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Very disappointed by the MCG "review," where he largely downplayed the flaws, constantly mentioned how he would be testing the unit as he got more of the modules (and requests, so I'm not sure how he could tell us that it was good so far if he hasn't extensively tested it yet) and dismissed the two years of asshattery prior to YouTubers getting beta units as "hiccups."

Edited by dj_convoy
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The most disappointing thing to me about the MCG review is that he extensively re-uses footage from the Offical Polymega sizzle reel, which makes it seem like the review is a full-fledged endorsement.  That's not the case, but an untrained viewer could be forgiven for thinking it was.

 

I do think MCG was fair in his analysis of the disc-based component.  I don't think it was smart to gloss over the drama from Polymega's development.  I think it was EXCELLENT that he opened it up against Playmaji's advisement.  Screw them, he paid for it, he can open it up if he wants.

 

 

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If this is supposed to be a beta test, how about these testers specifically play through games that are known to have problems on the emulators the Polymega's based on? I notice that Virtua Fighter Remix has exactly the same problems as on Mednafen, and Fighters Megamix actually has a problem that I reported and the latest release of Mednafen fixed.

 

Yeah, I'm kind of sceptical about whether this is a genuine attempt at testing or a mutually beneficial way to drum up hype/get clicks.

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I have my doubts about the effectiveness of any beta test that could be done this way.  If it's testing hardware, as we said before, there may be some merit to it, BUT the hardware really should have been final a long time ago.  If they're testing software, then six units isn't going to be a viable test.  They'd need bigger numbers.

 

How many people without YouTube channels or blogs were given a beta unit?  I think that's the answer to our question.

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4 hours ago, Silanda said:

Yeah, I'm kind of sceptical about whether this is a genuine attempt at testing or a mutually beneficial way to drum up hype/get clicks.

This is exactly the case. The beta-test strikes me as nothing more than a paid product placement (ironically, paid by the beta-testers) to top off the last run of pre-orders while driving views and subs to certain channels.  And, perhaps I am getting old and curmudgeonly, but I am tired of these kind of blatantly disingenuous YouTube marketing schemes. MVG's video, while inoffensive, was really not that informative and did in fact gloss over a lot of the "hiccups" that have plagued this console for the past year. Sarumaru's streams do show many different games played on the unit, which is useful, but not really a technical analysis. Beyond these two outlets, I have yet to see or read anything from the other beta-testers. And, as godslabrat points out above, can a beta test of 5 units really be viable?

 

I had genuine interest in this console for a long time, but everything about its roll-out is extremely suspicious. Early on in this thread, godslabrat made the point that this company is behaving like they don't have the means to deliver on the pre-orders they've already received. I couldn't agree more. I have a hard time imagining that, after all these delays, Polymega will release this console on July 6th, in the immediate aftermath (hopefully!) of the greatest financial downturn since the Great Depression, with global supply chain disruptions that will supposedly affect even the largest electronics manufacturers.   I want to have a reliable, easy-to-use backup for playing my Saturn collection, but I just can't see this thing succeeding. I hope I am wrong. 

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Well, at least something exists, so I will give them that much.

 

I would like to see if MCG gets any additional modules and does a follow up... an honest review that shows all of the warts.  This video seemed to be somewhere in between a hype real and a review. He really does down play the problems, and like godslabrat said, that review would appear to be more exciting to the untrained eye than it really is. Anyone that has been following this will see right through that.

 

So it is supposed to release this summer, yet it has been released to six people with a bunch of problems (big gotcha right there for the Sega CD)? Seems to be unrealistic to me. I hope backers get something for their money at some point. Well, they stand a better chance than Atacobox backers at least.

Edited by cybercylon
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Couldn't get online for a few days thanks to inclement weather, and I haven't watched MVG's video all the way through yet, but it seems like this "beta test" is nothing more than early review units being sent out to influencers as some of you have said. He is downplaying the issues this console had behind-the-scenes, and the emulation issues are just sorta glossed over; I'm not expecting MVG to unnecessarily rake this device over the coals, but he has been far more critical of other retro gaming products he's looked at in the past and this is an emulation box that will cost $400 once it's available for purchase from retailers. I was hoping for more honesty and less hype from him, but once he take another look at the device once he might do an actual full review.

 

With that said, I honestly don't get what it is with many retro gaming enthusiasts, YouTubers especially, and just jumping on the bandwagon every time there's a new device on the market that touts being able to play games, and only taking a critical look or taking a stand once the hype dies down and they realize they've been taken for a ride or said device falls far below expectations. I'm not advocating paranoia over anyone who wants to cater to retro gamers, nor am I saying anyone who takes interest in these devices are wrong simply for showing interest, but we seem quick to believe claims about devices without proof simply out of desire see it true or liking the design of the chassis. We seem to think that after Mike Kennedy and the RVGS/Chameleon debacle that no one else incompetent or of malicious intent will try to promise us the moon like they're James Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life, unless they're as grossly incompetent at hiding it like Atari with the TacoBox.

 

I know I'm not the only one thinking this, but I just needed to put my thoughts out there over this community and how people don't want to look before they leap (or rather, not try to find the bottom of a well before tossing hundreds of dollars into it).

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I have to say that the more I watch these videos the more this product looks good to me.  I really like the Games Database / Game Info Area and Wish List implementation.  So far it does not seem that this system has missed a beat on the videos.  I am going to watch until release day and then make my final decision, at this point however unless there is some major argument or point made I am looking to get this system.

 

I hope when they do their next round of betas in May that we will see videos from more people to give different points of view.  Being s Saturn Fan these videos focusing on Saturn is a big win for me.

 

 

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I truly want this to succeed but I'm getting dejavu. 4+ years ago the chatter was about extra modules. Atari 2600, Coleco, 3DO etc. There's chatter again now on Twitter about PSP and 3DO modules from new joiners many of whom are also asking questions that have long been answered. Hard not to be worried when I've seen all this before over the last 4 years of Polyretromegablox.

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49 minutes ago, thedoppelganger said:

I truly want this to succeed but I'm getting dejavu. 4+ years ago the chatter was about extra modules. Atari 2600, Coleco, 3DO etc. There's chatter again now on Twitter about PSP and 3DO modules from new joiners many of whom are also asking questions that have long been answered. Hard not to be worried when I've seen all this before over the last 4 years of Polyretromegablox.

The next time a project like this gets announced, I’m gonna buy a bottle of whiskey and take a shot every time the PR wing says “Just wait, you’ll see!”

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I'm actually finally looking forward to this machine, even if it's just the base for awhile. It's still overpriced, and the company overpromised, underdelivered, and took it out on the people patiently trying to wait for years for them to finish. I've followed this project for a long time and remember when it was supposed to be all FPGA based. The company talked about N64 and Dreamcast support being very real near future goals. They gave release dates dating back to to 2-3 years ago multiple times and even had in print interviews you can find online where they said they'd be having kickstarter like campaigns.

As delay after delay mounted, I found that posts on their forums asking questions about the product or pointing out inconsistencies were consistently not posting or getting removed. Eventually they closed their forums, changed their name, and then treated their customer base with what seemed to be annoyance many times.

 

The work is real. I'm happy about that, but the company announced the project to the public years too early if they weren't looking for community involvement or support. I hope Polymega emerges as a real all-in-one HDMI option for classic consoles, because if it meets its goals where they are now, this is about the slickest package anyone could ask for. I can't say I have had respect inspired in me for the company, but they appear to be pulling their weight until the work is done even if some people inside the company appear to have acted in an elitist fashion previously.

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8 hours ago, tecmocerealbowl said:

... I hope Polymega emerges as a real all-in-one HDMI option for classic consoles, because if it meets its goals where they are now, this is about the slickest package anyone could ask for. ....

Is it? It costs an arm and a leg, it's been "brewing" for 4 years and doesn't really offer a whole lot on top of any other emulation box ... 

 

This project should have been left for dead years ago, only thing remaining is to see if the few units that ship before the company folds (if they don't fold before), are going to rise in price or tank .... nothing else really.

 

(no I don't care to play directly my original CD games on this thing, and this comes from someone that has Panzer Dragoon Saga original and a Saturn Floppy Drive HSS-0128 to go with it .... maybe I'm pissed that they do not support the Saturn serial interface ... maybe!)

 

PS: yes, this is just my opinion, obviously.

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On 4/20/2020 at 11:08 PM, phoenixdownita said:

Is it? It costs an arm and a leg, it's been "brewing" for 4 years and doesn't really offer a whole lot on top of any other emulation box ... 

 

This project should have been left for dead years ago, only thing remaining is to see if the few units that ship before the company folds (if they don't fold before), are going to rise in price or tank .... nothing else really.

 

(no I don't care to play directly my original CD games on this thing, and this comes from someone that has Panzer Dragoon Saga original and a Saturn Floppy Drive HSS-0128 to go with it .... maybe I'm pissed that they do not support the Saturn serial interface ... maybe!)

 

PS: yes, this is just my opinion, obviously.

I don't want to come off as an apologist for the company, but the head of the project did have an interview with retrorgb where he admitted the company made poor communication decisions and has been making progress, albeit always slower than anticipated.

 

To answer your question from my personal perspective, I believe the system has a lot of potential. I also think it's going to be hampered by the cost. The company built a lot of the uphill battle itself. I have some experience with emulation boxes myself, and I don't find them easy. It's not there all built and ready to go, each system has tons of configuration options, and trying to set universal controls still often leaves a systems controls having to be adjusted as you switch. You need a front end, you need to load roms, and if your using one with fancy scroll wheels and massive game lists, the menus, sub-menus, duplicates, and visuals are not cleanly presented or quick to access. If you decide to use standalone emulators, every UI is different, and emulators very in quality and features. Stuff like mednafen standalone is more like MS-DOS than a program designed for Windows in mind. Some things run better on Snes9X, some run better on bsnes. Want graphical enhancements or need to tweak settings? Your emulator of choice might have dozens of settings available, some with jargon you may not understand off the bat. Want an all-in-one?  Retroarch claims to be the answer, but the interface is buried in menus and options, and in my experience, often has settings inexplicably reset or just decide it will crash on boot whether the installation is fresh or not across multiple pcs running different versions of Windows. PC and emulation boxes are great, but they are DIY from the software side. They aren't appealing to a lot of gamers, because they require lots of time and effort.

The idea of this machine is that everything is ready to go with no configuration needed outside of choosing a controller to use. Discs and roms can be dumped, so they only need to be read once. It's pretty clear they are putting tons of work into a clean UI that is good at choosing the right images for games instead of all images for them. The fact that the emulators are also being tweaked for the hardware configuration is encouraging too. They even have Steve Snake of Kega Fusion fame on the project, and in my opinion that is one of the best ease-of-use emulators that has ever been made. There's lots of good here with the bad, but the bad took me from excited, to very disappointed, to waiting for impressions from other people of the full product line.

Right now I have an OSSC, and I'm happy with that, but it's also hard to have all of my systems setup. I have to keep half of them in a closet.

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2 hours ago, tecmocerealbowl said:

I don't want to come off as an apologist for the company, but the head of the project did have an interview with retrorgb where he admitted the company made poor communication decisions and has been making progress, albeit always slower than anticipated.

 

To answer your question from my personal perspective, I believe the system has a lot of potential. I also think it's going to be hampered by the cost. The company built a lot of the uphill battle itself. I have some experience with emulation boxes myself, and I don't find them easy. It's not there all built and ready to go, each system has tons of configuration options, and trying to set universal controls still often leaves a systems controls having to be adjusted as you switch. You need a front end, you need to load roms, and if your using one with fancy scroll wheels and massive game lists, the menus, sub-menus, duplicates, and visuals are not cleanly presented or quick to access. If you decide to use standalone emulators, every UI is different, and emulators very in quality and features. Stuff like mednafen standalone is more like MS-DOS than a program designed for Windows in mind. Some things run better on Snes9X, some run better on bsnes. Want graphical enhancements or need to tweak settings? Your emulator of choice might have dozens of settings available, some with jargon you may not understand off the bat. Want an all-in-one?  Retroarch claims to be the answer, but the interface is buried in menus and options, and in my experience, often has settings inexplicably reset or just decide it will crash on boot whether the installation is fresh or not across multiple pcs running different versions of Windows. PC and emulation boxes are great, but they are DIY from the software side. They aren't appealing to a lot of gamers, because they require lots of time and effort.

The idea of this machine is that everything is ready to go with no configuration needed outside of choosing a controller to use. Discs and roms can be dumped, so they only need to be read once. It's pretty clear they are putting tons of work into a clean UI that is good at choosing the right images for games instead of all images for them. The fact that the emulators are also being tweaked for the hardware configuration is encouraging too. They even have Steve Snake of Kega Fusion fame on the project, and in my opinion that is one of the best ease-of-use emulators that has ever been made. There's lots of good here with the bad, but the bad took me from excited, to very disappointed, to waiting for impressions from other people of the full product line.

Right now I have an OSSC, and I'm happy with that, but it's also hard to have all of my systems setup. I have to keep half of them in a closet.

I'm not going to comment at all on why you're interested in the system.  That's your prerogative and I respect it. 
 

What I do object to, is the fact that Playmaji gets to waive away their "communication errors" so easily.  I contend that this market is mature enough that it should be clear what level of communication is required for a project such as this.  Polymega isn't the first such project to get caught in the "communication" quagmire.  They're not even the fourth.  By now, it should be expected that your project can communicate basic progress and not endless hype.  
 

Moreover, I don't think we should tolerate calling these "communication errors" when they were, in fact, lies.  It's not an error when you deliberately release information to the public knowing it doesn't represent what's going on behind the scenes.

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In any case I think these systems, if they come out, are trying to be too much. They're trying to launch with an instant community, infrastructure, store, instant library and more. No one understands it it could take years or even decades to build that. And that those things can fall apart on a whim. This applies to the 202x VCS, Retroblox, Amico, and whatever else someone is trying to brew up.

 

They should just create a simple machine like the 1977 VCS and let it ride. If it's good it will catch on. Software Emulation is on a roll. And so is MiSTer. All doing quite well without the barking, the noise, the excuses, the tedium.

Edited by Keatah
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On 4/23/2020 at 6:08 PM, tecmocerealbowl said:

... They aren't appealing to a lot of gamers, because they require lots of time and effort.


The idea of this machine is that everything is ready to go with no configuration needed outside of choosing a controller to use. Discs and roms can be dumped, so they only need to be read once. It's pretty clear they are putting tons of work into a clean UI that is good at choosing the right images for games instead of all images for them. ....

If you are willing to throw 400US$ for a "ready-to-go" box and a "clean UI" (but use your own originals) I think at this point we should petition AtGames for it.

I'm sure they can do it for under 300US$ .... easy UI, nothing to configure and likely many games included .... they screwed up for so many years they are apparently getting their shit together and the last few units seems to be within reach of where one would place the word reasonable ... plus they actually ship every xmas season ... that's like clockwork and I have to hand it to them they missed no holiday season so far.

 

EDIT: also if that was all that they meant to do (emulation) they surely spent a lot of time spewing bs for years on how different their system was "you'll see, hybrid emulation is the future" [well apparently it isn't] just to make a 180 and get back to ... non-hybrid ... totally conventional software based emulation ... I am not even sure the choice of Intel will pay off, the current gen of ARM A76/A77 may be competitive enough and likely cheaper.

 

The only tech that may be interesting is the light gun, but somehow I can't believe it isn't someone else's idea already.

 

EDIT2: they are also so stuck up that they didn't want to add the second cart slot (or adapter) and extension port to support Famicom games into their EM01 NES module https://www.polymega.com/product/polymega-module-set-em01-nes/ I am sure those 2 piece of hardware and the extra holes in the molds would have been prohibitive ;-)

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4 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

The only tech that may be interesting is the light gun, but somehow I can't believe it isn't someone else's idea already.

Surprise, the light gun tech isn't theirs at all. It's a still, unfinished, kickstarter by someone else.

 

I think we've all beaten this dead horse pretty good. Let's see what happens in 2 months, if they actually deliver.

 

Here is the link to the light gun tech.

 

https://www.sindenlightgun.com

 

 

Edited by XtraSmiley
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On 4/26/2020 at 3:18 AM, XtraSmiley said:

Surprise, the light gun tech isn't theirs at all. It's a still, unfinished, kickstarter by someone else.

 

I think we've all beaten this dead horse pretty good. Let's see what happens in 2 months, if they actually deliver.

 

Here is the link to the light gun tech.

 

https://www.sindenlightgun.com

 

 

I think they've always said as much?

 

https://www.polymega.com/2019/06/05/light-gun/

 

"Powered by Sinden Technology, you can connect one or more RGC01’s to the Base Unit via USB cable and start blasting away on all your favorite Light Gun shooting games. The best part? It requires no other devices, sensors, or complicated setup to use. It just works."

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On 4/26/2020 at 4:18 AM, XtraSmiley said:

Surprise, the light gun tech isn't theirs at all. It's a still, unfinished, kickstarter by someone else.

 

I think we've all beaten this dead horse pretty good. Let's see what happens in 2 months, if they actually deliver.

 

Here is the link to the light gun tech.

 

https://www.sindenlightgun.com

 

 

That doesn't surprise me at all. I remember running across Sinden a year ago when RetroManCave did a video showing it off and talking to the creator, and being rather impressed with the solution they came up with. Long story short, the Sinden Lightgun works by emulating a mouse input, and where you point and shoot on the screen acts like you did a mouse click on the screen. It's simple and elegant in theory, and not the messiest in practice from what their demos shown. The only real caveat is that this only works in a PC environment, so this is only a solution that works for emulation or PC ports of lightgun games with mouse/custom input options.

 

The campaign was originally supposed to deliver back in September of 2019, but the guy running it has been keeping backers updated so it appears that he underestimated how much work was needed to finish, test and deliver the lightgun to those who backed it.

 

Considering the guy who made this tech is still testing, ironing out the bugs and working on delivering to backers eventually, I have to wonder how the lightgun tech is going to work with the Polymega and what testing is going to be done with them if any.

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1 hour ago, DurradonXylles said:

That doesn't surprise me at all. I remember running across Sinden a year ago when RetroManCave did a video showing it off and talking to the creator, and being rather impressed with the solution they came up with. Long story short, the Sinden Lightgun works by emulating a mouse input, and where you point and shoot on the screen acts like you did a mouse click on the screen. It's simple and elegant in theory, and not the messiest in practice from what their demos shown. The only real caveat is that this only works in a PC environment, so this is only a solution that works for emulation or PC ports of lightgun games with mouse/custom input options.

 

The campaign was originally supposed to deliver back in September of 2019, but the guy running it has been keeping backers updated so it appears that he underestimated how much work was needed to finish, test and deliver the lightgun to those who backed it.

 

Considering the guy who made this tech is still testing, ironing out the bugs and working on delivering to backers eventually, I have to wonder how the lightgun tech is going to work with the Polymega and what testing is going to be done with them if any.

Now see... that's the kind of thing that would legit warrant a beta test.  Damn shame the beta testers don't have the guns.

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12 hours ago, DurradonXylles said:

... The only real caveat is that this only works in a PC environment, so this is only a solution that works for emulation or PC ports of lightgun games with mouse/custom input options.

Well then it's right at home with the Polymega.

I wonder what they did for the Saturn? .... and I mean Virtua Cop(s) [1 & 2] do support the mouse .... actually a good chunk of Saturn Light Gun games do work with the mouse:


https://segaretro.org/Virtua_Gun

https://segaretro.org/Shuttle_Mouse#List_of_supported_games

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On 4/25/2020 at 10:50 PM, phoenixdownita said:

The only tech that may be interesting is the light gun, but somehow I can't believe it isn't someone else's idea already.

My surprise comment was directed here. I never said they were hiding the fact. Also, I wasn't picking on anyone, I just meant, one of the most exciting things they have coming, is actually another guys idea, and it will (if it ever comes out and works) work on other systems.

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