What do you people think of the Retro VGS?

[atheistgod1999]

If you haven't heard of it, here's a link: http://www.retrovgs.com/home.html

[EmperorIng]

Ugly cartridge design, ugly console design, and wow, ports of horrible SNES games. Oh boy, the Atari Jaguar 2.0!

The fact that one of the labels says "collectorvision" says it all: to trick idiot collectors into owning hunks of low-grade plastic.

[Grimakis]

I disagree. It's an interesting concept. A console with hardware that is designed around emulating other consoles. Homebrew devs could effectively release games cross-platform between this and another system.

The price needs to be right though. It isn't powerful, but I like the idea of a community driven platform.

[Xyga]

http://www.retrovgs.com/home.html

Wow! No.

[kamiboy]

A console lives and dies by its library of games, and, well, let us just say that this endeavour is off to an up hill start.

[speedlolita]

Load of balls, just like the Jag.

[ZellSF]

Well. There has to be something that makes the Ouya looks good in comparison and here it is.

[hosser]

Should have called it the Ouya Twoya.

[Pasky]

An android machine....but with cartridges....

[kamiboy]

Hey, guys. Before you break out the old jump to conclusion mat, and embarrass yourself, maybe you should read the FAQ.

This is a lot cooler in concept than any twopence android emulation box.

[RGB32E]

Yeah, the FPGA + ARM design is interesting:

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.

So, just like the RetroUSB AVS (FPGA console), the VGS will have the same type of capability. Maybe the AVS could be ported to the VGS! I hope the VGS HW doesn't cap at 720p like the Retron 5 and AVS do though.

[BONKERS]

This actually sounds interesting. I hope they can find their niche

[ZellSF]

Hey, guys. Before you break out the old jump to conclusion mat, and embarrass yourself, maybe you should read the FAQ.

This is a lot cooler in concept than any twopence android emulation box.

The Ouya was very cool in concept too.

There's much more to a game console than cool concepts.

Hell, Ouya's main flaw was selling a concept rather than anything of substance.

[blizzz]

The FPGA idea is interesting, but I don't understand why this console exists. A small PC with DRM free games should be superior in every aspect. If the only gimmick of this project are the cartridges then they shouldn't have made it so ugly.

I can't see how this console should gain a large enough userbase so that developers would actually make good games for it.

[BuckoA51]

I'm curious, when you program an FPGA like that, can it be cycle accurate to the hardware it's imitating? If so then you're potentially looking at more accurate emulation than a PC can do.

If the only gimmick of this project are the cartridges then they shouldn't have made it so ugly.

Can't disagree with you there.

[bobrocks95]

Since when have we had a full reverse engineering of any of these chips? Do clone consoles also have an FPGA programmed to mimic the original circuitry, or is this all of a sudden the most accurate emulator on the market (or maybe they've got a semi-functioning "kinda close" reverse engineering)?

[spmbx]

Those Jaguar moulds sure do get around! Makes me wonder where we'll see them next.