21st June 2019, 9:16 PM
Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, really the only interesting things about Polymega are the fact that it plays real game cartridges, though this requires not-cheap addons to an already expensive emulation box, and that as a result it'd surely let you do things like back up saves on game carts for those supported cart-based platforms. Other than that, yeah, I have a PC, and there are better ways than an expensive box to play those games emulated on a television.
This brings up a slightly related issue, though -- very powerful addon chips for new games on classic platforms. Like, a lot of recent Atari 2600 homebrew games use powerful chips in the cart to go far, far beyond the capabilities of an actual 2600. Galaga 2600 looks amazing! ... because it uses a chip that'd be totally, completely impossible in the '80s. You can play Super Mario World on NES, the SNES version! ... with a cart that basically uses a powerful modern chip (often a Rasberry Pi or such, in these classic-modern things) to throw the SNES game on to the NES's visual output. How 'legitimate' a classic-system game is it when you're basically completely cheating like this? Sure, developers are still limited by some restrictions from the original hardware, in video display output limitations and such, as you can see in that NES Super Mario World video if you look it up, but these are not "real" classic games, on in a "could this have existed on the system then" sense. I kind of think of this as the classic-system counterpart for games like Shovel Knight that take inspiration from classic-console games (in that case the NES), but do not stick to classic limitations, like how Shovel Knight has parallax scrolling, more colors, etc. I think that I'd say these people are not making "real" classic games.
Some other uses of Pis and such make more sense, such as the Dreamcast accessory that uses a Pi to make a multiplayer modem server emulator that can get you playing a bunch of online Dreamcast games again, against other people with the setup. That is doing something not otherwise possible anymore, but it's just emulating something which existed then, not making up some new thing that could never have existed on the original format. This light-gun emulation gun is in the second category, and like DC online preservation is pretty cool.
My main position here is, as I've said before I know, I understand being frustrated by the limitations of classic platforms, but isn't dealing with those limitations the whole point of making a thing for a real classic console, and not a Shovel Knight or such?
This brings up a slightly related issue, though -- very powerful addon chips for new games on classic platforms. Like, a lot of recent Atari 2600 homebrew games use powerful chips in the cart to go far, far beyond the capabilities of an actual 2600. Galaga 2600 looks amazing! ... because it uses a chip that'd be totally, completely impossible in the '80s. You can play Super Mario World on NES, the SNES version! ... with a cart that basically uses a powerful modern chip (often a Rasberry Pi or such, in these classic-modern things) to throw the SNES game on to the NES's visual output. How 'legitimate' a classic-system game is it when you're basically completely cheating like this? Sure, developers are still limited by some restrictions from the original hardware, in video display output limitations and such, as you can see in that NES Super Mario World video if you look it up, but these are not "real" classic games, on in a "could this have existed on the system then" sense. I kind of think of this as the classic-system counterpart for games like Shovel Knight that take inspiration from classic-console games (in that case the NES), but do not stick to classic limitations, like how Shovel Knight has parallax scrolling, more colors, etc. I think that I'd say these people are not making "real" classic games.
Some other uses of Pis and such make more sense, such as the Dreamcast accessory that uses a Pi to make a multiplayer modem server emulator that can get you playing a bunch of online Dreamcast games again, against other people with the setup. That is doing something not otherwise possible anymore, but it's just emulating something which existed then, not making up some new thing that could never have existed on the original format. This light-gun emulation gun is in the second category, and like DC online preservation is pretty cool.
My main position here is, as I've said before I know, I understand being frustrated by the limitations of classic platforms, but isn't dealing with those limitations the whole point of making a thing for a real classic console, and not a Shovel Knight or such?
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