5 ms·

I could see it selling for the same reason things like the snes classic do. Nostalgia goggles combined with a dislike of, I guess, unofficial emulation, for wha

I could see it selling for the same reason things like the snes classic do. Nostalgia goggles combined with a dislike of, I guess, unofficial emulation, for whatever reasons that don't make much sense to me. Either that or for the slightly more interesting things people do with these things like hacking and modding them. For me though, retroarch seems to have 99% of everything I'd ever want to emulate covered so...meh.

derefr 7y ago
> a dislike of, I guess, unofficial emulation, for whatever reasons that don't make much sense to me. For a reason that might make sense, but which I rarely see repeated: standardized “first-party” products allow a level playing field for speedruns and the like. Whereas nobody’s gonna trust a run you did on your modded toaster. A more likely reason, though, is that quite frequently now collectors are also content-creators (gamer YouTubers, etc.) and these folks need officially sanctioned games and consoles for the same reason professional artists need official copies of Photoshop: you’re way more likely to get sued as a business profiting off of piracy than as an individual just playing.
- benj111 7y ago
  What about people not wanting to pirate? However small, I'm sure the demographic is bigger than the content creator demographic. Then there's Christmas. My partner happily bought me a Nes Mini for Christmas, I don't think she would have been so happy to get me a raspi, controllers, case, possibly install emulators, roms, etc. Its like building your own PC, most people on HN could probably do that no problems, the majority of the population would prefer to get a Dell.
shantly 7y ago
The controllers, mostly, for me. Which Just Work and don't decide to become unmapped for no damn reason (admittedly less common on Retroarch/Lakka systems than others, though). I mean those things are legit. About as close to the originals as you could hope, and I've side-by-sided them. Only real loss on the NES are the four-score games (Super Spike V'Ball and World Cup Soccer are both actually good and are actually good with four players!) and light gun games, of which I love two but would only really defend one as even sort-of worth a damn (Duck Hunt). Still don't get why that wasn't on the Wii. SNES classic, on the other hand, is damn near perfect. After you hakchi all your other games on, in both cases, obviously. NES controllers especially are great for kids, for whom even SNES controllers are confusing with their four face buttons plus two shoulders—and I remember, as an NES kid who didn't get another console until I bought myself a PS2 in college, finding anything with more buttons than a 3-button Sega Genesis controller kinda tricky at first, though I eventually managed well enough to hold my own on some N64 games at friends' houses. Only "complicated" controller I've found to be almost as usable for my young kids is the Gamecube controller, so they got that right after all I guess. Sure you can get knock-offs, but Nintendo doesn't screw around with controller quality, even on cheapish emulator systems. [EDIT] also I've owned two Wii-connector-to-USB adapters, both from Mayflash, and both were janky and soon stopped working at all, so just buying the controllers (or just using the Wii Classic Pro controller, which is what I actually attempted those times) hasn't given me acceptable reliability.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
The Atari Flashback consoles already exist for this reason, the last one even had HDMI and upscaling built in as well as the ability to run ROMs from an SD card. You don't need a Ryzen processor to run old Atari games. I could see the appeal of them maybe designing the VCS as a SteamOS box in a cool woodgrain retro-styled case, even I'd be tempted. Stick an officially-endorsed emulator and ROMs on there and you're well away. But this talk of their own proprietary gaming platform? What developer in their right mind would want to develop games for such a small market?
- wjoe 7y ago
  It essentially is just a Steam box. It's all Linux based, and they're supposedly not building any sort of console UI or launcher for it. Install Steam, launch big picture mode, and it's basically the same as any other SteamOS box. If they'd actually positioned it as a low cost SteamOS box which can run a decent amount of PC games for cheaper than most PCs, they might have at least have a niche market for it. If they some integration with SteamOS to launch an Atari emulator and they'd have some extra selling point. But it's basically just a small low-powered Linux PC that might get a few exclusive deals.

derefr 7y ago

> a dislike of, I guess, unofficial emulation, for whatever reasons that don't make much sense to me. For a reason that might make sense, but which I rarely see repeated: standardized “first-party” products allow a level playing field for speedruns and the like. Whereas nobody’s gonna trust a run you did on your modded toaster. A more likely reason, though, is that quite frequently now collectors are also content-creators (gamer YouTubers, etc.) and these folks need officially sanctioned games and consoles for the same reason professional artists need official copies of Photoshop: you’re way more likely to get sued as a business profiting off of piracy than as an individual just playing.

benj111 7y ago
What about people not wanting to pirate? However small, I'm sure the demographic is bigger than the content creator demographic. Then there's Christmas. My partner happily bought me a Nes Mini for Christmas, I don't think she would have been so happy to get me a raspi, controllers, case, possibly install emulators, roms, etc. Its like building your own PC, most people on HN could probably do that no problems, the majority of the population would prefer to get a Dell.

shantly 7y ago

The controllers, mostly, for me. Which Just Work and don't decide to become unmapped for no damn reason (admittedly less common on Retroarch/Lakka systems than others, though). I mean those things are legit. About as close to the originals as you could hope, and I've side-by-sided them. Only real loss on the NES are the four-score games (Super Spike V'Ball and World Cup Soccer are both actually good and are actually good with four players!) and light gun games, of which I love two but would only really defend one as even sort-of worth a damn (Duck Hunt). Still don't get why that wasn't on the Wii. SNES classic, on the other hand, is damn near perfect. After you hakchi all your other games on, in both cases, obviously. NES controllers especially are great for kids, for whom even SNES controllers are confusing with their four face buttons plus two shoulders—and I remember, as an NES kid who didn't get another console until I bought myself a PS2 in college, finding anything with more buttons than a 3-button Sega Genesis controller kinda tricky at first, though I eventually managed well enough to hold my own on some N64 games at friends' houses. Only "complicated" controller I've found to be almost as usable for my young kids is the Gamecube controller, so they got that right after all I guess. Sure you can get knock-offs, but Nintendo doesn't screw around with controller quality, even on cheapish emulator systems. [EDIT] also I've owned two Wii-connector-to-USB adapters, both from Mayflash, and both were janky and soon stopped working at all, so just buying the controllers (or just using the Wii Classic Pro controller, which is what I actually attempted those times) hasn't given me acceptable reliability.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago

The Atari Flashback consoles already exist for this reason, the last one even had HDMI and upscaling built in as well as the ability to run ROMs from an SD card. You don't need a Ryzen processor to run old Atari games. I could see the appeal of them maybe designing the VCS as a SteamOS box in a cool woodgrain retro-styled case, even I'd be tempted. Stick an officially-endorsed emulator and ROMs on there and you're well away. But this talk of their own proprietary gaming platform? What developer in their right mind would want to develop games for such a small market?

wjoe 7y ago
It essentially is just a Steam box. It's all Linux based, and they're supposedly not building any sort of console UI or launcher for it. Install Steam, launch big picture mode, and it's basically the same as any other SteamOS box. If they'd actually positioned it as a low cost SteamOS box which can run a decent amount of PC games for cheaper than most PCs, they might have at least have a niche market for it. If they some integration with SteamOS to launch an Atari emulator and they'd have some extra selling point. But it's basically just a small low-powered Linux PC that might get a few exclusive deals.