RupeeClock

@missingno_fgc
Yeah, the few GBC games that are "advanced" by the GBA if I recall correctly are doing some kind of header check, and little more.

Shantae is another notable example, putting a major piece of unlockable behind it, but also changing the color palette to one better suited to the GBA.

The Oracle games, if you want to play them with the GBA content on modern hardware, you also have to suffer a color palette change that makes them look noticeably worse. Thankfully, there exist patches to force the GBC palette to be used in the GBA mode, good for playing on flashcart for a GBA or an Analogue Pocket for example.

Interesting, so it's not like Animaniacs, where it could display additional colours and use a sound effects library built into the Super Game Boy, and it's not like Space Invaders, where it actually launches a SNES ROM stored on the Game Boy cartridge.

Since the flickering is annoying, and it seems to be reading graphics data present on the Super Game Boy rather than data present on the Game Boy ROM, I'd understand why the feature was never completed.
It could've however, been creatively implemented to do things like display hidden messages that can only be read when played on a Super Game Boy, sort of like how Link's Awakening DX had the Color Dungeon, or Oracle of Ages and Seasons had the Advanced Shop.

Could Silksong's release be any part of those delays? A number of games appear to have delayed their releases just to avoid releasing against that juggernaut.

ININ and Strictly Limited at least seems to be getting their act together somewhat, a lot of their physical pre-orders have been stalled long enough as it is, and the whole Parasol Superstars thing was done just to satisfy the separate pre-orders for Parasol Stars and Spica Adventure whilst reducing the physical number of goods needing production.

Color palette management is important, I'd never really considered that the Mega Drive had a more limited simultaneous color display than its competing systems.
You wouldn't know it, looking at games like Dynamite Headdy.

It's a known issue for some games though, where certain sprites and background elements have to share colours.
Sonic the Hedgehog is a known example of that, where Sonic's blue is re-used for many background elements and cited as a reason why Sonic & Knuckles lock-on technology didn't make Knuckles playable in Sonic 1.

Looking really snazzy, and obviously it offers performance far beyond what's really needed for DS and 3DS games, but can do more than just that.

For something to specifically play DS and 3DS games though, the price point would be total overkill like Scollurio says, and it may not have full 3DS compatibility if it doesn't have built-in gyro for motion controls.

I've a soft spot for the Ruby Spears Mega Man cartoon, in a "so bad it's good" kind of way.
There's pretty famous moments like Mega Man taking a shot to protect the statue of Abraham Lincoln, the "Gutsman's Ass" meme, and one of my favorites is Mega Man taking Pharaoh Man's power, then promptly getting punched in the face.

@101Force
I'd have to look into it more, but if it's AI processing of any audio data you provide it, sort like an "AI auto-tune", that seems fine.

That said, there are "non-generative" ways to use generative AI.
Stable Diffusion has an "image to image" mode where you provide an input image, and your parameters modify the input.
However it uses the same process as "text to image" with the diffence being the former generates an image from a basis, and the latter generates an image from pure noise.

The tool in question, Synthesizer V, does in fact appear to be a form of generative AI, however it appears to entirely ethical and above board in its use of voice models from consenting voice actors?
I certainly doubt object to the use of this in pre-production materials ahead of hiring proper performers for the final production, but the use of Synthesizer V itself would probably also be ethical as the voice talent was paid for their contributions in the development of that software and service.
It means real humans were involved in proxy and proper process.

It's a tricky thing to evaluate, because consenting to having your voice likeness reproduced by AI can go wrong.
It certainly did when James Earl Jones' Darth Vader performance was used for real-time AI responses in Fortnite, and that was something that he and his estate may have not accounted for when he signed over his rights for AI recreation.

Interesting that they're including Conker's Pocket Tales.
Did you know that when you play that game on a monochrome Game Boy DMG or Pocket, you get a completely different game from the Color version? I wonder if they've accounted for that?

I've pre-ordered the Switch physical version of Earthion and looking forward to playing it that way.
That said, I feel like the Earthion release is at odds with the current landscape of retro gaming. Earthion is in effect an aftermarket unlicensed release, and has to exist in the same space as Itch.io homebrew games that sell ROMs to load onto a flash cart or emulator of your choice. Even many retro games sold on Steam will provide you the ROM data to use, such as Goodboy Galaxy.
Doing a nice physical only release of the game to use on original hardware, or selling a digital version that can only be played on PC or console (especially in a proprietary and restrictive emulator), isn't going to satisfy customers that want to play the game on a open source retro handheld for example.

Of course, this is no justification for distribution of pirated software, but this does highlight a service issue with the game they're selling on Steam.

Okay, this is something that I have given some thought towards.
Too often, generative AI focuses on generating the flattened output and not the processes involved, think like an exported image file versus a PSD document with all the layers.
So let's apply that to a completed software title with robust modding tools, and use machine learning with the formats for those tools.

Lunar Magic, the level editor for Super Mario World. They're in an MWL format, and define a full course in the game, such as Mario's entry point, the enemy and object placements (including checkpoints and pipes), terrain and sublevels, special features like water levels or ice physics, P-switch doors, keys and key holes, and the exit(s).

You could have a model trained on all of the vanilla courses from Super Mario World in MWL format, and use this to generate extrapolated levels based on tokenised characteristics (e.g. Cave level, Ghost House level, vertical climb or horizontal sprint, easy level, difficult level, etc).
You can require that certain aspects be required and follow certain guidelines, e.g. Mario's entry placement is always on the farthest left side, the goal is always on the right, the inclusion or exclusion of pitfalls.

On top of this, we introduce an adverserial aspect to refine the model's training, such as MarI/O which is able to play a SMW level through to completion and can be used to evaluate if the generated output can be played to completion.
https://youtu.be/qv6UVOQ0F44

These together could hypothetically be used to generate an unlimited number of vanilla-grade human completable Super Mario World courses, and another tool could be used to package the output of the dozens of courses into a ROM which is used to generate and distribute an IPS or xDelta patch file online.
The output might not be that interesting to play, it would never compare to the hand-crafted works of the talented Super Mario World hackers and designers at places like SMW Central, but as a theoretical demonstration it could be very interesting.
This however would still be very legally dubious as the machine learning process is being trained on Nintendo's own data; their designs for the game's courses. It could be argued as being transformative, but also as derivative.

Calling it Shindou Edition is a nice throwback to Super Mario 64's Shindou Edition, the rumble pak upgrade that was exclusive to Japan.

@mattysaurus
Considering these things are premium, I'm frustrated that ModRetro haven't offered an official protector carry case for the Chromatic. I don't want to get some random drop shipped case from Amazon or wherever.

Frustratingly, the rechargable "power core" battery can't be purchased on its own, as least not in "my region due to shipping regulations".
I got my Chromatic from DragonBox Shop, but this would be a problem for anyone that bought a 1st edition directly from ModRetro's site too.

@Coalescence
That's something that definitely caught my eye about the new stock. They've revised the colour schemes of all of the returning colours. The bottom-left corner's colour bands have been changed, differentiating them from the 1st editions.

There's an undeniable charm to Rockman The Puzzle Battle there, it feels like something that could've been a DSiWare title.

I got a lot of wear out of my RG35XXSP, so much so that the face buttons sunk in and became unresponsive, which was a shame and a known problem with the launch units.
I'm hopeful that the RG34XXSP might address that, but I'd need to see a teardown.
The other part is that I wouldn't ever consider using the stock firmware on an Anbernic device, and MuOS on the RG35XXSP is great, but not yet supported on RG34XXSP. I might have to look at Rocknix or Knulli instead.

There was also this unusual finding about the screen that it appeared to be a 4:3 panel and firmware trickery to make it function as a 720x480 3:2 display, but that didn't appear to be true. Strange, right?

https://youtu.be/e528oYFmsYI
https://youtu.be/FJJCwSIBC4

Regarding the ROM modifications.
I think this is for emulators, as mGBA is capable of emulating Game Boy Camera and can make use of a webcam on PCs, or the cameras on a homebrew enabled 3DS.

As PZT and RextheSheep already said, ports can be the fruit of a decompilation project, but they are not the goal, and ports are usually done by groups external to the decompilation effort.
There are exceptions such as the Sonic Advance 2 decompilation project, which does have the goal of producing enhanced ports with work-in-progress builds available, but these are usually an exception.

The Zelda Reverse Engineering Team to date have fully decompiled Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Minish Cap, but the Zelda 64 ports were handled by a separate group called Harbour Masters with their Ship of Harkinian project. Minish Cap to my knowledge doesn't have a port available

Decompilation projects usually have the goal of getting an in-depth understanding of a goal at the lowest possible level, which advances speedrun theory for both what's humanly achieveable, and fascinating on a tool-assisted scale.
They're also fantastic for preservation purposes as it gives insight into developmental processes, and can indeed be used to make the games accessible on newer hardware if necessary.

80% is a promising milestone for any decompilation to reach, but the last 20%, 10%, or even 1% of code can be painstaking to finish.

@Profchaos
Valve issued that cease and desist because the Portal 64 dev was using Libultra, which is Nintendo's official SDK for developing N64 games and needs to be properly licensed to be used legally.
The dev put out their own video on the issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDNU9k8uTc4
Valve's reasoning for the C&D would've been to distance themselves from the fan project that was treading on Nintendo's toes, because they want to maintain a good relationship with Nintendo, but also their fans that operate above board.

This is the same situation that Portal 64 fell afoul of, unlicensed code designed to run on Nintendo's system was not entirely clean room due to making use of Nintendo's own code or tools to compile.

It's a tragedy that this fact may've been unknown or swept under the rug, because it compromises the entirety of the Wii homebrew scene.

This isn't just some virtue signalling issue, this makes The Homebrew Channel devs vulnerable to legitation, I'm sure Nintendo would love to get back at them for helping to facilitate the Wii's rampant piracy problem.

@KingMike
The specific context here is that the Evercade line originated as handhelds only, and that the home console "VS" line launched after the Namco carts were made.
So the understanding or line of thought was that Namco only licensed the cartridges for handheld use, not home console.

In practice, the Evercade cartridges are really basically just SD cards. Despite the large number of pins on the PCB, only 8 are used, and in the same configuration as an SD card.

It's a bit of a facade really.

It's interesting that they claim that the imports are illegal, is that actually true?
I remember that Lik-Sang got shut down by a Sony lawsuit over the import of PSP and PS3 consoles from Asia to Europe, with Sony arguing things like compatibility of Blu-ray media and consumer safety standards with voltage supply differences.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/lik-sang-com-out-of-business-due-to-multiple-sony-lawsuits.19066/

Truth be told, this was an issue I had with a Japanese Wii I imported from Play-Asia to play Super Smash Bros. Brawl at the earliest opportunity. I had used an incorrect voltage converter with the JP Wii's power supply, and fried that power supply (but thankfully not the Wii itself).

Love the continuing preservation efforts of the Keitai Wiki community, and discovering all the bits of IP that were never accessible to the West before.

Huh, so in spite of that grievance, they still ultimately went ahead and made Tetris & Dr. Mario for the SNES.
They took a crack at doing a mixed multiplayer mode for the two different puzzle games, long before Puyo Puyo Tetris, you know!

I noticed this one on YouTube some weeks or months ago, and have been looking forward to the Kickstarter campaign starting.

Considering Analogue have yet to actually demonstrate their own Analogue 3D product, and it's supposed to ship in Q1 2025, I'd be curious to see what Modretro is offering.
Analogue have gotten too comfortable in their own FPGA bubble.

The NES carts were infamous for having that empty space, due to some very early NES carts like Gyromite actually housing Famicom boards with a Famicom to NES adapter.
The idea of an NES-sized cartridge having two boards and two adapters on opposite sides is novel though, and I'm surprised it only happened now. Years back it could've been a novel solution for selling old stock in new SKUs, but Nintendo would've probably never approved it with their strict licensing and limitation of how many titles could be published per year.

@Futureshark
Not at this stage, since Android devices are typically ARM not x86/x64.
The tool currently only recompiles for x86 devices like Windows or Linux desktop and laptop computers.

The screen resolution is a bit unfortunate. 480 width is going to be less than 2x scale for the DS's 256px wide screens.
That'll be an awkward 187.5% scale, and Drastic as a standalone emulator doesn't have the nice scaling/shading options that Retroarch does.

Taki Udon mentioned that one of his projects is replacement Nintendo DS screens, in his recent video for the Switch Lite replacement screens. That's something I'd like to see come to fruition since DS Lite and DSi screens have not aged particularly well; they're known to yellow due to the use of adhesives within the screen.

Wonderswan being one of the licenses is interesting, considering that's an entire platform and not just one franchise.
Still, if they're open to having some franchises return if other developers want to make it happen, in the way that Konami have done recently, I'm supportive.

I was astonished to see that we jumped from N64 static recompilation straight up to Xbox 360, I never imagined we'd see something like this.
A fantastic cause too, Sonic Unleashed had become so inaccessible due to only being on 360 and PS3 (not counting the PS2 and Wii versions which are effectively a different game).

@AngelFox
It'll probably end up getting a Carbon Engine release months after the GBA version.
That's what they're doing for Shantae Advance, GBA physicals first for an exclusivity window.

What happened with their 3DO D release and Rugrats + PioPow NES releases, is by their own admission evidence that their QA processes are lacking at least as new releases or changes in process are concerned. I do hope that they learn from that.

It's not just QA issues with physical media, their Carbon Engine games developed in-house are known to have a few issues.
The 1.0 release of Ninja Five-O that they shipped (weeks ahead of the digital release) has strange bugs like the intro video failing to play in Docked mode, or the gallery failing to display box art or game manuals.

LRG will be fulfilling the GBA physical release of Shantae Advance Risky Revolution soon, and I believe this is their first ever GBA release? Aftermarket GBA releases are rare so I'm keen to see if they get this right, especially as they just announced they're doing a GBA physical for Sigma Star DX, which I'm also interested in as a WayForward fan.

In terms of just fulfilling physical releases for modern systems, I do feel that LRG have turned it around and are back on track with made-to-order fulfilments, but the stigma of items instantly selling out and unfortunately long waiting times has stuck around.
There's also that LRG doesn't seem to be a fully preservationist as they used to be, if they're willing to ship Switch physicals ahead of or in-line with digital launches so that they're not fully patched and updated, or may not have full DLC on-cart like with the Switch release of Rain World.

This kind of conduct is how you get yourself blacklisted from the industry.

@Pillowpants
There's a good chance that they'll support English language when you plug them in anyway.
A lot of digital releases are true multi-region and set a language based on your Switch system.

I imported the SuperDeluxe release of Chicory, and it has full English language support.
It also had the surprising advantage of being much cheaper to order from Amazon.co.jp versus the Limited Run Games release, so something to consider.

The key pad buttons are big you could punch them, that's hilarious.
Adjacent to it looks like the back of a PC case with connecting ports, with oversized USB or VGA ports and 3.5mm audio jacks? So surreal.

I think the most notable thing about this release is probably the licensing involved.
Othello is a trademarked brand and not something you can just use freely like with Reversi. Capcom had run into trouble with this as the original release of Breath of Fire II makes specific references to Othello, and subsequent releases had to remove the reference entirely.

@jtotal
Ah my mistake, I thought it was there for additional data transmission.

In any case, the placement of that EXT connector and the shape of the e-Reader makes it physically impossible to plug it into the Analogue Pocket.

@Hastor
LRG used to really genuinely push for preservation in their releases and printing cards with the latest and most-likely final updates, but as of late they've opted to print physicals as pre-orders for upcoming digital releases.
I had this with Ninja Five-O and Glover, where the physicals arrived much earlier than their digital launches.

Like you say, QA issues too. Ninja Five-O has pretty shocking issues in the v1.0 build where the animated video intro after the splash screens doesn't play on Switch when in docked mode, and where the box art and manual sections of the gallery fail to display images. These aren't small things, and for a project of this scope these sorts of issues shouldn't be here.
Specifically mentioning this because this was an LRG published and developed release under their "Carbon Engine".

It's no wonder Josh Fairhurst seems to have disappeared online lately, this isn't a good look.
Buying standard physicals for modern consoles will be fine since they order game cards or discs from the platform's own manufacturers, but this is really disappointing to hear their vintage stuff isn't up to snuff.

@Serpenterror
The fact you needed two GBA systems and a link cable for any of the add-on content was also prohibitively expensive.
It was a novel means of distributing content that could be played even without a GBA, like loading NES games into memory by swiping cards.
The technical specification on e-Reader itself and the reverse engineering that's been performed to make decoding and encoding your own scannable bar codes is really cool though, Hunter R who does deep dives into Animal Crossing has a couple of great videos on them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF0rM7cevfg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1d8XWf8dDk

@Sketcz
My brother has an e-Reader and the Analogue Pocket, and as you suspect it's impossible to plug the e-Reader into the Pocket since the EXT port isn't in the correct location.
The e-Reader was only ever compatible with the original Game Boy Advance model and the Game Boy Player add-on for the GameCube; on the GBA-SP the EXT port was in a different location relative to the cartridge slot, and on the Game Boy Micro the EXT port was a smaller form factor that needed a converter.

@DonutPie
I just tried it out on my RG35XXSP and it sure does.
In the mGBA core settings, make sure you enable the "Game Boy Player" support option, it's in there somewhere.

The rumble patch is also compatible with this Color Enhancement patch.

@xzacutor
Cool, so they do have an offering! I might wanna consider it, though my current mechanical keyboard of 8 years is still doing really well. It's a HyperX with cherry blue switches; more of a typist's keyboard despite being marketed as gaming.

Edit: Unfortunately the Amazon UK link is for the US layout keyboard, and with a small enter key, that's no good.
I hope they consider international 108 numpad keyboards in the future since they've all looked nice.

@NatiaAdamo
That's the thing, I don't want a detached numpad, that'd probably just be awkward for when I reposition the keyboard.

This is nice, but I still won't consider a keyboard without a numpad on there. I get genuine use out of numpads and I'm using my keyboard for both work and gaming.

I'm very curious about the legaity of this.
Are they producing PS1 motherboard reproductions, or compatibles with components used in a PS1 system?

Such as if Sony has legal protections on the motherboard hardware design, whether they'd be copyrights, patents, or something else.

Brave Wave Productions previously made Giants, a "concept album" with much of the same talent working on this Gimmick arranged album.

I'm pretty excited to hear this full album, Tee Lopes doing an arrangement of "Strange Memories of Death", the famous unused Gimmick soundtest track, definitely got me interested.

That's a pretty strange direction, considering Rare apparently had to do multiple takes for the flower pots that say "thank you" in Banjo Kazooie's Mad Monster Mansion.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/11/random-no-the-flower-pots-in-banjo-kazooie-werent-swearing-at-you

@ChaseIQ
The article and Twitter posts state that the SS One will support discs via an optional dock add-on.
It also has native support for PS1 controllers and memory cards.