Retro Gaming Thread

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Why not go out and buy a PS5, XSX, SWITCH and a couple of games for the same price as all the Dreamcast mods?

I would if two of those three were easily available at the store

For me, the modding scene is cool from a hobbyist perspective. I like watching videos that explain how these mods work, similar to shows about working on cars or homes. I can even excuse the exorbitant prices based on the fact that these projects like the N64 Digital are small productions.

But it's the scalping primarily that burns my britches. We can't do anything about that, but I can still be mad. And it's also the rat race to prove oneself as the ultimate retro gamer by spending ~$500 per system in mods and upgrades. At least upscale converters like the Retrotink are affordable in a relative sense.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

That's just the price of old Nintendo shit in Australia?

That might be a little bit incorrect.

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That's just the price of old Nintendo shit in Australia?

That might be a little bit incorrect.

So there's a slight markup for the HDMI kit

[Hawq]

I forget if some of these have been here already

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[Hawq]

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[Hawq]

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Here's a nice list to show how many WATA-graded, factory-sealed NES games there are out there on the U.S. market.

The replies on Twitter allude to an inflated market for these, so I think it's cool to see someone trying to quantify the market.



The interesting part is the list of games without any known graded copies

Baseball Simulator 1.000, The Black Bass, Bucky O’Hare, BurgerTime, California Games, Donkey Kong Jr., Dragon Warrior II, DuckTales 2, Dusty Diamond’s All-Star Softball, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off Road, Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, Magic Darts, Ring King, Roundball: 2 on 2 Challenge, Rush n’ Attack, S.C.A.T.: Special Cybernetic Attack Team, Skate or Die 2!: The Search for Double Trouble.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Some extra WATA news.

[darc]

I looked at all the mods people do to make a Dreamcast good... Why not go out and buy a PS5, XSX, SWITCH and a couple of games for the same price as all the Dreamcast mods?

"all the Dreamcast mods" don't cost nearly as much as any of those unless you're a youtuber trying to make a shocking clickbait thumbnail ("all the NES modz for $3 gazillion WHOA CLICK") or you're using ebay (=huge markup for this hobby).
I have no interest in XSX or PS5 and couldn't even name a single exclusive title for either one Love my Switch though and my PC

And people seriously go out and pay $300 for a GameCube component cable when you can get a Wii with component cable for $50? And it does it better?

The Wii doesn't do it better though, the GameCube has better video output. Also, plenty of people use the GameCube to play real GBA hardware on a CRT with the low latency GameBoy Player homebrew frontend GBI, which the Wii doesn't have

But modding a 64 for HDMI is particularly stupid, they still look like ass, and it's still the second worst aging Nintendo console after the Virtual boy.

The HDMI mod can override the N64's internal blur filter, making it look a lot clearer on some titles, not to mention it implements its own filters that can enhance the image. It also does full upscaling/processing of the HDMI signal as much as as any full-featured scaler does, and does dual simultaneous video output for streamers.

I have all of the above mods on my consoles, except I purchase the kits at retail price and install them myself. So my expense is like $150 or so, not $900.
When new mod kits come out I also buy multiples of kits and lots of broken junk consoles before they sell high, fix em up and mod them, and make a profit while keeping one for myself.
I'm not doing scalping though, not only do the mod creators track that, but anything that's possible to scalp you really can't get more than 1 anyway and I've gotta have one for myself But for like the XStation, I bought 10 PSXs with broken drives and 10 XStation boards and made a decent profit
I would never argue that everyone should own these kits, but those of us who use these kits have our reasons. For everyone else, emulation is free and like 90% as good as the real thing

[darc]

For me, the modding scene is cool from a hobbyist perspective. I like watching videos that explain how these mods work, similar to shows about working on cars or homes. I can even excuse the exorbitant prices based on the fact that these projects like the N64 Digital are small productions.

That's the thing for me, I probably spend way more time doing the modding than I do playing them if I'm being realistic. Just like car dudes spend way more time working on their cars than driving them around But soldering, as tedious as it can be, can be fun for me

But it's the scalping primarily that burns my britches. We can't do anything about that, but I can still be mad. And it's also the rat race to prove oneself as the ultimate retro gamer by spending ~$500 per system in mods and upgrades. At least upscale converters like the Retrotink are affordable in a relative sense.

Yea, the scalping is insane. The FPGA shortage is hitting this hobby hard, esp. when small time mod makers are competing with car manufacturers for FPGA allotment
Some mods like PS1Digital might not have another manufacturing run for another year+ due to the fact that the FPGAs used are basically completely gone

Speaking of Retrotink though, I have the RetroTink 5X Pro that came out a couple months ago and that thing outputs very closely to the HDMI mods (as long as your console already has RGB...), it's pretty incredible.

[pixel]

With the mod market craziness, I focused my time on cheaper IPS screen mods for Game Boys. I've been collecting handhelds for the past year, and really discovered that I like portable gaming much more than consoles. I'd recommend the AGB-001 mods to anyone, the original GBA was so easy to work with especially compared to the DS or Game Boy Color.

I do have consoles that could use some mods, so maybe if prices cool down, I'll get my U.S. Saturn and Dreamcast consoles back up and running.

PC-based emulation is more than good enough for me, especially with a 240hz monitor with black-frame insertion. And I'm in no shortage of games to play with just all the GBA/DS/3DS games that I never finished. Most nights I end up playing picross anyway

I'm just excited to see when FPGA supply meets demand to see what kinds of crazy ideas people come up with. Seeing a MiSTer core for the Saturn is a little mind-blowing, so building an FPGA setup is on my list for the future.

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Some extra WATA news.

Watching right now, it's obvious that Karl only wants to stamp out the free market of dodgy collectable auctions!

But honestly, I'm at the section of the video that outlines how these fraudsters bought a game database website in order to control market data. These fuckers suck.

[Hawq]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[darc]

With the mod market craziness, I focused my time on cheaper IPS screen mods for Game Boys. I've been collecting handhelds for the past year, and really discovered that I like portable gaming much more than consoles. I'd recommend the AGB-001 mods to anyone, the original GBA was so easy to work with especially compared to the DS or Game Boy Color.

I do have consoles that could use some mods, so maybe if prices cool down, I'll get my U.S. Saturn and Dreamcast consoles back up and running.

The replacement screens are one of the few mods I haven't really explored. I am at home most of the time so I don't have much of a use for portables (I always play my Switch docked, for example). I did try to fix a dead GameGear recently that I wanted to upgrade the hell out of, unfortunately unsuccessful in the repair after a recap and clean I couldn't figure out why it won't power on.

PC-based emulation is more than good enough for me, especially with a 240hz monitor with black-frame insertion. And I'm in no shortage of games to play with just all the GBA/DS/3DS games that I never finished. Most nights I end up playing picross anyway

I'm just excited to see when FPGA supply meets demand to see what kinds of crazy ideas people come up with. Seeing a MiSTer core for the Saturn is a little mind-blowing, so building an FPGA setup is on my list for the future.

I've barely used emulation on PC in the last 10 years tbh, just stick to FPGA and real hardware for the most part. My wife and I are both gamers, in our living room I have an big HDMI switcher setup with a MiSTer, RetroTINK5X-Pro, DCDigital, PS1Digital, PS2 (component fed into RT5X), Saturn (RGB fed into RT5X), N64Digital, GameCube HDMI, Wii U, docked Switch, and an NVIDIA Shield box I use for gamestreaming PC games from my 3080 Ti in my office workstation's gaming VM. So anything 8-bit/16-bit or portables I pretty much stick to the MiSTer (I do have a lot of that real hardware but it's hooked up to an RGB CRT in our garage), 32-bit era onward I use real modded hardware, and for modern games I do the Switch/PC combo. I pretty much have little interest in PS3/PS5/PS5 and 360/XB1/XSX although my wife owns a lot of that hardware and has some of it hooked up in her office.

It's an amazing time to be a gamer

[melancholy]

I've barely used emulation on PC in the last 10 years tbh

Me too, with one gigantic exception: I will only play GameCube and Wii games on Dolphin because it’s just so damn good. Everything else predating PS3/360 era, though, is either on a mini console or on the original hardware with an Everdrive. I dabbled with a RetroPie but ended up never using it. I also tried to make a handheld retro system with a Surface Go and a telescopic controller, but once again I never used it. I’m just past the days of jacking with game settings for 30 minutes just to play a ROM of something I’ll likely only play for 10 minutes. I just want to flip a switch, choose the game and go.

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Here's a weird one, a Mega Man NES port to SNES?



https://hackinformer.com/2021/08/25/meg ... u-1-audio/

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As a sucker for Capcom's arranged music albums and Mega Man IV, this is a pretty neat trick. It was the only one I bought for the NES (at a video rental store clearance no less), so I'm one of the dozens of people that prefer it to the other. Not as good as II and III, but more charm than V and VI.

I'm still a big fan of Skull Man