Razieluigi

Endlessly frustrating discussion that devolves into petty semantics every single time.

We should stop using the term "emulation" unadorned. It should always be specified as hardware or software emulation. Always. Full stop.

That said, while the claims of FPGA makers like Analogue of "zero emulation" are disingenuous, it's equally disingenuous to just define them both generically as emulation and assume the audience now sees them as equivalent.

Any emulator — hardware or software — is only as good as whoever programmed it. But if we were to put a hypothetically perfect software solution against a hypothetically perfect FPGA solution and judge them on sheer fidelity, the FPGA would come out ahead. The difference might be negligible, but you can't escape the reality that one option necessarily puts some layer of processing between the player and the game while the other does not. But there are other factors at play than fidelity. Convenience, versatility, user options and quality of life features...

These are different solutions to the same problem and both come with too many pros and cons to list here. In order to choose the best option for their needs consumers should be educated on the difference, but clearly not by any of the people trying to sell these products because they're all guilty of misrepresenting reality.

I'll always love that clean, early VR look.

I remember being disappointed when this gorgeous style eventually gave way to slapping textures across every single polygon. The 5th gen consoles just weren't powerful enough to pull off that level of detail, and it felt like 3D graphics needed to take a step backwards before moving forwards again.

Which they did, starting with the Dreamcast. But man, it was rough going for a while.

@dukestah Huh. They must have added that to later models. The NES one doesn't have anything like that at all.

A brilliant RPG and one of the absolute best games on SNES. It's a shame that it has flown under the radar for decades because it deserves far more attention than it ever received.

A Quintet collection would be fantastic, but at the very least this game should be available on NSO.

It's an especially bad decision since the target audience for this kind of thing is inherently savvy about retro gaming and emulation.

Not offering the option to purchase a ROM is an excellent way to guarantee that people just find one by other means.

What a shame. Game preservation depends on talented people giving their time and energy to projects like this.

Online toxicity is nothing new, but it feels like there's no end to its escalation.

@Azuris Wait... did you put the magnets on the side?

I also have the NES keyboard and separate numpad, and they definitely do not dock magnetically.

Three cheers for the calculator function, though. I had been wanting a calculator with an old-school red LED display for ages, and then this came along and fit the bill perfectly.

It makes sense given that this same feature had recently felt so revolutionary in Virtua Racing, but I think it was the right call to axe it. The game's character and sense of gleeful chaos is really enhanced by the behind-the-car perspective.

Crazy Taxi was such a breath of fresh air at the time. It's hard to express how extraordinary it was to have it running in nearly arcade-perfect form on a home console. I was in grad school during the Dreamcast era, and this game would frequently become the centerpiece of any party we were throwing. People just couldn't wait to grab the controller next.

Looking forward to digging through some of this, and already enjoying the reminder of how incredibly weird video game journalism was back in the day. It didn't seem so odd at the time, but it's a far cry from the long-form reviews and discussion we see today.

Just as a random example I already stumbled across... a preview for Silver Surver (NES) in Issue 9 of EGM reads "Good graphics and a lack of color round out the cart." What a bizarre and seemingly self-contradictory sentence.

I also recall a review of Castlevania Bloodlines that noted "I admit it. Konami is the king of Castlevania games." Like... yeah, they're the only publisher that makes them?

This will be a nostalgic kick for those of us who grew up in that era, but also an interesting adventure for younger players who are used to modern games journalism and want to see what the culture looked like a few decades ago.

@-wc- Totally agreed. To some degree, of course you can spend money to get better sound quality. But as you note, you rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns and so much of what is out there is utter nonsense. I'm thinking of overt crap like the LessLoss Blackbody — a literal $800+ paperweight that uses the power of pseudoscience to transform sound by placing one (or more if you can afford it!) in the general vicinity of your setup.

Of course, that's an extreme example compared to the parade of more mundane but equally scammy high-end speaker cables and power conditioners and whatnot.

I'll give these Marseilles devices a modicum of credit — they at least do something even if it seems mostly to make the picture worse. But that's damning with some pretty faint praise, indeed.

@Gs69 I'm not sure they're fake reviews. I think that people are just very good at convincing themselves that they see and hear improvement after they've spent money on a product that's supposed to improve their experience.

Audiophiles have been buying useless snake oil products for decades now and swearing up and down they hear the difference. As the gaming industry matures and spins off sub-markets of niche enthusiasts, it would be surprising if we didn't see the exact same thing happen.

Just to be clear, this was not a "bungled venture". That would imply a legitimate project that collapsed under mismanagement.

This product never existed nor were there plans to bring it into existence. This was a scam, top to bottom, intended to collect money from its marks. This "venture" proceeded exactly as intended.

This is just a developer creating a story out of thin air to get some pre-release publicity.

Nothing to see here.

Ahhhh... the 90s console wars will literally never die.

Neither one sounded "better" than the other. They just sounded different and could accomplish different things in different ways.

It's like trying to figure out if a guitar is better than a piano.

This remains the only console I've ever regretted buying. It's a decent piece of tech and the screen was great (if a bit splotchy) for the time. But the support was atrocious, the "wobbly bubble" UI felt lazy and cheap, and the library just never materialized. All said and done, I'm not sure if I spent more than 50 hours gaming on mine in total.

I also may be in the minority with this opinion, but I always thought the PSP was nicer looking and more comfortable to use. I still preferentially reach for my PSP-2000 when I want to play anything from that library.

That's an exciting pedigree, but "plunder battle" means absolutely nothing to me. Is this some sub-genre I'm not aware of?

I've really enjoyed all the Castlevania seasons. Looking forward to seeing how they pick up from last season's cliffhanger.

It's wild how many hardware options we have for retro emulation now. I still don't understand how Ambernic can flood the market with so many different designs on such a regular basis, but choice is good.

Yeah, I was skeptical of this story from the start. The game does lean into ethnic and cultural stereotypes, but it's entirely playful and affectionate about it.

It makes more sense to think that Punch Out! is dormant for the same reason that other Nintendo franchises go dormant — their reluctance to revive IP if they don't have anything new to do with it.

All that said, this was a magnificent game — possibly one of the best franchise revivals I've ever played. I wouldn't mind an HD port of it, just to let those fantastic animations really shine.

It's a shame that, for all intents and purposes, YouTube is the only reasonable option for any of these creators to get their content out there.

You could argue that this kind of journalism wouldn't exist at all without YouTube making it possible, but that only makes it sadder that its policies — and moreover the impersonal and literally robotic way that those policies are enforced — are getting in the way.

@Hordak I can't recall the exact steps since I did it some time ago, but I used PocketSync to make it easier. Somewhere in that program is an "instance JSON" button that should take the bin/cue files on the SD card and make the appropriate JSON files. When you run the core, you need to chose those JSON files.

But I hear you. I have no understanding of how this stuff works. It's definitely more complicated than just picking a ROM from a list.

Always cool to see projects like this!

But the home version was definitely the better game.

On the bright side, it should take literally no time at all for Martín to fulfill SEGA's demand that all existing products be destroyed.

@bluemage1989 What are you on about? Nobody asked for or expects "slobbering credit."

But people deserve acknowledgement when their work is used, not just because it's the right thing to do (which it absolutely is), but because those credits are what artists use to build their resumes and careers.

This is uncontroversial common sense, not some dire sign of the times as you're bizarrely implying.

I hope there's a circle of hell where the people who greenlight and publish this predatory skinner-box trash are forced to play it for the rest of eternity.

"we want to deliver something new"

Now here's another five Yakuza games.

Honestly, though, a company can walk and chew gum at the same time. Nintendo (for all its faults) knows very well how to celebrate its history while continually churning out new and interesting experiences.

Utsumi does SEGA a disservice by predicating his decisions on a false choice. Just another reminder that CEOs are paid a lot of money for being surprisingly bad at their jobs.

Stories like this mostly make me realize I just don't understand the complexities and general insanity of music licensing.

His agreement with Paramount just allows them to use the music, then? And they still need to get separate permission from SEGA to use the lyrics?

And if Gioeli acknowledges he doesn't have the rights to the lyrics but maintains that the music belongs to him, I feel like this must cut both ways. Surely he's performed this song over the last few decades. Has he gotten permission from SEGA to sing the lyrics each time? Or has he just been performing instrumental arrangements?

I may have to finally get one of these. I've been happily using my standard GC controllers for years, but my new TV room layout (and new cat) make wireless a more attractive option.

Having just binge-watched all of these in October, I'm pretty excited for the next batch of episodes.

I know there's a lot of mixed opinions on both series, but I've loved all of it so far.

@Shiryu Their website does say that the carts work on a RetroUSB AVS, which makes me think it's probably using fairly standard mappers. But yeah, it's hard to say nowadays. A lot of these retro projects are impressive, but are loading the carts with so much modern tech that it feels like a little bit of a dodge to say they're running on original hardware.

The localization thing is cute, but is very consumer unfriendly if both versions aren't on the same cart and that immediately puts me off considering a purchase.

I'd buy the ROMs, though, if they were available.

I see the semantics police are out in full force on this one.

@NinChocolate I get that a lot of retro gaming enthusiasts are CRT fans and that's cool. I have one stashed away for when I need it. But you also need to recognize that CRTs are functionally endangered technology with a dwindling number of users, however devoted they may be. You are too niche an audience to be developing hardware for.

The vast majority of people interested in playing retro games are interested in playing them on screens they already have. Every extra port added to a board costs more and raises the asking price for a feature that most users just don't want or need. You can bemoan it all you want, but there's no mystery about why these devices aren't designed to support displays that are in a ever-declining number of households.

Great to have more options out there and I look forward to hearing about this one.

But at this point, I feel like the Pocket has effectively grown up to be an excellent MiSTer alternative with the additional benefit of portability. I'm not sure I need anything else!

@UK_Kev You can remove "by March 31st 2025" from that sentence and the answer will still be "no".

Shame. He seemed like such a nice boy.

Ha. He rolls up wearing a Cinemartin t-shirt — his failed "company" that is mostly known for its vaporware 8K camera.

I'll at least hand it to the guy. He's an expert troll.

Their custom mapper must be a beast to be getting images like that from the NES. Those enemy sprites are phenomenal (technically and artistically).

I need to look into this. I wonder if it will work on a RetroUSB AVS.

Pretty awesome. I really wish I had room for an arcade cabinet, but it's hard to complain to much given how easy it is to play all these old games on the screen I already have.

This really is a golden era for retro-gaming enthusiasts.

CWX's attitude is like that of someone who neglected a puppy and is now aghast that someone else rescued it.

Even if eadmaster's translation isn't up to snuff, at least they're making a good faith effort to finish the work that CWX left to die on the vine for an entire decade. Their umbrage about this is petty and absurd.

A proper response would have been to thank eadmaster for bringing this translation back into public consciousness and offering to help them complete the project.

I assume that you just need to fold your discs in half to fit them into that slot on the front left since I don't see anywhere else that one could possibly fit.

@UK_Kev They're hoping that the $3 buy in is low enough to pull in a lot of takers, but also low enough that none of them will come after them when this product inevitably fails to materialize.

Thank you for running this.

I'd prefer to not see anything else about these grifters until they release an actual product that can be reviewed for real (which, of course, isn't going to happen). But if any further updates are worth reporting on before then, they should be posted under this headline and not any of the prior ones.

@pomegran I feel like we should just get in the habit of saying "software emulation" and "hardware emulation", honestly.

@slider1983 You are giving him far too much credt. These aren't edits for time and clarity. A jump cut every single time a game starts is fishy, to say the least. There would be absolutely no reason to edit the video that way unless you're trying to trick the viewer. And judging from some of these comments, it's working.

Until this thing is in the hands of independent reviewers, which I give about a 0% chance of ever happening, it can be presumed to be a scam.

I really wish this site would stop reporting on this nonsense, much less credulously stating "prototype put through its paces" when it isn't remotely clear that's what is going on in this video.

I've said it before. I'll say it again. This. Is. A. Scam.

Ummm... am I the only one who thinks it looks like there's a jump cut in that video every single time he starts a game?

"the Sega brand isn't anywhere near as prominent as it perhaps should be, given the company's enviable history in the world of video games and the strength of its IP library."

The same could be said of Konami.

He's right to note that these are valuable resources. It's criminal how badly they're being squandered. A broad portfolio does you no good if it just sits in a dark closet while you churn out Sonic and Yakuza games because you can't think of anything else to do.

You want to elevate the Sega brand? Get Sega back to what it used to do better than nearly anybody else in the business — delivering unique and unexpected gaming experiences.

@nocdaes It's hard to pin real numbers on this since I'm not aware of any publicized sales figures for various Analogue products, but I think your take is a really optimistic view of how successful first-party cartridge-based devices would actually be. These are relatively niche devices that don't shift millions of units.

The brief flurry of mini-consoles doesn't prove anything. They were plug-and-play devices with built-in libraries of games that were made on the cheap and intended to scratch a nostalgic itch. They appeal specifically to people who don't already have a bunch of carts at home which, let's be honest, is the vast majority of people.

Releasing a device that can only play legacy media that is no longer in wide production does not make sense for a global corporation that can be making far more money on other ventures (even if one of those ventures is apparently a weird alarm clock).

It does make sense for a smaller company like Analogue that can shift a modest number of units and call that a big success.

This is a great game and I'm glad it's been successful enough to warrant all these ports.

But considering that it's fundamentally a twin-stick shooter, it's a puzzling choice for multi-platform release on all these machines that just don't have the inputs needed to make it work without compromise.

Shock of shocks that the same scam artist responsible for a vaporware 8K cinema camera can't shoot a clear video.

Stop. Giving. Them. Publicity.