Retroblox game console

[Jaguarandine]

I was wondering what you guys think of this new proposed console?

www.retroblox.com


Pretty renders and rhetoric aside, this seems like an ambitious product compared to some of the others that have been out there. Also, it uses the same SoC as the GPD XD, which is pretty powerful. Though, IMO if they were really doing something different, we'd see something similar to better Sega Saturn or Atari Jaguar emulation. They seem to just be sticking to the consoles that have already well-established emulators. "Hybrid emulation", LOL. Also, their fear of Nintendo is strange considering many of these other companies have been left alone.

 

[Kippykip]

Reminds me of a Retron 5 but on steroids.

 

[Agricola]

All of these emulation consoles (Retron5, NES Classic etc.) are closed off for no reason, my computer can do the same with a Retrode. And I can even adjust the emulators more to my liking.

The only one of these consoles I was kind of excited for is ED's RetroPi.

 

[levi]

Guys, don't take the mickey - they're doing High Level Emulation at a low level!

 

[rygD]

All of these emulation consoles (Retron5, NES Classic etc.) are closed off for no reason, my computer can do the same with a Retrode. And I can even adjust the emulators more to my liking.

The only one of these consoles I was kind of excited for is ED's RetroPi.

And that is the computer and Retrode combination you were talking about, just in one nice little package.

 

[levi]

To be complete though, you will need to buy extra blocks for each of NES, SNES and Megadrive though. But to be fair to them, they will apparently ship it with support for MegaCD, PC Engine CDROM^2 and Playstation out of the box.

And further, retrode adaptors do seem to have dried up recently, so you'll need another way to rip your 2600 and virtual boy carts.

 

[Ian J]

Yaaawn, move along nothing to see here.

EDIT:

What happened to the other CD/DVD based console that would let you use your own discs?

It was a crowd funded project but I can't remember the name of it.

 

[levi]

They might have written their own emulators, but it seems a pretty strange thing to do to me when there are all those free cycle-exact emulators out there for these older systems, freely available and yours to fork if you want to add a skin or a loader or something.

 

[Ian J]

It was called indieGO! and it turned out to not live up to its hype. First, it required a BIOS for many systems in order to even work at all (even for PS1, where HLE bios is available)
and the exclusive game for it, Projekt Lila, is awful.

That's the one.

So they have shipped then, I haven't seen a single review of it.

They might have written their own emulators, but it seems a pretty strange thing to do to me when there are all those free cycle-exact emulators out there for these older systems, freely available and yours to fork if you want to add a skin or a loader or something.

Exactly, I really don't see why people get so excited about these emulator based systems when the emulators are available on practically every platform with enough horse power.

 

[Jaguarandine]

That's the one.

Exactly, I really don't see why people get so excited about these emulator based systems when the emulators are available on practically every platform with enough horse power.

I think people are looking for a super-easy, expansive emulation system where they can turn it on, load the game, and it just works. To date, no system like that has been created. That's why people keep throwing their money at stuff like this on Kickstarter. Personally, I don't think this perfect emulation solution for novices ever will exist. There are too many licensing and liability hurdles to ever combine things into a pre-installed and ready box.

Efforts like the GP2X, Pandora, RetroArch, etc., have really pushed things forward, but still remain outside of the mainstream due complexity and familiarity. Meanwhile the NES Classic makes millions and goes for hundreds on eBay. Retroblox, in my opinion, is the next big attempt. Unless there is some Caleco Chameleon-like controversy, I fully expect their Kickstarter campaign to be funded. Whether or not they can deliver remains to be seen. I think not, but I would be happy to be wrong.

 

[levi]

Ironically, I suspect the NES classic is currently going for silly money largely because it has been hacked, and it turns out comes with enough storage for all NES games ever. The NES doesn't have any sort of BIOS, and the video I saw about hacking the NES classic does look harder than just dropping a few .nes files on an SD card, but I guess the NES classic is quite cute hardware.

 

[Ian J]

I never owned a NES but did fall for the classic, I wanted one until they went out of stock and I'm now over it.

However if they did a PC Engine classic I'd be all over it like a rash, even though I can emulate the games already.

I think people are looking for a super-easy, expansive emulation system where they can turn it on, load the game, and it just works.

I presume that's why I see so many "Fully Loaded" devices for sale. Grrrrrrrr

 

[Ian J]

At 1:21, we can clearly see him booting up the USA Sega CD Bios.
So either Sega licensed them the BIOS (unlikely), or they are working on an HLE bios (never has been done before for Sega CD)
or they lied to me.

Can you ask them re this on their forum.

 

[PowerGod]

I think people are looking for a super-easy, expansive emulation system where they can turn it on, load the game, and it just works. To date, no system like that has been created.

I had a try with emulationstation + retroarch, and I found the combination pretty impressive !! While using retroarch cores I'm able to select/start/play/change controls/save/etc../exit emulation without even touching the keyboard, I can do everything with just the gamepad !!

Setting up the thing for home consoles required like 5 minutes !!
The only "difficult" thing, if you want to call it like this, was to edit the emulationstation config file to setup the paths of roms and emu cores... but after that, I was able to set everything with just the gamepad, and every home-console just worked without issues !!
(Also, if you only use retroarch as main interface you don't even need to use a text editor to set the paths of roms, you can use the gamepad)

MAME/Arcade things remains anyway a little tricky, because of the different control patterns and different mame versions, but excluding those, I think we have a pretty big step forward toward making emulation things easy

 

[Ian J]

Looks like the Retroblox is now called Polymega.

POLYMEGA, the Modular Retro Entertainment System Getting Ready For Pre-Order Launch

Their own site must be getting hammered as it's a bit sluggish:

http://polymega.com

 

[ingoreis]

It look nice but what is with Playstation-2 Emulation?

Playstation 2 is "Retro" for me too.

 

[levi]

It's slightly surprising to me they're not even targetting wii or gamecube emulation with that thing. Gamecube might well be tricky because of the mini discs needing special slot load drives (though if they used a lid like all of the retro disc based machines then it wouldn't be a problem). Actually it's probably just the difficulty of reading the discs in all of these cases. While gamecube, Wii and PS2 discs are all DVD based there's enough of a difference to make it difficult to rip them, and ditto Dreamcast CD-based discs. PS1 games are just CDs painted black, and SegaCD, PCEngineCD are just plain silver CDs.

 

[WizardStan]

There's two problems with Gamecube emulation from disk:
1) They're backwards. Data is written to them from the outside in. Normal disks are written inside out, so most hardware literally cannot read the disk: they start looking at the "start", see empty space, and return a disk-empty failure. Some hardware can read them, and they might be able to find ad use such a drive, but...
2) They're encrypted. The decryption key is on the disk as a silver barcode; the Gamecube's drive literally read the barcode and did decryption on the fly. Unless the disk drive they use also has such a barcode reader and decryption system they would have to get very clever.
I highly doubt such a drive exists for average users, or for anyone at all anymore these days. That's not to say they won't find such a clever way as they can do it all in software eventually, but the task is monumental compared to "insert disk, read data, emulate" that they probably don't want to promise (or even hint at) anything.

 

[levi]

Yeah, it why I bought a cheap second hand gen-1 wii, homebrew hacked it, and used gxloader to rip all of my discs which are now in the loft. I'm still looking for a solution to rip my Dreamcast games though.

Although I do wish I could chop the garbage off the end of my gamecube isos to make them similarly sized to the isos you can download if your so inclined. Ones you make yourself are always the full size of the disc, meaning I can only fit so many on the 32GB uSD card currently in an adaptor into the USB port of my Wii.

 

[haanuman]

Why do I have the feeling that this is a pass for me.