Fulfill your childhood console fantasies for $99

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exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
When was the last time you played one of the old games? I got so excited when I downloaded my N64 emulator, loaded up goldeneye, and then....realized it wasn't as good as I remembered it. The past is the past, lets all move forward.

Yeah... You picked a shooter of all things. Absolutely not surprised.

The genre obsessed with graphics and realism. Of course you were disappointed. Because a modern Call of Duty is the exact same thing only 1000 times newer and better.

Try something that is actually timeless and has an ending and has no modern replacement or equivalent. Ocarina of Time? Conkers Bad Fur Day?

Twenty year old first person shooters and sports games are the LAST games you should expect to be fun compared to modern incarnations. The newer ones are exactly the same but better.

However, Ocarina of Time is Ocarina of Time. No matter how many new Zelda games come out, unless its a deliberate remake, regardless of better graphics or controls, they will never be Ocarina of Time again.

All the platformers in the world can come out with HD this and HD that and be one of the greatest games ever made. But its still not Conkers Bad Fur Day.

Its different. Certain games are just unique and one off. Even with the same engine and same gameplay, you can have entirely different experiences. I mean, I can play Jak or Ratchet and Clank on the PS4, just a 3D platformer right? Sure. But its still not Conkers Bad Fur Day.

If you just take something like running in a circle through a hallway fragging people online for hours on end, its the same experience today with much better games. There are only certain types of games that can retain their playability as they age.

This isn't meant to be derogatory or biased. Shooters and sports games are games that simply derive themselves 100% from mechanics and gameplay rather than story or immersion in a fairytale world, so the experience is not so unique to a given game or generation, therefore newer versions are almost always expected to be better.

But others like RPG and adventure, its like a classic Stephen King novel. No matter how many newer novels come out, they are all unique, even though they are still all books made of paper.

But a football game is just football. It just gets better and better and there is no need to retain the old ones. And football is always football, it never changes. Unless you are talking baseball. Baseball isn't football. But baseball is baseball no matter how many times you do it. It just gets more refined.

Football is football. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you run, you tackle, you score. That has never changed. But graphics get better, AI gets better, etc. Shooting people is shooting people, very similar. You run around, you shoot people, you avoid being shot, whoever has most frags in the alloted time wins. Again and again, but better graphics and more players and more physics and more realistic guns and blood. These games are themselves DEFINED by the very things that improve each generation, they don't stand alone as works by themselves. And Ill even concede that jumping on platforms or killing monsters is still jumping on platforms and killing monsters.

But Jak 6 in 4K HD is still not Banjo Kazooie or Conkers Bad Fur Day.
 
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marvdmartian

Diamond Member
Apr 12, 2002
5,434
20
81
Hyperkin Retron 5 combines ten consoles into one on December 10 for $99:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/19/hyperkin-retron-5-game-console-on-sale-december-10/

$99 on December 10th, 2014:

1. NES
2. Famicom
3. Super NES
4. Super Famicom
5. Sega Master System
6. Sega Genesis
7. Sega Mega Drive
8. Game Boy (original)
9. Game Boy Color
10. Game Boy Advanced

If you're into playing original cartridges (instead of ROMs) and loathe good industrial design, then boy will this push your nostalgia buttons :awe: Seriously though, I would have killed for something like this as a kid. If we were on good behavior throughout the week, we were allowed to rent a console & one game each from Blockbuster on the weekends (that rarely happened haha). Ah, memories.

Funny, didn't notice the 2014 in the article. ;)

This thing would be full of win, if it were an emulator that didn't need the original cartridges.
 

Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
15,745
4,563
136
I can deal with an emulator hardware and I can deal with using my actual games, just not both. One thing I notice about a lot of these things is that the hardware is so much faster, scenes tend to move faster than the music and sound effects they were originally synced with, lessening the impact and making for a jarring and far less compelling experience.
 

KentState

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2001
8,397
393
126
The advantage of boxing up these old systems and putting in the basement is moving on from all the games I never completed. As it stands, I have 50 or so games since the launch of the Xbox 360 I haven't started. Would be overly frustrating to add in another 50+ from the previous generations.
 

smackababy

Lifer
Oct 30, 2008
27,024
79
86
do you still have to blow the nintendo/snes cartridges to get them working?
if not, this system is full of win!

Blowing never really did anything, just so you know. The NES had a big flaw in the cartridge design (that was later sort of addressed with a new NES) where it wouldn't make a good contact, or the contacts would become bad over time.


I don't see a huge market with this. I have all of these systems, save for the Sega MegaDrive and Super Famicom (which I thought was the same as the Super NES, just the Japanese name / design) and of all the games I do have, I only even consider playing ones from SNES unless I want to torture myself and play Metroid (because after Super Metroid, Metroid is painful without the improvements to gameplay). My PS2 is still around and hooked up every now and again though. I just use an emulator for SNES.
 

Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
15,745
4,563
136
I think the nes issue was Nintendo's security chip had to be perfectly in sync with the connector. One small slip or bit of dirt and you had a blinking red light. The nintendo cleaning kit helped, but dust getting on the inside was a common occurrence of the awful vhs redesigned famicom sold state side.
 

thegimp03

Diamond Member
Jul 5, 2004
7,420
2
81
I have save states on my real NES using custom FPGA mappers using a PowerPak flash cart. :D Select + B/A to save/load.

Very helpful when playing Battletoads and Contra to train for beating them legit.

Or instant death traps in Megaman.

Or when gambling in Zelda to max out rupees. The RNG seed is part of the save state so if you pick the wrong one, revert back in a flash and grab the right one since it won't change :D

Hax. :p
 

exdeath

Lifer
Jan 29, 2004
13,679
10
81
I think the nes issue was Nintendo's security chip had to be perfectly in sync with the connector. One small slip or bit of dirt and you had a blinking red light. The nintendo cleaning kit helped, but dust getting on the inside was a common occurrence of the awful vhs redesigned famicom sold state side.

That just caused the blinking and 1 sec resets. It wasn't just one pin though the whole connector was flawed.

Even with CIC disabled, you'd get corrupt graphics with rows and columns of tile, artifacts, freezing, etc.

Problem is the tension on the ZIF pins, they flattened out over time and no longer made contact.

Combine with:

Also because it was ZIF it didn't have the benefit of being constantly scraped clean by the insertion or removal of carts.
 
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