FPGA Based Videogame System

[Mattelot]

 

You're not going to get confirmation, which is why it was released the way it was. So why are you even asking about it?

 

I never asked about it. You continue putting words in my mouth. Saying "I'll stick with this until I get confirmation" is not asking a question, it's stating my stance.

 

The only question I did ask, which you still have not answered is "what is wrong with that?"

Edited February 16, 2018 by Mattelot

[keepdreamin]

 

I never asked about it. You continue putting words in my mouth. Saying "I'll stick with this until I get confirmation" is not asking a question, it's stating my stance.

 

The only question I did ask, which you still have not answered is "what is wrong with that?"

 

Because it's a waste of other people's time and incredibly annoying, that's why. Just because you demand something, doesn't mean it's worth consideration by others.

 

Do you hound people in real life for information after they repeatedly ignore or deflect your inquiries (I'm sorry, your "stance" ) Or do you have some amount of social awareness like rest of us, and know when to knock it off?

Edited February 16, 2018 by keepdreamin

[DadsGlasses]

There is so much confirmed information to discuss here in this thread. Hardware questions with Super Nt and NT Mini, glitches and bugs, setup questions, preferences, etc. So much awesome stuff to discuss.

 

Why is anyone worried about discussing unconfirmed stuff like legal issues and jail break sources? (I myself have gone down this rabbit hole.)

 

Now Im trying to focus on the confirmed stuff!

[snatcher1996]

 

If you know who smokemonster is, and what he's done for the community over the past couple years and applied some basic reasoning skills. You wouldn't be here trying to debate with people that the source of the jailbreak is important to know.

 

I honestly don't understand all the fuss about smokemonster as a person or his achievements, when all he did was copy together No Intro romsets with a couple of hacks and genre / game series collections and called it "curating".

Maybe it's not too far fetched to call the following some people in this community have cultish.

[Mattelot]

 

Because it's a waste of other people's time and incredibly annoying, that's why. Just because you demand something, doesn't mean it's worth consideration by others.

 

Do you hound people in real life for information after they repeatedly ignore or deflect your inquiries (I'm sorry, your "stance" ) Or do you have some amount of social awareness like rest of us, and know when to knock it off?

 

Being annoying is subjective and a waste of time is irrelevant. It's important to me, so it's not a waste of my time. If you really felt it was a waste of your time, why are you continuing to respond? Do you do that often?

 

I didn't "hound" anybody for anything. You (for the 3rd time) keep stating that I was asking for information and I wasn't asking any questions. I just stated my stance. All you're doing here is trying to take someone who has a different stance than you and silence them because you disagree. You're taking your tinfoil hat and trying to place it on someone else's head (for whatever reason, I have yet to figure out).

Edited February 16, 2018 by Mattelot

[keepdreamin]

 

It's important to me, so it's not a waste of my time.

 

 

Entitlement.

[Mattelot]

 

 

Entitlement.

 

Thank you for the value-added response.

[Jakir]

Can this thread talk about something other than the jailbreak being suspicious yet?

For the love of god the firmware updater is designed so that it only uploads firmware with specific markers. You can't just flash any firmware to it, it has to say "Hi Super Nt, I'm a Super Nt firmware".

And if the firmware fails to update or you turn it off while it is updating (it takes a full 3 minutes to update) then everything is still fine because it doesn't change the firmware updating part of the code. So you can just run the firmware update again or pick a new firmware to update it with.

And if you update a wrong firmware or "malicious" firmware designed to break the console it still doesn't change the firmware updating part of the code so you can just update the console with a good firmware and everything will work perfectly.

Also the jailbroken firmware has seen tons of downloads and there have been 0 reports of it breaking anything.

There is absolutely nothing to be suspicious of and nothing it can break you couldn't fix by flashing an official firmware. You sound ridiculous. Pick a new topic and move on.

Edited February 16, 2018 by Jakir

[keepdreamin]

"Just stating my stance"

 

 

The "alternative facts" way of asking questions.

[Prodigal Gun]

I was using Super Game Boy 2 with a dirty GB game when the GB game crashed. I did a console reset and the SGB rebooted with a black screen on the GB side. It still seemed to think the GB game was running as the SGB2 allowed me to change borders and manipulate pallets and such, but the Super Nt menu hotkey would not work. I soon realized that it WOULD work if I activated the screen saver on one of the non-default built-in borders (L, L, L, L, R). It would also work for a fraction of a second when entering the SGB2 menu (L + R). It was as if the Super Nts hotkey polling only works when the SGB2 is animating something on the SNES side.

 

I managed to induce this strange state intentionally by tweaking the GB game after the SGB accepts it (you can probably just yank it out).

I finally found a game that will not allow access to in game menu using jailbreak. Super Bomberman plays well but won't allow access to the in game menu. There are others but this one is confirmed.

Edited February 16, 2018 by Prodigal Gun

[Mattelot]

"Just stating my stance"

 

 

The "alternative facts" way of asking questions.

 

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

 

Jakir, some people are completely comfortable with that. There is nothing wrong with it. Some people have reservations and preferences. There is nothing wrong with that either. These things may not be important to you. Nobody has to use the firmware if they don't want to. If my reasons are not important to you, then yes, pick a new topic and move on.

[Jakir]

 

Whatever helps you sleep at night.

 

Jakir, some people are completely comfortable with that. There is nothing wrong with it. Some people have reservations and preferences. There is nothing wrong with that either. These things may not be important to you. Nobody has to use the firmware if they don't want to. If my reasons are not important to you, then yes, pick a new topic and move on.

I don't care which of you does it but one of you stop responding to the other. All you are doing is spamming my inbox with a bunch of notifications about people being morons and not about the updates I followed this thread to receive.

[T-REX]

I don't care which of you does it but one of you stop responding to the other. All you are doing is spamming my inbox with a bunch of notifications about people being morons and not about the updates I followed this thread to receive.

 

"I love listening to these little piss-ant soldiers trying to talk tough. They make me laugh. If Kevtris were here, he'd laugh too."

 

Sorry but I couldn't resist!

[Andromeda Stardust]

I can confirm the sram saving bug, played and beat dkc 1 and it only registered the first save point. I saved at every save point before beating the game and it only registered the very first save point. This got me thinking about a feature request I'd like to make. A menu selection to manually save sram either from rom or cartridge. This way I don't have to rely on a automatic function that I can't see if its working or not.

 

exactly what happened to me with mario world. played into the game a bit, beat switch palace, saved, beat iggy, saved, quit, and when i boot the game back up, im back at the switch palace. especially damning is if you start an rpg, save at the first opportunity, verify the save works, then play into the game only to lose it all.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Thanks Kevin, that's pretty much what I told him. (I responded with a thermal image of a cat, which had the same color levels ) He has a computer science background, so I figured I'd at least give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

 

For anyone who might know thew answer....

Is there a way to power cycle the Super Nt from the menu/setting?

 

Maybe I'm missing something. It seems like it would be handy for flashcarts, or multi-carts, where you might want to use a wireless controller, and reset to the game list without having to get up.

 

As I mentioned, with the Super Game Boy, if you have a GB EverDrive in the SGB, and start Supee Turrican from the Super Nt menu to use a reset. Then choose "Start cartridge" it goes right back to the same game that was previously running on it. Only powering it off, then on, will bring you back to the SGB + GB Everdrive game list.

 

gameboy has no built in reset function so you need to power cycle the everdrive to change the rom. pressing reset on real hardware only restarts the loaded game. why you expect different behavior from the super nt?

[CZroe]

 

It has nothing to do with "conspiracy theories." If the author of the firmware is not important to you, there really is no value-added in commenting on it. People have their reasons for wanting to ensure it was written by kevtris.

The “value” (reason) is to answer the people who would be satisfied by the same rational and possibly lessen the volume of people demanding to know.

 

It’s clear that Kevtris is neither confirming nor denying involvement. You can bet that there is a good reason for it and it’s actually pretty easy to see why when you think about it.

 

What would be the biggest concern with selling a product that can play authorized and unauthorized copies? Legal threats claiming that playing unauthorized copies is the intended purpose. Bear with me...

 

Remember the Bung Doctor V64? It billed itself as everything BUT a backup/copy device, even though it was made primarily for copying N64 games.

 

They claimed it added surround sound to your N64 with some audio processing that the user is bound to bypass. They claimed that it turned your N64 into a VCD player even though it could do that with no N64 attached (excused the CD-ROM drive). They claimed that it was an unofficial (yet perfectly legal) development kit, which was true enough already (Acclaim/Iguana Entertainment definitely had one), but they still tried to emphasize it by holding dev competitions like Presence of Mind ‘98 (POM98) with Dextrose. Anyway, as if all that wasn’t enough, they also removed the “Backup” option from the machine’s BIOS, which effectively stopped users from pirating games themselves (you could still download). They intentionally left the “Backup” functions in the BIOS through every revision but one single byte controlled whether or not the option appeared on the menu. Sure enough, the “Backup-enabled” ( B ) version of the BIOS was always available within seconds of a new BIOS being shared online. Bung’s own partners were sharing it, but Bung themselves could not acknowledge it. Why?

 

Nintendo was suing them. Nintendo successfully argued that the primary purpose was piracy and got imports blocked around much of the world. It didn’t matter that it could also be a legitimate dev kit. It didn’t matter that it could also be used for legitimate backup purposes. It didn’t matter that it was also a VCD player or sound enhancer: What mattered was that Nintendo was able to convince others that the primary purpose was piracy.

 

Now, there’s no question that the primary purpose of the Super Nt is to play original SNES games, but that’s thanks to them taking efforts to make this abundantly clear.

 

Even with the Nt Mini, Kevtris did not openly talk about the jailbreak until after the device was on the market. Why? What’s the difference? The difference goes back to the “intended purpose.” You can’t argue that it’s intended purpose was to play pirated games when it neither shipped with nor mentioned that feature until after it was already selling. Even then, they made it a point to distance themselves from what Kevtris was doing. It’s increasingly hard to do when people are saying things like “can you really call it a ‘jailbreak’ when the creator himself is throwing the gates wide open?” They’re definitely leaning on and promoting Kevtris’ involvement even more this time around, making his association with the Super Nt a huge selling point. As such, they need to be even more careful that it does not appear that they are using piracy or the promise of a jailbreak to sell this.

 

Asking Kevtris not to acknowledge the jailbreak this time around is an additional caution that makes sense in this context. No one can claim that the Super Nt was sold for piracy when they never mentioned nor promoted nor publicly enabled such functionality. It was never a selling point except for people who read between the lines and those people should also know not to expect an acknowledgement. Kevtris refusing to comment should be all the acknowledgement we need, since there is no reason he can’t deny it if he really weren’t involved. He literally said “no comment” on the MLiG live stream.

 

Continuing to harp on whether or not this comes from Kevtris is just adding noise. You aren’t going to get an answer unless Analogue and Kevtris agreed to a certain time frame before mentioning it. Since that doesn’t appear to be “after launch” like it was last time, then there may not be a time frame as a direct consequence of leaning on Kevtris more heavily for marketing.

 

I will continue telling people who ask not to bother asking. They may have “reasons for wanting to ensure it was written by Kevtris” but there are also reasons why no one can confirm that. Telling them how/why they can assume it is Kevtris and why it doesn’t matter is a noble effort.

 

By taking these precautions, Kevtris and Analogue have ensured that no one can possibly claim that the Super Nt was intended for or marketed for piracy.

 

FYI, Analogue/Kevtris may already be on Nintendo’s legal radar for a different issue, making them extra-careful this time around. Remember when the NES Classic Edition launched and retailers like Best Buy and GameStop were selling counterfeit controllers? They may not have said “Nintendo” on them but there was absolutely no way for the average consumer to know they were ordering a fake from the website (thumbnails were too small) and even in-store half the employees insisted that they were the official Nintendo controllers. I personally witnessed a GameStop employee *insisting* that the “NES Classic Edition controller” on their website was the official Nintendo one, even though it wasn’t, and he was instructing people to order that with in-store pick-up. Several people I know ordered it and got a controller with a white cord (didn’t even match the thumbnail).

 

Now, remember that it was a controller trademark/design registration that confirmed the SNES Classic. Nintendo’s trademark/patent on the D-pad may be gone and they may have ignored these extremely close designs for years, but Nintendo still cares about rip-off controllers that copy their design. Clearly. Look at the efforts manufacturers are taking to differentiate their SNES Classic Edition controllers this time around.

 

Remember the Analogue Nt Mini’s bundled 8bitdo NES30 controller? What do you see when you look at 8bitdo’s website now? It was discontinued, retconned to “N30” to avoid using “NES,” and there isn’t a single picture anywhere. Clearly, there is a concern with design and trademarks here and that’s possibly why the Nt Mini isn’t currently available. Several of 8bitdo’s other controllers, like the SN30, were also presumably too close for comfort, so they were discontinued and replaced with the new design... the same design used for the matching Super Nt Bluetooth controllers (previously proprietary wireless). I’m willing to bet that any future shipment of Analogue Nt Mini will have a very different controller.

 

I couldn’t work this in above but Bung did it again with the GB Xchanger and Doctor GB Card: they acted like the devices were more for digital greeting cards, electronic classroom exams, etc. Deniability is really the only reason that useless voice recorder flash cart exists (stores a couple seconds of voice).

Edited February 16, 2018 by CZroe

[NE146]

 

I honestly don't understand all the fuss about smokemonster as a person or his achievements, when all he did was copy together No Intro romsets with a couple of hacks and genre / game series collections

lol man I for one appreciated it, finally getting the nice organization of the thousands of roms we've literally had for decades. It's always something I thought about could/should be done... but there was zero way I'd ever spend the time to do it.. it's a ton of work

 

I mean It'd suck going to a library and it's 200,000 books were simply sorted in alphabetical order.. vs. having the sections we know right?

[CZroe]

 

gameboy has no built in reset function so you need to power cycle the everdrive to change the rom. pressing reset on real hardware only restarts the loaded game. why you expect different behavior from the super nt?

The Game Boy dev library defaults to resetting by pressing A, B, Start, and Select simultaneously. Some early games, like Castlevania Adventure, ignore this, but most will either reset or pull up a save dialog.

 

Just in case anyone wants IGR for their Game Boy games and doesn’t know this. TurboGrafx does something similar with Run and Select.

[Cool Matty]

Kevtris, I had a feature request for the official firmware:

 

Would it be possible to implement HDMI-CEC support? This would be incredibly useful for those of us using their home theater setups. With CEC, the console can tell the TV/receiver to switch inputs when it is powered on. If the console supports it, it could also turn itself off, as CEC will notify the console when the TV/receiver announces it is powering down. It also really adds to the integration with receivers, as they can reveal the console as an input without any setup (including providing a name to the receiver for the input). For comparison, the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Playstation 4 all support this tech, and it's really handy. You'll want to add a toggle to enable it though, for people who prefer not to have the input changing function.

 

Thanks for considering it, and thank you for the hard work, it's been a blast to play.

[keepdreamin]

 

I honestly don't understand all the fuss about smokemonster as a person or his achievements, when all he did was copy together No Intro romsets with a couple of hacks and genre / game series collections and called it "curating".

Maybe it's not too far fetched to call the following some people in this community have cultish.

 

Do you own any Everdrives?

[Jagasian]

What is the known list of outstanding compatibility/accuracy issues? Keeping a public list will help drive home how obscure any remaining issues are. The least obscure that I know of is the Super Powerpak. I bought a Super Powerpak years before the Everdrive or sd2snes were released. Nowadays, my Super Powerpak is in storage as a collectors item, since it is no longer manufactured, and the sd2snes is superior due to better game compatibility and faster loading times.

[TheCardiganKing]

They’re definitely leaning on and promoting Kevtris’ involvement even more this time around, making his association with the Super Nt a huge selling point. As such, they need to be even more careful that it does not appear that they are using piracy or the promise of a jailbreak to sell this.

I've been watching this thread for awhile and CZroe has the most sensible point.

 

Do you all not realize that pre-loading Super Turrican: Director's Cut and S.T.2 was a wink and a nudge to potential buyers saying, "Hey, you can load games without cartridges on this thing!"? Analogue was all but outright saying that jail breaking was possible. The only person who would be able to do this mere days after release is Kevtris. Stop with this senseless discussion. Some people have major gripes because their autism tells them that they absolutely have to know who made the jail break.

Edited February 16, 2018 by TheCardiganKing

[snatcher1996]

 

Do you own any Everdrives?

 

I sure do. They work great with every No Intro rom I through at them.

 

lol man I for one appreciated it, finally getting the nice organization of the thousands of roms we've literally had for decades. It's always something I thought about could/should be done... but there was zero way I'd ever spend the time to do it.. it's a ton of work

 

I mean It'd suck going to a library and it's 200,000 books were simply sorted in alphabetical order.. vs. having the sections we know right?

 

Sure, if you like it and it helps you, I won't argue about that.

[CZroe]

 

I honestly don't understand all the fuss about smokemonster as a person or his achievements, when all he did was copy together No Intro romsets with a couple of hacks and genre / game series collections and called it "curating".

Maybe it's not too far fetched to call the following some people in this community have cultish.

Haven’t you heard? “Curated” content is the new thing since Apple started the Apple Music service. [emoji6]

 

That said, I’ve been using SNES, N64, GB, backup hardware since the ‘90s and I still very much appreciate his effort. Recently noticed that both he and No-Intro have what appears to be a hack listed as “RevA” for N64 Rogue Squadron: Naboo Starfighter is unlocked despite the notoriety of how secret it was. Oh well. No one is perfect!

Edited February 16, 2018 by CZroe

[Jakir]

 

I sure do. They work great with every No Intro rom I through at them.

 

 

Sure, if you like it and it helps you, I won't argue about that.

Smoke (and his team) have poured literal hundreds of hours into making the best possible install and go packs they can provide and they do it free of charge, no ads, no subscriptions, no bs. Don't know what game you want to play? Browse through the game series collections and pick a type shmup, action, platformer, franchise (maybe you want to play a new Zelda or Kirby game or something), or you can even browse 2 player games if you have a pal over and want to entertain with something new. It is so easy and all you have to do is open the game series collection menu.

 

And because everything is well sorted if you have a game you only sorta remember from years ago and want to play it again that makes it super easy to find.

 

Even if you don't download the game series collection addon the regular lists are still designed to have everything broken up so that they don't have too much in a single folder which can break or seriously slow down some flash carts. They also include hacks, homebrews, and translations pre-patched which the no-intro packs do not. So if you ever feel like playing a Final Fantasy where the last boss is actually still tough even though you've leveled up to max, or a Zelda game without the freaking heart beaping sound, or a game you know like the back of your hand with a path randomizer so it is actually an adventure again, or Super Mario with a Sonic Sprite or basically any other hack known to man you don't even have to go out and hunt down the hack and patch it yourself it is already done and included. Heard about an awesome game that was released in Japan and never made it to the US because companies thought that "Americans don't like Japanese styled games like rpgs and such"? Well odds are that game and its English translation is already included in the pack.

 

And even if absolutely none of that appeals to you I don't think SmokeMonster has ever done a thing that can be interpreted negatively by anyone. Watch one of his streams. He just hangs out, listens to mellow music, talks about how much he loves arcade stuff, and patches roms.

 

He's right up there with Kevtris and Bob from RetroRGB where if someone has anything negative at all to say about them I immediately suspect the person that said it is probably full of crap.

 

Point being if you can't trust Smoke or the thousands of people that claim the jailbreak didn't cause their Super Nts to call the police then who can you trust?

Edited February 16, 2018 by Jakir