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[cinnamonandgravy]

was going to get both colors, but pussed out at the last second and only got the white one.

 

[dave_d]

But whats the point without any way to buy new games and the second hand market is going to shit?

Of course the second hand market going crazy makes me wonder if at some point will my old Genesis/SNES/N64 collection be worth so much that they can fund my retirement

 

[ReBurn]

Anyone else surprised that pre order are still going? Usually stocks are done in minutes am I right?

I'm not surprised. This thing is expensive for what it is considering what's in the box compared to what you can buy a real N64 for.

 

[AngelMuffin]

I'm not surprised. This thing is expensive for what it is considering what's in the box compared to what you can buy a real N64 for.

People buy HDMI modded N64s for $400…

 

[Ceadeus]

People buy HDMI modded N64s for $400…

Are you kidding me, jeez

 

[Ceadeus]

I'm not surprised. This thing is expensive for what it is considering what's in the box compared to what you can buy a real N64 for.

I found it not that expensive, I mean there are no similar FPGA N64 on the market right now?

 

[AngelMuffin]

Are you kidding me, jeez

I think they me be a little less now, like closer to $300 but yeah, they do. Of course, the Analogue does more than just output HDMI, especially considering the benefits that jailbreaking it will bring. I also love the design and finish of this console. I don’t own anymore Analaogie consoles now that I have a MISTer but I think I’m gonna pull the trigger on this one.

 

[nkarafo]

However, I still think FPGA provides benefits over software emulation.

Oh yes, there are plenty of benefits. I mentioned them a few posts above.

Most important, IMO, is the efficiency. Meaning how the FPGA can reach the same level of accuracy as a software emulator on a general CPU but with a far less powerful and cheaper chip that consumes much less power.

Of course, software emulators have their own benefits too, something Analogue will never tell you about

Or at least, not to the degree of overhead you'd have with software emulators on a Windows system. So depending on the system being emulated and cost you'd need for an FPGA equivalent, I suppose that you'd save money with an FPGA approach if the hardware required to emulate the system through software costs a lot to power through the OS & resources overhead on PC.

OS overhead is a thing but it's not the emulators fault. There's no lag in the emulator itself if programmed properly. In theory, one could create a "bootable" emulator that doesn't need an OS. But since nobody is asking for something like this and probably won't happen sure, we can add lower latency to the FPGA's benefits since it comes as a standard.

One thing to note, if you have a powerful enough CPU, there are other ways to improve latency and even surpass FPGAs or the original consoles. You can even "fix" the native input lag each game has, inherently. There are two methods, one is called "run ahead" and the other "pre-emptive frames". I can't explain how they work because it's fairly complicated. But it's a way to improve latency in software emulators by taking advantage of the excess power of the CPU (they are pretty demanding tasks so you won't see them in cheap devices). I'm not sure if that's possible on a FPGA but i don't think any FPGA has this currently. Of course fixing input lag this way isn't considered an accurate method, nor it is available for all consoles, but it works wonders when it does work and the experience beats even the real console on a CRT TV.

You can literally make the SNES Mortal Kombat games playable this way . Even Super Mario World has at least 2 frames of inherent lag on a real SNES, despite being a high quality 60fps first party game, but you can easily shave them off with software emulation (RetroArch supports both methods in many of it's cores) and reach almost perfect response, with whatever lag there's left from the gamepad and monitor.

Also yes, overall an FPGA is the cheaper and more efficient way to emulate games VS a mid-range PC. However, this benefit applies to more demanding to emulated systems. You don't need a powerful, big case PC to emulate the SNES as accurately as the Analogue NT. Any mini PC can run bsnes and do the same job, or better, with similar efficiency and low power draw. As the emulated systems get more demanding, say Saturn and N64, the efficiency of the FPGA is more noticeable since these systems require way more powerful CPUs (and even GPUs in the case of N64) for accurate software emulation.

 

[Ceadeus]

I think they me be a little less now, like closer to $300 but yeah, they do. Of course, the Analogue does more than just output HDMI, especially considering the benefits that jailbreaking it will bring. I also love the design and finish of this console. I don’t own anymore Analaogie consoles now that I have a MISTer but I think I’m gonna pull the trigger on this one.

I also can't wait it looks stunning!

I have a jailbroken pocket and it's been pretty much perfect to me. I hope the 3D to be as good. What is MISTer, is it a DIY?

 

[ahtlas7]

Damn! That’s a sexy looking machine.

 

[Moses85]

Still available for preorder?

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Of course the second hand market going crazy makes me wonder if at some point will my old Genesis/SNES/N64 collection be worth so much that they can fund my retirement

Personally I don't think so. I have been collecting for years and have lost money on my collection 3 years in a row (since the end of covid).

I keep telling myself to hold on to my stuff but really that is just wishful thinking. Then someone asked me how many 8tracks, cassette tapes, and Beta/VHS tapes I personally own and I looked at them an laughed "I don't want to go through the hassle of hooking that stuff up and it would all sound awful it it even worked, I digitized my music/movie collection years ago!" they replied "Exactly!".

If I could dump my entire collection right now I would but even the brokers/mid to large lot purchasers have dried up.
Probably everyone here knows this...but video games are not an investment strategy. Only keep the stuff that is important to you, dump everything else.

 

[DoubleClutch]

Personally I don't think so. I have been collecting for years and have lost money on my collection 3 years in a row (since the end of covid).

I keep telling myself to hold on to my stuff but really that is just wishful thinking. Then someone asked me how many 8tracks, cassette tapes, and Beta/VHS tapes I personally own and I looked at them an laughed "I don't want to go through the hassle of hooking that stuff up and it would all sound awful it it even worked, I digitized my music/movie collection years ago!" they replied "Exactly!".

If I could dump my entire collection right now I would but even the brokers/mid to large lot purchasers have dried up.
Probably everyone here knows this...but video games are not an investment strategy. Only keep the stuff that is important to you, dump everything else.

Sounds like something a collector would say to get everybody else to dump their collection.

It’s a crapshoot either way. Nobody knows what the future will value. It might be total junk to future generations.

Collecting should primarily be a hobby if you are doing it. There’s no certainty you’ll make money from it.

 

[nkarafo]

Probably everyone here knows this...but video games are not an investment strategy. Only keep the stuff that is important to you, dump everything else.

Yeah i don't know. I could dump my boxed copies of Mortal Kombat 3 and Ristar on the Game Gear decades ago since i never cared about the Game Gear games i have. But i needed money and sold them a few days ago for 400 euros.

And that was not the only case. I managed to finance almost the entirety of my previous and current PC build, by just selling old stuff i had and never used.

I agree that you maybe shouldn't buy games as a later investment. But don't dump games you already have. You never know how valuable some stuff may be. Even something as seemingly useless as a cardboard box may worth a ton of money because it happens to be a part of a rare bundle.

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Collecting should primarily be a hobby if you are doing it. There’s no certainty you’ll make money from it.

Yeah I totally agree here! Also, not trying to grift anyone out of their collection...just sharing personal experience from the perspective of someone that has poor impulse control.

agree that you maybe shouldn't buy games as a later investment. But don't dump games you already have. You never know how valuable some stuff may be. Even something as seemingly useless as a cardboard box may worth a ton of money because it happens to be a part of a rare bundle.

You can def make cash on one off items for sure but I was referring to a large collection. Once I had all the things that I didn't have as a kid I didn't stop collecting. That lead me to where I am now with multiple rooms in my house full of stuff no one would ever want. I.E. I have 15 game gears....no one will ever want those

 

[AngelMuffin]

I also can't wait it looks stunning!

I have a jailbroken pocket and it's been pretty much perfect to me. I hope the 3D to be as good. What is MISTer, is it a DIY?

It’s an open source FPGA system that you can DIY or buy complete. It can run everything right now up to PS1/Saturn/N64 along with a few hundred arcade boards at the moment.

 

[dave_d]

Yeah i don't know. I could dump my boxed copies of Mortal Kombat 3 and Ristar on the Game Gear decades ago since i never cared about the Game Gear games i have. But i needed money and sold them a few days ago for 400 euros.

And that was not the only case. I managed to finance almost the entirety of my previous and current PC build, by just selling old stuff i had and never used.

I agree that you maybe shouldn't buy games as a later investment. But don't dump games you already have. You never know how valuable some stuff may be. Even something as seemingly useless as a cardboard box may worth a ton of money because it happens to be a part of a rare bundle.

That's pretty much my attitude. The reason I have a collection in the first place is I bought games over the years and I just kept them since I either liked the game or I didn't need the money and didn't put in the effort. However as you say you never know what might be worth money. I know I've mentioned this before but I once owned Spiderman Web of Fire because I needed the money and how much could it ever be worth? The game was terrible and it was for the 32X. (Yeah, I can't bring myself to go up on pricecharting to see how much it's worth now.)

 

[digital_ghost]

Finally i can play superman 64 in all its 4k glory.

 

[Quasicat]

I waited until my last student left my classroom to get my preorder in and they’ve already sold out of the white. Oh well. I’m sure they will have a restock of this in 2025 and I’ll try again at that point.

 

[Ulysses 31]

Black controller in stock but they don't ship to Europe!

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Oh yes, there are plenty of benefits. I mentioned them a few posts above.

Most important, IMO, is the efficiency. Meaning how the FPGA can reach the same level of accuracy as a software emulator on a general CPU but with a far less powerful and cheaper chip that consumes much less power.

Of course, software emulators have their own benefits too, something Analogue will never tell you about

Well the biggest advantage of software emulation IMO is theoretically unlimited scalability. So with the right hardware setup, you can blitz well beyond what the original hardware could ever do. We see that with PCSX2 and RPCS3 today (and compatibility's been improved a lot with both).

OS overhead is a thing but it's not the emulators fault. There's no lag in the emulator itself if programmed properly. In theory, one could create a "bootable" emulator that doesn't need an OS. But since nobody is asking for something like this and probably won't happen sure, we can add lower latency to the FPGA's benefits since it comes as a standard.

Right, I was mentioning the OS overhead part as that being on the OS, not really a fault of the emulator's. The emu makers can't control what OS overhead will look like. I kinda like the idea of a bootable emulator though. Maybe could have a home with Pi-based devices.

One thing to note, if you have a powerful enough CPU, there are other ways to improve latency and even surpass FPGAs or the original consoles. You can even "fix" the native input lag each game has, inherently. There are two methods, one is called "run ahead" and the other "pre-emptive frames". I can't explain how they work because it's fairly complicated. But it's a way to improve latency in software emulators by taking advantage of the excess power of the CPU (they are pretty demanding tasks so you won't see them in cheap devices). I'm not sure if that's possible on a FPGA but i don't think any FPGA has this currently. Of course fixing input lag this way isn't considered an accurate method, nor it is available for all consoles, but it works wonders when it does work and the experience beats even the real console on a CRT TV.

You can literally make the SNES Mortal Kombat games playable this way . Even Super Mario World has at least 2 frames of inherent lag on a real SNES, despite being a high quality 60fps first party game, but you can easily shave them off with software emulation (RetroArch supports both methods in many of it's cores) and reach almost perfect response, with whatever lag there's left from the gamepad and monitor.

Yeah I've heard of this before, but never really looked too deeply into it as a concept. It seems like a way of brute forcing better input latency and tons of games benefit from it. But there's a downside to it if the game is very cycle-dependent. IIRC, a lot of DOS games are cycle-dependent so if you run them either via emulation or compatibility layer on CPUs magnitudes faster than what they're expecting, the game logic processes too fast and the game becomes unplayable.

There are very easy ways to get around that with modern hardware but I'm supposing back during say the mid '90s when DOS was still at thing but Windows was starting to take over, the solutions were a bit more involved, like going into the BIOS and downclocking the CPU speed.

Also yes, overall an FPGA is the cheaper and more efficient way to emulate games VS a mid-range PC. However, this benefit applies to more demanding to emulated systems. You don't need a powerful, big case PC to emulate the SNES as accurately as the Analogue NT. Any mini PC can run bsnes and do the same job, or better, with similar efficiency and low power draw. As the emulated systems get more demanding, say Saturn and N64, the efficiency of the FPGA is more noticeable since these systems require way more powerful CPUs (and even GPUs in the case of N64) for accurate software emulation.

True. For anything pre-PS2 console-wise I'd say a decent mid-range or even lower-range PC you can get refurbished for a couple hundred bucks off eBay would be more than adequate for emulation today. Even a super-old 2005 IBM Thinkcenter I had way back could run SSF pretty well, as long as there wasn't a bunch of other tasks running simultaneously. But I wasn't running SSF on it back in 2005; that came years later.

So it's probably the fact the emulators themselves have gotten better with compatibility and lower resource requirements why cheaper hardware can run those earlier systems (and I guess, most DOS-era games) pretty well, at least without using 4K upscaling hacks and such. For stuff like PS2 or especially PS3 you'd probably need a better mid-range system to run them at acceptable (i.e like the original hardware, but cleaner image with modern display) levels.

I'm really curious how affordably an FPGA-based PS2 or PS3 could go for compared to the original systems and compared to the kind of PC you'd need to emulate them at reasonable levels, vs. the kind of PC you'd need to run them at the enhanced levels an FPGA equivalent could. Like I get the general pricing trend would look like: original hardware >> FPGA (original hardware) > PC (original hardware) >> FPGA (enhanced level) >/>> PC (enhanced level).

But more curious what the gaps in cost would look like from a hard numbers POV.

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

controller looks like its gone through that "interpreted for modern audiences" stuff

is that a GCN analog stick? AB button placement looks off. Z as a shoulder trigger?
and im probably 1 of 13 people who care about this, but doubt the rumble has been faithfully reproduced (location/center of gravity/overall performance)

 

[Matchew]

I don't know. The controller looks pretty nice to me. Wish the buttons had color, but other than that looks great.

 

[Arsic]

I fully expect Nintendo to shut this down soon enough.

 

[nkarafo]

Yeah I've heard of this before, but never really looked too deeply into it as a concept. It seems like a way of brute forcing better input latency and tons of games benefit from it. But there's a downside to it if the game is very cycle-dependent. IIRC, a lot of DOS games are cycle-dependent so if you run them either via emulation or compatibility layer on CPUs magnitudes faster than what they're expecting, the game logic processes too fast and the game becomes unplayable.

There are very easy ways to get around that with modern hardware but I'm supposing back during say the mid '90s when DOS was still at thing but Windows was starting to take over, the solutions were a bit more involved, like going into the BIOS and downclocking the CPU speed.

Runahead isn't related to the issue of DOS games running at the wrong speeds. This is only an issue if you try to run these games natively, on a faster PC than what they expect. In emulation (such as DOSBox) you can always control how many cycles you want for each game. However, i'm not sure if runahead is available in RetroArch when the DOSBOX core is loaded. RunAhead uses save states in some way in order to function so the cores need to have some certain standards regarding that. It's usually not available in complex systems but on anything 8/16bit i use it all the time and it's great.

I'm really curious how affordably an FPGA-based PS2 or PS3 could go for compared to the original systems and compared to the kind of PC you'd need to emulate them at reasonable levels, vs. the kind of PC you'd need to run them at the enhanced levels an FPGA equivalent could.

Well, the PS2 isn't that demanding these days (to emulate it at reasonable levels), i mean i could run almost all games full speed on my 11 year old 4th gen i5. Even in software mode i could manage full or 90% of the speed. You could build something like that for less than 200$.

PS3 is a different beast.

Now a cycle-accurate PS2 emulator though? Yeah, i don't think that's possible with current CPU technology. Even the N64 would probably push beyond the fastest current CPU if it was at the same level of cycle accuracy as the bsnes. So cycle-accuracy isn't really a thing beyond the 16bit consoles. But AFAIK, an emulator doesn't need to be "cycle accurate" to be faithful and 100% compatible without bugs.

And FPGAs also get more expensive the bigger they get. Meaning the emulated system has to "fit" inside the FPGA or the FPGA must have enough logic gates for it. I know the N64 pushes the limits of the FPGA Mister uses down to the very last gate. AFAIK, Analogue uses a different, better one. But for something to the level of PS2 or PS3 these FPGA chips may be too expensive even for the enthusiasts.

 

[jshackles]

On one hand, I've got about 50 N64 game still, all packaged up in nice rental-type cases.

On the other hand, I've already ripped them all and play them with emulation, which I consider still to be superior simply because RetroAchievements are available for a lot of these games.

Also, the white console is now sold out - as are the black controllers. I'm not sure if my OCD will let me order a black console and a white controller.

 

[ReBurn]

People buy HDMI modded N64s for $400…

People also buy a $120 N64 and a $30 Hyperkin 3-in-1 HD cable and play just fine.

 

[Banjo64]

Works with the N64 wireless pad that Nintendo sell today I read.

 

[marquimvfs]

They don't send to Brazil, unfortunately.

 

[AngelMuffin]

People also buy a $120 N64 and a $30 Hyperkin 3-in-1 HD cable and play just fine.

Yeah, if they’re happy with that they’re not the target audience for this. To each their own.

 

[Ulysses 31]

People also buy a $120 N64 and a $30 Hyperkin 3-in-1 HD cable and play just fine.

I wouldn't have settled with that kind of quality. Which is why I got a RetroTink 4K that made big improvements to the picture quality.

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

all packaged up in nice rental-type cases.

This man is spitting facts right now...bought some of his nes lot a few years back and those cases are ON POINT

 

[Matchew]

Wait. Where do you get those cases?

 

[Ceadeus]

I fully expect Nintendo to shut this down soon enough.

they've been selling FPGA consoles for years.

 

[jzbadblood]

I've got my original N64 hooked up with AV cables and an Everdrive X5. This is a tempting upgrade for game nights.

 

[lakitu1982]

controller looks like its gone through that "interpreted for modern audiences" stuff

is that a GCN analog stick? AB button placement looks off. Z as a shoulder trigger?
and im probably 1 of 13 people who care about this, but doubt the rumble has been faithfully reproduced (location/center of gravity/overall performance)

I care about the authenticity of the rumble! that thing was unique to the N64. No chance it's anything like the original. I'll be using my original pad with rumble

 

[SEGAvangelist]

Just watched the VGEsoterica video on this. Looks awesome. I probably won't pick it up, but hearing they're interested in a Saturn one has me hyped as all hell. Specs look good too.

 

[DeVeAn]

Too expensive. Really, the limited nonsense and fomo crap they pull is a damn shame. Super NT and Mega were better priced even though they don't come with a controller.

 

[Ozzie666]

I find myself more excited for this then PS5 Pro. I am disappointed in lack of DAC support, that product has been a bit of a let down. DAC was great for The Mega and Super consoles, but no Duo or Dock support has been terrible. That's my beef with Analogue, they move on and don't support previous products well. I also wish they would either release a new NES Noir system, I might even stupidly bite on re-released consoles with built in 4K support.
But fromy my understanding RetroTink 4K if you can afford them and an Oled is the way to go if your looking to retire CRT's and move on.

I've decided to go with NSO N64 controllers, I believe they will conntect via the Analogue 3d with no dongle, I do have one of those retroblue or is it blueretro adapaters though. I want a black 8bit do n64 controller, but had to settle for white. Nice to have a back up, also sitll N64 controllers in excellent shape and barely used. Looking forward to playing some classics.