Odd email from Messiah concerning Generation NEX (famiclone)

[rbudrick]

Hi Folks,

I got this email from Messiah (Brad Strahle in particular):

Dear Future Generation NEX owner,


Thank you for purchasing Messiah products! The support and interest in our peripherals from customers like you is important to us. With the looming release of the Generation NEX system, we are proud to present the return of one of the most influential systems in video game history. Messiah originally announced that the Generation NEX system was going to support a built in “rumble” feature, compatible with the various NES and FAMILY COMPUTER software. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we were unable to implement this feature in the current model of the Generation NEX., however we are certain you will still be thrilled with the product. We value your business and hope you will continue supporting the entire line of present and future Messiah products! Those of you that opted to pick up your order at CGE will be able to do so August 20th and 21st. For the rest of you that could not attend CGE this year, your order will ship on Sept15th.



If you have not done so… make sure you get your Messiah Wireless Controllers to use with your Generation NEX.



Thank you for supporting Messiah!



MESSIAH DEVELOPMENT TEAM

But then it looks like they tried to recall that message in a second email:


Brad Strahle would like to recall the message, "Update for future Generation
NEX owners.".

Since I don't have Outlook or anything like that, the messge recall didn't work. So....are they going to have the rumble feature or not? If they are, that's kind of a weird thing to happen. :)

-Rob

[playmessiah]

Hello Everyone,

Sorry I have been off the forums so long. Things have been crazy recently gearing up for CGE and the Generation NEX launch.

About the email... sorry about the confusion it generated... It was actually recalled do to the fact that the customer list was visible for some reason.

THE RUMBLE FEATURE HAS BEEN REMOVED!

We are very sorry for this but it did not work well enough to implement... Well... let me elaborate a little...

Because none of the original games had a rumble signal or even a signal going to the controller for that matter we had to go about this a totally different way. We were monitoring the audio levels looking for spikes indicating an explosion or action in the game. The big issue we ran into too was that there was no uniform audio level, so you would have to adjust the rumble setting for each game. No two games would work on the same setting and it was very difficult to tune. The bottom line is that unless the user was willing to spend 5 to 10 minutes adjusting the rumble... the controller would just rumble all the time to the beat of the music.

It was a lot of fun to play my favorite 8-bit games with rumble, but... despite how much fun it was… it was a bigger hassle and all of you would have been disappointed with rumble feature. With regret we took the feature out and went back to the drawing boards with hope of someday resurrecting again.

Don’t worry there is still a lot going on with the Generation NEX including a few things that I am sure everyone will get a kick out of. All of us at Messiah can’t wait to show you the product at CGE… it will be like Christmas morning with kids… the best part is watching the expression on there faces as they open the gifts.

Thank you everyone for being such loyal supporters!

Brad Strahle
Messiah Entertainment

[midgey]

To be honest, I wasn't expecting the rumble feature to work for the very same reasons that you stated. I felt it wasn't very neccesary, so I'm not let down by this at all and it won't affect my decision to purchase. Nice idea about working with the audio levels though.

[Raedon]

Now if you guys could make it without that nes on a chip that isn't 100%.. Still the only famiclone I've been looking forward to.. ever..

[Flack]

That same rumble idea might work in a different way. Imagine that same "filter" applied to lights on the console, so your NEX flashes along with the music! That would be sweet!

[googlefest1]

im sure there would stil be people interested in fiddleing with the rumble feature

it could still be left in there but not realy advertized

it seems like time and money has been spent trying to implement the feature - it may as well be left in there - with no techsupport

the novelty of the option to play with a feature like that could still be a selling point

[rbudrick]

Or how about a rumble feature where you have 5 switches to turn off or on each of the sound channels....that woud be very easy to adjust for each game, I would think.

-Rob

[omnedon]

features = production costs

[rbudrick]

True, but now that the rumble is gone and the cost is the same, there's more room to work with in that budget. Unless, of course, waaaaay to much was spent on trying to get the rumble implemented.

-Rob