avcrypt

Stop putting the dpad above the thumb stick.

I bought one the moment I saw this post and just got it in yesterday. I love it, absolutely beautiful, great performance, really enjoy it. My one singular gripe is that the right side feels crowded. It's hard to wrap my hand around it and still have easy reach to all six buttons and two right shoulder buttons.

I'll give it this: the AMOLED is probably beautiful, but the vector display is THE point of the Vectrex, because its game lineup is completely non-compelling and bland. (As spicy of a take that is.) I'd have to see one up close in person before committing to one.

I've watched Simpson from afar for a while now, ever since he started staking an online presence. Something I've noticed about him is that he tends to jump at the shiniest new thing regardless of its history, context, or relative impact. I remember back to some goofy Commodore branded Linux distribution that was bloated with junk that he gushed over as if Commodore themselves invented it. He's extremely optimistic to the point of folly and I think that's what guides his beliefs towards GenAI.

The sound is definitely an attempt, but the use of dithering to simulate the 4-level grayscale is really impressive.

I'm a fan of the playdate and it has some of the most beautiful and interesting games I've played. I'll gladly recommend others "waste" and/or "burn" their money on one. It's one of the neatest and well built handhelds I've had the pleasure of playing.

In all honesty, it feels like this is flying super close to the sun with the Yoshi's Island inspiration. Like it's to the point where, if you hid the characters, I'd think this was a cut level from it.

I have no history with the Spectrum so I can't share much excitement or relish the moment, however, those product shots are really nice. Won't lie, did consider looking it up based on that alone.

At first I was taken aback by the price tag, but given how much time, money, and effort I've put just into my Saturn, pretty fair in comparison.

Honestly, it's not a bad shake either. I recall the GG being a pretty comfortable system to hold for long periods.

@MegaManFan the ROM was encrypted, but the emulator they used decrypted it and stored the entire ROM contiguously in memory. It was extremely trivial to then extract the ROM.

This was akin to locking a door but keeping the key tied to the doorknob. There is, technically, a lock on that door, even if it's virtually not there.

@HammyHavoc "if it exists, the DRM will inevitably be cracked on it (online functionality notwithstanding). Doesn't matter what the publisher could have done, it was inevitably going to happen."

Poetic waxing ...but it didn't work? I'm not sure you understand what copy protection exists to do. This was a half-baked attempt at copy protection that failed with the lowest effort attempts. Yes, copy protection will be broken, you're not sharing groundbreaking info here, but they might have well not included any at all given how trivially they implemented it.

Let me explain because I genuinely don't think you understand: copy protection exists to prevent piracy for the duration in which the largest portion of sales will occur.

This was a massive failure on LRGs fault and should serve as another warning to how untrustworthy they are.

I read through the comments but didn't see a lot of blame going toward LRG. I didn't buy the game, probably won't, and I'm not interested in the ROM, but I have been following technical discussions that seem to indicate that LRG did a really awful job at implementing copy protection on the ROM they shipped on steam. Apparently either the encryption itself was flawed due to improperly applying it, or that it was too easy to extract the ROM contents from the emulator's memory just after starting the game.

I don't have hard evidence yet as the story is still developing, but I wouldn't be remotely surprised at LRG dropping the ball once again.

> No explanation as to where the £25k of backer's money disappeared to

Presumably the bar. That's not exactly a fat stack of cash. Though, all said, in what I took from how it was run, it's not entirely surprising. Running any service oriented business is hard and margins tend to be razor thin, and combined with the things I'm hearing about the restricted hours and odd choices around things like food, it sounds like he ran this thing on nightmare difficulty.

Don't read this as tacit approval of this behavior, it's not and don't do this, but how common is this in the new-retro release scene? I've seen other games so this but not grab focus like this one.

I'm honestly interested in how often this happens nowadays to help shape how egregious this is.

@boatie "[...]The reason why nobody wants to buy Commodore for a lot of money is because the legal complexities will cost so much money to sort out[...]"

I totally agree with this and wanted to add the even bigger investment of time. No amount of money can speed up complex trademark disputes without hefty agreements out of court. And once you start making agreements, everybody comes running out of the woods claiming they also have some amount of trademark rights and can also tie you up in court. In the US, you can easily get stuck in the appeals process for years after the initial multi-year court battle. In that time, you're stuck in the water with a trademark you bought but can't use.

Even if you don't completely lose, you may be saddled with a trademark with a complex matrix of acceptable uses to not infringe on the plaintiff's trademark rights. "You can make socks, but only ankle high and never in red." sorta stuff.

I don't envy Simpson here, and honestly, I hope he had smart people trying to warn him of this ahead of time.

I never had one, but the impact of it is very apparent today all over the place. Big love to the goofy little beige wedge.

Some of the biggest naysayers tend to have just enough knowledge to be reductionists and complain but not enough to appreciate the beauty of solutions like this.

@smoreon it's emulation. What Linden is describing is static recomp on die which is an increasingly common way to approach emulation on resource constrained systems.

Using a 2350 here is pretty clever and definitely something I'd expect from Linden. (I'm a bit of a Randy Linden fanboy) Super inexpensive with tons of I/O and the PIO state machines to get pretty close to something like FPGA or CPLD performance and flexibility.

Ooooohohoho interest greatly registered

Leading in: I'm an developer of what are now called AI systems, however non-generative. My work mainly revolves around NLP, classification, and cluster analysis.

I really like Gen AI when used responsibly. It's nice to use at work to bounce ideas off of and get honestly pretty great reflection without bothering my coworkers. That said, the amount of articles written with Gen AI that are nails-on-a-chalkboard incorrect or not even remotely proofread is astoundingly large.

A lot of sites that put out a few nicely written, well researched articles now pump out tons of garbage constantly. There are so, so many broken links and dumb explanations.

I was recently banned from commenting on one of them for correcting the author for saying planar modes in early computers had something to do with this long, drawn out explanation of light physics. That explanation was eloquently written, with a lot of confidence underneath it, which is how I knew it was AI slop injected into an article about MS-DOS of all things.

There's a reason I sub to Hookshot. My Google Now feed is full of garbage-food-AI article slop attempting to cash in on my niche interests. But these sites feel premium. The articles on Hookshot sites have a human touch.

I know a thing or two about AI, from a technical standpoint, and the claim "but ChatGPT isn't a chess program" might sound reasonable. However, ChatGPT is almost assuredly built on a Mixture of Experts technique, and so it should be pretty good at it.

(Don't take this comment too seriously. I got a good chuckle out of it.)

The big lesson here is to always separate your work and personal accounts. Always. Never cross them.

That said, there's no reason Google should commingle Drive issues with YouTube without a more extensive reasons to do so. This is the price we pay for companies getting too big: we all wear their golden handcuffs.

To add context why supply like these are impacted beyond just the immediate cost: There's a ton of uncertainty around what tariffs will look like tomorrow or a month from now because they keep changing. Manufacturing takes time, like months, and by the time the ship finally reaches the shore, things could be worse or more complicated. It makes it impossible to drive business plans. It's impossible to guarantee a price to domestic assemblers and distributors.

I deal with this every day for my clients nowadays. The uncertainty is just as bad as the insane costs at entry.

This is a really welcome kit after the Saturn Switcher became unobtanium. I've been looking for a Switcher for my second Saturn and this couldn't have been more perfectly timed.

And to address above comments:

• I don't want a Satiator. I have a Fenrir. I'm very happy with my Fenrir.
• The Saturn Mister core is really neat and cool but still really buggy and choppy. I also can't play my physical games with it.

Absolutely gorgeous graphics for the SMS

@Siambretta I strongly believe the only market appetite most of the West has for these handhelds is in the more boutique options such as Analogue. I don't know if there's enough of a mass of potential customers to justify domestic US protection when margins would be so thin.

Totally agree.

I guess this will widen the void for affordable and light handheld emulators for a while in the US. I can't imagine any domestic operation to match it will leap at the opportunity given how razor thin the margins are.

@StanSpam tariffs are assessed at port of entry, and since they're drop shipped via DHL to the customer, the customer is on the hook.

From personal experience, the DHL fee for handling it is gnarly, something like $20 plus half the tariff fees just to pick up the item.

I remember a couple months ago being told in comments on this site that I was paranoid for some doom-y comments I had around the tariffs. This isn't me coming to say I was right, but rather that I was actively in discussions with large suppliers pausing or cancelling contracts left and right for clients of mine at that time. A lot of people I work with who manage logistics for unstable markets were sounding the alarm as far back as early February. For many large suppliers' logistical arms, the US is now considered an unstable/unreliable market akin to countries where bribery or a positive relationship with the dictators/ruling families is a required cost of doing business to get your shipments accepted at ports of entry.

It's not quite that bad yet, but preparations are being made across the board.

My heart goes out to those passion projects that give people a lot of joy. They're going to be hurting a lot, and they'll need a lot of support from us.

IIRC this game was free on it's original release. I remember it being ball-bustingly difficult, and I don't recall ever beating it. I'll check out the remaster and see if it's maybe a little more approachable.

Neat!

> Beach says it's a "shame" that people can't "separate their opinions about Palmer from what we're trying to do here at ModRetro."

It benefits Palmer, so no, I can't separate it.

What's the biggest shame to me is how the whole conversation is so unbelievably toxic to the point where I've even gotten borderline death threats for mentioning I didn't like Lucky Palmer. I have a small following out there, and for whatever reason, when I'm asked about it directly or indirectly, I make the most dry statement about why I won't buy one, and then get a handful of people "colorfully" wishing me a less-than-great-day.

Should you care where your luxuries come from? I think you should. If Lucky doesn't bother you then that's fine. You do you. I'll do me. It gets harder when it's something you need, but nobody needs this, so if you do have a moment, look up who's involved with the treats in your life.

@jesse_dylan that's at odds with Microsoft's own statement which positions it as a way to prototype game ideas and "preserve classic games" by making it easier to bring it to more platforms.

That's only a slightly paraphrased statement from the Muse AI event back in February. They're very adamant it's supposed to aid in game creation.

@HoyeBoye not that I'm aware of. Hackaday sometimes plays a little fast and loose with technical reporting, so I'd chalk it up to a bit of a hallucination.

Great! I'd heard murmurs of this but not more than a rumor.

Looking forward to what other high profile people in the scene like XL2 think as well.

Edit:
Also this bit: "A custom CRAM manager allows for easier management of 16, 64, 128 and 256 color palettes." is pretty awesome. CRAM palettes are just tedious to work with.

If Randy Linden was involved, I'd be super interested in this. The guy is awesome in both being a pretty cool person, but mainly how incredibly clever he is.

(For those not in the know: Linden created Bleem, but also wrote the Amiga port of Dragon's Lair, and the SNES port of DOOM.)

...but he's not. So if I take away the Bleem name, this is just any other sad retro revival Kickstarter. Bleem, to me, can't exist without Randy.

I remember being in a hardware mod discord when someone asked a question, got a community answer a day ish later, and was followed by some other person going on a long tirade on how the creator didn't care and that the clones were going to finally put them out of business.

Just entirely antisocial, uncalled for behavior. I don't know what provokes people to do this.

If they'd change the screen to OLED, I think this would be a solid, solid choice. For the price point it'll carry, I think that's a letdown for most consumers.

And to address the top comment: I'll take an android handheld over an FPGA one any day.

@HammerKirby oh no, I'm aware. The story takes place in an island region that relies on boats, has a criminal organization named "Team Aqua", on a game box and advertising that emphasizes the water nature. It'd be like complaining a pepperoni-lovers pizza had too much pepperoni.

To me, it's a super silly criticism. I can't really read the review without laughing a bit at it.

> The standalone IGN review from 2009 scored it 3/10 stating it's: "Little more than pointless. I don't get it, and neither did most Americans in the '80s. Japan likes it, though."

Straight up no due diligence on the IGN author's part; a massive journalistic red flag. However, it is the publication dunked on for ranking a Pokemon game lower for "having too much water," so I guess that isn't surprising.

This story touches on a common myth/misnomer of Japanese game players of being much more hardcore than the West and likewise preferring more difficult games. Some were, absolutely. That's where the FDS really shined as it allowed players to inexpensively get access to harder games, and SMB2 was that FDS game.

In reality, both sides of the dateline preferred roughly the same difficulty overall, with the West tending to get the harder games to offset the impact of rental stores. (Looking at you Lion King and Astal!) The only real difference was the genre appetites. It's no mystery that Japan held up the RPG market singlehandedly throughout the late 80s and very-early 90s.

As such, it shouldn't be a big surprise that Crash may have been too difficult for the Japanese market. There were definitely the hardcore players who sought out the harder Western version, but the larger market needed some gutter-bumpers too at times.

I see Taki listening to the swan song that is distributor upsells. Here's the big problem: you need a Quartus Prime Pro license to generate Agilex bitstreams. A fixed pro license is around $4,000. That will SIGNIFICANTLY limit who is able and willing to generate cores for the platform.

@Cyber_Akuma I 100% agree with your comment and has been my general opinion of it. By the time it released, it would have either been a letdown via the strained performance characteristics, or completely lost any benefit of cost reduction by games requiring pack-in carts that bundled the disc system software and the requisite enhancement chips.

@greenwichlee I was avoiding talking about that as well as I was getting really ramble-y. You can see the "scar" of the crash in a UK barcode (and in the US too). There is a clear line where US arcade machines stopped and Japanese cabinets ruled. It is a ripple in a market that is close enough to feel it.

@Crecca I've thought about this and I think it's because Europe never had an appetite for consoles. Generally you'd need to punch out of your own market, and I don't think any of the usual culprits (CDTV, CD32, C64GS, GX4000) were able to do that.

The CD-i arguably might fit that criteria, but I don't think Phillips ever thought of it as a game console.

I'm an American, so hold that against me as you see fit, but the reason I feel that we never talk about the Japanese and European markets is fairly simple, if a bit silly:

1. The US swings markets around the world. It's a big chunky beast that demands attention. It's the elephant in every room everywhere. People tend to see European markets as echoing whatever the American market is doing, generally as a consequence of whatever the American market has done.
2. Talking about how Europe and Japan were fine isn't great story telling. A behemoth market where the video arcade was pioneered, smote by greed, burnt to ashes, and reborn into something stronger thanks to an unlikely hero that impacts everybody to this day is fun to read about.

The European market matters, and I don't want to dismiss it. Rare is involved in some of my most fond childhood memories. However, saying "computer video games did well in Europe and spawned a generation of elite bedroom coders" is interesting to me, but without really expounding on that with some drama and character growth sounds a bit like describing FCOJ commodities growth in the late 80s; probably interesting, but not captivating. Same goes for Japan's market.

I care, I think others should care, it's just not enough of struggle or growth to captivate more than nerds like me who deeply care or academics.

@Muppets4 when the article was originally published a year and a half ago, the name wasn't known.

I want one so bad, plus a Chromatic, but it's got so much baggage attached. Palmer Lucky, in my eyes is not someone I would enjoy being around and honestly someone I wouldn't feel safe being around. Additionally he chose his audience very clearly and openly when he got Logan Paul to attach his name to the Chromatic.

Those things make it really hard to want to own one. I don't like Analogue for their business practices, but their products have fallen into my lap, and I'll accept them, and I have legitimately enjoyed them. Palmer's products, as honestly great as they are, just have a "funk" about them that I can't get past.

@Bod2019 it's the exact same hardware as the SNES but it includes some additional audio hardware for CD playback and an extra 256KB of memory to help with buffering data from the CD unit.

@Lorfarius I agree and it's the biggest fuel for my skepticism around them having a model ready to ship. I'd bet they're having a rough time getting the nuanced pieces like custom RSP microcode working right now.

I won't lie, I was hoping a bit for some of that garish rainbow that the PS1 had