RetroBlox : Another new Play-Everything "Retro" Console

[GaijinD]

Bleam didn't use a real PS BIOS but it was also custom written on a game by game basis, IIRC.

No, it was general purpose, though I don't remember how good the compatibility was. I want to say I had problems with some games, but it's been a long time.

You were probably thinking of Bleemcast, the Dreamcast version that did have multiple releases, each customized to a particular game. I had an actual PlayStation by that point, so I never tried any of them.

[SignOfZeta]

Bleamcast is really impressive. The kind of thing we take for granted nowadays, emulation of polygonal stuff massively upgraded in resolution and overall smoothness thanks to newer hardware. I have the MGS one. The disc has some of the most insane custom etching and weird copyright protection I've ever even.

What I meant regarding Bleam was that their BIOS was legal but bad and needed to be constantly fixed one game at a time to increase compatibility. This is what I vaguely remember.

I remember Neo Geo emulation being like that at some point.

My point is that if you can't use a real one and they aren't going to license the real one then we can look forward to "game compatibility" being in increased incrementally over subsequent releases and frankly that kind of shit is why I play old games in the first place.

Bleam didn't use a real PS BIOS but it was also custom written on a game by game basis, IIRC.

No, it was general purpose, though I don't remember how good the compatibility was. I want to say I had problems with some games, but it's been a long time.

You were probably thinking of Bleemcast, the Dreamcast version that did have multiple releases, each customized to a particular game. I had an actual PlayStation by that point, so I never tried any of them.

[GaijinD]

What I meant regarding Bleam was that their BIOS was legal but bad and needed to be constantly fixed one game at a time to increase compatibility. This is what I vaguely remember.

I remember Neo Geo emulation being like that at some point.

Ah, okay. I can't say I remember, but it's a general pattern for emulators, so you're probably right. The deciding factor today is probably how well documented the BIOS features are. With enough reverse engineering already done, it may be relatively easy to put together a working replacement. I'm pretty sure Bleem! was starting from scratch.

Since you mentioned it, now I'm remembering NeoRage taking a half-hour to load KoF '97, before it even had sound. I actually thought it didn't work, since it'd go to a black screen with no indication that it was doing anything. It wasn't until one day where I had to walk away from my computer and came back later to find the game running that I realized it just took a long time to start up.

[sirhcman]

[KnightWarrior]

You know people going to fund this right?

I really hope this blows up in there faces

[bob]

You know people going to fund this right?

I really hope this blows up in there faces

why?

[KnightWarrior]

There just cashing in the Retro-Hype

[esteban]

I will admit that I am much more interested in this project now.

I went from 100% skeptical ---> hmmm, this could be a good thing.

FLAWS:
I see the entire concept of pulling out and swapping modules as cumbersome. But, I think I might change my mind on this...

We need more details on SoC/emulation or whatever...

------

Obviously, the fact that the CD-ROM drive is in the base unit = awesome, since everyone will have access (not an upgrade).

However, I do worry about the build quality of the CD drive....hopefully it will remain reliable and functioning in a few years? To cut costs, using cheap mechanical components will be incredibly tempting for the design team.

[elmer]

5 weeks since this whole thing was announced, and the team has been very quiet for 4 of those weeks.

Does anyone else feel like the buzz and excitement that the RetroBlox guys generated in the first week has just been allowed to slowly drain away?

[NecroPhile]

Yeah, they need a lesson in hype.

Where's the cardboard pcbs?  Where's the pci dvr card stuffed in a clear shell?  C'mon, guys, get with the program! 

[SignOfZeta]

Personally, I have no interest in hype. I can't imagine why anyone who isn't making money off it would.

[elmer]

They are alive and kicking. Can't really say more than that but there should be an update soon.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions that the guys need to clear up.

I did a video chat with Bryan last month and he showed me the prototype playing a Keith Courage cart playing in the PCE element module. It could have been an elaborate rouse but I kind of doubt it.

A video like that would be really helpful to show.

They've *got* to show the thing playing cartridges, that's the main unique-selling-point of their technology.

Our PCE has one of the simpler cartridge interfaces around on consoles.

But showing that running will start to show the potential power of their system.

The thing that will *really* start to convince folks is going to be seeing some video of those hard-to-emulate SNES cartridges with co-processors.

And by that, I mean video clearly showing that the cartridge images haven't been preloaded onto the system.

If they can do that, then I expect that they'll easily get their crowdfunding.

[CrackTiger]

Don't you need a working prototype for kickstarter? If so, they'll have to include footage of it performing. They're probably working on their promo video right now.

[SignOfZeta]

A "working prototype" doesn't have to be a fully functional thing in practice or theory. If it kinda played Mario Bros it would satisfy that criteria.

I donated to the Kite Patch (mosquito repellent) project years and years ago and it's still not done because it's new medical technology and that needs major research and regulation to work.

They did send me a sample spray last year that works really well, still no patch.

Maybe these guys will send you a Gameboy in six years. That's kinda all a Kickstarter is supposed to be. I agree with the DoxPhile guy, the specter of VGS hangs over every similar project now and we are now asking as much of five man teams as we ask from Sony.

[Groover]

This seems like so much vaporware. This is a long way from reality. I hope it is great and comes out but I will wait until it is a real product for sale. Also it will choke more the sale of CD games.

[elmer]

Apart from some of the crazier members of the tinfoil-hat brigade, who are already spewing ill-thought-out random hate, most folks that I see are just skeptical, and are patiently waiting for more information.

a group of people demoing something they made well before asking for crowd funding for the manufacture of an actual product.

This is what the skeptics want ... some actual demos of what the team have put together, so that they can get some idea of how much has been done (promises-backed-by-verifiable-reality) and how much is still left to do (promises-backed-by-hopes-and-dreams).

Your peeps don't have to do much, except be open and honest ... which would seem like a good policy when you're going to be asking for people's money up-front.

Their silence for the last month doesn't give people a good impression, and doesn't make it look like they've got their act together and really do have a "manufacture ready" product.

Perhaps they do.

[Gypsy]

I think Elmer is spot on here. Most rational people are just taking a wait and see approach.

I certainly would never give them a dime of money before any product exists, but if it turns out to be a decent product capable of performing the job of multiple disc based systems, then that is appealing for a lot of reasons.

[Groover]

@Nulltard

I'm still not convinced but they don't have to convince me until it is out for sale. I'm just not going to get excited and I'm taking a wait and see approach.

[elmer]

Nulltard:

Your peeps really need to pay some attention to their forum.

Having someone post an "Is the Project Dead?" thread is bad enough, but having a guy post this in response is worse ...

2017-03-21 at 4:18 AM
Foefan
 
It's not dead. The team is currently under a legal embargo so they legally can not put out an update or even answer questions about the console. All they can say is that they are still working on it and that they are in a legal battle.

Legal battle??? RetroBlox is being sued???

That's not a good rumor for them to allow to spread ... unless it's true, of course.

[Gredler]

Legal battle??? RetroBlox is being sued???

That's not a good rumor for them to allow to spread ... unless it's true, of course.

I think the verbiage is confusing, and that random person posting that is not helping. There is a lot of back channel communication about their product.

*I think* they have a parent funding company, and I imagine they are NDA'ing the thing hard, which is what "legal embargo" *probably* means, and this person has worded it in a way that makes it sound litigious

[elmer]

The RetroBlox post last week just made it sound like they were in the middle of negotiating some deals, and were probably under NDA.

I suspected that this "foefan" guy just misinterpreted that.

He really should be corrected on the forum, even if the guys still don't want to say what is going on just yet.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if one of the many trademarked users of the word "blox" wanted to have a word with your guys. 

But I'm hoping that what they're really trying to do is to properly license things like the Playstation, Sega CD and PCE System Card BIOSes.

If they actually pulled that off, then the whole project would get a huge boost in credibility.

[Gredler]

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if one of the many trademarked users of the word "blox" wanted to have a word with your guys. 

[sirhcman]

damn those legal roadblox

[esteban]

XBlox.

[ClodBusted]

Polymega Wondermega Mega-CD Mega Drive Multi-Mega Megatech Mega-LD Mega Jet Mega PC Epic MegaGames

Mega.

Oh and by the way, that reddish-blonde on the left was in my class during high school. She has grown a pair of impressive boobs since then.

[LostFlunky]

It's happening!

http://polymega.com/2017/05/29/introducing-polymega/

Their logo tutorial reminded me of the opening credits of Wild At Heart: 

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/wild-at-heart/

(And Polymega is only one letter off of Polygram...)

Sorry to be critical, but I don't like the name...
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/wild-at-heart/

[NecroPhile]

It's kind of a dumb name, but no biggie.  It's just a name, and I doubt any Swedes will care about a game console.

I'm more interested in details on the actual product, but it looks like that ain't gonna happen until they ask for money.

[Mi5terDNA]

Admittedly, I hadn't thought about that... If this device is going to play ISOs as well that's all fine and dandy, but well, I don't know about you, but I already play both PCE CD ISOs and Sega CD ISOs on my Wii ;3

Also wii is only upscaling to 480p, this thing hopefully will upscale nicely to whatever tv you're using.

I do want to try to mod my wii, I recently got a broken one that was just dirty or something works fine for me, so I kinda want to try to mod it. Can you pm me links on how is the best way so I don't have to trudge through the shady corners of the world wide webs?

https://please.hackmii.com

You need the Wii's MAC address and an SD card, that website does all the bundling and downloading work for you.  After that you plug the SD card with the files on it into your Wii, open the 'letterbomb' in your messages, and follow the steps on screen.  Once that's good grab all the emulators you want from wiibrew and you're good to go!  A $4 Wii2HDMI adapter from AliExpress is a personal recommendation of mine if you're running on an HDTV and not a CRT though, cleaner 480p image than component in my experience.

[elmer]

Please note: This is a technical / educational post, so if you're looking for juicy new tidbits of info on the console itself – you'll need to wait until next week!

Wake me when they say something that is actually interesting.

[Gypsy]

Oh so no actual info just a bunch of bs and buzz words.

[SignOfZeta]

Please note: This is a technical / educational post, so if you're looking for juicy new tidbits of info on the console itself – you'll need to wait until next week!

Wake me when they say something that is actually interesting.

No shit! A massive screed about how to overthink a name is not much of an update.

[Dicer]

The classic "we have nothing but we need to give them something" update...

[NecroPhile]

"Just give us money.  We'll figure out the specs later!"

Sound familiar? 

[Gredler]

They've asked for money? How much are they asking? I am curious about this but would hope to hear specs before I heard the price haha

[NecroPhile]

They've not said much of anything, really.

But I should've been more clear in my previous post.  I meant it in response to your comment that "hopefully the technical info will be covered in such detail when it is released"; as in it's possible that they don't give technical details even when the kickstarter launches.  Considering the amount of hype and lack of substantive info. surrounding the project thus far (not unlike a certain chameleon), it wouldn't surprise me at all.

[elmer]

They've asked for money? How much are they asking? I am curious about this but would hope to hear specs before I heard the price haha

I've not seen them asking for money, yet.

I'm going to guess that the Kickstarter and pricing announcements will come during E3.

It'll be interesting to see if the basic hardware specs have changed since April ... I kinda doubt it, but maybe.

If not, then the comparison (for me) will be this ...

https://www.amazon.com/Tinker-board-RK3288-1-8GHz-Mali-T764/dp/B06VSBVQWS

$78 including case and power supply, from an internationally-known manufacturer.

Sure ... the RetroBlox POLYMEGA will offer an immediate out-of-the-box experience (if it ships), but it'll be basically the same ARM-emulation at the end of the day. And it will be DRM-protected, and not run ROMs.

[Gredler]

If not, then the comparison (for me) will be this ...

https://www.amazon.com/Tinker-board-RK3288-1-8GHz-Mali-T764/dp/B06VSBVQWS

$78 including case and power supply, from an internationally-known manufacturer.

Thanks for the link to that ASUS board, what OS can you put on that thing? I will start researching it, looks rad.

I love the ASUS products I've purchased elsewhere.

And it will be DRM-protected, and not run ROMs.

ew.

[NecroPhile]

It can run Roms from flash carts... They just won't have access to all of the big features like a physical cart would.

Wait.... what?  Are you saying it'll detect flash carts and gimp how they work compared to real hueys?

[Gredler]

I think I remember them mentioning something about backing up carts, adding manuals or labels or something based on the carts, or downloading cheats? I am getting more curious about it after hearing it will play flash carts, but will it load roms from SD cards?

[CrackTiger]

How can a "repro" console "elevate retro games to a new level" if it can't do everything that the consoles it's pretending to be can do?

You save much more space and time with a handful of consoles plus flashcarts than a single repro console and thousands of carts + hundreds of pricey repro carts required just to run any kind of fan translation or even the simplest of hacks.

Unless this thing retails for $50, I don't see what kind of market it could target other than casuals who don't plan on ever buying more than one or two games for any of the supported platforms. But that would still defeat the whole point of a device that lets you plug physical games into it.

[Gredler]

Still waiting to hear about online play, so I can get worked over by Arkhan and Dark Kobold at the same time.

Double team supreme

[elmer]

Thanks for the link to that ASUS board, what OS can you put on that thing? I will start researching it, looks rad.

It's the same CPU, running at the same speed, with the same ... everything really, as the original RetroBlox prototype that they showed. The huge difference is that it doesn't come with the cartridge slots and controller ports build into it.

Most folks can just buy cheap USB-to-whateverjoypad adapters if they care ... or someone could wire up the I/O pins on the Tinker Board and write a driver ... just like nulltard's peeps have done.

As for the OS, it runs a customized version of Debian linux if you need to use it's 4K HD video-playback hardware, or you can run a more-standard Debian distribution and run whatever you like on it, such as RetroArch and all of its emulators.

The RetroArch guys are working on adding support for it to their stand-alone Lakka operating-system-plus-emulators-and-do-everything-out-of-the-box ... but it's not there quite yet.

The point is ... it's open, it's supported, it's fixable, but you're actually going to have to read some web pages to get it working.

The POLYMEGA promises to be a closed-environment one-stop-shop solution for something that's basically-the-same-but-may-be-better.

We really don't know at this point.

You can probably tell from my language, which basic approach I personally prefer ... but that's not important.

The critical question (IMHO), is whether these guys can actually pull off what they promising. If so, then there are potentially a lot of people who would be happy with this.

[ClodBusted]

If I want to play original cartridges on my PC, I just plug in my Retrode cartridge reader in one of the USB ports. Reads SNES and Genesis right from the start as well as reads/writes SaveRAM, and has two ports for both SNES and Genesis controllers built in. With adaptors, I can even load GB, N64 and Master System cartridges, the N64 one features two N64 controller ports as well.

I know some people build prototype adaptors for Hucards and NES carts, and there's support for them in the Retrode firmware.

[GohanX]

They've asked for money? How much are they asking? I am curious about this but would hope to hear specs before I heard the price haha

I've not seen them asking for money, yet.

I'm going to guess that the Kickstarter and pricing announcements will come during E3.

It'll be interesting to see if the basic hardware specs have changed since April ... I kinda doubt it, but maybe.

If not, then the comparison (for me) will be this ...

https://www.amazon.com/Tinker-board-RK3288-1-8GHz-Mali-T764/dp/B06VSBVQWS

$78 including case and power supply, from an internationally-known manufacturer.

Sure ... the RetroBlox POLYMEGA will offer an immediate out-of-the-box experience (if it ships), but it'll be basically the same ARM-emulation at the end of the day. And it will be DRM-protected, and not run ROMs.

I'm now more interested in this Tinkerboard than the Polymega.

[Dicer]

So minus CD's the Retro-freak will continue to be the de-facto machine if you want an all-in-one games compatible device?

Seems that's the vibe I am getting anyway.

Once retro-poly-whatever went to secure proper bios'es and crap the drm was assured, and sorry but not being able to pop my current streamlined rom collection over with my legit hard owned copies all at once is big ass deal breaker for myself, and assuredly plenty of others.

Oh well, it sounded kinda neat, but as i have said all along, this was never gonna go very far.

I could still be proven wrong, but that opportunity is closing quickly.

[bob]

people seem to care way too much about this thing (one way or the other).
majors has a buddy that summed it up perfectly when we were talking about tobias shit, and it kind of applies here too.  "These arent being made for people who know anything about this stuff".

i mean, good for them if they make it and sell a few, but exerting any energy on reverse-engineering the insides of essentially nothing is a waste of time.  accusing them of stealing anything or how it compares to other knock off systems is pointless.  if you think its a dumb idea or want to feel like you "figured it out", then just move along.

[Dicer]

people seem to care way too much about this thing (one way or the other).
majors has a buddy that summed it up perfectly when we were talking about tobias shit, and it kind of applies here too.  "These arent being made for people who know anything about this stuff".

i mean, good for them if they make it and sell a few, but exerting any energy on reverse-engineering the insides of essentially nothing is a waste of time.  accusing them of stealing anything or how it compares to other knock off systems is pointless.  if you think its a dumb idea or want to feel like you "figured it out", then just move along.

Harboring the "only post if you have something good to say" mentality isn't good, at all...

We should be allowed to discuss/debate any topic that comes along, it is a discussion forum after all, if I was carefully curtailed thoughts and a have mind I'll apply for another NEOGAF account.

That said I didn't try to be negative about this product, I just say the direction it was taking a mile back and promptly pumped the brakes, there is a slim chance something good could still happen but I don't see it coming over the horizon.

[bob]

people seem to care way too much about this thing (one way or the other).
majors has a buddy that summed it up perfectly when we were talking about tobias shit, and it kind of applies here too.  "These arent being made for people who know anything about this stuff".

i mean, good for them if they make it and sell a few, but exerting any energy on reverse-engineering the insides of essentially nothing is a waste of time.  accusing them of stealing anything or how it compares to other knock off systems is pointless.  if you think its a dumb idea or want to feel like you "figured it out", then just move along.

Harboring the "only post if you have something good to say" mentality isn't good, at all...

We should be allowed to discuss/debate any topic that comes along, it is a discussion forum after all, if I was carefully curtailed thoughts and a have mind I'll apply for another NEOGAF account.

That said I didn't try to be negative about this product, I just say the direction it was taking a mile back and promptly pumped the brakes, there is a slim chance something good could still happen but I don't see it coming over the horizon.

ha, my response wasnt directed specifically at you.
i'm just sayin.
and its not a "post only if you have something good" angle i was going after.  im just surprised lots of people care this much about it.  its amusing how people have jumped all over what is essentially a concept with prototype.  at this point it doesnt really matter what the innards are since they prob arent final.

[Gredler]

Was fun to check out, worked really well from what we tried, still curious to learn more - but outlook is positive given what I was shown.

[rrob78]

Was fun to check out, worked really well from what we tried, still curious to learn more - but outlook is positive given what I was shown.

Same here, got to play some PC Engine Street Fighter II Turbo, little to no lag with the physical hucard in the system. I was impressed, was digging the crt & rgb filters.