RetroBlox : Another new Play-Everything "Retro" Console

[Michirin9801]

That doesn't address CD hardware.  There's no flash cart for ISOs on PCE, etc.

I'd think the exact same argument about burnt CDs would go without saying... Do I have to spell out everything?
Also if you have your real cartridge with your save file in it, why would you NOT use it?

And like Gredler and myself have said, it's not an either or type of thing.  I'd want to play my real games on a modern TV and play games I don't own, homebrew stuff, translation patches, etc. and I'd rather not go through the expense and hassle of another flashcart or burning cdrs.

Let me rephrase my point: The selling point of this device is playing your physical games through HDMI without having to mod your old systems, kinda like a "Multi-system AVS"
If you want to play hacks, homebrew stuff and games that you don't own, you can already do that Right Now both in real hardware through flash carts and burned CDs, and in other emulation boxes that already exist.
When (or if) this thing comes out, there's nothing stopping you from playing both in it...

[Arkhan]

I'd think the exact same argument about burnt CDs would go without saying... Do I have to spell out everything?

Before you get lippy, you should really stop and understand the difference between being able to use an ISO and having to burn a CD-R.

There is a reason things like the GD EMU are so sought after for dreamcast even though people could just burn CD-Rs all goddamn day if they want.

[Michirin9801]

I'd think the exact same argument about burnt CDs would go without saying... Do I have to spell out everything?

Before you get lippy, you should really stop and understand the difference between being able to use an ISO and having to burn a CD-R.

There is a reason things like the GD EMU are so sought after for dreamcast even though people could just burn CD-Rs all goddamn day if they want.

Admittedly, I hadn't thought about that... If this device is going to play ISOs as well that's all fine and dandy, but well, I don't know about you, but I already play both PCE CD ISOs and Sega CD ISOs on my Wii ;3

[Arkhan]

Admittedly, I hadn't thought about that... If this device is going to play ISOs as well that's all fine and dandy, but well, I don't know about you, but I already play both PCE CD ISOs and Sega CD ISOs on my Wii ;3

and then you can't shove a real cartridge into the Wii, so there's that whole issue again.

Now do you see how a combination machine would be a useful thing?

[Gredler]

Admittedly, I hadn't thought about that... If this device is going to play ISOs as well that's all fine and dandy, but well, I don't know about you, but I already play both PCE CD ISOs and Sega CD ISOs on my Wii ;3

Also wii is only upscaling to 480p, this thing hopefully will upscale nicely to whatever tv you're using.

I do want to try to mod my wii, I recently got a broken one that was just dirty or something works fine for me, so I kinda want to try to mod it. Can you pm me links on how is the best way so I don't have to trudge through the shady corners of the world wide webs?

[Necromancer]

Let me rephrase my point: The selling point of this device is playing your physical games through HDMI without having to mod your old systems, kinda like a "Multi-system AVS"
If you want to play hacks, homebrew stuff and games that you don't own, you can already do that Right Now both in real hardware through flash carts and burned CDs, and in other emulation boxes that already exist.

Obviously there's other options.  Via HDMI, I can play hueys with a Retron5, CDs with a soft modded Wii and a cheap adapter, or roms/isos/CDs on a computer... but there's nothing that'll do all of the above in one system.  It's not hard to comprehend that I'd prefer a single machine instead of two or three..... or a dozen when you look at playing more than just PCE.

When (or if) this thing comes out, there's nothing stopping you from playing both in it...

You sure about that?  I wouldn't be at all surprised if it won't play roms, isos, or even CDRs, not when DRM and protecting homebrew stuff is a primary goal.

[Michirin9801]

Also wii is only upscaling to 480p, this thing hopefully will upscale nicely to whatever tv you're using.

I do want to try to mod my wii, I recently got a broken one that was just dirty or something works fine for me, so I kinda want to try to mod it. Can you pm me links on how is the best way so I don't have to trudge through the shady corners of the world wide webs?

Yeah that's why HDMI is the selling point... Personally, I'm good with 480p because that's a perfect 2X scale of 240p, and pretty much all the systems you can emulate on the Wii are 240p so... Yeah...

I'll PM you with what you might need, but I don't know if it's gonna work on a supposedly broken Wii, unless you've gotten it fixed since...

Admittedly, I hadn't thought about that... If this device is going to play ISOs as well that's all fine and dandy, but well, I don't know about you, but I already play both PCE CD ISOs and Sega CD ISOs on my Wii ;3

and then you can't shove a real cartridge into the Wii, so there's that whole issue again.

Now do you see how a combination machine would be a useful thing?

Let me rephrase my point: The selling point of this device is playing your physical games through HDMI without having to mod your old systems, kinda like a "Multi-system AVS"
If you want to play hacks, homebrew stuff and games that you don't own, you can already do that Right Now both in real hardware through flash carts and burned CDs, and in other emulation boxes that already exist.

Obviously there's other options.  Via HDMI, I can play hueys with a Retron5, CDs with a soft modded Wii and a cheap adapter, or roms/isos/CDs on a computer... but there's nothing that'll do all of the above in one system.  It's not hard to comprehend that I'd prefer a single machine instead of two or three..... or a dozen when you look at playing more than just PCE.

When (or if) this thing comes out, there's nothing stopping you from playing both in it...

You sure about that?  I wouldn't be at all surprised if it won't play roms, isos, or even CDRs, not when DRM and protecting homebrew stuff is a primary goal.

Guys, there's a lot of conflicting information in here...

First off, It's not hard to wrap my head around the fact that you would want all of them in one system, or that you would want to play them on a modern TV, but one talks about running ROMs and ISOs in it as well as playing real cartridges, and the other talks about it not running those because of DRM, but if it can't run ISOs and ROMs, and you want to play hacks, homebrews and/or games you don't own in it, you're gonna have to get a flash cart and burn CDs, unless the system doesn't play those either somehow, and if that's the case, aren't you gonna need a separate emulation box for those things anyway?

Also, isn't this a 'modular' thing? Doesn't that mean you're gonna have to buy a different attachment for each game system you wanna play on it? Wouldn't that get in the way of the whole "All-in-one" argument? The way I see it, it would be smarter to shove a HuCard slot and a CD reader on a Retron-5-like system and add support for PCE and whatever systems support CDs...

[Gredler]

Yeah that's why HDMI is the selling point... Personally, I'm good with 480p because that's a perfect 2X scale of 240p, and pretty much all the systems you can emulate on the Wii are 240p so... Yeah...

I've not used my wii in forever, but maybe I should give it a shot. The color and quality output of the wii was always such garbage, I never considered it an option. My TV's are 1080 and 4k, so wouldn't a 480 have to be upscaled by the tv? (typically poor quality)

I do want to try to mod my wii, I recently got a broken one that was just dirty or something works fine for me, so I kinda want to try to mod it.

I'll PM you with what you might need, but I don't know if it's gonna work on a supposedly broken Wii, unless you've gotten it fixed since...

I apologize for the confusing sentence; the wii was given to me and because they thought it was broken, but it works fine after some minor maintenance.

[Michirin9801]

Yeah that's why HDMI is the selling point... Personally, I'm good with 480p because that's a perfect 2X scale of 240p, and pretty much all the systems you can emulate on the Wii are 240p so... Yeah...

I've not used my wii in forever, but maybe I should give it a shot. The color and quality output of the wii was always such garbage, I never considered it an option. My TV's are 1080 and 4k, so wouldn't a 480 have to be upscaled by the tv? (typically poor quality)

Have you tried the Wii2HDMI converter? It's pretty cheap, but it's not gonna magically make the Wii output in HD or anything, I don't even know if it reduces input lag, but it's gonna cleanup the composite artifacts and it MIGHT upscale the image in an acceptable manner... I don't know because I play my Wii on a CRT, but that's a thing to keep in the back of your mind...
The other options I can think of are the Wii Component cables, which will also clean up the image somewhat, and a separate upscaler box like the Framemeister or something like that, but the latter has a bit of a prohibitive price...

[Gredler]

Have you tried the Wii2HDMI converter? It's pretty cheap, but it's not gonna magically make the Wii output in HD or anything, I don't even know if it reduces input lag, but it's gonna cleanup the composite artifacts and it MIGHT upscale the image in an acceptable manner... I don't know because I play my Wii on a CRT, but that's a thing to keep in the back of your mind...
The other options I can think of are the Wii Component cables, which will also clean up the image somewhat, and a separate upscaler box like the Framemeister or something like that, but the latter has a bit of a prohibitive price...

No I've not tried up purchase an upscaler for my wii, I was trying to make a point about HDMI selling point of these consoles.

For CRT I'll use the genuine article, but for my 1080p plasmas the analog systems look muddy and control poorly. My 4k has a really nice built in upscaler (probably because 80% of content has to be upscaled for it at this point in 4k's lifespan), so I can play those with component/composite.

If I bought an upscaler, I would skip the wii and use original hardware.

I consider the Wii the highest end of the analog generation 480p being the highest it will go without exterior upscalers, which I dont want to invest in.

I'll try the mod out, and use the component cables I have on the 1080p and 4k at 480p, but I imagine it will still look poorly scaled (except for the aforementioned nice scaler in my 4k)

[Sarumaru]

For someone like me, the advantage of having a console like this would be convenience. For example, about a week ago I had a bunch of guys over for some game playin' and we switched between a few consoles. Someone brought some mega cds, a bunch of pce shits, some sfc carts and some neo cds. I pulled some of my systems out of my game room that were connected to my pvm via a switch and took them to the living room. We played PCE through an upscaler, and I don't have a framemeister so we had to suffer through the lag which made some stuff unplayable. We played the SFC stuff on the retron after, then hooked up the CDZ for a couple rounds.. every time we switched consoles, it somewhat broke the flow of the game playing while I fiddled to connect shit. We didn't even bother with the Mega CD because of two power adapters and just didn't feel like hooking all this shit up....

At the end of the night, there were systems all over the floor. Right now, all the systems went back into the room and I couldn't be bothered to hook all this shit back up to the switch.. seemed like a hassle. I am a huge fan of optical media and a system like this would just make it easy to play my original games on without having to fuss over a billion cables when people come over. All my shit can just stay hooked up to the PVM for my personal enjoyment. If one of my buddies comes over and is like "HAY I HAS NEW GAEM. LETS PLAY NAO" we could just pop it in something like this and be playing. All my other game things can just stay hooked up as they are in the room undisturbed.

This is not for everyone. I get a weird personal enjoyment from playing my original games (maybe because I'm f*cking old, whatever), whether it be on real hardware or something that will play them like real hardware. I'm excited for it.
I want it. I'd advocate for it. I want to be involved in it and hope that it becomes a reality. Even if there ARE a few modules I would need to get for the games I want to play, the main system stays plugged in. Changing the module wouldn't be any more of a hassle to me then just switching out a cart. Time for video game playing for me is very rare, especially when friends come over. I don't want to waste that time fiddling with things when we could get straight to the game playing. But that's MY situation why I think I would benefit from such a device.

[SignOfZeta]

Maybe you just don't like old video games very much.

[Sarumaru]

Maybe you just don't like old video games very much.

MAYBE!

[elmer]

I just wanted to chime in to add that the atariage thread is hilarious. I see many of them as wearing foil caps in their parent's basement, next to a shrine they have built and filled with anti-retrovgs evidence...

Yep, there are definitely some folks over there that seem to take their part in the "AtariAge Hater Brigade" a little too seriously ... but dude, your peeps haven't really shown anything more than a pretty skin that could be running on an $35 RPi yet, and your guys are throwing around overblown marketing buzzwords like they're going out of style, while providing little *real* information.

Their actions are only fueling the more-strident members of the doubters-club.

Now, my *guess* at this point is that your guys do actually have some clue about what they're doing.

I just find an RPi or low-end-PC, running a multi-system emulator (probably a hacked Open Source one), with an FPGA that can be reconfigured to read a physical cartridge ... kinda boring.

It's basically a Retro Freak with nicer software and CD support (and probably a much higher price).

But that's just me.

If your friends are right, there is going to be a large-enough group of people addicted to plastic that will love this thing.

But I'm still pinning my hopes-and-dreams on Kevtris's fully-FPGA Zimba3K.

I'll take one-guy-with-a-passion-to-get-things-right over a bunch-of-guys-with-a-passion-to-make-money any day, especially when that guy has shown that he has the technical talent, too.

Having said which ... I'm still enjoying the AA thread, for much the same reason that you are. 

P.S. Interesting to see both Henshin Engine and Sydney Hunter builds on their machine. Wonder where they got those??? 

[nodtveidt]

P.S. Interesting to see both Henshin Engine and Sydney Hunter builds on their machine. Wonder where they got those??? 

Henshin Engine would have come from Sarumaru and I. Which one of the six million ports of the fifty Sydney Hunter games was on display? I no longer have a hand in any of them, and the only ROM I've ever made was a barebones mapper/coldet demo of the first stage, not even worth messing around with.