New "Retro VGS" 2D Cartridge-based console

GohanX · Jun 11, 2015

Yes and yes!

Sherlin · Aug 2, 2015

What he said.

Takumaji said:
I will never buy a console with "Retro" in its name.

Fuck that retro bullshit.

SpamYouToDeath · Aug 2, 2015

Does anyone know what the hardware is like yet?

NeoSneth · Aug 3, 2015

I'd be wiling to place a bet that it's Android based.

xsq · Aug 4, 2015

SpamYouToDeath said:
Does anyone know what the hardware is like yet?

shit.

White Devil · Aug 4, 2015

Yeah I do love gimmicks. Admittedly.

I also really like the idea of this. Just seems cool. I like new toys. The cartridge based console brings back positive feelings. Yeah, unless all the hipsters in the country decide this is ironic enough to spend their money on it won't sell very well. And may crash rather quickly.
Having said that, I am not a hipster and I hope it does well, indie games tend to carry a lot of talent and this could potentially host some amazing games. Unfortunately the creators of any good titles for the system won't likely bank off its success.

Danthor · Aug 4, 2015

White Devil said:
Yeah I do love gimmicks. Admittedly.

I also really like the idea of this. Just seems cool. I like new toys. The cartridge based console brings back positive feelings. Yeah, unless all the hipsters in the country decide this is ironic enough to spend their money on it won't sell very well. And may crash rather quickly.
Having said that, I am not a hipster and I hope it does well, indie games tend to carry a lot of talent and this could potentially host some amazing games. Unfortunately the creators of any good titles for the system won't likely bank off its success.

I refer you to the super successful Ouya.

SpamYouToDeath · Aug 4, 2015

xsq said:
shit.

Well, of course. But it could be boring shit, like an OMAP running Android, or it could be interesting shit, like a SuperH with a custom OS and GPU.

StealthLurker · Aug 5, 2015

ElectricGrave said:
Get out! I got one of them Arcade VGA and yeah now it makes sense, it is an AGP Radeon card on a Vaio P4, ancient rig I had set up with a J-Pac. Thanks for the heads up, I'm gonna look into it.

I've got a setup like that hooked up to a PVM. However with a current gen Arcade VGA card and fairly modern PC. It's a great little emu station. Basically a MAME cab without the cab :lolz:

SpamYouToDeath · Aug 6, 2015

StealthLurker said:
I've got a setup like that hooked up to a PVM. However with a current gen Arcade VGA card and fairly modern PC. It's a great little emu station. Basically a MAME cab without the cab

Are the ArcadeVGA cards still worthwhile? Every recent Intel and AMD device I've seen can drive 15KHz signals normally.

StealthLurker · Aug 6, 2015

SpamYouToDeath said:
Are the ArcadeVGA cards still worthwhile? Every recent Intel and AMD device I've seen can drive 15KHz signals normally.

To tell you the truth I went that way just play it safe. Pretty much just plug n play with some tweaking to fine tune. I was paranoid about potentially messing up the PVM I intended to use lol

Sherlin · Aug 12, 2015

What’s going on under the hood?

(Steve Woita) Think of it as hardware that is reconfigurable by the cartridge. The RETRO VGS will have its own cool configurations (ways to make a game), and it can also be hardware-configured to be other old-school architectures that a lot of developers are used to developing for. Specifically, and at this current time, it’s an FPGA and ARM system. If a developer wants to make a Neo Geo game, they would include an HDL (Hardware Description Language) file that configures the FPGA to operate like a Neo Geo. The developer would code their game to run against the Neo Geo platform. This HDL code along with the actual Neo Geo game will be on the cartridge. Once that cartridge is placed in the RETRO VGS, it will become a Neo Geo and play that game. So in this case, the language is: 68000 and Z80 code. If you wanted to do a new Atari 2600 styled game, you'd include a 2600 HDL file that configures the FPGA to replicate the logic of the original 2600 hardware and then you'd include your new 2600 game on that cartridge too. These two files are then paired up on the cartridge and when plugged into the RETRO VGS, will turn the console into a 2600. So the language that would be used in this case is: 6507 (6502 with less address space). Does that help explain things a little "bit" more? Oh and we’ll have a nice little ARM chip for some more fun stuff. We'll be supplying the validated cores for developers to choose from and you don't have to know how to program an FPGA to make a game, it just gives us a lot of hardware flexibility, I didn't want to lock us in to a specific ASIC design.

systmdfect · Aug 12, 2015

Sherlin said:
What’s going on under the hood?

(Steve Woita) Think of it as hardware that is reconfigurable by the cartridge. The RETRO VGS will have its own cool configurations (ways to make a game), and it can also be hardware-configured to be other old-school architectures that a lot of developers are used to developing for. Specifically, and at this current time, it’s an FPGA and ARM system. If a developer wants to make a Neo Geo game, they would include an HDL (Hardware Description Language) file that configures the FPGA to operate like a Neo Geo. The developer would code their game to run against the Neo Geo platform. This HDL code along with the actual Neo Geo game will be on the cartridge. Once that cartridge is placed in the RETRO VGS, it will become a Neo Geo and play that game. So in this case, the language is: 68000 and Z80 code. If you wanted to do a new Atari 2600 styled game, you'd include a 2600 HDL file that configures the FPGA to replicate the logic of the original 2600 hardware and then you'd include your new 2600 game on that cartridge too. These two files are then paired up on the cartridge and when plugged into the RETRO VGS, will turn the console into a 2600. So the language that would be used in this case is: 6507 (6502 with less address space). Does that help explain things a little "bit" more? Oh and we’ll have a nice little ARM chip for some more fun stuff. We'll be supplying the validated cores for developers to choose from and you don't have to know how to program an FPGA to make a game, it just gives us a lot of hardware flexibility, I didn't want to lock us in to a specific ASIC design.

Forgive my ignorance, but it basically sounds like this is a MAME machine. Is this not just emulation?

NeoSneth · Aug 12, 2015

FPGA's can be seen as hardware emulation in a way.

Some classic computers have been redone with FPGA's in the past like the MiniMig(Amiga computer)

shadowkn55 · Aug 12, 2015

NeoSneth said:
FPGA's can be seen as hardware emulation in a way.

Some classic computers have been redone with FPGA's in the past like the MiniMig(Amiga computer)

The minimig takes a different approach. At it's heart, it still runs off a 68000 compatible processor (68SEC000 to be exact), not just an emulation core. The fpga portion replicates the custom chips and other shelf parts. It's similar to how to the various revisions of the Sega Genesis have evolved. Each one still contains a real 68k but the subsections get condensed to save pcb space and/or costs. They just went with ASIC implementations instead of FPGA. This approach is probably the best way to clone retro systems but availability of vintage processors will get tougher as the years go on.

GohanX · Aug 12, 2015

I think the concept is neat, but does that mean every programmer is going to need to know how to design the system perfectly in FPGA to get the game to work right? I wouldn't expect your average indy game programmer to also have quan's hardware skills to make it happen.

HeavyMachineGoob · Aug 12, 2015

Retro VGS could also supply FPGA "code" for commonly used platforms as well.

But yeah, FPGA is far better than software emulation, no contest. An FPGA can replicate hardware down to the transistor (of course, a human has to adapt from the original chips to the FPGA, so there's room for quality discrepancies). A random CPU running an emulator in software can never truly replicate to the level of an FPGA, resulting in constant quality discrepancies that can never truly be fixed. The quality also goes down the cheaper that random CPU is (which typically happens, like with AtGames "clones").

shadowkn55 · Aug 12, 2015

HeavyMachineGun said:
Retro VGS could also supply FPGA "code" for commonly used platforms as well.

But yeah, FPGA is far better than software emulation, no contest. An FPGA can replicate hardware down to the transistor (of course, a human has to adapt from the original chips to the FPGA, so there's room for quality discrepancies). A random CPU running an emulator in software can never truly replicate to the level of an FPGA, resulting in constant quality discrepancies that can never truly be fixed. The quality also goes down the cheaper that random CPU is (which typically happens, like with AtGames "clones").

It really depends on how the actual implementation turns out. If the fpga can load a cycle accurate core of the desired cpu, it should be transparent. They haven't specified what the ARM cpu really does. Theoretically, you can ditch the ARM cpu and run strictly off the fpga. Just have it boot a default platform, say Neo-Geo, then load a different core based on the software on the cartridge. Another ARM/FPGA combo that already exists is the retron 5 and that loads emulation core as well. Not hardware emulation by any means. Having an fpga doesn't automatically exclude it from being software emulation.

SpamYouToDeath · Aug 13, 2015

Re-implementing a whole video game system in an FPGA is a hell of a lot of work. It also requires a reasonably large and fast FPGA, with the right external interfaces to whatever peripheral hardware you need. Considering that we already have near-perfect software emulation of anything they'd hope to achieve in that FPGA, I don't quite see the point. It might be a nice intro platform for people who want to learn an HDL, though. I got really bored of toggling in code and watching the registers light up when I was doing digital design classes.

HeavyMachineGoob · Aug 13, 2015

I for one am not a fan of software emulation, it should not be a replacement for real hardware. We have single chip ASICs available, use those instead, much better and perfectly fast. For Retro VGS, I'm happy to see a quality initiative. I for one would rather have a FPGA than software emulation.

SpamYouToDeath · Aug 13, 2015

HeavyMachineGun said:
I for one am not a fan of software emulation, it should not be a replacement for real hardware. We have single chip ASICs available, use those instead, much better and perfectly fast. For Retro VGS, I'm happy to see a quality initiative. I for one would rather have a FPGA than software emulation.

If the emulation is accurate, what does it matter? For a developer, sure, having the genuine hardware is an interesting environment. For someone just playing the game, though, if they can use the same controllers, to play the same game, and it makes the same video signal, what's the difference?

MattBlah · Aug 14, 2015

I'm starting to gain a bit of interest in this machine. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect it to be a success at all, but if they price the kickstarter right and it comes with a packed in game I might go for it.

MadAsgardian · Aug 14, 2015

So apparently they've released the specs for this (or maybe it's old news?):
http://www.gamegavel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7474

Also, sounds like they're considering some sort of minidisc technology for the carts:
http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=175286544

ki_atsushi · Aug 14, 2015

Using minidiscs would be amazing.

famicommander · Aug 14, 2015

I demand all my retro games be played on vinyl.

New "Retro VGS" 2D Cartridge-based console

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