BSNES on the first front, output through a video card with TV support, and a $20 Saturn USB controller. No big deal. Heck, with an emulator you get some functionality for overcoming inherent flaws of the original thing (easier saving, no more regional disputes, no dirty contacts ever, better cheat support, and so on). I'm sure that adds up, but doesn't a SNES and especially the Power Pak add up as well?Originally Posted by BetaWolf47
Anyway, there's lots of options out there, plenty are great.
The drawback of a modded regular Xbox is timing issues. Input from the controller always seems to lag, even on SD TVs. If you take minor lag from the SD TV and use an HDTV instead, it makes some action games virtually unplayable. Also, having to FTP the games and used a wired connection to do so is a real pain (especially since my main computer doesn't have a working LAN port)
[quote name='Shidou Mariya' date='Nov 17 2010, 10:05 PM' post='4889940']
I'm a collector, but only to a certain extent.
Not as extreme as Rickstilwell though.[/quote]
Hey, welcome to DP and thanks for registering today just to respond to me.
My point was that if you're not willing to buy every game you want to play, there are cheaper/convenient ways to play all those games you can't afford or don't want to shell out the cash for. Yes, there is a certain charm to playing them on the original hardware, I can admit that. But an XBOX can be had for 1/3 the price, can be completely loaded up with everything you could possibly want in one shot, and has tons more functionality (DVD/media player, XBOX titles, other emulation, etc).
Maybe the PowerPak isn't 'overpriced' but it's still expensive for what you get out of it.
On my HDTV the lag was TERRIBLE, but I noticed no lag on my Triniton (27" flat tube) or my Magnavox (25" tube). But yes, loading games can be a PITA if you don't have a router nearby. If you plan properly, you only need to do that once.
Thanks for saying something important enough to reply toHey, welcome to DP and thanks for registering today just to respond to me.
Maybe the PowerPak isn't 'overpriced' but it's still expensive for what you get out of it.Expensive, overpriced, and rip off are three completely different things, while only the first may apply to the PowerPak (and most retro flash carts). SNES has the most competition of any of the retro systems except the most recent one to come out from neoflash is still the highest priced.
If I were going to get any of the SNES flash carts, this is the one I'd get. I can't say enough good things about the NES one, and this guy does good work. It's very unlikely anyone else will do better, because the games it cannot play require special hardware. Hardware that is no longer produced, and that would be extremely expensive and probably illegal to replicate again.
The Paunch Stevenson Show free Internet podcast - www.paunchstevenson.com - DP FEEDBACK
If the DSP can be replicated, why not the other chips?
I would think the obstacles would principally be a desire not to make the device overly complex for the sake of a handful of games, and simply the difficulty involved in the programming.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)
The DSP is not replicated; it's an original chip, cannibalized from cheap copies of Pilotwings and other stuff.
But yeah, it can be done... eventually. It's a matter of reverse-engineering the chips and programming an FPGA to emulate them. It's not an easy task by any means, and according to people who are much more tech-savvy than I am, the DSP will actually be harder to copy than, say, an SFX chip, though the SFX chip is still no trivial task. But maybe some day...
In any case, the PowerPak uses the extra pins for dynamic memory allocation, IIRC, so the PowerPak will never support any of these other chips, and prepare to wait a decade or two for FPGA emulation of multiple SNES coprocessors.
I bought my SNES Power Pak a few months ago and haven't regretted it since. I can play it on my Super Famicom without any modification, using original hardware/controllers. Japanese games with English patches that were never released here are playable. There are no emulation glitches. It's fully compatible with the FC 16 Go (portable SNES) so I can pretty much take all my games with me when I'm on the road and continue play on my console at home.
It's true about certain games that utilize custom chips, they don't work. But 95% of the games I want to play work with no glitches. It's worth every penny if you ask me.
Why not just use the free SNES emulator homebrew on DS? The nintendo hardware is definitely of higher quality then the FC 16 Go, and also....the emulator is FREE so you still don't have to pay the OUTRAGEOUS $140 for the powerpak.
A part of me still wants to buy the thing, but I'm really having a hard time justifying the purchase. If the price dropped to around $100, I'd for sure get it.
Unless things have changed lately, the only SNES emulators available for DS are very limited/inaccurate.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)
It's a matter of playing on original hardware or not. If not, then there are many emulation options on newer consoles.
I actually have used an SNES emulator on Gameboy Advance and it performs quite well.
As for reproducing chips, I can't see it happening. The extreme cost would probably never be financially sound. Even so, you'd need the schematics of the original chips, are those even in the public domain? I know Curt Vendel has acquired and released the design of old Atari chips, but Atari is long dead as a company.
The Paunch Stevenson Show free Internet podcast - www.paunchstevenson.com - DP FEEDBACK
I plan on buying one. I already own most of the SNES games I'd ever want but the ability to play translations on the actual console is immense. This is coming from a guy who has used PS1 conrollers to play everything on a SDTV through his computer for about ten years. IMO that's about as close at is gets for emulation.
DS SNES emulators still suck. The PSP's wasn't any better last time I used it.
Are you sure? Which one? The only one I ever saw get anywhere was SNESAdvance (I think it was renamed at one point) and that ran some games but with no sound and most were unplayable (it was more of a proof of concept).
There are NO, I repeat, NO 100% emulators out there for the SNES. There are a couple that come damned close, but none are perfect. If you want to play the games as originally as possible short of owning each cart, then the Powerpack is the way to go.
However, I don't think it's worth 140.00. I bought one off Craigslist for 60.00, which is still a little high for my taste. (40.00 is reasonable IMO).
My personal opinion is that if you want to play emulated SNES games quickly and easily, just download some Emu/ROM sets for the Dreamcast. Forget all that hacking the X-Box bios softmod shit; just burn the disc and play away. Besides, the few SNES emus on the Dreamcast don't suffer the lag time in controls that most X Box SNES emus do. You may have to drop the audio in some games or fiddle with the framerate, but most ROMS are quite playable.
Thing is about emulation on DS, it's always improving. If you buy an FC-16 Go, it's always going to have the same limitations. Even though most emulators are progressing slowly, they will get there.
Selling gaming accessories. Click
I find that hard to believe.
And even if by some fluke it is, your talking like getting a PowerPak in that manner and for those prices is a viable choice. I can assure everyone here that you will not be locating one off Craigslist and you will not be finding one offline or online for $40-$60.
SNES Advance, yes, which is like 6 years old. I got the EZ Flash IV GBA card. The SNES Advance program is used to convert an SNES rom to a GBA Rom. Somehow the emulation is added to it at that time. It's the same thing for NES (PocketNES), Gameboy Color (Goomba). The only stinker is you have to combine games into single GBA files in order to switch around. Otherwise you have to exit the "emulator" entirely and go into another "copy" of it. They all work like that on the GBA. I don't have a DS. The only problem I'm having is that I can't exit the emulator using the hotkeys. I think there is a fix/workaround for that, but I haven't bothered yet. I think I only tried a couple games, but Super Mario World I know worked fine.
The Paunch Stevenson Show free Internet podcast - www.paunchstevenson.com - DP FEEDBACK
Can someone explain to me why the hell the powerpak costs $140. No matter how I do the math, the total production costs etc don't add up to anything near that figure.
Even if we assume worst case scenario it costs them $100 per unit to make so that for each sale they are making $40, I still don't see how it's costing them $100 to make this thing??
I mean, a famiclone system like the Retro Duo, that is 2 systems in one, comes with two controllers is still only about $40-60. Or what about the Gen Mobile? Comes with 20 games built in and still doesn't cost half that amount. It doesn't add up....it just doesn't add up.
A part of me thinks their "it's expensive and requires a lot of work" argument is a bunch of baloney. NOW I'm NOT saying there aren't any legitimate costs associated with producing the thing, but $140 seems completely UNREASONABLE. I really feel there's a lot of greed involved in that number
The first thing you need to realize is that a 50% profit margin is normal, not at all greedy. EVERYTHING you buy is at least double the manufacturing cost. If it goes through a distributer thats another doubling of the price compared to the cost.
The next part is that clone systems are amazingly cheap to build. NOAC chips are literally $0.25 each in bulk. The rest of the electronics and plastics is a couple dollars total. That is how a $10 NES clone with a keyboard can be sold and still make a profit. See playpower.org for someone trying to use those for education. The $40-60 NES/SNES clone is likely around $8-12 to fabricate, and since it is just a single chip there is no hard design work needed.
And the final piece is that things like the PowerPak are very hard to build. Assuming you already know computer architecture and programming and pcb design it would be many months to a year to design one. Then there is the prototype board costs of ~$500 each, and plastics mold cost of ~$5k. Expect to be $7k in the red just from the start. Then another $5-10k to actually get the production done. Not many people are able to do all that!
After all if the PowerPak ($140) is being greedy, the chinese neoflash myth is even more expensive so they must be super greedy. Cart+programmer like mash mods ($115) with far less electronics and design would have to be a rip off. And tototek cart+programmer ($80) that doesn't even have USB would be exploiting people.
These carts aren't like DS flash carts that are made by the millions. In the case of the PowerPak its one guy with a family he probably would like to feed and house. I think the mash mods is also one guy doing great work.
Come now, ZSNES was perfectly adequate for everyone for years. The way some people talk about BSNES now, you'd think ZSNES was like playing a SNES with an ice pick stabbed through your skull, or something.
Unfortunately, DS homebrew has been around for years and SNES emulation is still quite limited, apparently. At this rate the DS will be discontinued by the time it all gets fixed.
Oy, not this again. Didn't we go through this all in some NES Powerpak thread?
I would certainly think that if they're cannibalizing a Pilotwings cart for every Powerpak, that would bump up the price.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)
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