RetroGaming

19446 readers

153 users here now

Vintage gaming community.

Rules:

Be kind.
No spam or soliciting for money.
No racism or other bigotry allowed.
Obviously nothing illegal.

If you see these please report them.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Analogue 3D: FPGA-Based N64 Available For Pre-Order On October 21 (www.retronews.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I’m still very curious what consumer segment ends up picking this up. It’s $250, and I would assume you can just get an actually N64 for like $30, no?

Sure, but you're not factoring in all of the price factors that come associated with playing that on a new TV or complicated AV system. This comes with HDMI output built in, and will have scalers and other amenities for QoL usage in 2024. The sad truth is that it's actually pretty expensive to have an AV setup that is designed to handle old consoles, especially with how TVs have not properly supported lower-res content for a long time.

Fact of the matter is some of the best scalers with low latency that you can buy are nearly $2k US, and even the cheaper or more budget options are more expensive than the $250 price tag that this targets (the OSSC, for example). I wish this wasn't the case, but the Analogue 3D and equivalent reimplementations are actually super important for people who are still interested on playing the closest to "real hardware" in 2024.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Again, the comparison or value to the specific group isn't what's factoring in to my question. To HOW MANY people they can sell this to and make it worth it in the end for the company is whay I'm curious about. Even globally, I don't imagine there are THAT many people with a physical collection of N64 games that don't already have the console and are otherwise looking to replace it. Thats why I'm saying the crowd to market to must be incredibly specific.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

This Analogue group is very specialized in high-end, non-emulated resurrections of old consoles. They're known for their passion & product quality, and also a shitty website UI. In my opinion. It sucks. Can't be good at everything, I guess, and you struggling on their website isn't their problem.

So as you noted, they're charging enough for their product...and quite often when they do a limited run release (especially on a brand new console), they sell out within minutes. Sometimes they'll do a restock, much later, if they feel like it.

I also don't want to get anyone in trouble, buuuuuut it is heavily implied that while their hardware doesn't involve emulation of any kind, there may or may not be physical cartridge emulators that can run ROMs of all kinds of games. Legal & not so legal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯