Italian law is a bit overzealous in respect of "piracy". I suspect due to the fact that for many years there were no laws preventing it at all. Dudley of Yesterzine had a video about it a few months back.
However, to claim such devices are illegal seems a bit of a stretch. Admittedly they only really exist to put roms on (which I'm 100% ok with), but you can buy them without the SD card, put your own roms on, play ports and lots of other games.
Plus, these things are sold on Amazon, but curiously the authorities don't seem to be interested in that.
Once upon a time the BBC was at the forefront of the home computer revolution, now look at it!
I absolutely hate what has happened to the BBC. What used to be a trustworthy, authoritative source of information and a producer of quality entertainment is no more. Imagine a news story about something you're not familiar with and now imagine there's a blooper like this in it. Then imagine that every news story has a blooper like this. Couple that with New Beeb's mission to destroy culture, history, and all the other trappings of Britishness ("Welsh Choir Boys", anyone?) and the whole stinking edifice needs to be taken down.
What I hate even more is that I have to pay for it despite not consuming any BBC content.
There's an arcade local to me that opened last year. I've been once and probably won't go again. The problem is there's no real draw other than the nostalgia factor, which for me at any rate was satisfied by the one visit. The coffee shop 20 yards up the road, however, I probably visit at least three times a week.
I'm not going to buy one because whispers I don't actually like Doom very much, but this is a very cool project! It's the sort of thing I'd like to do, if I had the skills an knowhow.
I found this, which might be of interest. Sadly there are no citations, but I'll leave a link to the full article: "Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi had warned his company that they needed to be poised to seize the 16-bit console market by 1990; however, his statement did not have the binding edge of command that his pronouncements usually carried. Nintendo was still reaping huge profits from the NES, so there was no hurry to come up with a successor system. There was also another reason for the delay - Nintendo was having development problems with this newest box. It was little more than a design concept and a few barely working prototypes at this point, but already certain issues had surfaced that demanded attention. The system as originally designed was way too expensive to be produced in a version affordable for the average consumer, let alone cost-effective for Nintendo. On top of that, project leader Masayuki Uemura was unable to meet Yamauchi's demand that the new box be back-compatible with the NES. The back-compatability feature was eventually abandoned; however, that only saved about US$75 on the anticipated end-user price tag. The chief culprit of the cost was, of course, the all-new graphics and sound processing suite upon which Yamauchi insisted. Designed in anticipation of the coming multimedia boom, it drove up the cost of the system so much that Nintendo was again forced to cut costs elsewhere or scrap it and risk being left behind. The problem was eventually solved by installing a slower CPU - a Motorola-based WDC65816 CPU - instead of the faster 10 Mhz MC68000 that Uemura originally intended. This meant that the new box would not be that much faster than the NES itself, so a math coprocessor (as cheap as Nintendo could cobble together) was thrown in to ease the processing strain a bit."
@bring_on_branstons You make it sound as if the SNES was some sort of dismal failure due to CPU choice. In reality it was a phenomenal success with a library of games that sits up there with the best of the best. And that's coming from a Mega Drive fanboy like me!
There's that phrase "Neccisty is the mother of invention", perhaps if Nintendo had thrown a 68k, a 386, a DEC Alpha, an Arm2 or something else in we'd never have got that library.
@smoreon it's interesting, especially if we look at what other companies were doing.
SNK went with the Rolls Royce approach, and spent the next few years trying to make things more affordable.
NEC went with the limited add-on route, but went too early with it's next gen hardware.
Sega went with the max add-on route and met limited commercial success with them. This probably also hindered the Saturn and Sega as a company.
Nintendo went with a capable but cheap base system, enhanced by the carts themselves.
I'm a Mega Drive fanboy who bought into the Mega-Cd and 32x, but if you ask me which strategy was most successful I'd point to who is still making hardware today.
Mass consumer electronics is a cutthroat business. You have to design to a cost and make the most of it!
@bring_on_branstons Nintendo's philosophy does make a lot of sense, though. Instead of having an expensive system that will quickly become obsolete, build a cheaper system that is user upgradable in a transparent way via game carts. Each cart has the potential to add features/performance and, better yet, in ways that suits the game being made rather than in some generic way. Plus you can push all of the extra cost onto the consumer!
@Damo Well the rather delicious irony is that if people hadn't "preserved" these roms in the first place, then Blaze, SNK, Taito, Capcom, Sega and all the rest would have nothing to sell!
At 2.8" that screen is far too small for my knackered old eyes. At £50 this competes with umpteen Chinese emulation handhelds that beat it in every respect, unless you're determined to hand over money to whichever shell company now owns SNK.
I'm going to resist, like I did the last two times. I'd love to have one, but I know I'd set it up, play with it for a couple of hours, and then box it back up and put it in the cupboard never to be thought of again.
@JJtheTexan it was an era of unbounded creativity that, thanks to the speccy's low price, was available to a far wider audience than any other system or console at the time.
My second favourite bit is Bruce Everiss, who years later on his blog tried to claim Imagine's downfall was all due to piracy. We had a tremendous amount of fun reminding him of this.
My favourite bit of the programme is Imagine's sales exec trying to flog the concept of a £40 (£130 now) speccy game to a distributor. To say he looks unimpressed at the prospect is an understatement!
I don't think the problem is AI, but consumers who constantly demand new content but aren't willing to pay for it. Look a look at the web: it seems to me to be funded by adverts for fake products and dubious services, rather than by people paying for quality content they like.
All AI is doing is filling the void that our rampant media consumption and unwillingness to pay has left.
@jamess Limited Liability doesn't give carte blanche to criminal acts. If there's a suspicion of criminality it should be investigated by the police and if the evidence merits it, the accused brought to trial.
Anbernic are a strange company in that for every product they bring to market, they always seem to bake at least one thing wrong into them.
The previous iteration of this, the 556, could have been great except for the nerfed sticks and lack of updates to boost performance. This one seems to have nerfed the sticks in a different way, although it looks like they are doing some firmware updates to improve performance.
What a shame. I do question, however, if an out-of the-way industrial estate, in an out-of-the-way place (Portland), in the largely seasonal (and hence sleepy) part of a fairly sleepy county (Dorset) is really the right location for such a venture.
Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, if I were making the game I'd probably go for something like State of Emergency and play up to the Project Mayhem aspects of Fight Club.
Before the Chromatic was released I'd never heard of Palmer. Once it all blew up about a supposed "arms dealer" creating a GameBoy I thought I should look into it. Rather than the Bond style villain he is portrayed as I found somebody who thinks that if you like peace and prosperity you have to carry a bigger stick than those who would take it from you.
@tofuman86 The big benefit is you end up with a native build of the game for a target system. So, for example, you take a PS2 game, decompile it to portable code files (like C++) and then re-compile to run on PC or PS5 or on an ARM based handheld etc.
Typically this would be more performant than emulation and crucially, because you've reconstructed the source code, allows changes to be made.
The downside is that each game is a special case in and of itself and requires its own decompilation, which is a complex process. The people doing this sort of work are real wizards!
Yeah, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so. Yeah. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so. Yeah. So. Yeah, so. So. Yeah, Yeah, so, so, so, so, Yeah.
As per Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun. The internet makes this sort of behaviour more easier and more instantaneous. Prior to the internet people had to make do with spiteful letters sent anonymously, rude missives to the editor, crudely drawn graffiti, or spending 20p per word in the classifieds.
Comments 60
Re: Rumour: Seller Of Undumped GBA, DS, DSi And 3DS Beta Carts Raided By British Police
This story gets stranger with every passing week.
Unless there was suspicion of theft, why a police raid?
Why would Sega (Europe) give a monkies about a bunch of ancient beta carts?
Who is this mysterious seller?
Once the price went spiralling out of control, why didn't the preservation society just walk away?
I'm detecting shenanigans.
Re: Tomb Raider Composer Jailed For COVID Loan Fraud
@The_Nintend_Pedant Only those who can't fight back.
Re: YouTuber Raided For Reviewing Handheld Emulation Consoles Pre-Loaded With Sony And Nintendo Games
Italian law is a bit overzealous in respect of "piracy". I suspect due to the fact that for many years there were no laws preventing it at all. Dudley of Yesterzine had a video about it a few months back.
However, to claim such devices are illegal seems a bit of a stretch. Admittedly they only really exist to put roms on (which I'm 100% ok with), but you can buy them without the SD card, put your own roms on, play ports and lots of other games.
Plus, these things are sold on Amazon, but curiously the authorities don't seem to be interested in that.
Re: BBC Recently Covered The Rise Of Retro Gaming - See If You Can Spot The Problem
Once upon a time the BBC was at the forefront of the home computer revolution, now look at it!
I absolutely hate what has happened to the BBC. What used to be a trustworthy, authoritative source of information and a producer of quality entertainment is no more. Imagine a news story about something you're not familiar with and now imagine there's a blooper like this in it. Then imagine that every news story has a blooper like this. Couple that with New Beeb's mission to destroy culture, history, and all the other trappings of Britishness ("Welsh Choir Boys", anyone?) and the whole stinking edifice needs to be taken down.
What I hate even more is that I have to pay for it despite not consuming any BBC content.
Smash the BBC!
Re: Arcade Enters "Survival Mode" As It Seeks To Avoid Closure
There's an arcade local to me that opened last year. I've been once and probably won't go again. The problem is there's no real draw other than the nostalgia factor, which for me at any rate was satisfied by the one visit. The coffee shop 20 yards up the road, however, I probably visit at least three times a week.
Re: "No In-House Jokes And Keep It Clean" - How Legendary '90s Mag Mean Machines Was Revived For A New Generation
How many monkey-asses were dusted in the making of this production?
We gots to know!
Re: Developer Of SNES DOOM Defends The Tech Behind Limited Run's 2025 Update
I'm not going to buy one because whispers I don't actually like Doom very much, but this is a very cool project! It's the sort of thing I'd like to do, if I had the skills an knowhow.
Re: Hands On: 30 Years On, DOOM's "Super FX 3" Upgrade Gives SNES Players A More Polished Way To Rip And Tear
@bring_on_branstons thought you'd like that one 👍
This has been a great thread - made me feel 35 years younger and talking about this stuff in school!
Re: Hands On: 30 Years On, DOOM's "Super FX 3" Upgrade Gives SNES Players A More Polished Way To Rip And Tear
I found this, which might be of interest. Sadly there are no citations, but I'll leave a link to the full article:
"Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi had warned his company that they needed to be poised to seize the 16-bit console market by 1990; however, his statement did not have the binding edge of command that his pronouncements usually carried. Nintendo was still reaping huge profits from the NES, so there was no hurry to come up with a successor system. There was also another reason for the delay - Nintendo was having development problems with this newest box. It was little more than a design concept and a few barely working prototypes at this point, but already certain issues had surfaced that demanded attention. The system as originally designed was way too expensive to be produced in a version affordable for the average consumer, let alone cost-effective for Nintendo. On top of that, project leader Masayuki Uemura was unable to meet Yamauchi's demand that the new box be back-compatible with the NES. The back-compatability feature was eventually abandoned; however, that only saved about US$75 on the anticipated end-user price tag. The chief culprit of the cost was, of course, the all-new graphics and sound processing suite upon which Yamauchi insisted. Designed in anticipation of the coming multimedia boom, it drove up the cost of the system so much that Nintendo was again forced to cut costs elsewhere or scrap it and risk being left behind. The problem was eventually solved by installing a slower CPU - a Motorola-based WDC65816 CPU - instead of the faster 10 Mhz MC68000 that Uemura originally intended. This meant that the new box would not be that much faster than the NES itself, so a math coprocessor (as cheap as Nintendo could cobble together) was thrown in to ease the processing strain a bit."
http://web.archive.org/web/20080505070423/http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index.php?page=SegaBase+Genesis
Re: Hands On: 30 Years On, DOOM's "Super FX 3" Upgrade Gives SNES Players A More Polished Way To Rip And Tear
@bring_on_branstons You make it sound as if the SNES was some sort of dismal failure due to CPU choice. In reality it was a phenomenal success with a library of games that sits up there with the best of the best. And that's coming from a Mega Drive fanboy like me!
There's that phrase "Neccisty is the mother of invention", perhaps if Nintendo had thrown a 68k, a 386, a DEC Alpha, an Arm2 or something else in we'd never have got that library.
Re: Hands On: 30 Years On, DOOM's "Super FX 3" Upgrade Gives SNES Players A More Polished Way To Rip And Tear
@smoreon it's interesting, especially if we look at what other companies were doing.
SNK went with the Rolls Royce approach, and spent the next few years trying to make things more affordable.
NEC went with the limited add-on route, but went too early with it's next gen hardware.
Sega went with the max add-on route and met limited commercial success with them. This probably also hindered the Saturn and Sega as a company.
Nintendo went with a capable but cheap base system, enhanced by the carts themselves.
I'm a Mega Drive fanboy who bought into the Mega-Cd and 32x, but if you ask me which strategy was most successful I'd point to who is still making hardware today.
Mass consumer electronics is a cutthroat business. You have to design to a cost and make the most of it!
Re: Hands On: 30 Years On, DOOM's "Super FX 3" Upgrade Gives SNES Players A More Polished Way To Rip And Tear
@bring_on_branstons Nintendo's philosophy does make a lot of sense, though. Instead of having an expensive system that will quickly become obsolete, build a cheaper system that is user upgradable in a transparent way via game carts. Each cart has the potential to add features/performance and, better yet, in ways that suits the game being made rather than in some generic way. Plus you can push all of the extra cost onto the consumer!
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair's Nephew Has Created A Gift Card-Sized Gaming System
@obijuankanoobie no problem! 👍
Re: Sir Clive Sinclair's Nephew Has Created A Gift Card-Sized Gaming System
@obijuankanoobie my Anbernic RG XX Cube is my current Pico-8 device of choice. Its 1:1 screen is a perfect match.
Re: Review: Super Pocket Neo Geo Edition - Unlike SNK's Original, This Handheld Won't Break The Bank
@Damo Well the rather delicious irony is that if people hadn't "preserved" these roms in the first place, then Blaze, SNK, Taito, Capcom, Sega and all the rest would have nothing to sell!
Re: Review: Super Pocket Neo Geo Edition - Unlike SNK's Original, This Handheld Won't Break The Bank
At 2.8" that screen is far too small for my knackered old eyes. At £50 this competes with umpteen Chinese emulation handhelds that beat it in every respect, unless you're determined to hand over money to whichever shell company now owns SNK.
Re: The Team Behind Mean Machines Has Created A New Magazine With Sega And Supercell
That takes me back - dusted monkey asses all round!
Re: PCSX2 Latest Version Introduces More Performance Updates & Fixes For Classic Games
I want to propose a toast to refraction who has worked on PCSX2 for over 20 years!
Re: Arcade Archives' Latest Rerelease Is An Old Taito Title From The Golden Age Of Arcades
$8 for that? What a rip off!
Re: Here's Your Third (And Probably Final) Chance To Own A ZX Spectrum Next
I'm going to resist, like I did the last two times. I'd love to have one, but I know I'd set it up, play with it for a couple of hours, and then box it back up and put it in the cupboard never to be thought of again.
Re: Despite His Ongoing Health Battle, Castlevania Vet Shutaro Iida Is "Deeply Involved" With Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement
Yes indeed, get well soon Mr Lida!
Re: The BBC Has Republished One Of The Most Infamous Video Game Documentaries Ever Made
@JJtheTexan it was an era of unbounded creativity that, thanks to the speccy's low price, was available to a far wider audience than any other system or console at the time.
Re: The BBC Has Republished One Of The Most Infamous Video Game Documentaries Ever Made
@mjparker77 Golden days
Re: You Might Want To Download These Free Sega Games Before They Get Delisted
@Fighting_Game_Loser So they can sell it back in a couple of months for $5!
Re: The BBC Has Republished One Of The Most Infamous Video Game Documentaries Ever Made
My second favourite bit is Bruce Everiss, who years later on his blog tried to claim Imagine's downfall was all due to piracy. We had a tremendous amount of fun reminding him of this.
Re: The BBC Has Republished One Of The Most Infamous Video Game Documentaries Ever Made
My favourite bit of the programme is Imagine's sales exec trying to flog the concept of a £40 (£130 now) speccy game to a distributor. To say he looks unimpressed at the prospect is an understatement!
Re: Review: Anbernic RG34XX SP - Another GBA SP Clone, But One That's Worth A Look
And if you don't like this, wait 5 minutes and Anbernic will release another device.
Re: ChatGPT Translated An Article About Space Harrier, Then Suggested "Tailoring" It For Retro Gamer
@WileyDragonfly Don't get me started, or I'm going to have to go on a tirade about "begging the question".
Re: ChatGPT Translated An Article About Space Harrier, Then Suggested "Tailoring" It For Retro Gamer
I don't think the problem is AI, but consumers who constantly demand new content but aren't willing to pay for it. Look a look at the web: it seems to me to be funded by adverts for fake products and dubious services, rather than by people paying for quality content they like.
All AI is doing is filling the void that our rampant media consumption and unwillingness to pay has left.
Re: Writers Of 'Did You Know Gaming' Book Published By Unbound "Received £79 Each For Over 7 Years Of Work"
@jamess Limited Liability doesn't give carte blanche to criminal acts. If there's a suspicion of criminality it should be investigated by the police and if the evidence merits it, the accused brought to trial.
Re: Writers Of 'Did You Know Gaming' Book Published By Unbound "Received £79 Each For Over 7 Years Of Work"
@NoirConceit in the early days it was fine, it was only when the crooks saw it as an easy way of fleecing people it became a big no go.
Re: OpenAI's ChatGPT Lost A Game Of Chess Against The 48-Year-Old Atari 2600
Give it a couple of weeks and it will be wanting to play Global Thermonuclear War.
Re: Two Classic SNES & NES Jaleco Football Games Are Coming To PC
The links in this article appear to be broken.
Re: Review: Anbernic RG557 - A Powerful Emulation Handheld With One Too Many Issues
Anbernic are a strange company in that for every product they bring to market, they always seem to bake at least one thing wrong into them.
The previous iteration of this, the 556, could have been great except for the nerfed sticks and lack of updates to boost performance. This one seems to have nerfed the sticks in a different way, although it looks like they are doing some firmware updates to improve performance.
Maybe by the 558 they'll have a perfect device?
Re: Konami Is Stealthily Rolling Out A New Contra Lightgun Game In US Arcades
@Norintha depending on where you are in the world, it's more likely to do with gambling and taxation laws.
Re: "It's Just Not Working" - FreePlay Arcade Will Close Its Doors Later This Month
What a shame. I do question, however, if an out-of the-way industrial estate, in an out-of-the-way place (Portland), in the largely seasonal (and hence sleepy) part of a fairly sleepy county (Dorset) is really the right location for such a venture.
Re: The Making Of: Fight Club, The Game David Fincher Didn't Want You To Play
Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, if I were making the game I'd probably go for something like State of Emergency and play up to the Project Mayhem aspects of Fight Club.
Re: Fallout 1 & 2's Source Code Isn't Lost After All
"Heineman adds that, when she gets time, she intends to explore ways of getting Fallout 1 & 2's source code published online."
Source ports!
Re: This Indie Dev Seems Pretty Serious About Making A Spiritual Successor To Ridge Racer
Best girl Reiko Nagase or no dice!
Re: Sega's Altered Beast Gets A Free Fan-Made Remake
"Wise fwom your gwave!"
No chance! These graphics look shocking!
Re: Odin 2 Maker Ayn To Join Anbernic In Pausing US Shipments
@roe your phone is likely more powerful and capable. Add a controller - lots to choose from! - and you already have a better gaming device.
Re: Odin 2 Maker Ayn To Join Anbernic In Pausing US Shipments
Removed
Re: Emulation Handheld Maker Anbernic Suspends All Shipments To The US
@Razieluigi These products only exist to steal the IP of Western companies.
Re: Toaplan's 'Snow Bros. 2' Gets Fresh New Remake, Out Today For PC & Switch
£30 on Steam!?! I think that can wait for a Steam Sale or CD Keys reduction
Re: What Happens When An Arms Dealer Publishes Your Video Game?
Before the Chromatic was released I'd never heard of Palmer. Once it all blew up about a supposed "arms dealer" creating a GameBoy I thought I should look into it. Rather than the Bond style villain he is portrayed as I found somebody who thinks that if you like peace and prosperity you have to carry a bigger stick than those who would take it from you.
Re: PSRetroX Creator Clarifies PS2 Decompilation Project Not In "Active Development"
@tofuman86 The big benefit is you end up with a native build of the game for a target system. So, for example, you take a PS2 game, decompile it to portable code files (like C++) and then re-compile to run on PC or PS5 or on an ARM based handheld etc.
Typically this would be more performant than emulation and crucially, because you've reconstructed the source code, allows changes to be made.
The downside is that each game is a special case in and of itself and requires its own decompilation, which is a complex process. The people doing this sort of work are real wizards!
Re: A New Recompilation Tool Is Being Developed To Enable Native PC Ports Of PS2 Games
@BlobExtension well everyone has to start somewhere.
Re: Interview: "Let's Make Great F**cking Games" -The Legacy Of Monolith Productions
Yeah, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so. Yeah. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so. Yeah. So. Yeah, so. So. Yeah, Yeah, so, so, so, so, Yeah.
Editors: DO YOUR JOB!
Re: This Year's Best April Fools' Prank Is A Croc C64 Text Adventure You Can Actually Play
The best April Fool I've seen today came courtesy of the BBC Archive on YouTube. Have a look for The Curious Case of the UPSIDE-DOWN Library.
Re: Attacking Retro Modders Is Not Cool, And It Needs To Stop
As per Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun. The internet makes this sort of behaviour more easier and more instantaneous. Prior to the internet people had to make do with spiteful letters sent anonymously, rude missives to the editor, crudely drawn graffiti, or spending 20p per word in the classifieds.
Gits gonna be gittish!