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How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS


racerx

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So many good points brought up by Ben Heck. He's a true master at his craft, and the RVGS guys should take note about each of his points. They're all valid, and seemingly ignored by the RVGS team. I wonder if these points were brought up by Ben when they first reached out to him and then ignored, or if Ben just declined to come aboard such a project without giving them feedback.

 

One of the primary mission the RVGS team seems to tout is "cartridges because... CARTRIDGES!" Ben brings up exactly WHY carts were used then and not now. But by golly, RVGS needs cartridges because... CARTRIDGES! System updates? Nah! Remember the good ole' days when updating a system meant an entire new manufacturing run? Us too! Let's do that again! The RVGS guys seem to want to bring something to market that is completely unwanted by consumers.

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But I think it's also what's making this the age of "Be bold and don't worry about the consequences. No one can hold you accountable."

It's partly about respect and partly about being appropriately humble.

I couldn't agree more.

 

The thing is that their declarations were made in public and were directed at us so it has always also been between us (as potential customers) and them.

When Mike claims he has 150 developpers lining up to make games for the RVGS or makes name dropping and it appears he only contacted some people once, without getting any promises, I feel cheated.

When they focus on gouging about their colored Jaguar cases, limited editions, etc...., I feel insulted as if I was a little child only interested in bells and whistles.

When they show us paper-printed "pcbs", videos of future games running on other existing hardware with some fake console 3D rendering in foreground or a video of some "prototype" board (that was supposed to be too expensive to make) which is just a retail dev board running an unrelated OS ("look how good I am, I can move the windows"), I feel like someone is thinking I'm stupid.

 

That's why, as someone who was initially interested by their idea, i feel "offended" by the way they have been dealing with their potential customers and, in the end, blamed their failure on us, "haters" instead of taking their share of responsibilities, like "professionals" would have done.

 

Off course, I don't expect any public apologies but I think the frustration of seeing they did not learn ANYTHING from their failure (and will likely proceed the same in the future) is one of the reason we have so much people still bragging about them.

Edited by philyso
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I'm wondering what and where all this money that was said to have been spent on this went into? Mike bought the Jag molds sure but the shells already paid for those. John only had a couple hundred bucks (tops) worth of crap shoved under that clear jag top as well. They went on like they had exhausted the family fortune and I just can't see how that is\was possible.

 

P.S. Bow down bitches, Ben Heck is in the house! :grin: :thumbsup:

I see you're using a Sega Genesis case for your prototype... Where do I sign up? :P :p

I know doing that bit on the show was borderline trolling.

 

(For folks that don't want to watch the whole thing it's at 12:50 in my video)

 

But I thought they seriously needed to see how ridiculous their prototype demonstration video looks to those of us outside of their project. Anyone can stuff boards under a case and wave a window on a screen with a mouse. Took me all of 5 minutes to slap together pre-show.

 

Show me a ColecoVision game or Gunlord running from a cart and maybe I'll say "shut up and take my money."

Edited by dashv
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One of the primary mission the RVGS team seems to tout is "cartridges because... CARTRIDGES!" Ben brings up exactly WHY carts were used then and not now. But by golly, RVGS needs cartridges because... CARTRIDGES! System updates? Nah! Remember the good ole' days when updating a system meant an entire new manufacturing run? Us too! Let's do that again! The RVGS guys seem to want to bring something to market that is completely unwanted by consumers.

 

Mike Kennedy wanted to market to the collectards who care more about having a "rare" cart on their shelves than playing games.

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Heard about this crowdsourced project and remembered I had it pitched to me about a year ago. Checked my email to confirm... it was these guys! I recall thinking it was a very strange concept at the time, but seems like they went for it?

 

Here's what I've learned about collectors and nostalgia, both from my game console mods of old and more recently pinball design and manufacture:

 

People will pay good money - stupid money even - for things that remind them of the past, but it has to be THINGS FROM THEIR PAST.

 

If I nostalgically play Duck Tales, for instance, I'm reminded of being 13 years old and not having to pay taxes or work 60 hours a week. The Twin Towers are still standing, gas is 90 cents a gallon and the Berlin Wall just came down - yahoo! Nostalgia is about the longing for things that are gone. Games (or movies, or songs...) are simply a tangible link to that memory, persistent evidence and a reminder of a past that is gone.

 

RVGS has no such history. It's not "taking us back to the past" because it didn't exist in the past. It's more of an impression of the past, like myself trying to imitate Sean Connery. Sure 8-bit graphics are the "hot thing" on Steam, but that's mostly because it's an affordable way for indie developers to make games.

 

I'm not nostalgic for cartridges. I don't even like swapping out Metal Gear V in order to watch a Blu-Ray. It is a less convenient way to enjoy media. One could argue (correctly) that Blu-Ray is superior to streaming but with games? No difference at all.

 

Cartridges - like a horse and buggy - were a product of their time. Couldn't download a game because there was no internet. Even if you could, you wouldn't be able to afford the RAM to hold it. Disks are cheap right? Sure, but the disk drives themselves cost as much as the computer. In that world, a mass-produced ROM mask on a PCB made sense.

 

Oh gee what else to complain about...

 

  • Jaguar shell is an insane idea, again, going back to nostalgia, you want to remind people of the console that killed Atari?
  • Save $X by using that mold, but how much does it cost to mod in all those ports that weren't on the Jag? (and on the front too)
  • Jag cartridges with weird handle were pretty lame, AVGN does a pretty good job explaining why.
  • Nobody is going to write games (or even port them, ask the WiiU) for a system with such a small install base

Also, have a working prototype. Crowdfunding should be 1) develop it with your own money 2) ask for the money needed for manufacture. When the money intended for manufacture gets used to finish development you always end up in a hole and have to seek additional funding to fulfill the materials. This is where most projects truly go off the rails.

 

KevTris system looks great. Get a stuffing quote from a fab house, Kickstart that cost + 20%, and release files for buyers to 3D print their own custom cases.

 

Boom, done!

 

Hey Ben

 

Thanks for visiting this humble thread. I just wanted to say thanks as your videos encouraged me to "get out and try electronics" so to speak. I bought soldering & desoldering tools and have had a blast learning things through success and failures and now I enjoy console modding. The content that you make inspired to just give things a try.

 

.... anyway, outside of the fanservice, you bring up some really pertinent points. Nostalgia is about a memory (or an echo of a memory). Without the"tangible link" as you say, you are just left with the shell (pun intended) of something that means a lot to a group of people. Crowdfunding should be the production of a realised idea to a suitable market, not the playmoney to develop a loose idea into a product that is production ready.

 

Thanks for chiming into our thread - keep up the entertaining videos.

Stu

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If I may comment on the nostalgia aspect: nostalgia only exists when contemplating the past. Even if DuckTales is a link to that fondly remembered past, your enjoyment of it in the present is based on its own merits. That is, if DuckTales sucks, no amount of nostalgia will make you enjoy it in the present. In short, good games are still good decades later.

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Cartridges - like a horse and buggy - were a product of their time. Couldn't download a game because there was no internet. Even if you could, you wouldn't be able to afford the RAM to hold it. Disks are cheap right? Sure, but the disk drives themselves cost as much as the computer. In that world, a mass-produced ROM mask on a PCB made sense.

 

 

 

Cartridges are where it's at; they're just a convenient wrapper for an expansion board thus they transcend time:

 

We had the game modem expansion board for the VCS that let us download games or plug in carts.

 

RAM to hold it? The SuperCharger for the VCS was essentially another 6K RAM expansion board with an audio cassette interface that mirrored the old board for the Altair, a similarly RAM challenged machine; ditto you can even load the Tiny BASIC from tape and make your own games with high quality graphics or load the existing library of games from tape. Cassette players were and are still ubiquitous while LP's and 8-tracks have bit the dust along with the floppy drives of yore clicking and whirring and failing to load. I agree, and those were not nearly as cool as tape; for gaming, cassette tapes were pefect and the ACR interface again transcend time - we can use our iPods with their external GUI menu's to select from a plethora of gaming fun and can continue to do so when usb and parallel ports and compact flash and SD cards have all faded to obsolesence.

 

I think a Ben Heck designed Atari Flashback portable bundled with a RAM expansion cart with a simple ACR interface would provide a tremendous retro experience for anyone that ever played an Atari, used cartridges or loaded games from tape :) Carts and tapes and iTune game downloads would be the media of choice that would bring back the fun and let gamers just play again without fumbling with a usb interface or tiny memory cards you have to format and install and swap back and forth; that's not farfegnugen there's no nostalgia there and ditto for the interface: retro means we load a game by plugging in the cart or pressing play on tape or ipod which draws familiarity from the cassette interface with it's play button; we never waded through menu driven interfaces to select a game on our Television sets.

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Its not so much that they were insulting anyone's intelligence, but more so trying to cram an unbalanced idea into a niche area. That and apparently letting a salesperson make engineering decisions. A no-no however well intended.

 

 

I was wondering how far along the prototype development got, so I've looked a bit more into the photo from John Carlsen's Facebook post from last week (first attached photo) that mentioned the prototype, the same setup that appeared in the video that was up for a few days but has now been taken down.

 

He seems to have a Lattice Semiconductor ispMACH 4256ZE Breakout Board underneath the transparent Jag case (as well as some Lattice packaging in the background).

 

[..]

 

I think the red PCB is an Olimex RK3188-SOM-EVB (with HDMI and USB).

 

[..]

 

That is completely correct.

 

 

People will pay good money - stupid money even - for things that remind them of the past, but it has to be THINGS FROM THEIR PAST.

 

There was a brief discussion here on AA about exactly that. Good to see the point reiterated.

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I'm pretty sure we're seeing eye on eye on this whole fiasco. I just wanted clarify, not specifically to you, for the people only seeing the dollar amounts ($2000 vs, $100k) that there is a delineation of where the "blood money" is being "spent." Somewhere between those two numbers lies passionate work of someone who loves the intricacies of video game hardware. Kinda reminds me of a salami attack (real term, btw). You take a couple thin slices hear and there over a long period of time, nobody notices. Take the entire salami at once, someone definitely notices. When you do part time R&D over the course of many years, it's far different from lumping that all together into consecutive man hours doing the same work.

 

It just occurred to me that RVGS was asking for ~$100,000 in prototyping costs and another ~$80,000 stipend for each member of the group, including Carlsen. I don't know -- even that may be fair -- but they wouldn't dare go in front of a VC (or Shark Tank) with just a couple of translucent Jaguar casts and phat ideas. :-o

 

And FWIW, I noticed that in my first post on this (which you replied to) I didn't clarify I was speaking in terms of what they could have shoestringed together before coming to us to ask for our financial support. That may have saved us both a lot of discussion and misunderstanding. :grin: Mea culpa.

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Sorry if my post about the boards used in the prototype was redundant, I hadn't seen anyone else state exactly which Lattice board was being used, or find the Olimex (which it seems was the board actually running in the demo).

 

But I thought they seriously needed to see how ridiculous their prototype demonstration video looks to those of us outside of their project. Anyone can stuff boards under a case and wave a window on a screen with a mouse. Took me all of 5 minutes to slap together pre-show.

True, a guy sitting at his kitchen table which has been covered with off-the-shelf hardware and hobbyist-level electronics tools, including an old CRT scope that's not even plugged in, telling you that he has spent 7 months developing hardware that he can't show you because of patent issues does look ridiculous.

 

Even worse than looking ridiculous though, is the fact that he is lying. They also show a mockup of what claims to be a finished PCB design on the Indiegogo page, but based on the state of the prototype and the last minute fluctuating specs, that is likely a fake too.

Edited by galax
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I believe Mike wanted my help with industrial design but yes, I didn't think it sounded like a good idea and never really followed up.

 

The Ouya has poisoned the well for any project crowdfunded like this (and even that was a much better concept) It failed for the same reason - lack of original content and what content there was didn't sell very well at all, driving developers away.

 

There are loads of homebrew games already being made (and sold here!) that work on consoles you already have. RVGS was a classic "solution in search of a problem"

 

 

 

 

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I believe Mike wanted my help with industrial design but yes, I didn't think it sounded like a good idea and never really followed up.

 

The Ouya has poisoned the well for any project crowdfunded like this (and even that was a much better concept) It failed for the same reason - lack of original content and what content there was didn't sell very well at all, driving developers away.

 

There are loads of homebrew games already being made (and sold here!) that work on consoles you already have. RVGS was a classic "solution in search of a problem"

 

 

 

 

 

My concern is if this has any implications on anything else that needs to be crowdfunded and contains an fpga. This project has shed some light on the fpga topic to the general public but perhaps not in way that leaves a good lasting impression.

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You can be 100% sure that AVGN has also been contacted about the RVGS. Maybe Classic Game Room as well.

Believe me, AVGN is REALLY hoping this thing gets released!

 

I can see it now, "This piece of rat-feces-infested nobody-gives-a-shit hunk of indie-dung only has like 7 or 8 games and they are all buggy ports of games you can get on other consoles. I mean look at this bug! It's like the developers weren't even told they were supposed to make the game bug free the first time!"

Edited by StarPath
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