Posted by SignOfZeta on October 19, 2019 at 09:42:45 EST in reply to ha ha I was all set to explain it to you but then this "explain it to me" comment made me think you could just google it. Well, I'll do it anyway. FPGA supports the recreation of hardware on a modern chip. Essentially it's a chip that can almost completely accurately mimic the processes of existing older hardware by scanning everything in those chips layer by layer (literally, you should look it up, I've seen the scans). This means when you slot in a game gear game it will have the same exact slow down, the same exact sound glitches, and behave exactly as you would expect a game gear to behave, except on modern hardware that won't fail as easily, with a backlight that works, and with the ability to slot into a dock to play on your tv properly up-resed. It's not software emulation of the hardware, it's hardware mimicry down to the absolute metal of it. I don't love the form factor myself, but they're targeting the most popular Nintendo consoles primarily so it makes sense. Anyway there are not things like this every month, this is only the third FPGA-based console out basically ever I believe, and all of them were by this company (analogue), who are not nobodies, and are in fact the pioneers in the field and make really solid consumer hardware - $200 is much cheaper than I thought it'd be even, it's only that cheap because the price of chips has recently declined. most of your kneejerk reaction up there is aimed at things that are not actually relevant in this case! (n/t) from exodus.
Hmmm, nope. I already knew pretty much all of that. I don’t think I misunderstood anything. I for sure know what an FPGA is, I for sure know Analogue, the French company that put MVS boards in wood boxes and sold them for crazy money, right? If the Left button breaks on every one of these things because it isn’t perfected yet I don’t know that they’ll be able to fix it like Nintendo or Sony would. I don’t think I misunderstand that. Regardless of “commitment” they are a garage company. This being $200 means they got sweatshop capital and aren’t even present for the construction of these things, totally outsourced. I’m not telling you to not have fun with it, I’m just saying that I’m pre-bored of it already due to a constant wave of retro Frankenstein bullshit that frankly just looks like unimaginative pirate junk give some sheen of legitimacy just because at the moment there isn’t anything obviously better to do.
It’s GTO from Two Lane Blacktop, basically. Smells too good, takes credit from others.
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