Gaming has apparently left me behind because this looks totally stupid to me. I do like a lot of these games, I have logged hundreds of hours on Astro City cabs, and arcade gaming from that time is very special to me but...it’s a tiny cab you play on a TV with USB sticks? WTF, why? Does it have a pencil sharpener built into it too? Is there a clip on the back so I can wear it on my belt? At least the price is good...and so far most of the games on the list aren’t super lag sensitive. If it’s one of the surprise games VF2 would be very hard to get right and nobody would be happy with VF3.

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Posted by SignOfZeta on July 10, 2020 at 22:26:06 EST in reply to Sega's "Astro City Mini"--well, it's sort of almost portable : p--will have Virtua Fighter. Also 35 other games, only 9 others of which have been named, but I'm kinda pretty much tempted to import the darn thing (end of the year-ish...but then international shipping is taking 2 months apparently in these covid times blah) just to have a good version of Virtua Fighter...if the emulation actually turns out well. from Paleface.

Gaming has apparently left me behind because this looks totally stupid to me. I do like a lot of these games, I have logged hundreds of hours on Astro City cabs, and arcade gaming from that time is very special to me but...it’s a tiny cab you play on a TV with USB sticks? WTF, why? Does it have a pencil sharpener built into it too? Is there a clip on the back so I can wear it on my belt? At least the price is good...and so far most of the games on the list aren’t super lag sensitive. If it’s one of the surprise games VF2 would be very hard to get right and nobody would be happy with VF3.

They make a big deal out of it supposedly being made out of the same FRP or fiberglass or whatever it is...like it was some exotic hardwood or nickel plated brass. 2020 is fucked.

I'm gonna get it because dark edge and revenge of death adder are on it and I think these are the only official consumer releases of those games - and if that's what they're putting in the first 10 games, I imagine there'll be some real weird stuff in the remaining 26. Also I want to play it with this dumb controller they made.

(exodus)

(22:15:45 07/11/20 EST)

That controller image is a design mock-up and not necessarily what the final will be. I'm definitely interested in trying Dark Edge!

(Paleface)

(23:08:08 07/11/20 EST)

That is a cool controller.

(SignOfZeta)

(12:30:00 07/13/20 EST)

well I hope it looks like that!

(exodus)

(19:17:10 07/14/20 EST)

One of their designers said this (Google Translate) about what they're going for in the controller*: 'That 's right. I think fans are probably the most familiar with MegaDrive pads, so I'll try to make reliable original parts and make good original ones. For games such as "Virtua Fighter", we want to make it easy to enter commands accurately and full of SEGA love, so please look forward to this as well, including the design.' (* sold separately : p)

(Paleface)

(12:33:50 07/15/20 EST)

Sure the tiny screen and controls are silly, but if you aren't into them you can just ignore them and it's simply another of these retro console things. VF2 has a super-good port already on PS3. Despite owning the DC version back in the day, I don't know much about VF3--why do you say nobody would be happy with it? As far as I'm aware, the DC port is the only one and was considered a bad port, so I'd think there'd be at least *some* interest in a good one. (I wouldn't because it's got a stage with flashing lights, but that's just me and my dumb eyes.) I'd be surprised if they go for anything higher horsepower than the (30 fps in the arcade) Virtua Fighter 1, though.

(Paleface)

(23:14:52 07/11/20 EST)

I’m not %100 convinced that there is a way to overcome the lag issue that every modern thing has. That’s fine for Devil May Cry or Bomberman but for VF3...we’ll see I guess.

(SignOfZeta)

(12:32:22 07/13/20 EST)

Well, there are lag-free fighting game ports on PS3 and PC, at least. I don't know of any particular reason why there couldn't be on PS4, either--but I do know Capcom and SNK have farmed out recent ports to others, who perhaps weren't quite up to it. I would still be surprised if this Mini had anything as high horsepower as VF3 though.

(Paleface)

(18:38:11 07/13/20 EST)

If a game was analog SD, or slightly more than SD in the case of VF3, the game is tuned as a package. The PCB, the display, the controllers. Anything new has to go through HDMI land. If it’s a new game it’s tuned in HDMI, the console and the arcade are no different. I don’t think it’s possible to port VF3 to anything without at least a frame of lag and on most people’s setups it will be more like 4. For the casual fan that’s fine but for hardcore Akira players it’s quite likely a deal breaker. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Even with MVS the difference between analog CRT and literally any other display is noticeable. My least laggy HDMI display still lags. My laggiest is just unbearable.

(SignOfZeta)

(19:14:38 07/14/20 EST)

I have a pretty cheap, by now rather old HDMI monitor and its latency is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 ms--that's 3 milliseconds, not 3 frames. It has some silly mode that does add about a frame but I turned it off. Nowadays 3ms is a dinosaur, companies are marketing 1ms displays all over the place.

(Paleface)

(12:30:07 07/15/20 EST)

It’s not just the display though. There are often bottlenecks in these little single chip things that apparently no amount of coding or expertise can ever overcome. The PCE Mini, for example. You have to be able to emulate the original system, pole the controllers, render the video and the sound...all in sync, and send that to your 1ms display. In the 90s we saw what was on the screen sooner and reacted to it similarly. Now you have to self buffer all your moves and play safer.

(SignOfZeta)

(21:22:34 07/16/20 EST)

Well yeah, so hopefully they take care to get it right.

(Paleface)

(22:02:09 07/17/20 EST)

So far, maybe they are. There's a soundless video they're running as a mock-up screen through their official site, and it starts off with VF--but even though the YouTube video is 720p60, the VF part is actually only updating at 30fps--matching the original arcade framerate, as far as the internet tells me.

(Paleface)

(16:40:36 07/18/20 EST)

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