Retroblox

[dj_convoy]

The reporter at Nintendolife evidently has a decade of experience under his belt, and yet just regurgitated yesterday's "tweetstorm." Flashbacks to Kennedy giving places his "press releases" and them just being copied verbatim to Kotaku and the like.

[godslabrat]

NintendoLife is just a PR wing for PolyMega.

 

I saw a Sega splash screen video on twitter. Not really sure what that amounts to, good or bad...

[dj_convoy]

It means "ha ha, we can play those CD 32X games you want so damn much. All five of 'em."

[atm94404]

The reporter at Nintendolife evidently has a decade of experience under his belt, and yet just regurgitated yesterday's "tweetstorm." Flashbacks to Kennedy giving places his "press releases" and them just being copied verbatim to Kotaku and the like.

The headline is misleading because it says "From GDC" but there initial article was all just from the Twitter posts from yesterday.

 

Well I WAS just at GDC looking for these guys. I thought it was odd in their "tweetstorm" they didn't bother to say WHERE at GDC they were going to be. GDC is quite large and is spread across three multi-story buildings. It can take hours to go to every booth. Also, I thought it was REALLY odd they were going just for Friday. This is the last day of the show and most people who aren't exhibitors either skip Friday or leave after the morning in order to catch a flight home. The exhibition booths also close early on Friday because they have to clean-up.

I knew Playmaji weren't exhibitors because no one buys exhibitor space for one day. I figured they might be slumming in some other booths and walked around. I even went to the NESMaker booth and talked to the guys there around 1:00PM (which is two hours before they were closing up). I asked if they had seen or knew where the Polymega guys were. They too wanted to know that. "They were supposed to come by." I asked if they had seen the thing work, and they said they hadn't. The exact quote was :"I just want to make a game here, flash it, and see if the *blank* thing can actually play it." From the tone, they were getting skeptical of the whole thing as well.

 

Once I got back to where I was staying and checked Twitter, I see they posted some videos from an "offsite location". Looks like a hotel room or something. From what the NESMaker guys said, they were supposed to attend and come by the booth, so communication is an ongoing issue with these guys.

 

And frankly, that HUGE box they are showing could have anything inside it. There literally could be an Intel NUC and an external CD-ROM drive in that enclosure running the Seedi software. We don't have video (yet) of the box itself booting up to see if it's just running Windows and any number of existing Saturn emulators. We don't know if it is really playing off discs or is simply using the disc to identify the game and then using a disc image (on that fancy NVME SSD). The interface offers the option to load a save state after it identifies the game, so I'm not sure what their videos prove. Is this supposed to be their "99% compatible HLEBIOS"? I actually brought a case full of Saturn and PS1 discs to test on the off chance they were there (not surprised they weren't), so I could try a random game they didn't already have and see if it required dumping first and how it handled a cold boot.

Edited March 22, 2019 by atm94404

[godslabrat]

Some jerk went and got Pat & Ian all riled up:

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CjL01qxRV64

[dj_convoy]

The headline is misleading because it says "From GDC" but there initial article was all just from the Twitter posts from yesterday.

 

Well I WAS just at GDC looking for these guys. I thought it was odd in their "tweetstorm" they didn't bother to say WHERE at GDC they were going to be. GDC is quite large and is spread across three multi-story buildings. It can take hours to go to every booth. Also, I thought it was REALLY odd they were going just for Friday. This is the last day of the show and most people who aren't exhibitors either skip Friday or leave after the morning in order to catch a flight home. The exhibition booths also close early on Friday because they have to clean-up.

I knew Playmaji weren't exhibitors because no one buys exhibitor space for one day. I figured they might be slumming in some other booths and walked around. I even went to the NESMaker booth and talked to the guys there around 1:00PM (which is two hours before they were closing up). I asked if they had seen or knew where the Polymega guys were. They too wanted to know that. "They were supposed to come by." I asked if they had seen the thing work, and they said they hadn't. The exact quote was :"I just want to make a game here, flash it, and see if the *blank* thing can actually play it." From the tone, they were getting skeptical of the whole thing as well.

 

Once I got back to where I was staying and checked Twitter, I see they posted some videos from an "offsite location". Looks like a hotel room or something. From what the NESMaker guys said, they were supposed to attend and come by the booth, so communication is an ongoing issue with these guys.

 

And frankly, that HUGE box they are showing could have anything inside it. There literally could be an Intel NUC and an external CD-ROM drive in that enclosure running the Seedi software. We don't have video (yet) of the box itself booting up to see if it's just running Windows and any number of existing Saturn emulators. We don't know if it is really playing off discs or is simply using the disc to identify the game and then using a disc image (on that fancy NVME SSD). The interface offers the option to load a save state after it identifies the game, so I'm not sure what their videos prove. Is this supposed to be their "99% compatible HLEBIOS"? I actually brought a case full of Saturn and PS1 discs to test on the off chance they were there (not surprised they weren't), so I could try a random game they didn't already have and see if it required dumping first and how it handled a cold boot.

Thanks so much for posting this. Just yet another sign of these guys' level of professionalism and believability.

[dj_convoy]

Ugh; just looked at their Twitter, and saw this:

 

https://twitter.com/gamespite/status/1109173296946307072

 

 

I have a lot of respect for Jeremy Parish, and am now actively bummed that he's giving this thing even a mild thumbs up.

[DurradonXylles]

They just uploaded a number of tweets showing gameplay, at their hotel room at GDC, about ten minutes ago. I'd look into them but I'm currently at work. If any of you want to critique then until I can rejoin the conversation, feel free. I'll catch up.

[Flojomojo]

Ugh; just looked at their Twitter, and saw this:

 

https://twitter.com/gamespite/status/1109173296946307072

 

 

I have a lot of respect for Jeremy Parish, and am now actively bummed that he's giving this thing even a mild thumbs up.

Jeremy Parish: smart but not wise.

[derFunkenstein]

Pictures of filters like they're something nobody ever came up with before.

[phoenixdownita]

The videos they took look good enough to me (hard to judge on emu quality per se), not sure why them being at the GDC meant in a hotel on the side ... weird.

I know in the box there's a PC (their whole system is now just a SFF PC anyway), we will see what comes out of it in a couple of months.

 

Once more the whole box is pretty bulky compared to what they showed much earlier, also the fact that they only demo CDs may mean they do not have the modular system in place to accept carts ... either way they may have shown enough to buy themselves more good will from their own backers (for a PC based emu box).

[derFunkenstein]

The videos they took look good enough to me (hard to judge on emu quality per se), not sure why them being at the GDC meant in a hotel on the side ... weird.

 

That's fairly normal for companies that aren't big enough to pay for space on the showroom floor. Invite the press to your hotel room and turn a few tricks.

[cybercylon]

 

That's fairly normal for companies that aren't big enough to pay for space on the showroom floor. Invite the press to your hotel room and turn a few tricks.

 

All questionable and shady vaporware console demos have to take place in a Motel 6 or Super 8.

Edited March 23, 2019 by cybercylon

[phoenixdownita]

...dunno, aside the fact that it's now just a PC... we asked for videos, they gave us videos ... that part seems fine (aside the N months delay).

I am not defending them, just stating that we finally have videos of an emu PC with their case, logo, leds, controller all in the right places playing games from CD for at least NGCD and Saturn ... that counts for something.

Other than that I am NOT blown away in the least, mildly surprised there was anything to see at all, I have no idea how it would end (probably law suits and restraining orders but I am a pessimist so ... maybe not so bad).

 

I wonder in 2019 what's the quality of PC CD readers? I have not bought one in like 13Y or so, I know they are darn cheap.

Do they even make CD only readers anymore or is it all DVD/CD combos?

[derFunkenstein]

I wonder in 2019 what's the quality of PC CD readers? I have not bought one in like 13Y or so, I know they are darn cheap.

Do they even make CD only readers anymore or is it all DVD/CD combos?

 

 

It seems that slot-loading drives are all CD/DVD combos these days. Not that it matters; I have an external slot-loading LG DVD-RW drive and it's held up admirably for a few years, burning plenty of discs for Saturn, PS1, and Sega CD.

[Newsdee]

I suppose announing some kind of real specs beats showing a video capture card inside a case, but that's not saying much.

[godslabrat]

I'm glad something exists, just now it's not really that impressive. And I still feel like they're avoiding certain topics.

[DurradonXylles]

I'm glad something exists, just now it's not really that impressive. And I still feel like they're avoiding certain topics.

 

Yeah, I have to agree. Just as pheonixdownita says, on first viewing everything appears to check out. I'm not too prideful to admit that Bryan has finally delivered what people have been demanding for him to show, and it doesn't look too bad from the offset.

 

With that said, I am still skeptical mainly because we've been down this road before with a certain lizard inspired console that had a license from a defunct New England company that originally dealt in wares made from dried cow hide.

 

As atm said, there could be anything under the hood of the console, and Bernal did choose half a year of silence and needless subterfuge over honesty and keeping customers updated. As far as we know there's a more powerful specc'd computer or other hardware in that shell since they only have a picture of the one board and used Intel's 14nm chip shortage as a crutch for why they aren't able to ship anything out.

 

I have serious doubts that those games he shown off in those tweets are running using HLE BIOS, as those games are running absolutely flawlessly (even if it's a licensed and modified build of the beetle-saturn from Mednafen). When the games boot from the menu, they do boot without showing the Sega Saturn BIOS splash screen, but as far as we know there are options in the console to skip BIOS boot like with almost every PC emulator that exist. While Ryphecha and the Mednafen team refuse to allow BIOS splash screen skipping on their emulator, the options are available using their cores in RetroArch and BizHawk. The original videos showing off Saturn footage back in September were still cleverly rigged by recording direct line footage and starting games from save states.

 

My skepticism of BIOS-less boots is reinforced with the fact that all three of the Saturn games booting are clearly shown to have "Start New Game with Enhancements Enabled" underneath the title in the start game prompt, and the fact that the one video so far showing a Neo Geo CD game booting showed the tail end of the Japanese only Neo Geo CDZ BIOS boot screen which hangs for several seconds on that sleek platinum NGCD logo like its slower loading, golden logo equivalent.

 

Here's the logo to compare to this tweet.

The loading times don't even appear to be that much faster than a stock NGCDZ either, meaning that the emulator is running stock settings as if it's running like an original console.

 

The fact that their demo is using the Neo Geo CDZ BIOS for testing NGCD games doesn't prove anything in itself when their claims are about Saturn and PS1 HLE BIOS compatibility, but they are showing gameplay under the guise that they are going to be offering HLE BIOS as an option for the console since they talked largely about this months back. It makes the console look like it's much further along than it is.

 

The updates shown over the past couple of days has honestly surprised me, but it also makes me concerned in different areas now.

 

Playmaji could've shown us this progress over six months, and in fact could've done this update when [bryan] had his meltdown on Twitter or alongside the contest NESmaker is holding.

 

We have to assume Peter Kitsch was the one who took those photos, possibly even back in November when he shilled for them like his other pictures of them, so why did it take them four months to show us this prototype?

 

They could've told customers that hardware wasn't going to drop by April 1st long before they did, espeically because Intel chipsets are allocated for production quarterly and so they weren't going to have the CPUs they needed by January, maybe sooner.

 

What happened to the assembly line they had, or presumably should still have? They were so proud of it last April, and yet they couldn't show the boards being made more recently?

 

What's their beef with Analogue? Why try to make them look bad, and why make such a public scene on Twitter?

 

Why are they apparently having trouble communicating with their business partners as indicated by a previous post on this thread?

 

If they have a working SNES expansion unit ready to demonstrate, why wait until next week to show it off instead of taking it to GDC with them?

 

Why didn't they announce their GDC demo further along in advance than one day (and why was it one day only, for that matter)?

 

They claim HLE BIOS compatibility of over 90% for both PlayStation and Saturn, did they actually test most, if not all, ~7000 games between the two consoles? If so, did they test how well they actually play for some period of time, or only boot them up (since many games will boot but not function correctly with HLE BIOS)?

 

Why offer such unrealistically high amounts of storage, 1TB Micro SD and 2TB SSD, along with an expensive media format like M.2 NVMe SSD? Sure, the option is nice, but unless you're planning on hoarding every game from every console made between 1977 and 1999 it's wholly unnecessary.

 

Why only upgrade the CPU when the RAM is embedded and more powerful systems, such as the Dreamcast, N64, and PS2, will require both more RAM and CPU power to run properly? Why try to hide this behind "by authorized service only" when the CPU is socketed and all of the CPUs with its chipset and TDP are publicly available despite being OEM?

 

If the Intel shortage prevent CPUs from coming to them, how exactly do they have a working prototype right now? Either the unit is not x86 or they obviously falsely lead people to the conclusion that OEM = consumers cannot buy it at all, because looking at Intel's website you currently cannot get samples of socketed CPUs or anything above Skylake.

 

Probably the most troubling thing I've only now started to notice is that Bryan, or the guy running the Polymega twitter, appears to not understand a lot of hardware and software terminology or functions. I don't mean ultra advanced concepts that people at Intel or AMD would need to understand, I'm meaning things that someone making a video game console or talking about emulation should have some decent understanding about. For example this recent tweet:

 

 

Replying to @J1nx55 @Cole80884206 @KamenGamerRetro

We don't need runahead. Module controller ports run bare to the metal. Zero lag.

 

This example is not even the first time that he's said this, and he clearly doesn't understand the reason why people are trying to get this point through to him. Runahead is not for the hardware, it's for the emulation. I cannot begin to even fathom why he cannot take five minutes to Google runahead and understand that implementing such a feature within the emulators on his console could help out in a planned feature like, I dunno, netplay? One of the big reasons the idea that became "runahead" was proposed was to help with parity during netplay with emulators. If that's not bad enough he appears to equate the power pulled from an ARM processor to its performance or speed when talking about how good the emulators in the Polymega are. I guess I shouldn't be surprised when he talked shit about Analogue not being able to play 32x games out of the gate, using a quote from an article about how one of the project leads talked about the janky mess of cabling, but forgetting the fact that the 32x had to be fed the AV-out data from the Genesis via a weird little passthrough cable before connecting to a TV.

[Flojomojo]

So Durradon, how many pre-orders should we put you down for?

[cacophony]

 

For example this recent tweet:

 

 

The last time they claimed low lag their evidence was the result screen of the manual lag test within the 240p test suite. They didn't know how to do a meaningful lag test back then and I suspect nothing has changed.

[cybercylon]

So they show they have something. I would have by doubts about the bios issue as well. Thanks for the excellent summary Durradon.

 

Have to go back to the original questions that get asked from the start. Why do we need it and what problem does this solve? This is basically a PC in a box running some emulators. For what they are trying to get to play, I would think any modest PC made in the last several years can do the same thing. These are not that hard to get going, and HDMI out is common, so there goes want to be on couch and play on TV excuse.

 

So the target are casual users to have minimal setup fuss? How many of them are interested in 32x games, or even the Saturn for that matter?

 

There are so many other solutions for playing these games, so I don't see the point.

[godslabrat]

"Why do we need it, and what problem does it solve?"

 

That really is the key. When it was an FPGA system, the answer was hardware fidelity. Now that it's emulation only, the fidelity is no better than that of any other system running the same emulators. So the next possible answer is that it's cheaper. Well, no, it isn't. It's considerably more expensive than PC or FPGA options. So is it easier? Not really, that I can see. Maybe more user friendly than a PC, but for carts probably beaten by a Retron5. Is it a space saver? It's pitched as such, but the unit itself seems to be enlarging, and the modules aren't helping any.

 

"Will it work at all?" Was a question we asked when Hybrid Emulation was the buzzword. Now the question is "What does this do better?" This is the Ataribox problem... when your end design is essentially a PC, it's hard to give people a reason to NOT buy a PC.

[derFunkenstein]

"Why do we need it, and what problem does it solve?"

 

That really is the key. When it was an FPGA system, the answer was hardware fidelity. Now that it's emulation only, the fidelity is no better than that of any other system running the same emulators. So the next possible answer is that it's cheaper. Well, no, it isn't. It's considerably more expensive than PC or FPGA options. So is it easier? Not really, that I can see. Maybe more user friendly than a PC, but for carts probably beaten by a Retron5. Is it a space saver? It's pitched as such, but the unit itself seems to be enlarging, and the modules aren't helping any.

 

"Will it work at all?" Was a question we asked when Hybrid Emulation was the buzzword. Now the question is "What does this do better?" This is the Ataribox problem... when your end design is essentially a PC, it's hard to give people a reason to NOT buy a PC.

Their reason to not buy a PC will wind up being a reason to not buy the Retroblox, and thats their ROM store. A year ago they promised that was coming and they claimed some unnamed publishers were onboard.

[godslabrat]

Their reason to not buy a PC will wind up being a reason to not buy the Retroblox, and thats their ROM store. A year ago they promised that was coming and they claimed some unnamed publishers were onboard.

Oddly, the ROM store is the one promise they actually SHOULD break, as it seems like that's the one feature that compromises all the others.

[derFunkenstein]

 

The last time they claimed low lag their evidence was the result screen of the manual lag test within the 240p test suite. They didn't know how to do a meaningful lag test back then and I suspect nothing has changed.

 

Their idea of zero lag is interesting and I wish to subscribe to their newsletter.