|
fishmech posted:I don't think breaking the Wii U further is particularly useful to advertising Wii U games, which are discontinued. They're just being cheap and shutting down a cost related to their failed console. Because the art posts were a big part of the Splatoon fanbase and people wanted them in the sequel.
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 03:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 08:34 |
|
|
Very seriously getting a Sega Saturn... is there anything I should know about US vs J versions? Action Replay (or other modern carts) should allow me to play just about anything, riiiiiight?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 03:28
|
|
|
Speaking of that I got my flash cartridge for the Jaguar in yesterday. Now I can play all 4 good games.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 03:32
|
|
|
Silver Alicorn posted:Very seriously getting a Sega Saturn... is there anything I should know about US vs J versions? Action Replay (or other modern carts) should allow me to play just about anything, riiiiiight? Any legit discs, yeah. Get a mod chip (super easy install) to play burns.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 03:36
|
|
|
Luigi Thirty posted:Speaking of that I got my flash cartridge for the Jaguar in yesterday. Now I can play all 4 good games. I got the Lynx cart in a week or so ago, now I need to get a Lynx.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 03:42
|
|
|
Luigi Thirty posted:Speaking of that I got my flash cartridge for the Jaguar in yesterday. Now I can play all 4 good games. Tempest 2000, Defender 2000, Alien vs Predator, _________?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 03:57
|
|
|
It's so weird how Atari/Epyx chose to saddle the Lynx with a mere 160x102 screen. I'm sure it saved a bit of money over the 160x144 color screen on the Game Gear, and the wide-screen aspect is kind of neat, but a lot of games felt far too crunched in from it. It was often bad enough on the GG/GBC 160x144 color screens, but the Lynx is basically missing 29% often the vertical resolution and overall pixel count.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 03:57
|
|
|
[quote="“Rollersnake”" post="“476906594”"] Tempest 2000, Defender 2000, Alien vs Predator, _________? [/quote] An okay Doom port!  It's actually a devkit-style RAM cartridge with 8MB of flash to store cart images. I can upload homebrew programs and execute them out of RAM or I can upload two commercial games to it at a time.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 05:36
|
|
|
Silver Alicorn posted:Very seriously getting a Sega Saturn... is there anything I should know about US vs J versions? Action Replay (or other modern carts) should allow me to play just about anything, riiiiiight? Some games have region protection that the AR can't get around. Panzer Dragoon Saga is one of them. Get a mod chip and use a program to change the region code of the iso before you burn it. Other than that the only other weird thing I have ever ran into is Dynamite Deka/Die Hard Arcade gameplay will run in Japanese on a Japanese Saturn no matter what. It is a pain in the rear end for the QTEs. I keep considering getting the replacement BIOS for it but that is more effort than I want to put into the Saturn.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 05:49
|
|
|
Panzer Dragoon Saga actually doesn't have special region protection, it merely won't run if it detects a cart that isn't the memory card.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 05:53
|
|
|
Pretty sure Panzer Dragoon Saga works fine with on my Action Replay. Maybe it's a patched ISO though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 06:44
|
|
|
So I never did play Rez back in the day, but I picked up Rez Infinite when it launched recently. I just now actually got around to playing it with my Rift. That was... something. Holy poo poo. Played through the first two stages and that was quite an experience. Wish I had beefier headphones on the Rift, I might see if I can disconnect the little stock ones and use my normal headphones instead.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 10:22
|
|
|
What are the longevity issues that are going to cause retro consoles to die over time? Obviously there are dying/leaking capacitors and batteries, but what else?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 12:21
|
|
|
I would blow Dane Cook posted:What are the longevity issues that are going to cause retro consoles to die over time? Obviously there are dying/leaking capacitors and batteries, but what else? The gamepad on the WiiU's a pretty major one.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 12:30
|
|
|
Most of the cart based consoles are going to be pretty reliable, though heat in the processors and ASICs could eventually become an issue. Some of the CD systems are already showing age issues with belts and lasers degrading over time, and there not always being easy replacements.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 12:31
|
|
|
Silver Alicorn posted:Very seriously getting a Sega Saturn... is there anything I should know about US vs J versions? Action Replay (or other modern carts) should allow me to play just about anything, riiiiiight? Also maybe sometime in the next year or two that one guy will come out with his module to load games from the mpeg port.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 13:37
|
|
|
The only reason to really take a mod chip over a Pseudo Saturn is that there's a tiny amount of games that don't work correctly with Pseudo Saturn or the Action Replay ram for one reason or another, and you might want to use a memory card eventually. Probably the main one for most people is that the SNK games don't really like the 4MB RAM expansions and can get all glitchy or run slower than they're supposed to. Karasu Tengu fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Sep 30, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 13:49
|
|
|
I would blow Dane Cook posted:What are the longevity issues that are going to cause retro consoles to die over time? Obviously there are dying/leaking capacitors and batteries, but what else? Well there are two categories of issues where longevity is concerned. The first kind is stuff that is fairly trivial to repair at least to handy-ish people. This would include things like replacing SRAM batteries in carts. The second kind is stuff which generally needs specialized/proprietary parts, if it can even be reasonably repaired at all. The stuff that's always most failure-prone (and this isn't just retro consoles but anything electronic) is anything involving moving parts, most commonly optical drives. They are built to last a certain, high-as-hell number of hours of use, but that countdown's gotta hit 0 sometime (and probably did long ago), so anything like that is definitely on borrowed time now. This is consumer-grade equipment, but even industrial-grade machinery still requires maintenance and replacement parts; that I'm aware of, no one has built a magical printer that can just go forever with the same belt in it (and if they have it's probably ludicrously expensive). Even if it wasn't used, the mechanisms can stiffen up for various environmental reasons and create problems for it working reliably; this might not be outright failures but could be things like loads taking longer than normal which can impact game behavior if it's outside of the system's expected tolerances, so things like stuttering cutscenes, or worse, softlocks because the game was built to expect all data to be loaded at a specific point and doesn't manage to do it. The most difficult console to get in working order right now is probably the Atari Jaguar CD, which was a flaky piece of poo poo even when it was new, and very few were sold since it was a lovely expensive add-on for a lovely expensive console. Probably not too far behind is the Virtual Boy, a lot of its optical mechanisms just weren't built to last 20-ish years, and it didn't sell in massive numbers either (but did better than the Jaguar CD did at least). Other known iffy systems are the Famicom Disk System, both because it has an internal belt which can fail, and because magnetic storage media does just degrade over time, and the bulk of those disks were written over 20 years ago. I remember flyboi in this thread managed to hack his FDS unit to allow it to write data as well, and "refreshed" his collection of disks that way. Somewhat related is CD's themselves, since at the end of the day the important data is only protected from data-destroying oxygen via two thin clear plastic discs and some glue holding it all together. The plastic itself is fine (assuming it's not abused, of course) but the earliest pressed CD's (of the music variety) have been failing pretty regularly for a while, even a minor enough imperfection in the glue causing it to fail and let in oxygen means that disc is hosed. Fortunately game CD's were several years after CD's initial introduction, so there's hope that improvements in how they were manufactured may hold things off, but that being said it's not uncommon for people with large collections of CD's or even the much later DVD's to have at least one or two discs which "rotted", because said disc happened to come out of a batch that barely "passed" QA and while it worked for several years, the glue failed eventually. Even the early Nintendo systems (Famicom and Super Famicom) tend to have somewhat loose and unreliable cartridge slots; it's not uncommon for a Super Famicom to need the ensure the cart is very slightly tilted forward or backwards (like by slipping a folded piece of paper behind it) and if nudged even slightly will lock up the game. I'm pretty sure at launch the SNES at least was far far more tolerant of this, not like when Game Center CX played Mario World in like 2005 and slightly brushing a piece of paper against the cartridge accidentally hard crashed the game. This isn't outright "it doesn't work at all" but does mean greater care is required than it used to. That said, what problems we do know about with these systems seems to be solvable for the most part. I guess the only other thing to be weary of is the controllers, especially since by their nature they get used with a lot of pressure put on them, and a lot of official controllers are difficult and expensive to source out good condition authentic replacements for, especially ones with known issues like the N64 and its notoriously failure-prone analog stick (and Gamecube controllers can also be difficult due to the Smash community). There's probably a bunch of stuff we don't know yet, either. These are problems that we're seeing 20-30 years into the console launches, we'll probably see new ones 50-100 years in. univbee fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Sep 30, 2017 |
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 14:02
|
|
|
univbee posted:The most difficult console to get in working order right now is probably the Atari Jaguar CD, which was a flaky piece of poo poo even when it was new, and very few were sold since it was a lovely expensive add-on for a lovely expensive console. Since you mentioned Jaguar, everyone should watch this video which has a pretty in depth background on its existence, as well as the CD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsQY0YEqzYo The system itsself was actually really cheap - $200, I was quite surprised by that. The CD add on just came out wayyyyy after the system was dead. I think the video says they only made/sold a few thousand? All videos by this guy (Wrestling with Gaming) are really good as well.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 14:10
|
|
|
The Genesis and SNES were also $200 in the US, so the price wasn't a mark in the Jaguar's favor.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 14:25
|
|
|
fishmech posted:It's so weird how Atari/Epyx chose to saddle the Lynx with a mere 160x102 screen. I'm sure it saved a bit of money over the 160x144 color screen on the Game Gear, and the wide-screen aspect is kind of neat, but a lot of games felt far too crunched in from it. Yeah I remember seeing the Lynx in the 80's and all the sprites looked weirdly huge, but without the detail you'd expect. Really wanted one though and will probably get one of the modded ones once I have the cash lying around.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 14:42
|
|
|
univbee posted:Even the early Nintendo systems (Famicom and Super Famicom) tend to have somewhat loose and unreliable cartridge slots; it's not uncommon for a Super Famicom to need the ensure the cart is very slightly tilted forward or backwards (like by slipping a folded piece of paper behind it) and if nudged even slightly will lock up the game. I'm pretty sure at launch the SNES at least was far far more tolerant of this, not like when Game Center CX played Mario World in like 2005 and slightly brushing a piece of paper against the cartridge accidentally hard crashed the game. This isn't outright "it doesn't work at all" but does mean greater care is required than it used to. That said, what problems we do know about with these systems seems to be solvable for the most part. One thing I noticed with the SNES when I was taking some apart recently is that the earlier models used a two-piece cartridge slot. There was basically a header on the board, then the slot plugged into that and got screwed down. I'd imagine that made the repair easier if the pins got bent out like the NES used to, but might have contributed to the issues with nudged cartridges. The later model that I was tinkering with (not a 1-chip, but a 2-chip with some kind of RGB) had a 1-piece cartridge slot that was soldered directly to the board. I'm guessing that one is probably more stable if the pins are still Ok.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 14:46
|
|
|
Elliotw2 posted:The Genesis and SNES were also $200 in the US, so the price wasn't a mark in the Jaguar's favor. Given the timeframe, it was. The Sega CD was expensive and so was the 32X, considering that you needed a Genesis either way. The 3DO, CDI, and coming Saturn were all outrageous, while the Playstation was still $100 more. If the Jaguar had actually been well designed, it would've been an amazing bargain.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 14:48
|
|
|
fishmech posted:It's so weird how Atari/Epyx chose to saddle the Lynx with a mere 160x102 screen. I'm sure it saved a bit of money over the 160x144 color screen on the Game Gear, and the wide-screen aspect is kind of neat, but a lot of games felt far too crunched in from it. Remember that the Lynx was designed in 1986 and sat around a while as they tried to convince someone to make it. So they were working with hardware a lot older than the Game Gear.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 14:53
|
|
|
Random Stranger posted:Remember that the Lynx was designed in 1986 and sat around a while as they tried to convince someone to make it. So they were working with hardware a lot older than the Game Gear. The original 1986 design also included provisions for cassette tape storage, a much more compact case design compared to the original Lynx model, and a bunch of other changes. It's not really a question of screens being available either, the 160x102 resolution was never a common one for LCDs. But what using it allows is about the largest resolution that can fit with using no more than 16,384 pixels. Which means taking up less than 16 KB of RAM in palletized color with the ability to show the full 4096 colors onscreen (although because of how the palettes work you can only show 16 independent colors per scan line). This was in turn important because the system needs to copy data from the cartridge into RAM to execute it, which is IIRC done in 32 kilobyte chunks normally. The system has 64 KB of RAM total, so after the room taken for a chunk of the game cart, and room taken for the screen memory, you get 16 KB of RAM for the game to use, some of which was additionally used for further game loading. For comparison sake, the Game Gear inherited 8 KB game RAM and 16 KB VRAM (used with a 4096 color base palette but no more than 32 colors on screen in normal modes, so it could safely use higher resolution) and the ability to execute most stuff directly from cartridge. The original Game Boy was 8 KB and 8 KB because it only used 2 bit monochrome, the GBC expanded to 32 KB system RAM and 16 KB VRAM with normally 56 on screen colors before needing to employ tricks.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 15:38
|
|
|
Sir Tonk posted:Given the timeframe, it was. The Sega CD was expensive and so was the 32X, considering that you needed a Genesis either way. The 3DO, CDI, and coming Saturn were all outrageous, while the Playstation was still $100 more. If the Jaguar had actually been well designed, it would've been an amazing bargain. TG16/Genesis/SNES all ~$100 for the core system (no game) Jaguar was $200 new "64 bit" console Sega CD - $230 Turbo Duo was probably ~$300 CDi - who cares 3dO - $700 Jaguar seems like a good deal in that comparison - genesis was already out for 4 years, SNES 2, 4x the bits! Check out this 1997 Jaguar fire sale though (Jaguar $59 CD addon $89 w/ 4 games): http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/1012/retro-scan-of-the-week-atari-jaguar-in-tigerdirect
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 16:21
|
|
|
Yeah I bought a Jaguar in the late 90's for basically nothing. Wish I still had it, those things are way too expensive now.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 16:25
|
|
|
I was usually pretty good about fire sale Toys R Us items - I know I got my Nomad for $50 or so, 32x for probably $30 or so. I never recall seeing a Jaguar at TrU though. The firesale in that ad is mentioned in the video I linked to a few posts ago and looks like its mail order only, so maybe that's why.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 16:50
|
|
|
Sir Tonk posted:Yeah I bought a Jaguar in the late 90's for basically nothing. Wish I still had it, those things are way too expensive now. Nah. Other than having the ur-port of Doom, it's a really lovely system.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 16:53
|
|
|
Elliotw2 posted:The Genesis and SNES were also $200 in the US, so the price wasn't a mark in the Jaguar's favor.  Edit: Somebody post the elephant behind a coatrack ad. I liked that one better.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 17:33
|
|
|
falz posted:I was usually pretty good about fire sale Toys R Us items - I know I got my Nomad for $50 or so, 32x for probably $30 or so. I never recall seeing a Jaguar at TrU though. The firesale in that ad is mentioned in the video I linked to a few posts ago and looks like its mail order only, so maybe that's why. I remember Seeing a pile of Jaguars for sale at Babbages for 29$ a pop. This was about 1997 or 1996. I had the money but thought to myself, eh that system sucks and I have a PS1. Oh hindsight.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 17:38
|
|
|
[quote="“falz”" post="“476916618”"] I was usually pretty good about fire sale Toys R Us items - I know I got my Nomad for $50 or so, 32x for probably $30 or so. I never recall seeing a Jaguar at TrU though. The firesale in that ad is mentioned in the video I linked to a few posts ago and looks like its mail order only, so maybe that’s why. [/quote] I still regret not begging for a $30 virtual boy and $3-5 games. Pretty sure that was around the time I paid $85 for Turok too. Both bad products but I think VB would give me less motion sickness.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 17:55
|
|
|
Here's some handy price comparison points for old video games, by the way, valid as of this month: $1 in August 2005 is $1.25 now. $1 in December 1998 is $1.50 now. $1 in April 1989 is $2 now. $1 in May 1980 is $3 now. $1 in September 1977 is $4 now. $1 in June 1974 is $5 now. $1 in October 1971 is $6 now. And yeah that means that the quarter-a-play in the original Pong machines was basically $1.50 a play in modern money.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 17:56
|
|
|
I paid $200 for the Jaguar, two controllers, and one game (Hover Strike). A Jaguar CD sells for >$700 on eBay. The Jag also needs a center-negative wall wart which are uncommon. I think Best Electronics still sells NIB Lynx II units for $149.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 18:18
|
|
|
The Milkman posted:I still regret not begging for a $30 virtual boy and $3-5 games. Pretty sure that was around the time I paid $85 for Turok too. Both bad products but I think VB would give me less motion sickness.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 18:26
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/KateLibc/status/914228374066708480 Still working out what the problem is here but yeah. Just a head's up. There are some photos inline.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 21:45
|
|
|
I'm not well versed in things about this, but I've been in this thread once or twice before. There used to be (or still is) this thing people would buy to play their old school consoles into and get really crisp output on their TVs. They cost like $400, pretty sure it started with an X and looked like your standard cable set top box. Now, with the SNES Classic Edition, if I'm okay with using this thing, is there any really difference in quality between the two? Is one clearly or evidently better than the other?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 22:12
|
|
|
LODGE NORTH posted:I'm not well versed in things about this, but I've been in this thread once or twice before. You're thinking of the XRGB devices, most notably the XRGB Mini (also known as the Framemeister). Its main purpose is to take unstable old console analog signals (accepting composite, S-Video, component and SCART input) and output it quickly (to minimize lag) to a stable, digital HDMI signal (older XRGB units output to VGA). The SNES Classic is essentially an emulator box and natively outputs to HDMI, so it makes no use of an upscaler.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 22:23
|
|
|
The Nintendo Classic consoles are probably fine enough for most people especially when you factor in the price of these things but it isn't at all perfect. There were some audio issues with the NES Classic. There were also some issues with the way it handled the pixels or something that wasn't quite right that made things look weird when scrolling. I dunno I just watched a video about it. I expect for 99% of buyers it'll be just like they remember.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 22:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 18, 2024 08:34 |
|
|
If anyone is looking for a really clean back-lit Game Boy Pocket I've got one that I modded myself up for sale in SA Mart  https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3836035
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2017 22:55
|
|
