That was my hope. Instead of doing this ridiculous handheld/console dock hybrid piece of junk, I would have loved to pay $200 or even $300 for a new run of the AES with a stick and sets of games on multi-carts which could be sold separately. It could have had a neat little anniversary logo printed on the console itself. I have an AES, but it's getting on in years and my sticks are both getting looser over time. There is no technical reason they couldn't have done this as the Motorola 68K and the Zilog Z80 are still around in the marketplace and the other parts of the Neo Geo AES are still easy to find and could be manufactured in quantities for well below the $200 or $300 retail price. As it stands, this product doesn't appeal to either the gamer or the collector side of me and like I said earlier, unless it gets good reviews from people I trust, I have very little interest in owning one.
Neo Geo X Gold System details and price announced!
- Thread starter Hellraizah
- Start date
That was my hope. Instead of doing this ridiculous handheld/console dock hybrid piece of junk, I would have loved to pay $200 or even $300 for a new run of the AES with a stick and sets of games on multi-carts which could be sold separately. It could have had a neat little anniversary logo printed on the console itself. I have an AES, but it's getting on in years and my sticks are both getting looser over time. There is no technical reason they couldn't have done this as the Motorola 68K and the Zilog Z80 are still around in the marketplace and the other parts of the Neo Geo AES are still easy to find and could be manufactured in quantities for well below the $200 or $300 retail price. As it stands, this product doesn't appeal to either the gamer or the collector side of me and like I said earlier, unless it gets good reviews from people I trust, I have very little interest in owning one.
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Lol, wut?
Really? Please tell me where I can buy a brand new US AES and brand new old style sticks for a few hundred bucks? You can't and on the rare occasions where a NOS unit pops up, it goes for $1K or more.
Turning to your other argument, it's not a pipe dream. I happen to know for a fact that in the early 2000s, SNK was looking to do exactly this and offered the opportunity to at least one authorized distributor to commission a run of new AES units and sticks. Unfortunately, they wanted a minimum commitment that at the time seemed crazy and the numbers didn't work.
Are you familiar with the second model of a product called the Atari Flashback? That model available at retailers up until a few years ago used a chip design that was not an emulator, but was an Atari 2600 on a chip. As such, you could build a simple hardware hack to make the system play not only the built in games, but any cartridge in the Atari 2600 library. They ended up selling over 800K units of that product in just a few short years.
It would have been fairly easy for Tommo/Blaze to remanufacture the old hardware again to satisfy those of us who have aging Neo Geo AES systems and sticks that we would like to replace and at the same time grab this new nostalgia market by just packaging it with a multi-cart. Failing that, they could have gone the Atari Flashback route and built a Neo Geo on a chip that could be modified to play the old carts. Instead, Tommo and Blaze created something that looks like a cheap miniature version of an AES but isn't and tried to work their existing crappy handheld into the mix. So, I'm sorry if I'm not excited that Tommo and Blaze want to charge you $200 for something nobody really wants or asked for.
KBneospy
Marked Wolf
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A new production run of the old hardware is a cool idea, and I think lots of us would be interested. However IMHO it's the other way around the "cheap" handheld wasn't designed for the docking station, the handheld looks to be well made and the docking station is just the "cheap" accessory that is a bonus for the handheld. I don't think this was originally meant to be a tv console rather a portable with the ability to connect to your tv. Then somewhere along the way a dock and a joystick were added as a nifty bonus.
Phexe
Quiz Detective
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If they did a rerun of consoles, I'd bet that the 'guts' would just be a SoC and have the same problems or worse than emulation.
I'm gonna get one of these for Xmas, try my hand at breaking the encryption. Knowing blaze its probably just a ZIP file with a plain text password of "blaze" or something.
I'm gonna get one of these for Xmas, try my hand at breaking the encryption. Knowing blaze its probably just a ZIP file with a plain text password of "blaze" or something.
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slerch666
updyke,
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So, supposedly they are using the same parts in the sticks as they did when it was released originally. If you want new sticks, buy the $50 stick and tear the stick and buttons out and swap them into your old sticks. Old sticks good as new sticks.
Doesn't get you a brand new AES, but at least you'd have better sticks that aren't loose and use the same parts (supposedly) as the old.
I seriously doubt the sticks are built using the same parts. The only person to say that was the PR hack they hired who seemed to know nothing about the technical aspects of the system. The sticks look similar on the outside, but I suspect that for $50 we aren't going to get very high quality sticks.
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Sorry guy, but hardware emulation is still emulation. Those Flashback units for Atari, commodore, amiga, intellivision.... it's still emulation whether you do it via software or hardware FPGA.
I don't care what they considered doing in 2000. Why would you even think they might make original hardware this time around.
It's a cheap emulation system with some fancy casing now.
They also have some balls to sell the games individually again on chips. They are going to be giggling every time they re-release a 20yr old game for $10,$20?
slerch666
updyke,
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Well, wait until day one and someone with an AES stick compares and does a tear down. If they are the same, buy one and replace.
Why would I think they might reproduce the original hardware this time around? Probably because that's what many people on every message board I have seen assumed they were doing when this thing was announced. Almost every post was "wow, I can't wait to play my original Neo Geo Pocket games on this thing". When the dock was shown, the same people said "wow, I can't wait to play my AES carts on this thing". There is obviously an interested market out there for a re-release of the stock AES hardware and re-released games. In fact, take a look at how Gamestop is advertising this thing. They're calling it the system you couldn't afford when it came out, finally at a reasonable price. They aren't promoting the fact that it's an emulator or that it's mostly a handheld that can output to your TV. Maybe I'm just naive, but I think there is a missed opportunity here and hopefully someone will come along and fill it.
FalcomAdol
Fio's Quartermaster
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They're not the same size, ergo not the same.
slerch666
updyke,
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If the buttons are the same manufacture and the stick is the same manufacture, cannibalizing the parts from the new stick to the old, assuming those pieces are the same between the two, will result in a new old AES stick.
From what I've seen, the joystick itself along with the buttons at least appear to be the same size as the originals. The arcade controller, the big box that houses all the parts, is smaller, yes. Swap the parts and you're good to go.
Obviously we won't know this is the case until it's actually released, so pre-ordering wouldn't be a good idea.
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The buttons on the original stick are trash anyway, I just hope we can figure a way to put Seimitsu/Sanwa buttons in there and they got the stick right.
Also, it shouldn't be too difficult to reproduce the stick for $50. I mean, the stick is good, but it's not exactly high quality parts here. It's some decent switches in the stick (which cost a dollar) and some crappy buttons that are easy to replicate.
Also, it shouldn't be too difficult to reproduce the stick for $50. I mean, the stick is good, but it's not exactly high quality parts here. It's some decent switches in the stick (which cost a dollar) and some crappy buttons that are easy to replicate.
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SetaSouji??
There Can be Only One
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The three things I plan to do after I get mine and do the review:
-If stick is not plug and play, write a driver.
-Take apart stick and see what modding can be done
-dump the console's memory and the ninja master card and see what we can do modding wise.
Oh, and bojay.. we get it, you don't want one and you've specified that... so get the fuck out of the thread and take your dumbass and moot ramblings to the war-room
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lol, 3 stupid people thought that was a possibility, and you just happened to be one of them
I know, right. I distinctly recall most people on this board believing there was no such product as this handheld either, calling it a hoax. There were tons of people who thought it was a possibility that this thing would at least be hackable to play real AES carts. I guess you're right though, it's pretty pointless to hope that they would make a product that was actually good or of real value to both the hardcore and the casual gamers. Why should they when people who should know better can't wait to throw down cash to buy what will likely be a cheaply built unreliable piece of plastic with Neo Geo stamped on it.
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lol, what? it's basically a handheld + high def neo geo console... the irony that the people this is supposed to cater toward are also the people who will find a reason to shit on it, regardless
I'm still all over this release. Playing metal slug on my big screen with my 4 year old son and two neo geo joysticks...I couldn't give a shit less if the hardware is original or not. I stopped being gay over retarded shit like that years ago
5 folks with assburgers does not constitute a "market"
SetaSouji??
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Kensirou
n00b
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Probably because so many of the NES and Genesis and other unlicensed retro consoles that have been released in the past few years play the real cartridges. You have people in this thread who expected that the handheld would plug into the cart slot vertically and that didn't happen. Are they morons too or just more imaginative and creative than the people who designed this product? You also had people posting here that thought the joysticks would be backwards compatible with the old AES and not USB as they turned out to be. I guess they are also morons. It's just sad that you guys think so little of this community and gamers at large that you can't even imagine a situation where a manufacturer could release a retro product that was the actual hardware or at least an updated or improved version of it. Blaze must love that they can just recycle a product they have already been selling, clad it in a Neo Geo looking shell and charge $200 for it. Well, I will take my leave. I hope the five of you buying this thing enjoy it when it breaks after a few days and no other roms get released for it and you find out that the performance is below all the other emulators already out there.