Are Plug and Plays Dead/Saturated Market now?

[+wongojack]

Yes, I meant cartridge support. I've never bought a single thing from the Wii U store and won't be doing so now for sure.

 

wongo: Problem is they'd be eating into selling 3DS hardware since they all do DS games, that's really it on the WHY. Now if the 3DS moved into the grave and DS support were killed with that (and it likely would) then it would serve a purpose. I think a few DS games were made for the WiiU VC weren't they? The games could be paneled out side by side or rotate the controller tablet thing sideways to do it on one. There's no reason to think they couldn't do another TV setup, but going to a TV that is widescreen by design wouldn't compliment it well.

 

I guess that having the games compatible on another handheld somehow prevents them from selling a device that can play them on a living room TV, but I think it is more likely that there is some sort of technical barrier.

 

I don't understand why the Aspect Ratio of the TV should matter at all. Top screen goes on the TV and you have to deal with a black border or something. Bottom screen goes on the tablet where you already have touch capability. The screens don't have to be the same physical size, just support the same ratio. It is possible that the Wii U's tablet just can't handle it from a hardware perspective. Like, maybe the touch control isn't sensitive enough or something. I dunno - it always seemed like a no-brainer to me.

 

Can the Switch screen be used simultaneously with the TV? Does the Switch screen have touch controls?

[zylon]

I agree on too much Genny stuff lately, especially with no real improvements. I can see a GameGear/SMS console as an option.

[godslabrat]

I agree on too much Genny stuff lately, especially with no real improvements. I can see a GameGear/SMS console as an option.

That's the problem... tons of Genesis stuff out there, but none of it done RIGHT. And now I worry that no one will bother because of all the failed missteps.

[Osgeld]

That's the problem... tons of Genesis stuff out there, but none of it done RIGHT. And now I worry that no one will bother because of all the failed missteps.

 

Its kind of hard to do genesis right on a price point where its a impulse purchase ... think about it at a 1000 foot level, its a 68K game machine that has access to a full z80 game machine that lives inside

 

AND its got to be 60 bucks or less including however much the store takes cause big stores don't stock small names for free

[zylon]

 

Its kind of hard to do genesis right on a price point where its a impulse purchase ... think about it at a 1000 foot level, its a 68K game machine that has access to a full z80 game machine that lives inside

 

AND its got to be 60 bucks or less including however much the store takes cause big stores don't stock small names for free

 

The Genesis 3 pretty much did that, just minus built-in games. I've still got one, lol

[+adamchevy]

I think they are oversaturated and personally Ive never been interested in any of them. Ofcourse Im a purist prat.

[pacman000]

They've been on the market since, when, 2005? Longer if you include unofficial devices, like the TV Boy.

 

I suppose they're here to stay, but it's an established market. You'll have trouble with competitors who've been in the market for 10+ years.

[Tanooki]

If my poking around google is worth much Jakks started with a 2002 release of a 10in1 TV games device with Atari games on it. They got to doing it after acquiring Toymax which had the original deal for their own device a 2600 Activision device that came out in 2001. So we've been having people love or complain about the inaccuracies of these things now for about 17 years.

[atarilovesyou]

 

Its kind of hard to do genesis right on a price point where its a impulse purchase ... think about it at a 1000 foot level, its a 68K game machine that has access to a full z80 game machine that lives inside

 

AND its got to be 60 bucks or less including however much the store takes cause big stores don't stock small names for free

But that's my point: a Genesis done right shouldn't BE an impulse buy...unless you consider the NES Classic and such impulse buys?..in which case I don't know what to tell you. The only difference is that Sega doesn't do hardware anymore and couldn't oversee it like Nintendo could.

 

Considering plenty of ATGames stuff sells for more than 100 CDN in these parts, it's hard to even call those impulse buys.

 

Just saying that a Genesis done right should be a big deal, but so it goes.

[atarilovesyou]

If my poking around google is worth much Jakks started with a 2002 release of a 10in1 TV games device with Atari games on it. They got to doing it after acquiring Toymax which had the original deal for their own device a 2600 Activision device that came out in 2001. So we've been having people love or complain about the inaccuracies of these things now for about 17 years.

I bought the Namco stick first around 2003 from Walmart. It was a solid product amd mine still works, even though he emulation isn't all that it could be...but what did I know back then, lol. It was a big deal when it first came out. The Activision stick was out earlier though...maybe at the same time? I'm in Canada though.

 

I've complained about tons of the Jakks stuff, well deserved in most cases. They never bothered to improve the quality of components, and I think the last one I got was the more rectangular Pac Man unit that had a lot of games in it. And painted buttons...ugh. But worked well enough.

 

After the FB 2.0 came out, I was spoiled because that system turned out great. I foolishly thought (as did many others, I'm sure the threads are still here) that the high point for retrogaming at big box retail was then...but as we can see, it just got bigger and bigger. The new high point for me are the mini Nkntendo consoles. If something is gonna be bigger than that, I am in.

[x=usr(1536)]

I'm going to propose an alternative to FPGAs or emulation: more Systems on a Chip.

 

Granted, this comes with its own set of considerations, not the least of which is the need to design and fabricate custom silicon. But this was happening 20 years ago with NOAC (Nintendo-on-a-Chip) bootleg NES devices, and there have been others since.

 

If you want to get really crazy with it, you could have SoCs for entire related families of devices where the block diagrams for the SoCs are divided up between different generations of hardware, each one selectable by the end user.

 

Why would I prefer this to an FPGA approach? For no real reason other than that the SoC is an in-silicon approach. It has all of the immutable benefits and issues that a system on a board had, and is locked to that.

 

Note that I'm not knocking FPGAs by saying this. FPGAs are perfectly fine in my book. But there's something appealing about not being able to change the design on the fly, much as was the case with the original hardware.

[Tanooki]

I bought the Namco stick first around 2003 from Walmart. It was a solid product amd mine still works, even though he emulation isn't all that it could be...but what did I know back then, lol. It was a big deal when it first came out. The Activision stick was out earlier though...maybe at the same time? I'm in Canada though.

 

I've complained about tons of the Jakks stuff, well deserved in most cases. They never bothered to improve the quality of components, and I think the last one I got was the more rectangular Pac Man unit that had a lot of games in it. And painted buttons...ugh. But worked well enough.

 

After the FB 2.0 came out, I was spoiled because that system turned out great. I foolishly thought (as did many others, I'm sure the threads are still here) that the high point for retrogaming at big box retail was then...but as we can see, it just got bigger and bigger. The new high point for me are the mini Nkntendo consoles. If something is gonna be bigger than that, I am in.

 

I'd agree on that history. I had that old Pac-Man handheld that had the red ghost monster joystick felt cozy that went over the joystick ball (and still have the ghost.) It wasn't right but really for most it wasn't wrong either other than sheer pros that memorized the behaviors of the games as they're close enough. I've had a few off and on since, kind of snapped them up if I found them outside of full retail typically. The last one they put out which is an oversized 8bit block sprite PacMan head is actually really solid, best interpretations yet and saves high scores, also back can pop off to hide the cord. It still is stuck on the dying cable but isn't as bad as the earlier stuff. Most of them were garbage arcade or not, home console too, and licensed was worse. Their revised Golden Tee with saves, multiple courses, and 4 players though is solid, and their weird gamecube looking controller with a centered plunger for pinball is surprisingly excellent on at least 2 of the 3 tables.

 

I never liked the flashbacks much for Atari. I liked the 2 which everyone loved to hack in the day to run carts, and then the handheld was pretty nice for a first try, but I just never had a lot of nostalgia around it as the games I liked most sadly were overly blocky shoddy arcade conversions and at that level I'd have rather used dumpy Gameboy sims on the Super GB or something on the TV.

[atarilovesyou]

I had the first run Golden Tee and was not impressed...meant to get the revised one, but the moment passed. I bet they could really graphically bump it up today. The pinball one was kinda fun for a bit but it went back...the no-name tables did me in. I would like to track down the recent Pac Man shaped pnp, apparently the latter is the one to get, but I don't consider it part of the Jakks lineage...it's a Bandai product, if memory serves. But something about it I like...I hear the ROM is near identical to the arcade, if not the same. I could be wrong. Now that I use MAME these sticks are largely just nice looking shelfware...interesting little oieces from the first wave of modern retro nostalgia.

[Austin]

I haven't been much a fan of plug 'n plays since the "plug 'n play craze" of the early 2000's. They were novel at the time but haven't improved much since then. Game lineups tend to still be small, the controls are often lackluster, and sometimes the recreation/emulation isn't perfect. Nintendo gets some points for having devices that feel just about as good as the original products they are based on, but they are generally the exception to the rule. Unless someone puts out devices to the same level of quality as the NES and SNES classics, I will likely have no interest in them.

Edited August 29, 2018 by Austin

[Tanooki]

I had the first run Golden Tee and was not impressed...meant to get the revised one, but the moment passed. I bet they could really graphically bump it up today. The pinball one was kinda fun for a bit but it went back...the no-name tables did me in. I would like to track down the recent Pac Man shaped pnp, apparently the latter is the one to get, but I don't consider it part of the Jakks lineage...it's a Bandai product, if memory serves. But something about it I like...I hear the ROM is near identical to the arcade, if not the same. I could be wrong. Now that I use MAME these sticks are largely just nice looking shelfware...interesting little oieces from the first wave of modern retro nostalgia.

I get it if you don't care anymore, but you missed out. It's not prettier but they fixed the other shortcomings of the thing and it really works well. I got pinball at a goodwill so I had little barrier to disappointment, but for me the tables were a great flashback to the days of Silverball 2 and Epic Pinball as they're laid out much like those in style and complexity so I enjoy keeping it around. And you're right that Pac-Man is a bandai packaged item. Also having just done something I haven't in a long time it did confirm to me, at least with Galaga that it's copying the arcade accurately or accurately enough I can't tell. I have not seen the likes of Wave 20 in a long time and I bagged 133310 points on that run too. For me a good run on a sub-arcade standard copy of the game is 50-75k typically though I can get sub-100k (90s) on a simulated one done well by Namco in the past too. That was insane, just wanted to feel it out and I didn't even lose lives until well after already racking up 2 extras.

 

If there is one non-Nintendo arcade wannabe on the market I feel got it right, Bandai did it with big head 8bit sprite pac-man arcade plug and play. The only downer is you get the usual scummy artifacting on a LCD screen you get from lousy RCA cables. I would think on a CRT that thing would look excellent, and the output even on that ratty old cable has less color shift, ghosting and twinkling on the colors than the Jakks ones do.

[Keatah]

I tend to believe the next few generations of SoCs are going to remain single-system only. I don't see any given SoC doing multiple systems, I don't think the demand is there for that, and Emulation or FPGA would be more economical. That's how I see it. And I also see a lot of complexity that has to be gotten right/correct straight out of the factory.

 

Why would I prefer this to an FPGA approach? For no real reason other than that the SoC is an in-silicon approach. It has all of the immutable benefits and issues that a system on a board had, and is locked to that.

 

Note that I'm not knocking FPGAs by saying this. FPGAs are perfectly fine in my book. But there's something appealing about not being able to change the design on the fly, much as was the case with the original hardware.

 

This "set in stone" unchangeable design resembles original hardware and is one of the ineffable qualities. Its mirror-universe counterpart is having 1 single microprocessor, through the magic and mystery of Software Emulation, become whatever system you want. Ha!

Edited August 29, 2018 by Keatah

[mr_me]

System on a chip can be fpga or asic. The choice is a matter of manufacturing cost. Asic is likely cost effective when the numbers are large and fpga when the project is smaller scale. Ten years ago fpga wasn't even an option. Fpga by definition means it's reprogrammable but it doesn't have to be.

[Jess Ragan]

Why are we having this conversation here, yet so many unrelated threads get posted on the Dedicated Systems forum?

[John Stamos Mullet]

Why are we having this conversation here, yet so many unrelated threads get posted on the Dedicated Systems forum?

Probably because "Dedicated Systems" is a terrible, way too vague name for that subforum, since the generally used term for them is plug & play.

 

When I read Dedicated Systems, I think of like point of sale cash registers, or closed circuit TV security systems.

[Keatah]

Why are we having this conversation here, yet so many unrelated threads get posted on the Dedicated Systems forum?

 

Plug'n'Plays are different than dedicated systems. And I don't see a Plug'n'Play forum. So..?

 

As to why so many unrelated threads get posted on the Dedicated Systems forum? - that's anyone's guess.

[Flojomojo]

Dedicated system = standalone, no way to add games via cartridges or disks or downloads. Not user programmable.

 

Plug n play = dedicated system

[Tanooki]

There are a few Jakks did that have game key mini cartridges, but that flopped.

[+thanatos]

What I don't get are these new plug and plays I saw at Target, that just have a single single game. Why do that now? That's just dumb and a waste of $20.

 

Space invaders: https://www.target.com/p/retro-arcade-space-invaders-gaming-system/-/A-51354194

Frogger: https://www.target.com/p/tv-arcade-frogger-gaming-system/-/A-51354167

[PikoInteractive]

What I don't get are these new plug and plays I saw at Target, that just have a single single game. Why do that now? That's just dumb and a waste of $20.

 

Space invaders: https://www.target.com/p/retro-arcade-space-invaders-gaming-system/-/A-51354194

Frogger: https://www.target.com/p/tv-arcade-frogger-gaming-system/-/A-51354167

 

I actually want to do that with a Tiger Electronic style casing.

 

Those single arcade sticks are made from what it was Majesco, they usually go on clearance, I don't even know how they get to have shelf space honestly.

[Keatah]

Dedicated system = standalone, no way to add games via cartridges or disks or downloads. Not user programmable.

 

Plug n play = dedicated system

 

Technically by the book, absolutely. In common discussion and knowledge, no. A plug-n-play is still understood to mean multiple roms/carts/games in a repro box, miniaturized.