Analogue announces the Super Nt for $189 (SNES)

[Einzelherz]

I'm kinda interested in this. The price is a bit high compared to the original, but you get what you pay for.

I don't understand why the emulation vs. FPGA debate persists; if this is just reimplementing (a good guess at) the original SNES logic, your input lag should be pretty similar to the original console.

Likewise comparing legal reverse-engineering to outright piracy is strange. The value of producing an unreleased SNES cartridge is there, but it's not legal. The Super Nt appears both legal and valuable to the community.

How is selling copied hardware code different from selling copied software code?

[orange808]

How is selling copied hardware code different from selling copied software code?

https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5 ... 493444e034

[bobrocks95]

To be clear since it isn't that much effort to type it out- it's reverse-engineered, not copied. Same as a software emulator, as orange is pointing out.

I wonder though- if it were based on 1:1 scans of a decapped chip, and copied it exactly instead of just copying the behavior, would that cause problems? Nintendo's chips are proprietary, so what are the copyrights on hardware at that level?

[FBX]

Because I had to:

[BONKERS]

I think saying SD2SNES is popular only because of that is very misleading. Convenience and game translations are huge factors too.

As far as SNES is concerned, availability is scarce and prices are through the roof.

If it was just about "translations" anybody could pay a 100 or 200 bucks or more to get one of these Clocktower, Bahamut Lagoon, FF IV/V/VI, Dragon Quest IV/V/VI releases from TimeWalk Games, FishyFace Games, Rose Colored Gaming and so on.

Some people might not want to support pirates.

You'd rather support people over inflating the value of games that the developers would see no money from anyway?
What's the difference between them and a pirate? No money goes to the people who made it as it stands.

Game collecting has gotten to unreasonable levels, and it's all because someone thought their game that they valued emotionally was worth whatever price they randomly came up with, and then someone actually paid that price. And then others saw that, and decided to do the same and the circle jerk continues to rise continuously. SNES games scarce? Certainly it's only because of hoarding collectors holding out for more money. I'm not saying games shouldn't have some value, but many have simply gone far too off the deep end over the years.
(I only regret selling all the games I did when I was younger, not because of the value. But because they are so damn expensive to reacquire. )

And it's because of this that bootleg copies trying to be passed off as legit have come to exist. Easy way to dupe people for easy money, and for some it's more feasible to just cave in and buy a bootleg instead of paying an obscene price for a legit copy.

Some boots make it obvious they aren't trying to replace the original, some are really high quality and are a decent way to get a physical copy of a game you want.

I reshelled and relabled a super ugly looking Dracula X bootleg for exactly this reason. https://abload.de/img/img_20171026_004853covbsqk.jpg
What does suck is, there are people trying to pass boots off as legit ones. And i've tried to report these to ebay but they don't give a shit.

[Wolf_]

Considering that snes consoles are no longer sold I'm confused how anyone could think the Super Nt "supports pirates" or that it is possible to pirate a snes console. As the game carts are also no longer generating revenue for the developers even a jailbroken (if it gets a jailbreak) Super Nt wouldn't cost the developers any money. In fact, exposing people to games they otherwise couldn't afford might encourage them to pick up versions of those games via the virtual store or talk about them to other people that might buy them which would actually increase the revenue the developers would receive.

Even if you are concerned about the cancerous collectors market the Super Nt has a cartridge port and is currently only confirmed to play games (Other than the bundled game) via cart. By making snes tech available to more people and with higher quality that can only increase the desire for people to want to own the games they like. Also lets be honest, people that don't want to spend any money are not going to buy a $190 cycle accurate 1080p native hdmi version of a snes when they can download an emulator that is "good enough" most of the time.

So I can't picture any way the Super Nt would create more pirates or result in the developers of the games seeing less money.

[Elrinth]

Does the Satellaview work with it? *trollface*

On a more serious note. I saw Super Turrican Director's Cut + ST2 is being included on the device. This just made me actually want and desire the Super NT.
I'm just curious, everyone says it's the same internal hardware as the Analogue NT and they said that device can't handle 16 bit consoles.
So why can this one? Is it really the same internal hardware, if not, what is the difference which makes all this possible? Wat is da specs?

Also, is it possible we'll get simulated expansion chips if the device get a jailbroke hardware?

[Wolf_]

Does the Satellaview work with it? *trollface*

On a more serious note. I saw Super Turrican Director's Cut + ST2 is being included on the device. This just made me actually want and desire the Super NT.
I'm just curious, everyone says it's the same hardware as the Analogue NT and they said that device can't handle 16 bit consoles.
So why can this one?

Also, is it possible we'll get simulated expansion chips if the device get a jailbroke hardware?

It is mostly the same hardware, naturally a lot of it didn't need to be changed. What did change is that the console now uses the Cyclone A4 fpga chip which is considerably more powerful than the fpga used in the mini. Replicating a snes would not take the full power of this chip so if the console gets a jailbreak (odds look incredibly good because it is made by Analogue & Kevtris and it is playing the 2 included games digitally) then replicating the fx chips could be possible.

[Elrinth]

As it states the original Analogue NT Mini also uses Cyclone V. I'm assuming it's a A2 since I can't see any specs for any other model?
Going by: https://www.altera.com/content/dam/alte ... _51001.pdf

Well we need to know the exact chip because just say A4 doesn't mean anything.
We need to know which sort of Cyclone V it is.
Seems to be different models beneath the Cyclone V like: Cyclone V E, Cyclone V SE, Cyclone V GT, etc. And they all have different capabilities.

However it also says: "Single- or dual-core" which is hard to tell.

So I'm assuming the memory amount is that which allows for the SNES?

[ZellSF]

I think people might be slightly misreading my posts.

I'm saying there are people who want this for fan translations, without having to pay money to pirates. There's a huge difference between paying for piracy and doing it yourself.

And no I don't think replicating hardware is piracy in the same way replicating software is.

Of course there's some fuzzy lines here, but I don't see it as weird that someone would choose to get this for fan translations and not cost reasons, some people might see repros as a non-option because of moral or legal reasons.

[bobrocks95]

You can flash your own SNES repros if you want to.
http://www.infiniteneslives.com/snessupplies.php

[CobraKing]

Game collecting has gotten to unreasonable levels, and it's all because someone thought their game that they valued emotionally was worth whatever price they randomly came up with, and then someone actually paid that price. And then others saw that, and decided to do the same and the circle jerk continues to rise continuously. SNES games scarce? Certainly it's only because of hoarding collectors holding out for more money. I'm not saying games shouldn't have some value, but many have simply gone far too off the deep end over the years.
(I only regret selling all the games I did when I was younger, not because of the value. But because they are so damn expensive to reacquire. )

Agreed on this. There are people on forums/sub-forums on Reddit posting their 'gaming rooms' or 'game setups' stacked with hundreds of games they've never played just so that they can get e-props or e-fame. There are also the professional resellers who watch for the latest fads/trends and then start grabbing everything. Retro gaming is trending upward unfortunately and prices could get worse for games.

[FinalBaton]

People are very agressive these days when it comes to making a buck via reselling
Just look at the NES mini and SNES mini scalping, same with Amiibos, etc

[bigbadboaz]

Agreed on this. There are people on forums/sub-forums on Reddit posting their 'gaming rooms' or 'game setups' stacked with hundreds of games they've never played just so that they can get e-props or e-fame.

Of course rising prices suck. But I really don't understand the outrage over a growing collector scene. This is a common part of life, in every reasonably-sized hobby. Nolstalgia grows, aging fans have rising incomes, items only get scarcer. Prices rise. It's both normal and inevitable. Vilifying the people who choose to participate within the gaming hobby makes little sense.

What else is a collector going to with his trove than display it with pride? It's the belief that these items are special that leads to a collection in the first place.. it's also simply what collectors DO. There's no need to draw the negative - possibly incorrect - inference that it's about "fame" or that the items aren't properly appreciated.

[Windfish]

So wait, we're not even sure that this game supports the Super FX Chip? How can people commit to a preorder without knowing this? Seems really sketchy - games like Yoshi's Island, Star Fox, etc. are hallmarks for the system.

[Guspaz]

Huh? What game? The Super Nt supports games that use the Super FX just fine. It's not a ROM-dumping console, it's a full FPGA-based hardware clone. It'll work with any cartridge you plug in.

[Windfish]

Oh, I see - I misunderstood. I thought the hardware was going to have trouble reading Super FX games. My bad.

Has there been any news, though, on the possibility of the Super NT having games boot from SD?

[Guspaz]

Only a "no comment" from Kevtris. If there is going to be a jailbreak, they won't say anything before the console ships, since they obviously wouldn't want the ability to play pirated roms to be a selling point before the thing is released.

[Windfish]

Shame. I hope they add the functionality.

Will they have enough to ship out to everyone who preorders, I wonder?

[DirkSwizzler]

While it would definitely make customers happy. Releasing a unit as jailbreakable as the nt mini for half the price seems like a bad long term business plan.

So I hope they do as well, but I’m only getting my hopes up for an excellent Super Nintendo implementation.

[bobrocks95]

While it would definitely make customers happy. Releasing a unit as jailbreakable as the nt mini for half the price seems like a bad long term business plan.

So I hope they do as well, but I’m only getting my hopes up for an excellent Super Nintendo implementation.

I think we were saying the same thing earlier in the thread and everyone shot us down, certain that it would be jailbreakable because their last console (the $500 one) was. I'm not holding my breath.

[Wolf_]

While it would definitely make customers happy. Releasing a unit as jailbreakable as the nt mini for half the price seems like a bad long term business plan.

So I hope they do as well, but I’m only getting my hopes up for an excellent Super Nintendo implementation.

Their last console was was $500. At $180 this breaks into a range where a ton more people can afford it. Sure if they sold under $5,000 units total or however many the nt mini sold that wouldn't be so hot but you're not factoring in that this is within $100 of the retron5's price and this is the best experience you can get and the retron5 is a flaming dumpster fire, yet it still sells tons. They might make less per unit but the margin multiplied by the crap ton of extra units it is going to move is going to be cash money baby.

Also adding cores doesn't add anything to the hardware/production costs except for Kevtris's salary so to turn down a major selling feature like that when they have next to nothing to lose is the equivalent of taking that huge pile of money from the Dark Knight and lighting it on fire because you do things for the lulz.

Don't get me wrong the jailbreak isn't confirmed but to not do it would be horrible business sense.

[bobrocks95]

While it would definitely make customers happy. Releasing a unit as jailbreakable as the nt mini for half the price seems like a bad long term business plan.

So I hope they do as well, but I’m only getting my hopes up for an excellent Super Nintendo implementation.

Their last console was was $500. At $180 this breaks into a range where a ton more people can afford it. Sure if they sold under $5,000 units total or however many the nt mini sold that wouldn't be so hot but you're not factoring in that this is within $100 of the retron5's price and this is the best experience you can get and the retron5 is a flaming dumpster fire, yet it still sells tons. They might make less per unit but the margin multiplied by the crap ton of extra units it is going to move is going to be cash money baby.

Also adding cores doesn't add anything to the hardware/production costs except for Kevtris's salary so to turn down a major selling feature like that when they have next to nothing to lose is the equivalent of taking that huge pile of money from the Dark Knight and lighting it on fire because you do things for the lulz.

Don't get me wrong the jailbreak isn't confirmed but to not do it would be horrible business sense.

What they would lose with a jailbreak is the ability to sell you the Mega NT next year for the same price. And the Turbo NT the year after that. It makes infinitely more business sense to not allow the jailbreak.

[Wolf_]

While it would definitely make customers happy. Releasing a unit as jailbreakable as the nt mini for half the price seems like a bad long term business plan.

So I hope they do as well, but I’m only getting my hopes up for an excellent Super Nintendo implementation.

Their last console was was $500. At $180 this breaks into a range where a ton more people can afford it. Sure if they sold under $5,000 units total or however many the nt mini sold that wouldn't be so hot but you're not factoring in that this is within $100 of the retron5's price and this is the best experience you can get and the retron5 is a flaming dumpster fire, yet it still sells tons. They might make less per unit but the margin multiplied by the crap ton of extra units it is going to move is going to be cash money baby.

Also adding cores doesn't add anything to the hardware/production costs except for Kevtris's salary so to turn down a major selling feature like that when they have next to nothing to lose is the equivalent of taking that huge pile of money from the Dark Knight and lighting it on fire because you do things for the lulz.

Don't get me wrong the jailbreak isn't confirmed but to not do it would be horrible business sense.

What they would lose with a jailbreak is the ability to sell you the Mega NT next year for the same price. And the Turbo NT the year after that. It makes infinitely more business sense to not allow the jailbreak.

No it does not because people wouldn't stand for that. I would certainly swear off analogue forever and I'm sure many others would be outraged with me. Also there is nothing saying they can't release the variants with jailbreaks and still have people buy them to get their favorite theme. They would simply need to sell well enough to cover the cost of having the molds made for the new shell and everything would be fine.

And you can sell a lot more consoles selling 1 that does everything than selling 3 that do a part because then people could easily decide not to buy the ones they are less interested in, and if they are only interested in 1 console and it costs $180 then that price becomes unjustified to a lot of people. Not to mention they would lose all the good pr they have built up with the nt mini and its jailbreak.

Obvious cash grabs are not good for company relations, just look at how EA is doing right now.

[bobrocks95]

Their last console was was $500. At $180 this breaks into a range where a ton more people can afford it. Sure if they sold under $5,000 units total or however many the nt mini sold that wouldn't be so hot but you're not factoring in that this is within $100 of the retron5's price and this is the best experience you can get and the retron5 is a flaming dumpster fire, yet it still sells tons. They might make less per unit but the margin multiplied by the crap ton of extra units it is going to move is going to be cash money baby.

Also adding cores doesn't add anything to the hardware/production costs except for Kevtris's salary so to turn down a major selling feature like that when they have next to nothing to lose is the equivalent of taking that huge pile of money from the Dark Knight and lighting it on fire because you do things for the lulz.

Don't get me wrong the jailbreak isn't confirmed but to not do it would be horrible business sense.

What they would lose with a jailbreak is the ability to sell you the Mega NT next year for the same price. And the Turbo NT the year after that. It makes infinitely more business sense to not allow the jailbreak.

No it does not because people wouldn't stand for that. I would certainly swear off analogue forever and I'm sure many others would be outraged with me. Also there is nothing saying they can't release the variants with jailbreaks and still have people buy them to get their favorite theme. They would simply need to sell well enough to cover the cost of having the molds made for the new shell and everything would be fine.

And you can sell a lot more consoles selling 1 that does everything than selling 3 that do a part because then people could easily decide not to buy the ones they are less interested in, and if they are only interested in 1 console and it costs $180 then that price becomes unjustified to a lot of people. Not to mention they would lose all the good pr they have built up with the nt mini and its jailbreak.

Obvious cash grabs are not good for company relations, just look at how EA is doing right now.

You forget that we're an incredibly small niche and most people have no idea about any kind of jailbreak. They don't advertise the console as a general 16-bit emulation machine, they advertise it as a SNES clone. There is almost zero PR gained off of a feature they don't/can't advertise.

[Wolf_]

What they would lose with a jailbreak is the ability to sell you the Mega NT next year for the same price. And the Turbo NT the year after that. It makes infinitely more business sense to not allow the jailbreak.

No it does not because people wouldn't stand for that. I would certainly swear off analogue forever and I'm sure many others would be outraged with me. Also there is nothing saying they can't release the variants with jailbreaks and still have people buy them to get their favorite theme. They would simply need to sell well enough to cover the cost of having the molds made for the new shell and everything would be fine.

And you can sell a lot more consoles selling 1 that does everything than selling 3 that do a part because then people could easily decide not to buy the ones they are less interested in, and if they are only interested in 1 console and it costs $180 then that price becomes unjustified to a lot of people. Not to mention they would lose all the good pr they have built up with the nt mini and its jailbreak.

Obvious cash grabs are not good for company relations, just look at how EA is doing right now.

You forget that we're an incredibly small niche and most people have no idea about any kind of jailbreak. They don't advertise the console as a general 16-bit emulation machine, they advertise it as a SNES clone. There is almost zero PR gained off of a feature they don't/can't advertise.

That is totally incorrect. The entire reason the nt mini sold as much as it did is because of the jailbreak. No one buys a $500 aluminum nes for hdmi when they could get a modded hdmi nes for $300 cheaper.

How do you think someone hears about this console? Someone tells them. And if someone knows about the console they know about the jailbreak. Just look at literally every youtube video ever made on the thing (aka where 99.9% of the word of mouth on this thing comes from).

No cores, no sale.

[Lawfer]

No it does not because people wouldn't stand for that. I would certainly swear off analogue forever and I'm sure many others would be outraged with me.

[bobrocks95]

No it does not because people wouldn't stand for that. I would certainly swear off analogue forever and I'm sure many others would be outraged with me. Also there is nothing saying they can't release the variants with jailbreaks and still have people buy them to get their favorite theme. They would simply need to sell well enough to cover the cost of having the molds made for the new shell and everything would be fine.

And you can sell a lot more consoles selling 1 that does everything than selling 3 that do a part because then people could easily decide not to buy the ones they are less interested in, and if they are only interested in 1 console and it costs $180 then that price becomes unjustified to a lot of people. Not to mention they would lose all the good pr they have built up with the nt mini and its jailbreak.

Obvious cash grabs are not good for company relations, just look at how EA is doing right now.

You forget that we're an incredibly small niche and most people have no idea about any kind of jailbreak. They don't advertise the console as a general 16-bit emulation machine, they advertise it as a SNES clone. There is almost zero PR gained off of a feature they don't/can't advertise.

That is totally incorrect. The entire reason the nt mini sold as much as it did is because of the jailbreak. No one buys a $500 aluminum nes for hdmi when they could get a modded hdmi nes for $300 cheaper.

How do you think someone hears about this console? Someone tells them. And if someone knows about the console they know about the jailbreak. Just look at literally every youtube video ever made on the thing (aka where 99.9% of the word of mouth on this thing comes from).

No cores, no sale.

https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/16/1648 ... o-analogue
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/16/sorry ... -nintendo/
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker ... ce-release
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/ ... -acronyms/
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/1 ... -order_now
http://mashable.com/2017/10/17/snes-sup ... w7QvsIrOqz
https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/16/ana ... s-console/
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017- ... t-unveiled
http://time.com/4981296/super-nt-release-date-preview/

Every single one of these is from a mainstream news/tech website, pulled from the first 2 pages of Google search results. If you think the popularity of this is from word-of-mouth and jailbroken cores you're delusional.

[Wolf_]

You forget that we're an incredibly small niche and most people have no idea about any kind of jailbreak. They don't advertise the console as a general 16-bit emulation machine, they advertise it as a SNES clone. There is almost zero PR gained off of a feature they don't/can't advertise.

That is totally incorrect. The entire reason the nt mini sold as much as it did is because of the jailbreak. No one buys a $500 aluminum nes for hdmi when they could get a modded hdmi nes for $300 cheaper.

How do you think someone hears about this console? Someone tells them. And if someone knows about the console they know about the jailbreak. Just look at literally every youtube video ever made on the thing (aka where 99.9% of the word of mouth on this thing comes from).

No cores, no sale.

https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/16/1648 ... o-analogue
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/16/sorry ... -nintendo/
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker ... ce-release
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/ ... -acronyms/
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/1 ... -order_now
http://mashable.com/2017/10/17/snes-sup ... w7QvsIrOqz
https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/16/ana ... s-console/
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017- ... t-unveiled
http://time.com/4981296/super-nt-release-date-preview/

Every single one of these is from a mainstream news/tech website, pulled from the first 2 pages of Google search results. If you think the popularity of this is from word-of-mouth and jailbroken cores you're delusional.

Yea, because people read the news. Compare the traffic those articles got with the views youtube got (and remember that if people saw one and were interested enough to research it they probably looked it up on youtube at some point) and I rest my case. Now lets look at the top youtube vids: 83,000 views, 110,000 views, 56,000 views. Compared against the 5,000 units they sold... yea the cores single handedly saved that overpriced trainwreck.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... ge+nt+mini

Analogue has a choice to be an excellent company or some money grubbing scumbags and I don't believe they would pick the latter.

[DirkSwizzler]

The entire reason the nt mini sold as much as it did is because of the jailbreak.

And it’s still for sale. Why sell 1 console when you can upsell 2 for 3x the price to people just jumping back into retro gaming.

How do you think someone hears about this console? Someone tells them. And if someone knows about the console they know about the jailbreak.

There are plenty of news outlets that talked about it. With the jailbreak either not mentioned or as an “added bonus”. Not a promised feature. They never promised a jailbreak would work for either one. It’s impossible for it to be a cash grab if they don’t provide a feature they never promised or advertised.

No cores, no sale.

Did you preorder one?

At the end of the day. Without a jailbreak it’s still an amazing device at a good value.

I don’t think anyone is assuming this is their last retro product. We all assume they will make other high quality clones, right?

I’m assuming that they haven’t completed other 16bit console cores. And the only way to find them is to sell more product to the same audience.

So, in my mind it either won’t ever be allowed to simulate other 16bit consoles. Or it will be allowed to and there will be no funding to implement them.

I guess it’s possible they could allow 8bit console simulation on all their future products. As long as they can still keep selling the next one each time.

But it still seems like a better plan to not even hint that it can simulate other consoles. “It’s just a really good snes” is such a simpler PR message.