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I never had a genesis but I recall thinking how cool this was at the time. Kind of magic, really (granted I didn’t know much about computers in those days, but

I never had a genesis but I recall thinking how cool this was at the time. Kind of magic, really (granted I didn’t know much about computers in those days, but I knew it must’ve been hard to alter an already shipped game). Turns out it has a pretty simple and clever solution. Kind of lost that with post production shipped patches.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
Sometimes, I wonder if there would be a niche market for an indie-focused video game console with the following constraints - I’m just thinking out load: - 1080p maximum video output, meaning lower production and GPU costs - Absolutely no internet or wireless connectivity. Wired controllers. - Due to no wireless connectivity, all games produced are final from the beginning. Like the good old days. - Switch-like cartridges, but with weaker DRM that maybe permits just using standard SD cards. Thus console has no need to have an expensive built-in disc reader and only requires minimal internal flash. - Due to the niche market, the console manufacturer doesn’t charge a 30% cut, and handles all manufacturing in-house, so nobody needs to worry about financing a production run. I think with proper marketing, and a good enough system for quickly porting games (maybe it’s just Proton under the hood?), you could find an audience in collectors… and prisons where the lack of connectivity is a feature.
- jonhohle 3y ago
  I’m not sure if it fits your use case but the Evercade VS is essentially this. Evercade carts are SD flash mapped to a Game Boy pin out (the first 8 pins are the same as an SD card). It’s both easy to read carts as well as get a flash cart for running arbitrary ARM code. Blaze changed the way the Evercade EXP reads carts, however, and it seems like the console no longer reads carts, or at least doesn’t after the first time.
- wolrah 3y ago
  You've basically described a worse Steam Deck, and would likely have a hard time beating the price of a Steam Deck by enough to be worth the sacrifices. Particularly intentionally making it unable to patch games. It's not like cartridge or pre-internet era disc games were bug free, just in that era you were stuck with whatever bugs the game shipped with forever. Games popular enough to get additional production runs were often patched, but those who bought an early version didn't get whatever changes the new one brought unless they went out and purchased a new one. Games that didn't sell well enough, perhaps at least in part because of the bugs they shipped with (E.T.? Superman 64?) never got patched. The best case scenario back then was something like Morrowind on Xbox, where the game was popular enough to warrant the expansions being ported over from PC and released as a compilation with an updated version of the base game that included a workaround for the game-breaking issue experienced on the original release. We still had to buy the patch, but at least it came along with a lot of new content so it didn't feel like rebuying the same game.
  - endgame 3y ago
    > ...but those who bought an early version didn't get whatever changes the new one brought unless they went out and purchased a new one. And for certain groups (e.g., speedrunners), this was incredibly important. The example I'm most familiar with is Metroid Prime 1, where so many tricks and sequence breaks are only possible in the original NSTC release.
    - wolrah 3y ago
      One could make an argument that having to seek out rare early releases to participate in the top tier of speedrunning is not a good thing. It's not like updates changing runs destroys a game's community, see the recently popular "Only Up" for a great example. One of the models used for a substantial part of the structure you climb was apparently not appropriately licensed and the updated route after it was replaced was significantly shorter. People kept playing, the same names stayed at the top of the leaderboard, the world went on. That said, this also isn't inherently a problem either. Steam has a feature to allow delivery of different versions of a title. It's intended mostly for test releases, but some games use it to allow players to downgrade to specific versions for mod compatibility (Kerbal Space Program) or to deliver a different tweaked version for specific use cases (Truck Simulator VR port). This sort of thing could be used in the same way to support the speedrun community. Also there are games which have restored rare bugs intentionally to support speedrunning. If the bug was unlikely to affect someone playing normally and is important to the speedrunning community there's no reason it necessarily needs to be patched.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    I don’t know. Unlike a Steam Deck, the lack of a screen or battery or large internal storage helps reduce costs - and the appeal to collectors comes from having physical media with a complete game. The Steam Deck has no physical media. Xbox and PlayStation Physical Media is a joke with extremely buggy and often incomplete builds. Switch cartridges are much closer to ideal… but the Switch has well-known compromises. Performance could be far superior on a stationary non-handheld, you wouldn’t need to develop assuming Joy-Cons… It would almost be marketable as being the machine for archivists and collectors; with a focus solely on what they appreciate (complete games, physical media, no gimmicks.)
- philistine 3y ago
  There are now two disgraced video game hucksters who tried what you are proposing: the Coleco Chameleon and the Intellivision Amico. Surprisingly, the rotting corporate corpse of a company that is the modern Atari managed to release their version, the stupendously called Atari VCS. However, no one cares about it, with Atari’s 50th anniversary collection the only thing of note that company has licensed. Not made. Licensed.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  I don't know if it would be a hit. I was convinced that Ouya would have been vaguely similar in that it would allow smaller devs into the market by having it as an alternative to the big three. Instead it was plagued by all manner of technical issues and incredibly poor handling of the whole project and died in next to now time. I guess there are things like the Colour Maximite 2 that allows for decent speed Basic interpretation. https://micromite.org/shop/maximites/colour-maximite/colour-maximite-2-fully-assembled/ https://micromite.org/shop/maximites/colour-maximite/colour-...
Nition 3y ago
Similarly amazing was the few games that had additional controller ports on the cartridge. Micro Machines 2 is one example.
- EgregiousCube 3y ago
  What continues to blow my mind is the Sega Channel TV service. So many cool things were done with carts.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Brazilian bank Bradesco released internet banking software for the Mega Drive in 1995. https://www.segaretro.org/TeleBradesco_Resid%C3%AAncia https://www.segaretro.org/TeleBradesco_Resid%C3%AAncia
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Sometimes, I wonder if there would be a niche market for an indie-focused video game console with the following constraints - I’m just thinking out load: - 1080p maximum video output, meaning lower production and GPU costs - Absolutely no internet or wireless connectivity. Wired controllers. - Due to no wireless connectivity, all games produced are final from the beginning. Like the good old days. - Switch-like cartridges, but with weaker DRM that maybe permits just using standard SD cards. Thus console has no need to have an expensive built-in disc reader and only requires minimal internal flash. - Due to the niche market, the console manufacturer doesn’t charge a 30% cut, and handles all manufacturing in-house, so nobody needs to worry about financing a production run. I think with proper marketing, and a good enough system for quickly porting games (maybe it’s just Proton under the hood?), you could find an audience in collectors… and prisons where the lack of connectivity is a feature.

jonhohle 3y ago
I’m not sure if it fits your use case but the Evercade VS is essentially this. Evercade carts are SD flash mapped to a Game Boy pin out (the first 8 pins are the same as an SD card). It’s both easy to read carts as well as get a flash cart for running arbitrary ARM code. Blaze changed the way the Evercade EXP reads carts, however, and it seems like the console no longer reads carts, or at least doesn’t after the first time.
wolrah 3y ago
You've basically described a worse Steam Deck, and would likely have a hard time beating the price of a Steam Deck by enough to be worth the sacrifices. Particularly intentionally making it unable to patch games. It's not like cartridge or pre-internet era disc games were bug free, just in that era you were stuck with whatever bugs the game shipped with forever. Games popular enough to get additional production runs were often patched, but those who bought an early version didn't get whatever changes the new one brought unless they went out and purchased a new one. Games that didn't sell well enough, perhaps at least in part because of the bugs they shipped with (E.T.? Superman 64?) never got patched. The best case scenario back then was something like Morrowind on Xbox, where the game was popular enough to warrant the expansions being ported over from PC and released as a compilation with an updated version of the base game that included a workaround for the game-breaking issue experienced on the original release. We still had to buy the patch, but at least it came along with a lot of new content so it didn't feel like rebuying the same game.
- endgame 3y ago
  > ...but those who bought an early version didn't get whatever changes the new one brought unless they went out and purchased a new one. And for certain groups (e.g., speedrunners), this was incredibly important. The example I'm most familiar with is Metroid Prime 1, where so many tricks and sequence breaks are only possible in the original NSTC release.
  - wolrah 3y ago
    One could make an argument that having to seek out rare early releases to participate in the top tier of speedrunning is not a good thing. It's not like updates changing runs destroys a game's community, see the recently popular "Only Up" for a great example. One of the models used for a substantial part of the structure you climb was apparently not appropriately licensed and the updated route after it was replaced was significantly shorter. People kept playing, the same names stayed at the top of the leaderboard, the world went on. That said, this also isn't inherently a problem either. Steam has a feature to allow delivery of different versions of a title. It's intended mostly for test releases, but some games use it to allow players to downgrade to specific versions for mod compatibility (Kerbal Space Program) or to deliver a different tweaked version for specific use cases (Truck Simulator VR port). This sort of thing could be used in the same way to support the speedrun community. Also there are games which have restored rare bugs intentionally to support speedrunning. If the bug was unlikely to affect someone playing normally and is important to the speedrunning community there's no reason it necessarily needs to be patched.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  I don’t know. Unlike a Steam Deck, the lack of a screen or battery or large internal storage helps reduce costs - and the appeal to collectors comes from having physical media with a complete game. The Steam Deck has no physical media. Xbox and PlayStation Physical Media is a joke with extremely buggy and often incomplete builds. Switch cartridges are much closer to ideal… but the Switch has well-known compromises. Performance could be far superior on a stationary non-handheld, you wouldn’t need to develop assuming Joy-Cons… It would almost be marketable as being the machine for archivists and collectors; with a focus solely on what they appreciate (complete games, physical media, no gimmicks.)
philistine 3y ago
There are now two disgraced video game hucksters who tried what you are proposing: the Coleco Chameleon and the Intellivision Amico. Surprisingly, the rotting corporate corpse of a company that is the modern Atari managed to release their version, the stupendously called Atari VCS. However, no one cares about it, with Atari’s 50th anniversary collection the only thing of note that company has licensed. Not made. Licensed.
NovaDudely 3y ago
I don't know if it would be a hit. I was convinced that Ouya would have been vaguely similar in that it would allow smaller devs into the market by having it as an alternative to the big three. Instead it was plagued by all manner of technical issues and incredibly poor handling of the whole project and died in next to now time. I guess there are things like the Colour Maximite 2 that allows for decent speed Basic interpretation. https://micromite.org/shop/maximites/colour-maximite/colour-maximite-2-fully-assembled/ https://micromite.org/shop/maximites/colour-maximite/colour-...

Nition 3y ago

Similarly amazing was the few games that had additional controller ports on the cartridge. Micro Machines 2 is one example.

EgregiousCube 3y ago
What continues to blow my mind is the Sega Channel TV service. So many cool things were done with carts.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  Brazilian bank Bradesco released internet banking software for the Mega Drive in 1995. https://www.segaretro.org/TeleBradesco_Resid%C3%AAncia https://www.segaretro.org/TeleBradesco_Resid%C3%AAncia
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]