That's a shame. I read up on the technical aspects of the NEO GEO line and was amazed by it. The fact that all the backgrounds are made of many sprites was what sold me on the worth of the system. nothing like having a background that could be made of items that are constantly moving to add to the game play experience.
So the guy on this forum claiming he had payed the 64Drive (on the time) for 3 months and e-mailed Marshall to get his money or get his product isn't a sign of anything? As far as I know that wasn't an isolated case. As far as I know there was another guy that the 64Drive died and wasn't able to get a replacement. The first I remember from this forum and the second from IRC. The guy refuses to reply paying customers e-mails and this is a bad sign to me. Besides that how many firwmare or OS update the 64Drive had? One? Besides all that, he's well known to be rude to everyone. I think customer support is a big part of a product and when you have StoneAgeGamer plus Retrogate on the other side to compare I stand my point: not worth your trust or your money.
I can't say anything about other people's experiences, but he orders them in batches (still does as far as I know), which is clearly stated on the website, so it takes time to have them made, shipped, assembled, etc. I've never had a problem with him, talked to him a few times and was helpful, even added a feature I suggested. There have been 9 updates to the menu and 3 to the firmware. He's currently working on redoing the firmware from the ground up, addressing some annoying aspect(s) (hasn't revealed everything yet) of N64 flash carts.
Kinda makes me glad that I bought ED64 instead of 64 Drive if this is true even though I sacrificed some features I'd want that the 64 Drive has. While I did have a hardware failure on it that wasn't my fault and probably could have had it repaired by Krikzz I didn't. (RAM chip died. Bad_Ad84 repaired it for me) I have had some OS derps and such and they were addressed PDQ by Krikzz and others. Haven't had a single issue with my EDMD that was related to problems with the device. Those issues seemed to be game glitch related. (Playing hacks, pirates copies, and such.) The Everdrive line is top notch in my opinion because of the support even if there are better devices out. That's one reason why so many would like to see a NEO GEO Everdrive made.
I haven't deal with the guy myself and all I'm saying were things I read on forums and saw on IRC. I'm also glad to see there were more updates than I had in mind still I'm not a fan of taking 3~6 months ETA orders, maybe it's just me but take NGev Team as an different example of that. People payed for Gunlord AES almost a year ago and it still wasn't shipped. I'm really not a big fan of putting my money on things the seller can't assure the day of arrival. Maybe all that I've read were people that don't like the way Marshall conducts it's business and I'm missing most of the information still many other retailers take pre-orders ONLY when they have an exact date for shipping and I think most buyers prefer the second way. EDIT: Just to express my point This were posted on his thread and didn't get a single reply of any kind. This is the kind of thing that makes me uncomfortable.
He also never posted if he got it fixed (or any second post for that matter), so marshallh might have contacted him personally. I can understand not wanting to put money down on something and not having an exact date at the time of order, but my experiences with him have all went smoothly and highly recommend the 64drive.
And that's how rumors start... I ordered a 64Drive, it was faulty (didn't run games bigger than 16 MB), I emailed Marshallh, sent him back my 64Drive, and a few days later I received a new one, working great. So if you don't have any problem yourself, please stop spreading gossips...
You know this is a two way street, right? The same principle applies to both ends. Positive and negative. As far as I can tell your story can also be taken as a "positive rumor", when this happens, it's often called propaganda and since I don't know you I'm not sure what motivated you to post that. Besides, I don't have the time to collect the numerous posts on the 64Drive thread of people asking "where is it" or "why he doesn't reply me". It's only gossip if I wasn't able to back my point on anybody's comment, which I did.
So, apart from the rumors and gossip, from a lack of talk about it from marshallh, it's safe to assume that the project is at least on hold until he says otherwise?
Honestly, as nice as it would be I view it as too niche. I just only got into the NEO GEO scene after exhausting most of the other consoles I was interested in. I am interested from a technical perspective as to why it is so difficult considering boards share many of the same layouts which is partly what led to so many boots...even among that though there's still significant variance to cover. So I can understand completely why people aren't as keen to jump onto that project; It's an unique beast. I just went the MVS route, I figure now's the time to get into it while the getting's still good. With consolized MVS' like the Omega and shockboxes with nice looking inserts it's only a matter of time until you begin to see another inflated market IMO. This isn't to say I wouldn't love to see a NEO GEO Everdrive, but I must say it isn't high on my list. I'd much more see disc based systems preserved to solid state formats ala PSIO/3do IDE adapter.
After looking at getting a Omega Consolized MVS system i would lover there to be a NeoGeo EverDrive, as the few multi carts that are out for the Neo Geo are not that great. Im guessing that it would be the most expensive product krikzz has ever under taken however, but could also be the most important to owners of Neo Geo's just because the game are soo expensive and production levels are no were near as high as other console games. Has Krikzz defiantly said no to this happening? [h=1][/h]
Actually the existing NeoGeo Multi Carts are pretty good. It's just disappointing that you can't get every title from them. I really doubt we'll see a NeoGeo EverDrive. If we did, it'd be the most expensive one yet most likely.
Maybe someone will take one of those 161 in 1 carts and strip the chips off, program some new ones with non hacked versions of as many games they can and make a new menu. I think that would be more feasible than someone making a flash cart.
It's really not that feasible, all evidence points to the chips being one-time programmable, plus only a couple of Japanese industrial programmers have the algorithm. So even though these chips can be pretty easily sourced from China inexpensively, in all likelihood a custom programming solution would have to be developed... Not fun. Also the games MUST be hacked to run on the multicart hardware; it's takes too much time, too many resources and is pointless to emulate protection mechanisms. So yeah the existing hacks aren't "clean", but are they worth the $400 of flash to get them clean? Since that's significantly more than the multicarts cost it doesn't make sense to even reuse the existing multicart hardware. I'd like to make a new multicart but programming the flash is extremely daunting as is hacking the games (25+ games need alterations).
