Retro games and emulation - Discuss retro shit in case you're stuck in the past or a hipster

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myrientnotice.jpg
Myrient, likely the best ROM site around with its ~390TB worth of content (almost all No-Intro, Redump, TOSEC sets, MAME software lists, Total DOS collection, DLC, patches and other useful stuff kept up-to-date and conveniently centralised in one place), will be shut down on 31 March 2026 due to the maintainer's inability to cover the rising monetary costs of running the site in the face of dwindling donations, hereby bringing us back into the era of scrambling for games in fragmented manner across dozens of websites, some stuff may even become permanently lost and not available anymore. This is like the burning of the Library of Alexandria, for the emulated games instead of books. Download what you consider important and participate into this Myrient back-up project to contribute as a data hoarder with a lot of archival storage (alt. link 1, alt. link 2, alt. link 3) to the Minerva Archive, and join the Signal group to share Myrient torrents. ArchiveTeam Warrior is potentially usable as well. Some scraping effort seems to be going on this Telegram channel. Make sure to donate to Myrient despite its imminent shutdown, its maintainer is going to be hit with a huge bill for used download bandwidth used by people making back-ups.

This notice will be removed after the expected shutdown.

Emulation General Wiki

emulation.gametechwiki.com emulation.gametechwiki.com
 
Niche Gamer: Retro game console GameTank hits crowdfunding goal (archive)
It’s the year of our Lord 2026 and indie creator Clyde Shaffer has successfully crowdfunded the GameTank, a new 8-bit video game console.

After running crowdfunding for GameTank over the past month or so, the retro console has smashed its goal of $30,000 and is still available to pre-order for $349.99.

The GameTank is built on a modern version of Western Design Center’s popular 6502 microprocessor.
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  • CPU: WDC’s W65C02S clocked at 3.5 MHz
  • Video: 128×128 framebuffer, some rows on top and bottom hidden by most TVs
  • Graphics acceleration: Hardware-accelerated byte copy, also known as a “Blitter”, can transfer images to the framebuffer on every clock cycle at 3.5 MHz
  • Graphics RAM: 512 KB used as source data for blitter
  • General-purpose RAM: 32 KB banked in 8 KB sections
  • Audio: W65C02S at 14 MHz with 4KB RAM, default 14 kHz sample rate
  • Controller: D-Pad + “A” “B” “C” and “Start” buttons, 2x ports
  • Cartridge: Custom 36-pin 0.1-inch pitch format, standard board contains 2 MB of flash memory
  • Expansion port: 26-pin rear expansion port exposing 12 bits of GPIO and other system signals
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Discuss the "GameTank". Had you heard of it? What do you think of the specs? Will it become a viable platform for niche troonslop games, or what? What can be ported to this hardware?

gametank-6502.webp

Dr. Geronimo said:
My AYN Thor order got cancelled on aliexpress. Many people think it was a glitch that had to do with the lunar new year.

Fucking chinkniggers.
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I assume it was because of this:

VideoCardz: AYN updates Thor and Odin 3 handheld pricing, Max models will now cost $489
 
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The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
Discuss the "GameTank". Had you heard of it? What do you think of the specs? Will it become a viable platform for niche troonslop games, or what? What can be ported to this hardware?
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It's an interesting project, but definitely not worth $349. It looks like they tried to make is easy to port pico-8 games to with the 128 by 128 resolution.
 
Hell yeah. I know there is only one game for it, and that game is homebrew, but ever since ben heck got all up in those guts I have wanted to know more.
 
The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
Discuss the "GameTank". Had you heard of it? What do you think of the specs? Will it become a viable platform for niche troonslop games, or what? What can be ported to this hardware?
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When I said I wanted a fantasy console from the 80s I didn't mean I want to pay the same price as one from the 80s.

I understand the appeal of wanting to make a physical console that uses old-school limitation, but there's a reason why people end up either doing homebrew or using a digital implementation. The average person is not going to dump $350 just to play some niche game on there. I don't see why a developer would want to spend money on one when an emulator can do the same thing and with how low the specs are it shouldn't be hard to make it cycle accurate.

The other issue too is that it looks like something you would see in a McDonald's PlayPlace. Even if some rich hipster bought it, it's too ugly to even display it.

If it was like $30 or even $100 I would say that's pretty reasonable, but like a brand new Raspberry Pi 5 with 16gb of RAM is $100 less than this thing and it is 27,000 times more powerful.

On the bright side, it looks like this whole project is entirely open-source so I guess if you wanted to you could make you're own physical console in theory. If this was just a way to donate money to support the project I would understand, but if they're trying to sell a product to a larger userbase I think it's a stupid idea.
 
On the plus side, if the video is anything to go off of (and I'm not finding it on the article), it has no built-in OS, which means if those cartridges are legit, you just plug and play. Big step up over the fucking Ouya or even that fucking abomination that is the Intelivision Amico
 
Back before the pandemic there were a few projects that used microcontrollers to make simple, Commodore like computers that ran basic such as the Maximite. The kits were $100-$150 and you could write Basic programs right out of the box without the need to hook it up to a PC if you didn't want to. Personally I think something like that is a far more compelling project. Price aside, while I get that people like the tactile feel of putting a cart in, having to download a game, burn it to yourr cart, and put it into your system only to find out it's shit is way too much fucking around for what are going to amount to Pico-8 quality games.
Celebrate Nite said:
On the plus side, if the video is anything to go off of (and I'm not finding it on the article), it has no built-in OS, which means if those cartridges are legit, you just plug and play. Big step up over the fucking Ouya or even that fucking abomination that is the Intelivision Amico
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I got an Evercade Super Pocket a while ago, and aside from the sub par emulation, I think this was my biggest issue with it. The OS had this loud midi music and a this startup shit and it made it feel cheap and tacky. I feel like the product is not what they're advertising, because besides the fact that the games come on physical carts, in practice it's almost indistinguishable from playing one of those cheap handhelds made by Anbernic or something. Why even bother with carts if the system doesn't instantly boot into your cart when you turn it on?
 
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Spyro the Dragon said:
Out of curiosity what's the game you all really want to get decompiled?
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Limiting myself to just N64. All of Rare's games.

Body Harvest. Hugely underrated, not re-released anywhere, and suffers from performance problems and occational janky or slow moments on native hardware. eg. There's a jump in one stage that will glitch out a lot.

WWF No Mercy/Wrestlemania and it's various spin offs. Peak wrestling games, even included things like UFC modes in the Japanese versions. A friend was big into ROM hacks of this before they were as well known and easy as they are now. Decompiled would be a nostalgia trip. Modded could be insane.

Hybrid Hevan, and Fighters Destiny would be nice. Wave Race was already mentioned. Beetle Adventure Racing.

Two Dollars said:
grabbed the full Nintendo Power collection,
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If they have the UK magazine 64 Extreme, might grab those. I remember them from when I was a kid, but never found them hosted anywhere.
 
A Deer In Headlights said:
On the bright side, it looks like this whole project is entirely open-source so I guess if you wanted to you could make you're own physical console in theory. If this was just a way to donate money to support the project I would understand, but if they're trying to sell a product to a larger userbase I think it's a stupid idea.
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Besides the emulator, are there any other aspects of the project that is copyrighted and properly open-sourced?
 
Judge Dredd said:
Body Harvest. Hugely underrated, not re-released anywhere, and suffers from performance problems and occational janky or slow moments on native hardware. eg. There's a jump in one stage that will glitch out a lot.
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> body harvest
> underrated

:story:

So many beginner's traps. Such tedious gameplay and checkpoint starvation. And if you chose the easier of two difficulties at the very start, you can't complete the game at all (if you're playing the original PAL release). There's no warning that you're rendering the game unwinnable, either. You just get to eat shit and start over. Even those Sierra games from the 90s at least let you start the game first.

Sorry for the rant. I played through it on Hero difficulty when I was into RetroAchievements a while back and it was legitimately the most miserable experience I've ever had playing a game. It's dog shit and I'm tired of pretending it isn't.
 
Judge Dredd said:
WWF No Mercy/Wrestlemania and it's various spin offs. Peak wrestling games, even included things like UFC modes in the Japanese versions. A friend was big into ROM hacks of this before they were as well known and easy as they are now. Decompiled would be a nostalgia trip. Modded could be insane
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I would love a decompiled version of the n64 wrestling games. Just the added wrestlers, costumes, and PPVs would add so much more to the game.
 
Friendly Primarina said:
> body harvest
> underrated

:story:

So many beginner's traps. Such tedious gameplay and checkpoint starvation. And if you chose the easier of two difficulties at the very start, you can't complete the game at all (if you're playing the original PAL release). There's no warning that you're rendering the game unwinnable, either. You just get to eat shit and start over. Even those Sierra games from the 90s at least let you start the game first.

Sorry for the rant. I played through it on Hero difficulty when I was into RetroAchievements a while back and it was legitimately the most miserable experience I've ever had playing a game. It's dog shit and I'm tired of pretending it isn't.
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The vanishingly few N64 games that weren’t total shit get overrated to hell and back.
 
Samuel Fuller said:
The vanishingly few N64 games that weren’t total shit get overrated to hell and back.
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so do the ones that are in fact total shit

The Mass Shooter Ron Soye said:
Niche Gamer: Console Archives adds Nobunaga’s Ambition this month (archive)


https://youtube.com/watch?v=qgDoE8-EPr8
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That's a neat game

Quick question: to play Ninja Gaiden 2 (NES), am I better off buying a Switch 2 and Console Archives Ninja Gaiden 2, or should I subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online and play it that way?
 
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