FPGA Based Videogame System

[Nomenclature]

It's funny hearing and reading the only objection to the product which are basically "why not just use an emulator?", or "why not just get a snes mini and hack it?". These sort of people will only learn by experience, and there's no reason to try and convince them. Basically they have decided they don't need to spend 230$ on something they can "basically" do for free. Once you play one you can tell the difference right away. They do have a point until the cores drop though, but once they do it's just hands down the superior product.

 

At this point, in relation to at least a SNES core, they either drive sales of yoshi's island and the sd2snes by the thousand, or they release the core and drive sales of the super nt. I don't think they're going to be silent on the question for 4 months and then once all the sales and new pre-orders are in just say "surprise! no cores, sorry!". Everyone is waiting for them they're not stupid. That and also they have 2 games built in, which shows it can at least play all the games the super everdrive can in rom form.

 

As for the NT mini cores, there's no sign they even have anymore parts to make more systems. They've expressed directly they're interested in moving forward to other systems not looking back at the past. And it would require them to at least make a cheaper model to fit demand which at that point is just a cheapo cash grab for cheaper hardware than the Super NT, and you get a NES cartridge slot (which is useless cuz you can just run the roms off the card), so basically just NES controller ports. I don't see them ever doing that. They'll just release all the cores for the Super NT and funnel all sales into one current product, which they will sell a boatload of and can seemingly produce many thousand a month...

 

I guess we'll know one way or the other in the next couple of weeks.

Edited February 7, 2018 by Nomenclature

[LewisD]

I decided to go ahead and buy a SD2SNES off of eBay tonight. With my horrible timing and luck, Kevtris will announce the jailbreak with supplemental chip support tomorrow.

[Laner]

 

Also the silence on if/when the cores drop is deafening, and it coincides with them ignoring all questions about making more NT Mini's. Seems pretty obvious the cores will be coming soon and they won't be making anymore NT Mini's as they'll be rendered relatively obsolete at that point anyway.

 

I'm not picking on you specifically here, but there seems to be a lot of wishful thinking around this subject. I hope you're right, and that we'll see the JB firmware drop any day now.

 

HOWEVER - If Kevtris/Analogue have decided that the Super Nt will never get additional cores/features/what-have-you, there is absolutely no good reason to acknowledge that. It's far better to say nothing, let people speculate, and boost sales in the process.

 

If they *did* come out and definitively state there will be no Core Store 2.0, it would undoubtedly hurt them - in terms of future sales, pre-order cancellations and eBay dumping by those who already have their Super Nt's in hand. There's no upside to admitting it. Better to keep people guessing in perpetuity.

Edited February 7, 2018 by Laner

[scott64]

Instead of doing another run of NT minis, Analogue should make an NES/SNES combo next. I personally find myself mainly using my retroduo instead of my original NES and SNES out of laziness. It would be nice to have a NES/SNES clone without the compromise in sound and compatibility.

[DadsGlasses]

Can cart audio be left enabled at all times, or should it be disabled when not in use?

Great question! I was wondering that myself.

[scott64]

I think he mentions it in the video, that if you plug headphones into an actual gameboy, its just as noisy if not more. I kind of want Analogue to produce a handheld based on the Gameboy/Gameboy Color where they could address this issue and output clean sound.

This got me thinking, does this mean that the pass through audio on the Super Retro Advance (and RetroGen) would work as well? Would it be possible to allow the pass though video to work through firmware or would that require a modification to the system?

 

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the SRA adapter has it's own composite output cables BUT if you're using a certain revision of the original Retro Trio (not SRT+) the audio and video pass through the pins somehow and require no additional cables. I'm probably one of the only retrobit fanboys preordering a Super NT, but I'd love to be able to play GBA games on it without messing around with extra cables.

[Loukey]

Wow. Lots of hubbub about not hearing about a jailbreak yet. Most of our consoles have not even been tendered to the courier yet, no need for concern quite yet.

[Kismet]

This got me thinking, does this mean that the pass through audio on the Super Retro Advance (and RetroGen) would work as well? Would it be possible to allow the pass though video to work through firmware or would that require a modification to the system?

 

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the SRA adapter has it's own composite output cables BUT if you're using a certain revision of the original Retro Trio (not SRT+) the audio and video pass through the pins somehow and require no additional cables. I'm probably one of the only retrobit fanboys preordering a Super NT, but I'd love to be able to play GBA games on it without messing around with extra cables.

 

That's probably something that could be made to be supported if kevtris has one, but my feeling on this is that it's probably a hack. According to this: https://web.archive.org/web/20150420003507/https://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?48386-Sound-fixes-for-the-Tototek-GBA-SNES-AD-Adapter, they probably cheaped out somewhere and the SNES by default mutes it. It also apparently only sends mono audio on the V1.0's . Video actually appears to be a hack to the composite output of a SNES and could not be supported that way. So IMO, if you plug it in, and have the audio not muted, the audio would probably work if the SNES is powered on. Though what it seems like is that these devices are simply meant to sit in the SNES slot to use the SNES controllers and don't even need the SNES or clone to be powered on.

 

I probably wouldn't recommend using it since it doesn't actually "run" anything on the console, it relies being connected to the SNES bus, which obviously doesn't exist the same way as the original console does.

[kevtris]

Can cart audio be left enabled at all times, or should it be disabled when not in use?

You can, but it will slightly raise the noise floor on the audio. I doubt most people will even notice so you can leave it enabled if you like.

 

This got me thinking, does this mean that the pass through audio on the Super Retro Advance (and RetroGen) would work as well? Would it be possible to allow the pass though video to work through firmware or would that require a modification to the system?

 

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the SRA adapter has it's own composite output cables BUT if you're using a certain revision of the original Retro Trio (not SRT+) the audio and video pass through the pins somehow and require no additional cables. I'm probably one of the only retrobit fanboys preordering a Super NT, but I'd love to be able to play GBA games on it without messing around with extra cables.

The passthrough audio would work, but I can't support pass through video- that'd need a lot of stuff- a video ADC and then composite video decoding, etc. The one that just has a video output will work though (on a cable or whatever, I am not sure how that works). It'd just be using the snt as a power supply and controllers. Sort of like that "super 8" thing did with NES/famicom games. You'd plug your AV cable into it, and then there was a little cable that came off of it and plugged into the NES.

[Reaperman]

Well that output looks a lot sharper than my snes/framemeister, even with non-integer scaling.

I hadn't planned on making a purchase today, but fine, whatever, I'll buy your pretty console...again.

It's those My LIfe in Gaming comparison screenshots--they get you every time.

 

I suppose I'll justify it to the wife by noting that the ship date happens to be my birthday--yeah, that might just work.

After all, I did get her that $20 blanket for her birthday a few days ago.

Edited February 8, 2018 by Reaperman

[Beer Monkey]

You can choose to do 60.09 in the Super Nt. There are minor tradeoffs though. At around 16:59 of the MLIG review they start talking about it. https://youtu.be/d_OW_t9RXEM?t=1019 Unless you are using an analog source and display there is no way around the limitations. Even an emulator will have minor issues I think due to the HDMI and the frame buffer that is required.

 

There are a lot of HDTVs that will accept the native NES/SNES refresh rate; I've owned two and I know people with others that take it no problem. I can run through an OSSC passthrough at 60.08hz 240p and my LG displays it quite happily as do most LG sets. Voultar recently had a blowup with Vizio where a firmware update broke the compatibility on his set and downgrading isn't allowed. I'd like to see unbuffered 60.08hz as an option at some point; obviously it should never be the default since then the system wouldn't work at all for some people. And if added there's need to be a way to reset it without the GUI, since some people would inevitably end up switching to it and bam, no picture!

 

So generally you don't want to produce a product for sale in the US that will see more use as a piracy tool. It's completely above board to change the firmware (which is what people do to make DVD and Blueray drives RCE0) that adds features that were not originally offered, as long as the manufacturer doesn't adopt or endorse it over their own firmware. They included games in the distributed firmware because they've been legitimately licensed.

 

I expect, but don't care if/when it happens that anything produced for the NT Mini will get ported to the SuperNT, but if people are complaining that they can't play their pirated games on the device, they need to stop and think about what they are saying about themselves. Like the most obvious thing for a JB firmware to do first is a "CopyCart" mode as the only way to put the games on the device, and have it actually check for chip carts so it refuses the copy process for games that will be broken. Later JB firmware with other cores could use a hash database of which games will not work with the current version of the core. That should keep the complaints down to people who actually have the real carts, and those who know what they are getting into with a hacked/fan game not in the hash table.

 

Right now Nintendo can not claim damages from this device, because they at present aren't even producing enough SNES Mini's to meet demand.

 

Also, the SNES patents are expired. So anybody can make a SNES without patent infringing. Adding features like playing from SD wouldn't change that. Analogue has zero legal worries unless they start cloning systems that are still under patent, include original BIOS..for the systems that have a BIOS, which is copyrighted software. To be completely safe on legal grounds one would need to do a clean room rewrite of the BIOS.

 

The power is basically directly connected to the port at all times that it is plugged in, so there's no way to disable it in the menu. Put a very small square of tape over the LED to cover it up if it bothers you. Power draw is very low and around 10-20ma so it is basically enough power to light an LED.

 

I don't really mind the LED. However my HDMI auto switch thinks the system is always on, so maybe there's some leaking of signal down the HDMI cable when powered off?

Edited February 8, 2018 by Beer Monkey

[Jagasian]

I just received the UPS notification that my Super NT will be delivered tomorrow. I pre-ordered back in October.

 

I still have my original SNES hooked up to my CRT, and I have experimented with hooking it up directly to my flatscreen TV. The built-in upscaler in my Samsung TV has all sorts of problems: flickering image, blurry as f-ck, and 80ms of input lag when measured using the 240p Test Suites manual lag test. While that is not the most accurate measure of lag, it is a good practical test in that it reports around 8ms of input lag on my CRT TV. So if my old eyeballs and reflexes are enough to detect a 72ms difference in lag... then it will make a difference in timing sensitive games for sure.

 

Over HDMI at 1080p, my Samsung TV is supposed to have 40ms lag. Tomorrow, I will report numbers of the Super NT running the manual lag test hooked up to this Samsung. If I can get numbers close to 40ms, I will be happy.

 

Next time I buy a TV, I will buy one with under 17ms lag.

[D3ltax55]

I want to get a cheat device. But I hear there putting cheats in a later update. Should I just get a cheat device for now or wait for the firmware cheat menu that may not even come out.
The thing is. I kinda want to put cheats for supermario rpg. which didn't support the game genie cause of the longer chip.
Can you use a super ufo cart and put cheat codes in. IDK for sm rpg thou.
Maybe I can get a translation of DBZ hyper dimension if it works with the jap cart.
Whatever cheat device works best for now.

[SubElement]

Just got my shipping confirmation to Australia. But, they didn't my international address well at all, it's listing my Apartment Number and Street three times, and doesn't even show my Country.

 

Hoping it's just a DHL issue, but it's all good on the back end. Otherwise this thing is going to some mystery destination.

[Thomas83Lin]

Just got my shipping confirmation to Australia. But, they didn't my international address well at all, it's listing my Apartment Number and Street three times, and doesn't even show my Country.

 

Hoping it's just a DHL issue, but it's all good on the back end. Otherwise this thing is going to some mystery destination.

My ups tracking shows my name multi times, but the address is otherwise correct. strange

[Nomenclature]

 

I'm not picking on you specifically here, but there seems to be a lot of wishful thinking around this subject. I hope you're right, and that we'll see the JB firmware drop any day now.

 

HOWEVER - If Kevtris/Analogue have decided that the Super Nt will never get additional cores/features/what-have-you, there is absolutely no good reason to acknowledge that. It's far better to say nothing, let people speculate, and boost sales in the process.

 

If they *did* come out and definitively state there will be no Core Store 2.0, it would undoubtedly hurt them - in terms of future sales, pre-order cancellations and eBay dumping by those who already have their Super Nt's in hand. There's no upside to admitting it. Better to keep people guessing in perpetuity.

 

Absolutely no reason...you know other than being honest with your customers. Lying via omission is still lying. There is a good section of buyers who are expecting at least a SNES core, and if it doesn't have one, original hardware with an ossc is still a better option. Lying to those people so they end up buying something they don't want isn't exactly sound business policy. That being said all signs point to the release of cores, so this will all be a mute point then.

Edited February 8, 2018 by Nomenclature

[cfillak]

I want to get a cheat device. But I hear there putting cheats in a later update. Should I just get a cheat device for now or wait for the firmware cheat menu that may not even come out.

The thing is. I kinda want to put cheats for supermario rpg. which didn't support the game genie cause of the longer chip.

Can you use a super ufo cart and put cheat codes in. IDK for sm rpg thou.

Maybe I can get a translation of DBZ hyper dimension if it works with the jap cart.

Whatever cheat device works best for now.

It looks like the Super Everdrive currently supports Game Genie cheat codes, and the SD2SNES will support cheats in the next firmware update, according to the sd2snes blog: https://sd2snes.de/blog/status. I'm not sure about the Super UFO but I'm fairly certain you're not going to be able to do translation patches on SA-1 games.

[narshe]

Kevtris, need a little cash? https://twitter.com/PicanteLive/status/961352854681325569

[Kismet]

 

 

Also, the SNES patents are expired. So anybody can make a SNES without patent infringing. Adding features like playing from SD wouldn't change that. Analogue has zero legal worries unless they start cloning systems that are still under patent, include original BIOS..for the systems that have a BIOS, which is copyrighted software. To be completely safe on legal grounds one would need to do a clean room rewrite of the BIOS.

 

 

I was not talking about patents, I was talking about copyright infringement (because people loading the mini classics with pirated games is a bad thing.) Nintendo can not presently claim that the NT Mini or Super NT, or RetroUSB AVS are "harming" them, because the NES Classic and SNES Classic are both impossible to buy except from scalpers on eBay. By releasing the SuperNT, it actually creates an alternative to buying either/both.

 

If Nintendo wants a piece of that pie, they should take every game on the mini's and release their own flash cart for the SuperNT, likewise SquareEnix, Capcom, Konami, Altus, etc. That is essentially free money for the price of a USB drive or SD card, depending on what arrangement they can swing with Analogue. Maybe SquareEnix could have a version of the SuperNT firmware built that protects their games on the SD card (as in can't be ripped back off the card) and they can sell those cards, and cut Nintendo completely out of their own Virtual Console market.

Edited February 8, 2018 by Kismet

[D3ltax55]

Just got my shipping confirmation to Australia. But, they didn't my international address well at all, it's listing my Apartment Number and Street three times, and doesn't even show my Country.

 

Hoping it's just a DHL issue, but it's all good on the back end. Otherwise this thing is going to some mystery destination.

I asked that my address didn't show in DHL in the tracking. I emailed analogue and they anshered me that whatever they gave them as a address that is what they put.

Edited February 8, 2018 by D3ltax55

[konradklaus]

Sigh... have not receive an email about shipping

[Kismet]

Kevtris, need a little cash? https://twitter.com/PicanteLive/status/961352854681325569

 

Someone doesn't know the value of an engineer's time. Those numbers probably need another zero on them at least.

[narshe]

 

Someone doesn't know the value of an engineer's time. Those numbers probably need another zero on them at least.

 

I'm assuming he has them done already.

[Riptide]

 

I'm assuming he has them done already.

Bad assumption.

He said he was working on a deadline that he was surprised to even meet just for the snes core. Where did the time come from to reverse engineer all those other chips as well?

[Pixelboy]

Bad assumption.

He said he was working on a deadline that he was surprised to even meet just for the snes core. Where did the time come from to reverse engineer all those other chips as well?

We don't even know if the FPGA solution in the Super NT has enough spare resources to cover those extra chips.