4 ms·

It’s hilarious reading the negative comments here because it’s completely out of sync with the way Analogue’s audience perceives them. They’re seen as a high q

It’s hilarious reading the negative comments here because it’s completely out of sync with the way Analogue’s audience perceives them. They’re seen as a high quality, craftsmanship driven shop. Their current consoles offer extremely high fidelity emulation. There’s an attention to detail that’s to the point where original hardware quirks, limitations of accessories are maintained. You can go pretty deep with the way the color palette, the pixel shapes, and the scanlines are rendered. Their current OS (for thw NT and such) feels like a file manager that could run on an NES. It’s ok. To see them invest into making it more capable, and more versatile is a great thing. You can’t get this level of service with a SNES Mini or a NES Mini. This is exciting!

jogu 5y ago
Yes, it's quite interesting seeing all the negative feedback. To be honest, I don't quite understand it. I've purchased both the Super Nt and Mega Sg and have been extremely pleased with them. They're extremely high quality and strike a great balance between providing an authentic experience for the console while being reasonable to use with a modern TV. And to be blunt, aren't even an unreasonable price when compared to the alternatives for making the original hardware usable with similar fidelity and features.
- user-the-name 5y ago
  > To be honest, I don't quite understand it. It's gamers. That is all there is to it. The entire gaming community is rotten to the core. Don't ever put yourself in a position where you have gamers as customers.
spicybright 5y ago
Hardware quirk preservation have always been a MAJOR focus of emulators since they existed. Almost every console emulator has been iterated on by millions of people to produce emulation as accurately as possible. The FPGA part is a really weird focus to me. From what I understand their emulation systems don't run as many games glitch free, as they don't have the same man power to recreate all of that in FPGA. You can't copy out raw game consoles schematics into into it, you need to have an FPGA programmer re-make it and make sure every rom runs against it. If anything, this shoots their "scholarly" claim in the foot from the start. Rendering mode shaders usually require a bit of setup, but it's also been around for years. I think around 2005 is the first I heard of a good CRT shader that imitated pixel shapes, color signal blur, monitor curvature, etc. I guess my main argument is, I could make a RetroPi in a few hours with every emulator, and every rom, and meet all of the marketing criteria with better settings. Including better compatibility. Assuming they're trying to advertise to my market, why would I pay 50x the cost for an inferior product? Why wouldn't they start from where emulation enthusiasts currently are instead of way behind?
- nsxwolf 5y ago
  Your solution wouldn’t play real cartridges and cards for SG-1000, Mark III, Master System, Genesis and Game Gear without a lot of work, and it wouldn’t look good on my shelf either.
  - spicybright 5y ago
    Let's see their claim again. > Designed to be the definitive, scholarly operating system for playing and experiencing the entire medium. I don't think they're being truthful here if this is really the case. A definitive system wouldn't be a black box with little way to fix or upgrade it once the company goes away. It should be a practical device with lots of cheap, interchangeable ports (that are dumb plugs or simple boards) you rip roms with (for preservation) and attach controllers to. Then you can load your roms onto a more stylish/temporary device for the shelf. I also think it's silly saying "the entire medium" before that's actually true. I really doubt they'll get around to writing FPGA designs for every system. Is there even external monitor and controller port support? Am I only limited to the entire medium of handheld/snes controller type games? Unless I'm mis-understanding, this just seems like another emulation handheld in an already flooded market, marketing itself the idea it's for "history". Even though it does the same thing as any other handheld. EDIT: Also to add, while it's great to have cart support, you can easily just get a rom ripper and do that. Consoles like the Retron exists with multiple cartridge ports, and all it does is rip the rom like any device, then emulates it.
    - nsxwolf 5y ago
      Yeah, I don't understand this marketing at all. "Scholarly"-what? It's a... nicer front end for their products? The appeal of the product for me that it's an extremely well made, nice looking Genesis with HDMI and retains peripheral compatibility. It is in my mind an unofficial "Model 4 Genesis". I don't mind that it isn't a MiSTer and that I can't modify it further - to me I suppose it's like a fancy new record player. I like to physically take carts down off my shelf, look at the labels, plug them in and play them. There's a lot of stuff out there that's just absolute junk in comparison, like the Retron you mentioned. Cheap plastic, tight cartridge ports that feel like they're causing damage, dodgy emulation. I may build something like a MiSTer eventually but it will serve a different purpose.

jogu 5y ago

Yes, it's quite interesting seeing all the negative feedback. To be honest, I don't quite understand it. I've purchased both the Super Nt and Mega Sg and have been extremely pleased with them. They're extremely high quality and strike a great balance between providing an authentic experience for the console while being reasonable to use with a modern TV. And to be blunt, aren't even an unreasonable price when compared to the alternatives for making the original hardware usable with similar fidelity and features.

user-the-name 5y ago
> To be honest, I don't quite understand it. It's gamers. That is all there is to it. The entire gaming community is rotten to the core. Don't ever put yourself in a position where you have gamers as customers.

spicybright 5y ago

Hardware quirk preservation have always been a MAJOR focus of emulators since they existed. Almost every console emulator has been iterated on by millions of people to produce emulation as accurately as possible. The FPGA part is a really weird focus to me. From what I understand their emulation systems don't run as many games glitch free, as they don't have the same man power to recreate all of that in FPGA. You can't copy out raw game consoles schematics into into it, you need to have an FPGA programmer re-make it and make sure every rom runs against it. If anything, this shoots their "scholarly" claim in the foot from the start. Rendering mode shaders usually require a bit of setup, but it's also been around for years. I think around 2005 is the first I heard of a good CRT shader that imitated pixel shapes, color signal blur, monitor curvature, etc. I guess my main argument is, I could make a RetroPi in a few hours with every emulator, and every rom, and meet all of the marketing criteria with better settings. Including better compatibility. Assuming they're trying to advertise to my market, why would I pay 50x the cost for an inferior product? Why wouldn't they start from where emulation enthusiasts currently are instead of way behind?

nsxwolf 5y ago
Your solution wouldn’t play real cartridges and cards for SG-1000, Mark III, Master System, Genesis and Game Gear without a lot of work, and it wouldn’t look good on my shelf either.
- spicybright 5y ago
  Let's see their claim again. > Designed to be the definitive, scholarly operating system for playing and experiencing the entire medium. I don't think they're being truthful here if this is really the case. A definitive system wouldn't be a black box with little way to fix or upgrade it once the company goes away. It should be a practical device with lots of cheap, interchangeable ports (that are dumb plugs or simple boards) you rip roms with (for preservation) and attach controllers to. Then you can load your roms onto a more stylish/temporary device for the shelf. I also think it's silly saying "the entire medium" before that's actually true. I really doubt they'll get around to writing FPGA designs for every system. Is there even external monitor and controller port support? Am I only limited to the entire medium of handheld/snes controller type games? Unless I'm mis-understanding, this just seems like another emulation handheld in an already flooded market, marketing itself the idea it's for "history". Even though it does the same thing as any other handheld. EDIT: Also to add, while it's great to have cart support, you can easily just get a rom ripper and do that. Consoles like the Retron exists with multiple cartridge ports, and all it does is rip the rom like any device, then emulates it.
  - nsxwolf 5y ago
    Yeah, I don't understand this marketing at all. "Scholarly"-what? It's a... nicer front end for their products? The appeal of the product for me that it's an extremely well made, nice looking Genesis with HDMI and retains peripheral compatibility. It is in my mind an unofficial "Model 4 Genesis". I don't mind that it isn't a MiSTer and that I can't modify it further - to me I suppose it's like a fancy new record player. I like to physically take carts down off my shelf, look at the labels, plug them in and play them. There's a lot of stuff out there that's just absolute junk in comparison, like the Retron you mentioned. Cheap plastic, tight cartridge ports that feel like they're causing damage, dodgy emulation. I may build something like a MiSTer eventually but it will serve a different purpose.