC (where it achieves some base-level success), it was branded as a game console and streaming box (where it fails at both). Atari's approach to this could charitably be called "hubris" and I'd strongly prefer words like "disingenuous" or "sleazy."

Truth be told, I'm betting if they put

you in charge of making this thing, I bet the end result would be more focused and practical. I know I've had some ideas for how this COULD have gone, that would have resulted in it not being total clownshoes. If this was the best Atari could do, why did they do it? I'm sure it was a quick buck, but it doesn't speak well of the long-term value of the brand or company. One day you're making a George Foreman Grill computer, the next you're slapping your logo on a foot bath.

January 5

6 minutes ago, Atarick said:

True. And it overheats, the controls lag, there are glitches all over, and the software is laughably incompatible with 3rd party titles. Also, Nintendo has essentially given up on support for it. They are as guilty of what Atari SA are (marketing a flawed device on brand name recognition), the only difference is they had a broader and more mainstream target audience.

I am sorry, Nintendo has given up support for the switch? Could you please elaborate on that?I am sorry, Nintendo has given up support for the switch? Could you please elaborate on that?

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