My fault, just read it from their official site and had said they can if they wanted too no problem BUT the Nintendo's patent on the console is what's keeping them from adding it.
Well the appeal "could" be doing it better. Maybe better emulation, better build quality, better interface/presentation. There is certainly room for improvement with that general idea, an emulation box that takes real cartridges and controllers. Depending on the system, you could make something that the majority of people couldn't tell from playing it that it was emulation. If you had the hardware to run BSNES in some little box you could make a pretty nice emulation clone SNES system. I don't actually expect this to achieve such a level of quality. Maybe it'll be better in some ways than previous products or it could be worse. I'm generally not interested in purchasing them myself so it doesn't matter to me unless they were to really achieve something amazing.
The interesting thing is that if it is well supported, they could easily release a N64 module further down the line. I've never really been that interested in these sorts of consoles (and it doesn't help that the Retron 5 and its ilk look like $10 knock-offs), but the hardware and software look pretty decent on this one so far.
Well at least this doesn't appear to be another "Coleco Chameleon" scenario. Depending on the price point, those who don't want to stress the optic drives on their retro consoles & don't feel like building their own machine, may find this appealing.
The Analogue NT Mini is FPGA based and Kevtris is apparently making other system cores it can use. Which is pretty damn cool. The RF is just a rebranded Retron5. It's garbage. If you want to take stuff with you on the go, build a small Lakka computer. Or an NUC Apparently on their forums they say they have gotten permission to use some FOSS software in their product and some people involved in commercial emulation and in said FOSS projects are involved. But i'll take that with a grain of salt.
Assuming you're going for an "out of the box" audience who are totally computer illiterate.... how are you going to ship these things legally without the required pirated BIOS files needed for these CD systems, then provide clear instructions where they can be downloaded? If the Retron5 was deemed redundant due to it just being an emu box & not interfacing directly with carts, what the hell would be the proper term for this thing?
I noticed the Sega CD BIOS boot screen showed up. Now, I wonder if they'll provide me with a way to dump my own BIOSes from my own systems (which would be interesting. Think the average end user of this device would be able to do that?), or if they come with the console - and if they do, what SEGA/Sony think about that. Also, gotta love the BS description of their "hybrid emulation" approach. Lots of words, barely any content. And the bits that are there don't sound too great. "reading the carts electrically" - well, duh. How else would you do it? And then it's "high level emulation" all of a sudden? HLE isn't usually the most compatible of approaches (see UltraHLE vs cen64, zsnes or snes9x vs bsnes), so no it doesn't work "just like an original console did". And finally, imho these devices in general are worthless without a decent CRT simulation filter, even if the emulation was near perfect.
Yeah to the ill-fated Coleco Chameleon, there Kevtris had made a LOT of FPGA cores, so as Vosse said. So stop being so negative about the FPGA cores , also CUPodcast mentioned about Kevtris, when it came to the ill-fated Coleco Chameleon.
This is an interesting concept, yet it's seemingly overly ambitious. I also foresee many future issues pertaining to the console's physical longevity, seeing as these are supposed to remain under 300 dollars. I imagine this machine ending up like the Amstrad GX4000, with its repugnant power supply and whatnot.
Yes, a whole two people we can name that have actually cloned a console using a FPGA and have it available as a commercial product. Kevtris and BunnyBoy (Retrousb). Meanwhile there are plenty of software emulators that have cartridge readers. I'm not being negative about it, I'm being realistic. The time and effort that it takes to accurately clone an entire system with a FPGA is significantly more than if you are using a modern computer system with some kind of cartridge reader. You aren't going to be able to just download files to replicate the array of systems people want on a FPGA and slap together a product. But you can find open source emulators for most of these consoles that will do a well enough job that the average user won't notice any issues. That leaves you to make a cartridge reader which isn't terribly difficult either. RSO, I also wonder about the CD system BIOS roms that are required for these systems. All of them are still protected by copyright and would require a license agreement to use them. The MagicEngine emulator did reimplement their own compatible BIOS and for PS1 there is NoCash's BIOS. Sega CD I'm unaware of any BIOS replacement that is freely available. But Sega does license their stuff. And the "Hybrid Emulation" does sound like bullshit to me as well. But I won't pass judgement on that until we see what it really ends up being. These sorts of projects happening are good because hopefully someone will eventually get it right.
Spoke about this in chat a few weeks ago. They missed an 'o' out of the title - between the b and the l....
It's the Polymega now and I kind of want one. I saw the Prices on NES games have been going down and I'd like some sort of clone. I settled on the next round of Retro USB AVS consoles but this thing is tempting, First PS1/Sega CD/Neo Geo CD clone to my knowledge. (I'd LOVE an Analog NT Mini but $500 is ridiculous)
But they aren't clones. It's an emulator box. There are no clones available of PS1, Sega CD, or Neo Geo CD. Putting together a nifty emulation box is different than making a clone.
I'm not really paying this much attention. Once they release it and we get actual pricing, I'll give it another look.
I thought this was FPGA not emulation. A FPGA for the Mega CD, Neo CD and PlayStation would be great as they all have issues. Mega CD and PlayStation have shitty lasers, Mega CD because Sony made the lasers and the Neo CD has an awful slow CD drive.
It's not a FPGA. It uses this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockchip_RK3288 As mentioned here: http://polymega.com/forums/topic/n64/ I see no reason to believe this will be anything other than another ARM based emulation box. As I have said before, that doesn't doom it to being a bad product. But it's still emulation and not in the same category as the RetroUSB AVS or the Analogue NT Mini which clone the NES with FPGA chips. Cloning all the systems they want to support isn't practical where as emulating them can be practical. Without a doubt it will make use of open source emulators to support the systems mentioned. Developing their own would again go into the realm of being impractical.
Just a quick question from you experts. I occasionally use Neogenesis and NeocdXDLS to run sega CD and neo Geo CD games from my OG Xbox respectively. I'm guessing these utilize emulation and simply pull the roms, then run them through the program. Is this correct? Xbox & Xbox parts being so cheap and easily available , I just find it an easy way to keep some wear and tear off of these more expensive & harder to fix systems. I'm guessing that's why some are interested in the retroblox, depending on how well it performs. Lastly: Polymega? I understand why they had to change the name but....Was I the only one that thought "really? that's the new name they chose"?
