FPGA Based Videogame System

[RabidWookie]

I think analogue would be smart to move on from the NES, it's become a saturated market and their limited resources would be better used on new systems.

[Kismet]

There’s a lot to that, actually. Shortly before this launched, Rene from dbElectronics, wrote an article regarding a disturbing industry trend of using modern 3.3v logic in 5v logic retro hardware without proper level translation. It usually works, but there were some potential issues.

 

It really stirred things up though. It took aim at a lot of popular products and polarized fans. It got a lot of people asking technical questions that the Iam8bit guys weren’t prepared to answer, so they just threw up that tongue-in-cheek disclaimer. In the end, their repro boards were from Infinite NES Lives, which were properly made with correct voltage logic level translation.

 

They really should have removed that by now.

 

Anyway, here’s the article that started it all:

https://db-electronics.ca/2017/07/05/the-dangers-of-3-3v-flash-in-retro-consoles/

 

That's really curious actually. I wonder how many people killed their systems by having gaming marathons with those early everdrives.

 

Anyway, as far as producing new carts that work in the SNES, but are primarily designed for the Super NT or NT Mini, seems like someone just needs to come up with a standard "blank" cart PCB and make sure it has "FOR DEVELOPMENT ONLY" on the PCB and a clear shell, so people aren't unwittingly buying repro's. Heck, make it so that the Super Nt/NT Mini can actually flash games TO such a PCB.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Kismet

[Andromeda Stardust]

Sega Genesis units sold: 30.75 million

Sega Genesis library: 897 games

Sega CD units sold: 2.24 million

Sega CD library: 209 games

Sega 32X units sold: 665,000

Sega 32X library: 40 games

(All of these statistics are from Wikipedia)

What these numbers seem to indicate is there is much less mass market demand for an HDMI clone that plays the expansion hardware, than many Sega purists seem to claim. I for one would be happy with a Genesis / Mega Drive only console and leave the CD and 32X stuff as footnotes in video game history. I would also like to see global sales numbers for Genesis/MD carts, CDs, and 32X carts. Probably a ton more carts laying around, and a lot more gamers just have a Genesis without the CD and/or32X add-ons. Hence the vocal minority.

 

However the market for a $200 Genesis shrinks considerably the pool of gamers willing to buy one, so it is probably more than likely the smaller hardcore sega fanbase with the CD/32X add-ons will overlap with the Sega fanbase that would invest in the $200 console.

 

However if adding an expansion port to make it compatible with the Sega CD adds $100 to the cost of the console, then I am probably out of the market for buying one. I think Analogue learned from the NT Mini just how much the market increases when you can cut costs without sacrificing quality.

 

What would be required to make the 32X work via an Analogue MD's HDMI seems to be unlikely to happen. Analogue's announcement of their external DAC said it would be compatible with the Super NT and "future Analogue consoles". It seems like they're suggesting that no future consoles will have a built-in DAC, any any CRT enthusiasts should just buy the external box, which honestly makes alot of business sense. So for 32X to work you'd need the external DAC, and then some kind of wiring adapter to go from Dsub-15 to the Genesis mini-DIN (or whatever it's called), which would plug into the AV in on the 32X. To use the Analogue MD's HDMI you'd then need a port to plug the 32X's AV out into on the Analogue MD that would do an analog to digital conversion. I highly doubt they will include this extra component for an add-on that sold so poorly and has such a small library.

 

Luckily, if the Genesis FPGA core is programmed correctly, there's really nothing stopping the 32X add-on from working with analog video, as long as you have the external DAC.

Pretty much this. Basically you could use the 32X out of the box with a Mega NT. The DAC RGB output would plug into the Genesis to 32X cable which could allow the 32X to piggyback video on it. There would not be a convenient way to get the analog output of the 32X into an HDMI port, but nothing would stop the 32X from being usable with the FPGA console plus the DAC cable.

 

My one request is that the external DAC should have an HDMI pass-through. Then you could switch between analog and digital video with a toggle like on the NT Mini. Then you could have the Analogue MD's HDMI passed through the DAC for playing Genesis/SCD games, and switch to "DAC mode" when you want to play 32X, and have the DAC fed into the 32X, and the 32X fed into an OSSC or other scaler. It's a messy, kludge solution that honors the original experience!

 

I think once an Analogue MD comes out and the Genesis core is polished and finalized, maybe sometime down the road in 5 years if/when Analogue rereleases 4K capable versions of all of their consoles, perhaps Kevtris will go back and try to address the whole Sega Sandwich entirely in FPGA.

This won't work. The console uses the HDMI pins to send digital video signal at native resolution and timings, then a special purpose driven DAC converts them to analog. There will be no way of getting HD signal out of the console when using the analog adapter.

[CZroe]

 

That's really curious actually. I wonder how many people killed their systems by having gaming marathons with those early everdrives.

Probably zero. [emoji4] For those it’s more of a concern about good/proper engineering practices but for the multicarts that just pump 5v into a 3v chip without even using a resistor for VCC, it’s an eye-opener. Thankfully, Kevtris has openly stated that the Super Nt is fine with these 3.3v devices. *whew*

 

I recall a video where Kevtris and Jason (GameTechUS) were looking into why the Turbo ED didn’t work with Jason’s PCE/TG16 region mod and Kevin noticed the improper voltage levels. He did not have nice words for Krikzz! I’m pretty sure that’s why he hinted at disgust at the Super Everdrive in the RetroRGB interview regarding Super Nt as well.

 

Anyway, as far as producing new carts that work in the SNES, but are primarily designed for the Super NT or NT Mini, seems like someone just needs to come up with a standard "blank" cart PCB and make sure it has "FOR DEVELOPMENT ONLY" on the PCB and a clear shell, so people aren't unwittingly buying repro's. Heck, make it so that the Super Nt/NT Mini can actually flash games TO such a PCB.

INL sells the blank PCBs and the programmer on his site (Kazzo NES/FC dumper updates for NES/SNES burning) and you can get clear shells too. RetroStage and many others offer these parts but I know INL sells an affordable programmer. INL’s programmer is cheap enough that you probably won’t feel like you need the Super Nt or Nt Mini to flash it (IIRC, $30). Kevtris had a lot of negative things to say about the cat hairs he and Jason found in their INL order of cartridge shells but I don’t recall any engineering criticisms. Edited February 18, 2018 by CZroe

[Keatah]

I vaguely remember the 32X, remember seeing it in a strip-mall EB or game something or other.. I thought it was kind of neat and interesting.

 

I personally believe it should be included in anything "Genesis". Same goes for the CD, or at least some way to support the software that runs on those expansions.

 

But, hey, whatever works.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Keatah

[CZroe]

This won't work. The console uses the HDMI pins to send digital video signal at native resolution and timings, then a special purpose driven DAC converts them to analog. There will be no way of getting HD signal out of the console when using the analog adapter.

...unless the DAC also has an HDMI output to replace the one it occupies. I think that’s what he was asking for.

[Andromeda Stardust]

So maybe this is a dumb time to ask the question.. but I guess it's always been in the back of my mind. Why do people like scanlines.. or rather, what is the advantage of them?

 

For all I can tell it puts lines across the screen... and I guess it looks fine.. but, and what? Is that all it's for?

Not a dumb question. People like scan lines because it recreates the look of crt televisions. These old consoles are designed around crt televisions and their limitations and you are not meant to be playing them on crystal clear modern displays. Scan lines create a unique look and the art was designed with them in mind. People like to recreate this look for that authentic feel or simply because that's how they remember the game.

 

There are various schools of thought but a popular opinion is that you should only be playing these games on crt displays. Scan lines provide a middle ground to people with modern displays. Try it some time. Dial in the scan lines and crop a bit of the image like a crt would. You'll be experiencing the game exactly how the developers intended. If it's better or worse is a personal opinion. You may notice pixel art start to make more sense when scan lines are added. Things come into focus. The art was designed knowing scan lines would be there so it doesn't always look right without them.

Some people like the look of it for some reason, and IMO, it's something you'd do if you're trying to replace a CRT experience, but that's just something you will always fall short on, since CRT's came in a bunch of different shapes and color phosphors used. I don't personally like seeing the scanlines on anything except when the intent is to go "this is a CRT". Much in the same way you see film grain or sepia/black+white in a "flashback" in a film, despite film grain hasn't really been a thing since the 80's as well. There's even "VHS" filters that people use to make digital video look crappy for the purpose of going "this was supposedly recorded in 1984" . So to that extent the purpose of scanlines is to give people that vintage 1985 feeling by degrading the video.

One thing to bear in mind about scanlines, is they give the display a texture. On CRTs, scanlines were not noticeable on interlaced 480i content but they were noticeable on 240p content such as video game consoles. The composite and/or RF artifacts also acted as a sort of blur filter which obfuscated the razor sharp edges of the pixels. Finally the CRT mask itself added texture to the image by subdividing the screen up into red, green, and blue domains.

 

Video game developers knew that pixels would be obfuscated a bit on consumer grade CRT displays, even moreso than professional grade PVM monitors. So while they may have designed sprites on graph paper before importing them as game code, the characters themselves during the 8-bit and 16-bit video game era took on an entire new cartoon like appearance when displayed on CRT sets.

 

Fast forward to the digital age, and you get a conundrum where sprites simply do not look good or lifelike with razor sharp pixels devoid of any sub-pixel textures or noise. The squares have a sterile appearance to them, and softening them up in emulators by using scalars or blending, just makes the pixels look like cheese. so the obfuscation process given by consumer grade CRTs of the day was not just a blur filter but added texture to the image.

 

Scanlines are one method of replacing some of that texture in a way that does not make the pixels look distorted. And the scanlines do help improve readability and sprite definition even when I'm sitting far enough from the display that I cannot make out individual squares. So by applying the scanlines to the image, it also reassures the gamer in a subconscious way, this is not emulation. Many gamers do also associate square pixels with emulation and all of the benefits as well as detriments that emulation provides. So the scanlines breathe life into the graphics by making them appear less sterile in the HD domain, and is my preferred way to play retro games on an HD screen.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

That's really curious actually. I wonder how many people killed their systems by having gaming marathons with those early everdrives.

If I had to guess, zero. The article you quoted has caused so much fear-mongering and butthurt in the retro collecting community. You're essentially running a 3.3V device with tiny smt chips on a 5v device with huge DIP chips. The 5v logic will win, every time. Those poorly made cheap repro carts will likely bite the dust long before the vintage hardware does.

[snatcher1996]

 

The problem there, is that pixel art made for LCD screens (That middle image set is from a sonic-clone called Freedom Planet) is not designed with the color palette of the game systems that run on CRT's, so adding scanlines to anything but 8-bit systems tends to do the opposite and makes it look a way it was not intended to.

 

Hence, NES, C64, Sega Master System, Apple II, CGA/EGA, etc when you add scanlines to those systems, makes it look like the color palette is doubled. But CRT's never had "grids" like the scan lines create, rather those lines came from the interlaced resolution. Trinitron screens actually had VERTICAL lines. So the correct "CRT" result would require lines in both directions. Remember dot pitch?

 

What has happened though in the last two or so years are 4K monitors and with them, resolution-independent scaling. So the result of this is that the dot-pitch equivalent (measured now in ppi) is so far from CRT norms that you can actually get away with replicating the individual trinitron style output on it. If you have a 144dpi 4K screen, and are running a SNES at 256x224, that is equal to about 14.7 dpi on a 24" screen.

 

But to go back a minute, if you think scanlines look good, you need a nostalgia check and go play a NES/SNES on a 14" CRT and ask yourself if you really think that looks better. It tends to only ever really be the case with arcade CRT's which were significantly higher quality than the TV's we had in the 80's, even the 90's.

 

Like I understand peoples nostalgia for the way the CRT looked, but then we have the other end of the spectrum of people who think the 8-bit style retro graphics look gaudy and try to use scalers on them to give them more resolution than they actually have, and then we have 3D cards and junky LCD monitors that apply linear filters to non-native scaling.

 

My opinion is that the original graphics do not need to be improved by filtering or scanlines. If it happens that the aspect ratio correction makes the pixels look too fat, then you've been playing with software emulators too long. But you can still turn that off. The original hardware didn't generate scanlines. The original hardware was plugged into CRT's of varying quality, so no two people will have the same fondness for scanlines, and to each their own.

 

But if you upload anything to youtube with scanlines, you've gone a little too far, because that is trying to give someone else your experience using your tastes, if youtube doesn't turn it into muddy blurs.

 

In my opinion even the pic from Freedom Planet would look better with scanlines if those were done right. There are like two or three lines per pixel row.

 

And I don't buy the sentiment that scanlines only look good on games that were meant to play with them. In my book anything 240p or less will benefit greatly from them, even Game Boy and Game Gear. One of the reasons I love my NT Mini and its analog output.

[Kismet]

INL sells the blank PCBs and the programmer on his site (Kazzo NES/FC dumper updates for NES/SNES burning) and you can get clear shells too. RetroStage and many others offer these parts but I know INL sells an affordable programmer. INL’s programmer is cheap enough that you probably won’t feel like you need the Super Nt or Nt Mini to flash it (IIRC, $30). Kevtris had a lot of negative things to say about the cat hairs he and Jason found in their INL order of cartridge shells but I don’t recall any engineering criticisms.

 

My issue, is that if we want to encourage "homebrew" stuff, there needs to be a way to obtain boards/shells that explicitly show they are designed for homebrew, and not simply to produce counterfeit copies of games.

 

I grabbed a few GB and SNES games off eBay the other day and in the back of my mind I was thinking "dang it, I should have looked for signs of it being a repro", none the less, I take issue more with people who are making money off of peoples ignorance. Some people want a repro (when I worked at eBay, the same can be said for the counterfeit handbags, some people explicitly want those counterfeits for whatever reason.)

 

At any rate, seeing as the boards are like 25$/ea and have clear markings on the PCB, it's probably not that unreasonable to just take every cart apart to make sure it's not a repro and slap sellers on the wrist who do didn't label them so.

[snatcher1996]

 

You're making a subjective statement about a feature that nobody will agree on.

 

 

 

 

And so did you.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Scaling 720p to 1080p is the exact same “molesting” overscan simulation does when it slightly crops a 1080p image on a 1080p-native display: non-integer scaling.

 

The problem with scanlines and non-integer scales is that a non-integer scale makes the rows of pixels different thicknesses. While this might look OK without scanlines do to solid colors that match the pixel above or below, there is a big difference with scanlines. With scanlines of varying thickness you are also varying the brightness between rows of pixels and you get horizontal bands of alternating bright and dark areas. Also, the scaling algorithm that tries to interpolate scanline and pixel detail will create scaling artifacts and moire effects (screen-door artifacts).

 

Even the best scaler would have to blend colored pixels and black scanlines to scale an image with proper scanlines to a non-integer output and avoid having thick and thin scanlines. This will result in less definition, more softness, and no sharp pixels. You simply must aim for a non-integer scale for scanlines to look right, even if some scalers make it look better or more even than others.

 

In short, scanlines are really only an option for integer scales. If you can’t disable all forms of non-integer scaling including overscan simulation, it’s not going to look right. Don’t judge scanlines based on non-integer scales.

CZroe, with all due respect, here's a screen capture from the AVS (720p scanlines, 4x horizontal, 3x vertical pixel aspect, upscaled to 1080p on ASUS monitor), and a screenshot from the Super NT (1080p scanlines 5x vertical scaling). They both look beautiful. Please explain where is the uneven scanline look or loss of fidelity you speak about.

 

AVS Mario @720p

 

Super NT Mario @1080p:

 

The only uneven pics I seen posted was that 4.5x scaling Kimset posted earlier (bottom image of this post) just look odd IMO. If you want to cover the full height of the TV screen, you should have used 720p 3x vertical scaling instead.

 

 

 

You gotta know what you are doing in settings. Also I think the default "4:3 for 16:9 telivisions" presets Kevtris used by default are all too narrow for my liking.

 

IMO, 720p 3x vertical scaling should have width set to 960 pixels (3.75x horizontal) with horizontal interpolation on. 1080p 5x vertical scaling should be 1600 pixels (6.25x horizontal) with horizontal interpolation on. 1080p 4x (for overscanned HDTVs) should use 1280 width (5x horizontal scale) with interpolation off.

 

I don't recommend 4.5x vertical scale at 1080p, but if you insist on using it, you should have 1440 width with horizontal and vertical interpolation turned on. If you need the full 240 scanlines to match your output display height, you should use 720p 3x vertical and let your display handle the pixel interpolation.

 

Finally as a primarily academic setting, use 480p with 2x vertical scaling and 640 width (2.5x horizontal scale) with horizontal interpolation turned on, if you want to use a 4:3 VGA monitor or HD CRT that doesn't support progressive HD resolutions (720p or 1080p). 480p mode looked fairly soft on my ASUS but otherwise produced a clean image with meaty scanlines that take up exactly half of each pixel.

[RabidWookie]

One thing to keep in mind: while the relative sales numbers on the Sega CD and 32X are low, the people that own them today are intense Genesis fans. You're targeting intense Genesis fans with an FPGA Genesis.

[2600 Forever]

This thread, when absorbed properly by the internet, will provide an interesting psychological inside to people who know how to analyze and use the data presented, some day.

[Kismet]

 

In my opinion even the pic from Freedom Planet would look better with scanlines if those were done right. There are like two or three lines per pixel row.

 

And I don't buy the sentiment that scanlines only look good on games that were meant to play with them. In my book anything 240p or less will benefit greatly from them, even Game Boy and Game Gear. One of the reasons I love my NT Mini and its analog output.

 

As mentioned a few times already, regardless of if scanlines improve the picture or not is a subjection observation. Out of the box on the SuperNT, in my opinion people will not want the scanlines on and will wonder if their system is broken if it were defaulted to that. They will not complain about the 4.5 scaling default and 8:7 aspect ratio unless they had been playing on Snes9x/Zsnes before where that is typically not the default. Likewise earlier in this thread about comparing Higan and the output of the SuperNT's color, Higan actually has a color "tick box" menu item to make it output the SNES color we see on the Super NT, but if it's enabled by default depends on what build you have AND if you're using something like Retroarch, which uses it's own scaler/framebuffer systems.

 

But every time someone says "oh but it gives it a CRT look", nope nope nope. At best it gives you a partial effect. Yes, the entire reason the scanlines exist is because people think there is something subjectively wrong with looking at the pixel art, but if that were the case, it would look subjectively wrong on ALL pixel art, which is never the case. You can actually see what Nintendo thinks of "CRT effects" in the Mini's. Jagged lines.

 

I have a photo of this actual effect from my CRT too

 

 

While we're at it, The CRT lag test with a real SNES:

 

Edited February 18, 2018 by Kismet

[CZroe]

 

My issue, is that if we want to encourage "homebrew" stuff, there needs to be a way to obtain boards/shells that explicitly show they are designed for homebrew, and not simply to produce counterfeit copies of games.

 

I grabbed a few GB and SNES games off eBay the other day and in the back of my mind I was thinking "dang it, I should have looked for signs of it being a repro", none the less, I take issue more with people who are making money off of peoples ignorance. Some people want a repro (when I worked at eBay, the same can be said for the counterfeit handbags, some people explicitly want those counterfeits for whatever reason.)

 

At any rate, seeing as the boards are like 25$/ea and have clear markings on the PCB, it's probably not that unreasonable to just take every cart apart to make sure it's not a repro and slap sellers on the wrist who do didn't label them so.

Yes. Luckily, INL boards are very distinctive (yellow) so they will not be confused for real boards. That said, I encountered my first GBA bootleg when I ordered a sealed Super Mario Advance 2 Super Mario World “JP import” (never actually spent a day in Japan) ahead of the US launch. This was actually pretty early in the GBA’s retail life, but for the rest of its retail life, the vast majority sold new on eBay were counterfeit... everything from Spy Kids 3D to Hannah Montana. It wasn’t just Pokémon’s games! In 2003 I was finding bootleg GBA games traded in at literally every single GameStop I checked.

 

My point there is that bootlegs were a bigger and earlier problem than most people realize... long before the repro market with programmable boards. I’ve seen a lot of people wondering why anyone would make a counterfeit of a shovelware licensed title like “That’s So Raven” that’s not even worth $0.50 but that’s because they fail to realize that it was being sold for $18+ while the game was still current... an enticing discount off the $30 MSRP. Just like GameStop, their buyers were unaware. They usually just thought eBay was quite a bit cheaper.

 

I got my INL programmer for dumping prototypes without desoldering and only recently got my first programable board for troubleshooting someone else’s programmable board (he had a FFII fan translation remastered as FF IV, so no one was confusing that for a legit game).

 

CZroe, with all due respect, here's a screen capture from the AVS (720p scanlines, 4x horizontal, 3x vertical pixel aspect, upscaled to 1080p on ASUS monitor), and a screenshot from the Super NT (1080p scanlines 5x vertical scaling). They both look beautiful. Please explain where is the uneven scanline look or loss of fidelity you speak about. The only uneven pics I seen was that 4.5x scaling Kimset posted earlier (bottom image of this post).

 

AVS Mario @720p

 

Super NT Mario @1080p:

You can see that it’s blending color into the double-thick scanlines of the Nt Mini so that they don’t appear darker than the thinner scanlines. If you weren’t using scanlines then it would be blending two rows of pixels there. Either way, you’ve lost the benefit of sharp top and bottom edges of many scaled pixels and forced the scaler to do more work (potentially adding latency).

 

Every pixel of detail is still there by virtue of the extremely low resolution source so I can’t say that it’s scanlines at the expense of detail, but it’s still scanlines at the expense of image sharpness and uniformity. An integer scale is far preferable. I’d literally play with 720p area within 1080p if that monitor allows it, but that’s just me, I guess. [emoji6]

 

It’s a fine approximation for someone who wants the scanline look, but if you actually want to improve clarity with scanlines then you have to stick with integer scaling.

 

Oh yeah: Both of his scanline pics have uneven scanlines. It’s especially obvious from a distance and would be even moreso for someone seeing the full screen. Not everything is easier to see with magnification. Don’t just look at the uneven thickness of the black lines; also look at the uneven thickness in the colored lines. It’s actually a misnomer for us to even call the black lines “scanlines” when they are actually the ones that were skipped (not scanned). [emoji6]

Edited February 18, 2018 by CZroe

[Keatah]

Thing with scanlines is lotta people automatically think they're replacements for the CRT look, or, rather, are intended to complete the look. They're but a small part of it. You also need to render the bloom, bleed, scintillation, reflection off the glass, the high contrast, mask texture, color interaction, and a lot more.

 

Some of this can be done through HLSL in MAME, but you really honestly need to tune each game by hand if you want a good look. At least tune for the brand of monitor and resolution and dpi.

 

I also believe that simple scalers and filters are utter nonsense. The only credit those features deserve is that they represented an early effort (in a time when computing power was low, and GPU power non-existent) to get a smoother shaded look. Crap like h4qx, 2xSaI, h2qx, Super 2xSaI, and SuperEagle should just be forgotten.

 

8K and higher intensity displays are right around the corner, once they get here we'll be considerably closer to getting that CRT look on a flatscreen. Many of us (including myself) thought 4K would've done it. But, as you can see, we're not there yet. Until then we're just farting around jerking back and forth.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Word was that he recently stopped producing Power Paks, hence, the SNES Power Pak being sold out. NES may just be residual stock. Regarding NWC, he no longer sells the gold or gray versions and the ones he’s selling now are deliberately made to look different, hence, no longer counterfeit bootlegs.

If he stopped producing the Powerpak, it might be for lack of parts, or just that it's dated technology. Powerpak still has superior audio expansion emulation compared to Everdrive.

 

As for the NWC repro carts, he never sold gray or gold copies. All used colored shells. I rather like owning an "authentic" NWC repro though. I think one guy from NintendoAge made a fake NWC gold repro using a gold shell and a deskjet printed label and desoldered the switches and mounted them on a piece of perfboard with a cutout in the proper location. Just like the elaborate fake AVGN used in the NWC video but fully functional.

[CZroe]

If he stopped producing the Powerpak, it might be for lack of parts, or just that it's dated technology. Powerpak still has superior audio expansion emulation compared to Everdrive.

 

As for the NWC repro carts, he never sold gray or gold copies. All used colored shells. I rather like owning an "authentic" NWC repro though. I think one guy from NintendoAge made a fake NWC gold repro using a gold shell and a deskjet printed label and desoldered the switches and mounted them on a piece of perfboard with a cutout in the proper location. Just like the elaborate fake AVGN used in the NWC video but fully functional.

I could’ve sworn it was him and that it was listed under the “Discontinued” section of his site. I wonder who it was I was thinking of then. *shrug* Edited February 18, 2018 by CZroe

[leods]

Strange. To me the 8:7 ratio seems correct, and even 4:3 seems stretched out horizontally. I'm not sure what looks like my old CRT, but most games I played look correct with the standard settings from the Super NT. I do use 4x hight just to reduce the size of the image, but besides that to me the Super NT looks correct out of the box and I see no need to change anything.

 

I tested 4x vertical and 5x horizontal pixel doubling and it looked like ass to me.

 

And to think some people like stretching the image to fill the screen. At that point it just looks silly....

 

The only graphical issue I have with the super NT is shimmmering/pixel crawl on slow scrolling objects of certain color. I do have interpolation ON (box unchecked), but still there is a weird distracting jumpiness specially on some white text on some games. I am guessing this is the fault of my monitor itself, but I'm not sure.

 

And BTW, I'm not sure what the whole deal with the 8bitdo controllers is. the 2 I have do give me some diagonals I didn't want now and then, but it's kinda rare. I did a 3 hour long stream yesterday, and I called out every time I made an unwanted input using the 8bit do controller, and it was like 5 or 6 times I think. I wonder wether there is inconsistencies between different controllers, or wether this is just how people play games differently so it affects them differently.

Edited February 18, 2018 by leods

[Andromeda Stardust]

I could’ve sworn it was him and that it was listed under the “Discontinued” setting of his site. I wonder who it was I was thinking of then. *shrug*

Nope. All in stock still...

 

Powerpak - https://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?products_id=34

Various competition carts - http://www.retrousb.com/index.php?cPath=29

Homebrew World Championships - http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=30&products_id=129

 

Ironically the Homebrew World Championships is the identical same PCB and mapper as NWC, just different ROMs and $30 cheaper.

[Keatah]

I also maintain an opposing argument (rightly or wrongly) that as the current 1st generation of gamers (1970's - 1990's) passes the torch to future generations, what is considered a good image will be quite different than what old-school CRTs provide.

 

It'll be about flavor, color science, texture, more procedural pre-rendering of effects. All to get a warm smooth look with softer edges. This may become the preferred look as opposed to the harsh overbright, distorted, and inconsistent CRT look. 8K will do that for us. It may be slightly different from CRT, but it'll be better!

 

---

 

While you guys tweak and twerk with your Nt Minis and Super Nts I'm sure you appreciate the consistency and reliability and variety of adjustments available. What adjustments you make today will be there 5 years from now. Exactly. And that's a huge benefit we all take for granted all too readily. I remember setting up some arbitrary software emulators a while ago, got the settings just right, and haven't touched them since.

 

Synthesized analog effects through digital displays is future of vintage gaming. And it's a good one.

[Beer Monkey]

I think analogue would be smart to move on from the NES, it's become a saturated market and their limited resources would be better used on new systems.

 

Nah.

 

They've only had really expensive NES systems on the market and there's big demand for NES. There's a lot of demand that hasn't had an accurate HDMI turnkey choice available at an affordable price.

 

The smart thing is to release an affordable NES console.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Beer Monkey

[Andromeda Stardust]

And to think some people like stretching the image to fill the screen. At that point it just looks silly....

Agreed. And these people watch 4:3 screen content stretched on their displays as well.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Nah.

 

They've only had really expensive NES systems on the market and there's big demand for NES. There's a lot of demand that hasn't had an accurate HDMI turnkey choice available at an affordable price.

 

The smart thing is to release an affordable NES console.

A cheaper alternative to the NT Mini already exists:

http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=36&products_id=78