First English Review Video/Stream of DarkSoft MVS Multicard?

[ASDR]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... E5olHLo45d (Edit: Replaced with the YT archive of the original stream)

Looks pretty rough for something to be released in the coming weeks. With all the drama that seemingly surrounds Neo Geo flash cards and their communities, I have no idea if this is legit, though. Can't wait for a thorough and trustworthy review from somebody like RetroRGB.

For now, I spend my NeoSD money on an SD2SNES + SSDS3. I figure if I drop half a grand on a Neo Geo EverDrive I might as well wait for the 2nd one to come out.

I sincerely hope the DS card will be great. I just dislike the idea of waiting 2-3min for flashing games. It just doesn't fit with the way I play arcade style games. I might play them for months, but generally only in short bursts. I'll do 1-2 scoring attempts in a shooter, a round of Windjammers and then switch to something else again.

The RAM based nature of the DS seems like what I want, but I'm extremely skeptical of the card's software. What I've seen so far doesn't make much sense to me. Like the slot concept. Why force loading of the last three games every time the card boots up? That seems like a waste of time unless I want to play all three games every time I turn the console on. And even then it really only moves the load time upfront. I guess it helps if I want to play all three games AND switch between them more than once? Also, why have three fixed slots? Most games are <768Mbit, seems like a waste of memory and a flexible system like with the NeoGeo Pocket SD might be better.

I also don't like the entire UX. Say I just want to play a specific game. From what I've seen in all the videos, the procedure is as follows:

- Turn the system on
- Wait for the card to load three unrelated games first
- Watch splash screen / boot animation
- Go to game selection menu
- Select game (for some reason, the games are listed in a tiny selection box on the left side of the screen and only cryptic MAME file names are used instead of human readable titles)
- Assign the game to a slot
- Wait for loading
- Card reboots, watch splash screen / boot animation again
- Select the slot you just updated, finally play the game

That seems like so much unnecessary delays, extra steps, clumsy UI. I wish the card would just be like any other flashcard and simply boot into a fullscreen list of games, select game, hit A, load & play. Maybe favourites & recents, instead of slots the card could simply transparently make use of the excess RAM to cache the last few games and skip loading if its already on there.

Let's hope they sort out their issues. I'd love to have basically a NeoSD with <30s load times.

[beast1x5]

Just an fyi that video was stolen from my twitch page at twitch.tv/beast1x5

The actual 5 hour playlist can be viewed here
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... E5olHLo45d

This is a beta test live stream.. I legit played on my supergun + bvm + ossc for 5 hours with permission from darksoft and mitsurugi-w to show it off

[ASDR]

Oh, you're here Apologies if I linked a non-canonical source. I don't want to promote people ripping of content. Basically, I tried to get an update how things were going on the Arcade Projects forums, read some blurbs on how prototypes have been sent out etc., something about a French review, did a quick google search and this video popped up. Was posted hours ago, didn't hear anything about it and thought I'd share it here as it was interesting to me. I didn't want to question your 'legitimacy', I simply saw that this was a new YouTube account and had no idea if that video was maybe just edited and editorialised to make the DS card look bad. Thanks for chiming in!

[spmbx]

I don't like the UI either (the axelf sounds weird too). It doesn't seem ready for release at all even taking into consideration the entire 5 hour session. What i like even less is all the drama bullshit and shit-throwing competition this whole thing turned in to. Also what do you mean "stolen video" ? It's right up there on your twitch page, i don't need to "steal" anything if i'd want to download it. Yes it's edited. That's not synonymous for stealing last time i checked.

[tomwhite2004]

use of the excess RAM to cache the last few games and skip loading if its already on there.

EDIT: Damn, I mistakenly thought that the three selected games are permanently loaded to the cart so you can re-boot and they are still there (like with the NeoSD). Shorter load times over the NeoSD are cool but not if you have to go though it every time you turn the machine on, ugh.

for some reason, the games are listed in a tiny selection box on the left side of the screen and only cryptic MAME file names are used instead of human readable titles

Check again, the games full title is listed at the bottom of the screen.

I'd love to have basically a NeoSD with <30s load times.

Yup, that would really be ideal.

the axelf sounds weird too.

The menu music can be completely disabled luckily!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_WYlPuEkXk

[ASDR]

for some reason, the games are listed in a tiny selection box on the left side of the screen and only cryptic MAME file names are used instead of human readable titles

Check again, the games full title is listed at the bottom of the screen.

Yes, but only for the currently selected game. The NeoSD menu looks like this:



Basically any other flash card just has a simple, full screen list with readable names:



Totally fine. But on the DS cart it looks like this:



Why use cryptic MAME filenames and 20% of the screen space for selecting games?

And then there's the slot system and waiting for three games to be loaded every startup + the UI clumsiness of having to assign a game to a slot, waiting for the cart to reboot and then having to select the slot again instead of just hitting a button for play & load with simply skipping the load step for games already in RAM. Some very questionable UI choices. All I want is NeoSD with faster loads

[tomwhite2004]

Yes, but only for the currently selected game. The NeoSD menu looks like this:

I see what you mean now, fair point.

And then there's the slot system and waiting for three games to be loaded every startup + the UI clumsiness of having to assign a game to a slot, waiting for the cart to reboot and then having to select the slot again instead of just hitting a button for play & load with simply skipping the load step for games already in RAM. Some very questionable UI choices. All I want is NeoSD with faster loads

I think the slot system was voted for by users before it was known if the games would be stored in memory or need to be loaded everytime. It's an ok idea if the games are saved and the cart booted straight into the first slot on powerup (removing the need to boot the menu system at all) but this implementation with loading everytime makes a slot system completely unnecessary. Not to mention the fast loading of games (relatively speaking) means you don't really need slots at all.

My gripe is that they are taking money for preorders when that now removed video shows a lot of audio bugs, crash issues, high score corruption and games not playing nice when in a particular slot. They say its all easily fixable but imho the hardware should be final and retail ready before you start taking money, it simply doesn't look finished.

[ASDR]

Oh, the card was meant to be flash at some point? Then of course it would be nice to flash more than one game. The artificial limitation to three slots is still wasteful, though. The NeoGeo Pocket SD flash card for instance has 16Mbit of flash and you can load 16x1Mbit or 4x4Mbit games etc. They could add an option to stop pre-loading the slots. And then some kind of 'load slot & play' shortcut, an option to boot directly to the games menu etc., that shouldn't be too hard and address most of my complaints.

It seems questionable that they take people's cash without ever showing the final PCB and their first public demo is such a disaster. But then again, who knows what's really going on with all the drama in the Neo Geo world. It just seems crazy to me, seeing these developers openly diss their competitor's products, exchanging accusations, communities aligning themselves with one company and wanting the other to fail. Just bizarre

I'll just sit back and wait for reviews. If they deliver something that actually works and can load a game in the 18s or whatever it was, they get my money. Otherwise I'll play some more Samurai Showdown 2 and eventually get a NeoSD.

[tomwhite2004]

Oh, the card was meant to be flash at some point?

I believe in the initial stages it was an option. However I must admit that I stopped following progress over the last year or so as the project stalled so only took an interest again recently. I could have misread their intention for the device.

It just seems crazy to me, seeing these developers openly diss their competitor's products, exchanging accusations, communities aligning themselves with one company and wanting the other to fail. Just bizarre

I expected that sort of thing from the community but was very disappointed to see the NeoSD developers engage in the same behaviour themselves.

But like you I will reserve judgement until the thing is actually finished, more options for consumers can only be a good thing.

[SNK-NEO-GEO]

These are the people that made multi's for CPS2, CPS3,STV,F3 etc...they get my full support and I happily throw money at them for the NeoGeo multi:).

[leonk]

These are the people that made multi's for CPS2, CPS3,STV,F3 etc...they get my full support and I happily throw money at them for the NeoGeo multi:).

Making a multi and a Neo Geo "everdrive" is not the same thing. Any EE worth their salt can make a multi using a donor cart replaced with RAM + external computer/FPGA to load that RAM. Creating an "Everdrive" that emulates all the different IC's, security chips, logic chips, etc is a lot more complex. DS has been at it for >3 years now. I think there's still a lot of work left to do. Taking preorders now is border line stealing.

[RGB0b]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS94MJAmQbc

Looks pretty rough for something to be released in the coming weeks. With all the drama that seemingly surrounds Neo Geo flash cards and their communities, I have no idea if this is legit, though. Can't wait for a thorough and trustworthy review from somebody like RetroRGB.

I'll be doing more of a nerd / tech review of it. Beast's stream is a good demonstration of functionality.

Also, would you mind updating your post with the correct link to Beast's videos? I know it wasn't intentional, but that link is to a stolen video
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... E5olHLo45d

[ASDR]

I'll be doing more of a nerd / tech review of it. Beast's stream is a good demonstration of functionality.

Also, would you mind updating your post with the correct link to Beast's videos? I know it wasn't intentional, but that link is to a stolen video
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... E5olHLo45d

Good point, done. From what I understand this condensed & annotated version of the stream was done by the NeoSD people and put up under a different account. Makes me double regret posting it here. I certainly did not want to aid any 'cooperate trash talk'. I was just simultaneously excited and concerned after seeing a 3rd party video of the DS cart. It's just sad that instead of the spirit of collaboration that seems to be the norm in the retro gaming maker community they chose to engage in this kind of behavior.

Looking forward to your review!

[RGB0b]

Thanks ADSR, much appreciated. In case anyone reading this isn't familiar with me, I'd just like to remind everyone that my review & comparison will be 100% nerd-based. I don't give a flying fuck about anyone's drama / rivalry / immaturity. Stolen footage will affect my opinion of the people who did it, not my opinion of their products.

[FBX]

Thanks ADSR, much appreciated. In case anyone reading this isn't familiar with me, I'd just like to remind everyone that my review & comparison will be 100% nerd-based. I don't give a flying fuck about anyone's drama / rivalry / immaturity.

That's how I am. If it turns out to be better than the NeoSD, I will flat-out say so. That said, I've been quite happy with the NeoSD. Yeah, load times when switching games is slow, but that's like the ONLY knock it has in my opinion. Everything else under the current firmware has worked beautifully on my AES.

[Lawfer]

Impressive.

Anyone know what would be the differences in getting a Multi-MVS Cartridge vs a Multi-AES Cartridge? Better video/sound? Brighter/darker pictures?

[ASDR]

Impressive.

Anyone know what would be the differences in getting a Multi-MVS Cartridge vs a Multi-AES Cartridge? Better video/sound? Brighter/darker pictures?

They should perform identical. I don't think the multicard should have much influence on the sound & picture, except of course artifacts when its not working properly. Since there's no 100% perfect AES/MVS adapter, using one is discouraged. NeoSD had both MVS/AES versions available shortly, and it seems the same will be the case for the DS card. Just buy the correct one for your system. And wait for reviews

[Lawfer]

Impressive.

Anyone know what would be the differences in getting a Multi-MVS Cartridge vs a Multi-AES Cartridge? Better video/sound? Brighter/darker pictures?

They should perform identical. I don't think the multicard should have much influence on the sound & picture, except of course artifacts when its not working properly. Since there's no 100% perfect AES/MVS adapter, using one is discouraged. NeoSD had both MVS/AES versions available shortly, and it seems the same will be the case for the DS card. Just buy the correct one for your system. And wait for reviews

I don't have any Neo Geo system nor ever owned a Neo Geo system, that's why I am asking. I never picked a Neo Geo nor games due to the prices, but with this Multicart it definitly makes it seem worth it now, so I am asking to know which would be better to pick up AES or MVS?

[ASDR]

Impressive.

Anyone know what would be the differences in getting a Multi-MVS Cartridge vs a Multi-AES Cartridge? Better video/sound? Brighter/darker pictures?

They should perform identical. I don't think the multicard should have much influence on the sound & picture, except of course artifacts when its not working properly. Since there's no 100% perfect AES/MVS adapter, using one is discouraged. NeoSD had both MVS/AES versions available shortly, and it seems the same will be the case for the DS card. Just buy the correct one for your system. And wait for reviews

I don't have any Neo Geo system nor ever owned a Neo Geo system, that's why I am asking. I never picked a Neo Geo nor games due to the prices, but with this Multicart it definitly makes it seem worth it now, so I am asking to know which would be better to pick up AES or MVS?

Well you did ask about the cartridge, not the system In any case, that's a more complicated question unrelated to this thread.