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An SSD can resurrect your old Sega Saturn and Dreamcast consoles:
Classic disc-based consoles are getting long in the tooth. As their optical drives burn out, they're rendered unplayable, which is a shame -- these systems were the peak of gaming in the eyes of many. Hardcore gamers who miss titles like Panzer Dragoon Saga and Power Stone may want to perform life-saving surgery on their Sega Saturn or Dreamcast consoles this summer, as a new solution will be able to replace dead disc drives, with no soldering skills needed. The Terraonion MODE -- Multi-Optical Disc Emulator -- simply drops into your console of choice, reads ROMs from a storage medium, and passes the data onto the console for processing. The dream of the '90s is alive.
[...] Some may wonder what the big deal is. Most of these games can be played on an emulator. But emulators simply don't have that magic that original hardware does. Is that worth the nearly $200 price of something like the MODE? For a lot of hardcore gamers -- especially those who are privy to the Saturn and Dreamcast's vast Japanese libraries -- the answer could be yes. It may be time to dust off some old consoles and relive one of gaming's greatest eras.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @01:57AM (5 children)
This is totally doable with enough time, money, and space.
Neo Geo cartridges are rather large. If you acquire a large collection (numerically) it will be a very large collection (physically). Plus you may want an old CRT which may require more space than a modern person wants to dedicate to old games.
AES hardware can be a bit more user-friendly, but games tend to be way more expensive. Flashcarts are an option if you're into that; they don't even have to be super illegal, certain Neo Geo games for sale on the Humble store or GOG are just wrappers around emulators without any DRM to speak of, and grabbing the ROMs out of your own legitimate purchase might possibly at worst be a legal grey area.
MVS hardware can be hooked up to consumer TVs via supergun devices, though care needs to be taken as some superguns if used improperly can put out unsafe voltages and fry your other equipment. Games tend to be cheaper, but it can be difficult or impossible to purchase non-counterfeits. Flashcarts are an option here too.
Hooking up either type of Neo Geo hardware to a modern display can be difficult; upscalers exist but even then the not-quite-standard refresh rates of the Neo Geo can make it either not work (if the upscaler passes through the given refresh rate and your display doesn't like it) or unpleasant (if the upscaler drops frames and/or adds lag to make up the difference). But for the right price you can just buy a display that isn't picky and if required an upscaler that will do what you want.
Figuring this all out and picking what's right for you and getting it working (and keeping it working, like dealing with other fun things with old hardware like replacing capacitors) is where the time part comes in.
I hear you.
For software emulators it may be possible to up your OS USB polling rate, which might help in some cases. Also, you can purchase controllers that have better latency than others. But you're still going to have an OS in the way, it may decide that no, now is when I'm going to check for system updates and thrash the disk or give your emulator's CPU timeslice to some other process or whatever.
You may be interested in the MiSTer FPGA. Its Neo Geo core is quite good, no software emulation there (I'm not going to touch whether using Verilog/VHDL to develop an FPGA core is hardware emulation or simulation or re-implementation). While most MiSTer users use USB controllers or USB bluetooth adapters which end up going through an embedded Linux not running on the FPGA, it is possible to increase the USB polling rate to 1000Hz and apparently some controllers work quite well with this. Also, there are ways to connect older non-USB controllers directly to the FPGA, bypassing the OS, though I don't think this is supported (yet?) for the official Neo Geo core.
As much as I dislike lag, I think anyone who claims this specific thing is a problem for them is just bragging.
Of course the other option is to just get old enough that your reaction time goes to shit, then you might not mind a bit of emulator latency.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday April 24 2020, @02:45AM
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday April 24 2020, @02:54AM (3 children)
Fucking sneezed and posted early, forgive me :)
I actually wasn't the guy. Witnessed it plenty of times though. They basically kicked the guy straight up in the air past the screen, timed it, and repeated it. It was a complex move to do the special kick too. Guys that could do it would royally kick your ass in Street Fighter.
If there is any bragging, it was match games where I was incredibly fast. Like Tetris. I could stack those moves and slow the game down. Yeah, very few people could beat me in a heads up match.
The getting old part sucks too. That's where I hope I get to use "thought control" where the latency has nothing to do with my hands, or chemical signals reaching them. Latency should be reduced to visual processing plus whatever time it takes before the signalling actually starts from your brain to your hand.
Meaning, I will blow that little shit the fuck off my lawn :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @04:31AM (1 child)
Makes me wonder. I know they have stripped down distros where the emulator is basically the only software running. You can get wired hardware and polling I/O already as well. With that in mind, how would an emulator perform on some form of RTOS running on the computer. By having those input and output guarantees, would it improve things? I know the mantra with RTOSes is "never late, probably not early," but don't know how that would affect something like an emulator system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24 2020, @06:13PM
I think the ODROID-GO uses FreeRTOS with emulators.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday April 24 2020, @01:43PM
Did you ever get the chance to play TGM3 Shirase [youtube.com]?