Retro VGS - A Niche Throwback?

Retro VGS Website

So it looks like some guys are trying make a push to release a retro-themed console with a somewhat questionable business model. Specifically, this "new" old system is going to be structured in the same fashion as home consoles of the distant past. It isn't going to connect to the internet. It isn't going to have any downloadable games. There won't be any media functionality or firmware updates. There won't be any patching for the games. It is going to run on cartridges, and only cartridges.

This thing is going to be about as retro as retro gets. And because of this, I have to question if there is an actual market for such a console. Perhaps an enthusiast niche market, but will it be enough to encourage development? And will there be enough support from middle-ware such as Unity? While it would probably be possible for Unity to add the Retro VGS as a build target, will there be enough interest to warrant it?

The guys behind this strange initiative are going to be firing up their Kickstarter in a week or two. So we'll see what the general enthusiast crowd thinks of this idea. I'm interested to see what you, the Unity Community think. Would anyone here be interested in releasing a game on a device like this? Would it even be worth the trouble and expense?

 

Love it. I frequently take issue with the way modern console games are so tied to the Internet for functionality. It's convenient for updates and patches but the long-term viability and use of these newer style games is severely compromised as a result.

I can plug in an old Atari 2600 cartridge today and it will be the same game as it was 30+ years ago. I don't have to sign in. I don't have to wait for an update to download. I don't have to have an Internet connection at all to play the game. The game is the thing. Not the marketing opportunities afforded by being constantly online. There are games I bought ten years ago that are useless now because the servers are offline, they require connecting to some defunct web-based system, etc.

Going back to regular cartridges would be awesome. It would also bring with it higher standards of quality control. If a game has bugs, guess what... it won't ship. That's how it used to be. A team had to make sure the game was ready, because there was no going back. I believe that system worked well, and I was on teams that had to do it. "Get it right" is not so much of a concern these days. Games ship filled with bugs with a "fix it in post" attitude, and that sucks for everyone.

Now, with all of that said, if this company can't get some good teams on board to create games for the system... compelling games... good games... then I'm not sure there's much of a market for it. I assume they've given that quite a bit of thought.

So yeah, I'd buy one of these, if there were good games for it. I might even want to make games for it. I wish them the best of luck.

 

Wait, didn't you just show me that video about gaming in '83?

Checked out the page. They seem pretty serious about this. The one red flag for me was how much compatibility they are trying to plug into the console, including two types of controller port, multiple processors and the like.

That all said, I expect this initiative to fail like pretty much all of the other 'indie' consoles over the last decade.

 

Yes, but I'm not sure what that has to do with it. You know there were plenty of games released before, during, and after 1983 that were awesome and fun and didn't rely on the Internet to play them, right?

Unfortunately I agree, but I do wish them the best of success.

 

It's a slick idea...and I swear there must be listening devices in my home* >.>

*I was/am working on similar idea ( cartridge console) using the RPi 2...tho mostly just for my own enjoyment.

 

The internet has made it easier to release games that don't work properly. In the old days if you released the game & it was buggy your rep took a beating & you had to live with it. Now they release a patch & rely on short attention spans & bright shiny objects to keep people interested. But that's an argument for another day.

I really wish this would take off but I just can't see it competing enough to make it viable for them to stay in business. There's nothing stopping people from putting out retro games on the existing consoles. All I can hope is that because its games are on cartridge they run hard with the line that unlike their competitors their games HAVE to work when released. Push it hard, bring lots of attention to how poor the release stats are for games on the other consoles & then back it up with reliable releases & they just might have a small chance.

ps. if you like the retro look there's also http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php. They even call their released games cartridges as well. Seems like my age group is hitting the stage of reminiscing about the good old days.....

 

Sorry, I was a bit oblique with my original post. Let me state my point more explicitly. Not being able to patch games doesn't prevent the release of buggy games by companies wanting to cash in and make a quick buck.

 

lols i said to some person (talking about their unity plugin) about wanting whatever i make to still be playable 50 years from now, and dude was like wut? 50 years? thats weird durrr durr durr

 

I think this is awesome. I keep saying there are a lot of us out here who enjoy those old school games. This one has a great chance at actually making it because of the drivers behind it. Retro mag is great. There are only a couple real paper retro mags available these days. One I get comes from Europe. If anyone knows of others let me know.

Truly I do believe it is only a matter of time before we see something like this really stick just because there are way too many people who do enjoy these old school style of games. I know we don't seem to have many of them on these forums because whenever I say such things people seem to think I am "over the hill", "out of touch" or "plain loco" but yeah there is a whole big world out there is all I can say. lol

I will definitely give it my support. That is all I can do. It will be a nice addition sitting next to my NES and Genesis. Definitely hope it makes it.

@Ony I agree with you. I think a lot of the modern day gamers would probably not like it because all they know is Internet and Online multiplayer gaming and cutting edge 3D and so forth. You are right though. Back in the day sure there were some buggy games but they certainly put more effort it seems into debugging most of them. I also think they placed more value on game-play although they were limited by the tech of the times.

 

The choice of including an FPGA alongside the traditional processor is an interesting one. As they state it may allow the console to better emulate some platforms as well as allow developers to better optimize their games. It wouldn't surprise me if it attracted some users more interested in the FPGA itself than the console.

Controller compatibility isn't much of a red flag in my opinion. Many of the target audience are likely to still have their old game controllers. Last I checked I had half a dozen or more 9-pin joysticks myself.

 

Its mainly a flag from my manufacturing background, rather then game dev. Building in two types of ports will increase manufacturing costs. As will building in multiple processors. It also increases the general number of failure modes in the system. All of this increases the amount they will have to charge the customer.

From a game play perspective having two of each controller port type means players may have to own both sets of controllers to play the full range of games, or to play games with more then two players.

 

No but it certainly does help. We don't live in a black and white world after all.

 

This thing is awesome....

"Think of it as hardware that is reconfigurable by the cartridge. The RETRO VGS will have its own cool configurations (ways to make a game), and it can also be hardware-configured to be other old-school architectures that a lot of developers are used to developing for. Specifically, and at this current time, it’s an FPGA and ARM system.

If a developer wants to make a Neo Geo game, they would include an HDL (Hardware Description Language) file that configures the FPGA to operate like a Neo Geo. The developer would code their game to run against the Neo Geo platform. This HDL code along with the actual Neo Geo game will be on the cartridge. Once that cartridge is placed in the RETRO VGS, it will become a Neo Geo and play that game. So in this case, the language is: 68000 and Z80 code.

If you wanted to do a new Atari 2600 styled game, you'd include a 2600 HDL file that configures the FPGA to replicate the logic of the original 2600 hardware and then you'd include your new 2600 game on that cartridge too. These two files are then paired up on the cartridge and when plugged into the RETRO VGS, will turn the console into a 2600. So the language that would be used in this case is: 6507 (6502 with less address space)."

Ha ha! That is pretty sweet. There are actually developers out there right now in 2015 who still make Atari games, Neo Geo games and many others. I was checking into that a while back thinking maybe that would be a better option for me.

If this new console can pool those existing developers together to support it that could bring in a nice variety of games. I wonder how configurable it is. Like could we provide an HDL file that configures it to a C64's VIC and SID chips for example? Be fun to be back into 6502/6510 Assembly language programming again.

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Thinking about all of this stuff we really need another major online game marketplace. GOG is probably the closed towhat I am thinking to a degree but not what I'd like to see.

I am thinking of a brand new completely retro style market. Not for retro cartridges (although something like this modern retro console cartridges could certainly be there). Mainly I am just thinking of a place where all of the gamers who like retro style games can go to buy their games. And all of the developers who are much more interested in developing such games can go to sell their games.

This would have several advantages: It separates the "old school" from the "new school" so all of the kids and so forth who go on sites like Steam and write stuff like "looks like some old game", "looks all blocky", "graphics are crap" etc won't have to see those games anymore and instead can see only the 3D HD games they like.

Likewise, it has the same benefit for the retro style gamers. I don't have to sift through tons of 3D and "modern" style stuff when I am really trying to find some old school style games to buy.

And a direct benefit of those two is that both modern & retro style game developers get much more targeted audiences. I think it'd be a win-win.

 

Totally. I really hope they can make this happen.

 

I think this looks like a cool idea that will never go anywhere.

1) Cart distribution adds another layer to between developer and market that will keep indies away with the wide range of alternatives available.

2) Having self contained games is only a plus for the customer, not developers.

3) There's no talk of dev tools, which worries me.

4) The fact that the games would last forever is a down side to most major publishers.

5) New consoles need games and #1, #2, #3, and #4 are really big reasons why no one will want to develop for it.

6) This is really cynical, but the things they're selling up (hardware longevity and self contained games) are long term things that most consumers don't care about at all.


I definitely think that there's room in the market for a new console that does something different, but this is not it.

All that said, I hope I am completely wrong and will most likely get one. Also, if you could dev for it, it would be a guaranteed success because there will most likely be no competition in the market.

 

If this catches on then someone is bound to make a cartridge with alternative ways to feed data into the console.

 

One of the main problems I see in the retro / home brew areas (which I think this would likely appeal to) is just too many different consoles. There are a lot of them out there with maybe 7,000 people owning this console, 10,000 owning that console. And so on. So it ends up fragmenting the user base across way too many systems. I'm talking about things like the GPX2, Caanoo, UzeBox, GCW-Zero, Dingoo, WIZ, Zodiac and even OUYA when it was around... and others targeting that dedicated user base. Then on top of that there are all of the things like the NVidia Shield which likely captures at least some of that market as well. Then of course we have all of the desktop retro games taking a bit of that market. And I suppose the mobile games take a bit of that market. And even the modern gen consoles target that market to a degree.

If they could actually get a main system in place the majority of the retro gamers jumped on it would be awesome. Something to bring all of these different retro-minded communities together.

 

This is one of the major sticking points in my mind, and one that would limit the success of a console like this.

While there are issues with on-line connectivity, there are also some very significant advantages. And these advantages can help both the developers, and the end-users. And most of these advantages are in effect in the earlier stages of development and release.

The chances of this Retro console getting exclusive titles is exceedingly low. Very few developers are going to make a game, and then just release it on this device. So pretty much no one will be forced to purchase a Retro VGS in order to enjoy a specific game. It is much more likely that we will see ports of existing games come to the Retro VGS, after they have been refined and "finished" on other platforms. There are too many advantages to distributing your game first on digital platforms.

Now, that does not mean that the Retro VGS is doomed to failure. It is clear from the website that the people behind it are already aware of all of this, and are moving forward anyway. They don't intend for this thing to sell like other mainstream consoles, and will likely not be selling the hardware for a loss. So they will be able to continue selling the hardware for a sustained period of time, and can stay in business even if the software doesn't sell particularly well.

They can also push to developers that releasing a game on their platform is a matter of prestige. Target successful smaller developers and indie developers, and convince them to release the "final" version of their game on the Retro VGS, and sell the copies they order to collectors and at conventions for a premium price. With much smaller, limited print runs, the Retro VGS cartridges are just naturally going to be worth more to collectors. Especially if a Retro VGS release is the only physical copy release that some of these games get.

So, there's potential here, so long as expectations are kept realistic. And the middle-ware scene is going to be important. The easier games are to port to the Retro VGS, the more likely that a developer will go to the trouble of releasing their title on that system.

 

I dont see how they expect distribution to work out. I believe an important step for lower budget/ indie games to gain traction was online distribution becoming popular so that you dont have to hit retail shelves anymore.

The retro games wont hit retail shelves.

On their website they give an example that an indie dev could order 50 cartridges of his game from their factory to give away at a convention... And then? Do they expect him to order 2000 cartridges afterwards and store those in his garage to send them via snail-mail when a customer writes him a letter with a cheque?

Or do they want to make an offline-Steam where you order your game (online, ironically) and they send it to you by snail-mail? They could use Amazon i guess.

A gaming system that you have to buy seperately, that wants to sell low-budget games without a practical distribution method... Yeah, no.

Granted, i dont have experience with gaming consoles so i dont get the nostalgia about cartridges, but i just dont see why someone would want to have such a thing. Not mention how darn expensive it is to develop a console and start mass producing it. I'd think it's far too expensive for a bit of nostalgia for an unpractical method (offline distribution of data).

There might well be a lot of people who are turned off by the closed nature and online-only stuff of the the mainstream consoles, but i'd think they just use a PC.

 

This system isn't being made for people who just want to play games. In my previous post I pointed out that current on-line distribution is very advantageous to developers and consumers alike. There isn't nearly enough discontent in that space to carry a mainstream-level console.

This system is being designed for collectors. By it's very nature, this system is going to be rare. It will be rare the second it gets released, and it will remain rare for years afterwards. And every last game that gets released for it will be rare, just by their very nature. Because of all that rarity, the physical release for this system will be able to command a much higher price than you would normally see. No developer is going to be selling games for this thing for $20. They'll sell them for $100 each, and they'll sell out.

You pointed out a 50-cartridge print run. If a developer went with that option, that means there would only be 50 copies of that game in the entire world. Compare that to physical release for any other game. Any game collector on the planet would be salivating to buy one of those cartridges at $100 a pop. They wouldn't even think twice. If it's a solid, critically-acclaimed game that has already gotten exposure and popularity on a digital-only platform? All the better, it will just intensify the demand.

 

@RichardKain is spot on. I'd still like to see it capture a majority of the retro gamer market. This thing is definitely targeting the diehards. It is a completely different mindset than what most people around here seem to be used to. Instead of having bundreds of thousands or millions of users of free or didt cheap games you have a small userbase that actually values each game highly. Heck the Kickstarter is even offering to build arcade cabinets for the big investors. This other world of people are generally not the "expect everything for free" kind of people the average gamer has become. They spend money and a lot of it. It is how Caanoo can exist and how other such systems can be made. There might only be a few thousand owners in the end but if the majority of them are eager and willing to pay $25, $50 or even more per game that is way more money for a developer than what they will likely see from their mobile or Steam games.

I certainly hope they don't make some easy dev kit for it. All that would do is provide a path to spam the hell out of the market the same way the others are being spammed. I like that this thing requires more skill and commitment to produce a game more in the "old school" way. And from my perspective (and others) that plays a part in making the games more valuable. If producing a game is relatively easy you end up with games not worth much money. This is true with anything in life. Specialized skills demand more money.

 

Good point about collectors i suppose. I think that mass-producing a console would cost more than it would gain by targetting collectors but i might be wrong.

If i made a "solid, critically-acclaimed game that has already gotten exposure and popularity on a digital-only platform" i would have many, many better things to do than to port it to this thing to earn $5k. But point taken about some complete niche thing for collectors (does it have to work? they'll buy anything you say, after all...).

Ok, i dont know what Caanoo is. That being said, 1000 times the audience will make up for selling your game for $1, $5 or $50 compared to selling it for $25, $50 etc.

That is one way of viewing things.
"Look at how much effort it took to make it." and to hope that people bother.
Another is to look at the result. And the gain for the consumer/ buyer: "It doesnt matter how long it took you, it just matters how long it entertained me."

Specialized skills stop demanding more money when there is a better/ more efficient way to do it. Very, very quickly. Unless you have prior depedencies.
But with new games for the consumer, you dont.

Personally, i dont think that there is a relevant target audience that values your engineering skills higher than the product they are getting. Especially not in a consumer market.

 

You're still coming at this from the wrong mindset. You're thinking of this console as something that can "compete" with systems that sell in the millions. They aren't going to be mass-producing this thing. I would expect them to trickle out 10-20 thousand of them in the first two years. (probably less) And I can guarantee that they won't be selling them for $100 a pop. The system hardware will probably be around $300, maybe higher. Due to the nature of what they're doing, they have to sell the hardware for a profit. This is not going to be a mass-produced, subsidized console.

Depending on how well their Kickstarter performs, it is likely that the system will be difficult to acquire for the first several production runs.

Ultimately, this project isn't about making tons of cash. This is about maintaining a sustainable business, and exhibiting craft. If they wanted to rake in tons of money, they would be doing something else. The margins on a device like this, and the games that get ported to it, aren't nearly as good as what you would see from digital distribution.

But I would point to the Analogue NT as an example of a premium, craft-focused retro video game project. That crazy thing is being sold for $500 per unit, and it's entire first production run sold out. And it's basically just a very, very nice NES.

If they go into this with the same mindset that the people running the OUYA had, they will fail. If they keep their expectations straight, there is definitely a market for them to reach.

 

There are flashcarts for freaking Vectrex (if you hear about it first time, don't worry, it wasn't very popular), so if it gets anywhere AT ALL someone's bound to make SD cart or whatever.

 

If anything it will likely be comparable to the Pandora handheld. They've shipped only about 6,000 units over three years.

 

I wanted a Vectrex soooo bad when it came out. A friend of mine in school had one (he pretty much got everything ever) and it was awesome.

 

If what you're saying is the actual mentality of people who would be into this, that figure is probably missing a few zeros. The economics of producing carts alone in limited supply would eat up most, if not all, of that $100.

Considering nothing on the site says or implies it's some hobbyist homebrew device (especially when they flaunt having cartridges that will be damn near eternal), it sounds like you're projecting a business model you think might work on to them.

 

I did note that anyone can make cartridges of their own game. Without quality control on the games, if this does become popular in any way, it will be the app store all over again.

So in a bizarre way this platform will only be successful if it's not popular.

 

No, it'll be '83 all over again.

 

If I were to approach the manufacturing process of the cartridges, I would only have a single size available. That way you could still mass produce the cartridges even if the games themselves only use a small number. You could even leave the recording process to the game developer as another way to cut costs.

 

I believe they already indicated this. They have grabbed the tooling from some other console to make the cartridges. So manufacturing the cartridges is less of a concern then the effort of putting games into the cartridges.

Still, I feel like most of these indie consoles are built and designed without ever brining in a manufacturing engineer. Designing in manufacturability from the start can cut the end price down dramatically.

 

I'm not saying people who like this stuff will buy anything. I am just saying they seem to be more willing to spend money on their interests in gaming than a lot of gamers are as far as Indie type of stuff. Compared to mobile games where you have people complaining that 99 cents is too high and the game should be free. If the game is free then they complain about the ads or IAP. That is what I mean. The difference I am talking about is in the strong aversion to spending money for things they actually enjoy compared to people who don't have that mindset or have it to a much less degree.

This certainly won't be some GRQ thing. I'd expect a developer should be able to make a decent amount of money after enough time has passed for the users to increase and for the developers to build up libraries they can use to accelerate development. In the beginning it is basically all passion driven on the game developers side I think. It's more about being involved in the community, the project, and working on something you believe in and get more satisfaction out of. Most people won't get that and that is another great thing about this kind of stuff I think. It attracts people who have a much deeper passion in the subject and community itself rather than always thinking of dollar signs.

It's basically one of those follow your passion serving a niche market and you'll probably make some money from it things.. The very same way there are Indie companies still producing and selling games (including cartriges) for the C64 computer. In this case Indie Devs such as Protovision, Knights of Bytes, and Psytronik Software (unfortunately they seem to be doing a site redesign atm).

 

This thing sounds dev unfriendly. Developers make or break consoles. Anyway you can do exactly all this with an OUYA that nobody wants either, and much easier for free with Unity or emulators.

So you're left with a sort of jaguar inspired bit of plastic.

 

It is touting FPGA's, and there isn't much out there at the moment that says hardcore nerd boner quite like them.

 

You'd have to hack in cartridge support to the OUYA though...which would be, unpleasant.

Asides from the FPGA bit (which is intriguing), an RPi 2 would almost be a better option. You just wouldn't have Unity support (tho there are some pretty good engines that target the RPi out there).

Granted, I wouldn't use the GPIO on the Pi for cartridge reading (too slow, takes way to long to dump a GB cartridge at the moment).

 

This.

There are people like the guy from the recent thread making inferior quality clones of other games, dumping them on the market, and wondering why he's not making a living within a few days. Then there are people who make games because they love it, because it's a passion, because they can't do anything else. Those latter people sometimes would love to make money with development but it's not the main reason why they do it in the first place. It's those people who something like this appeals to.

 

Considering how humongously large this market is (both player and money-wise) i think you are painting it in a wrong light. I mean, you have the mobile ftp market blowing everything gaming-related away monetarily so one cant really paint the users as not "willing to spend money".
Granted, most users wont spend money, and the largest pile of the money spent is probably concentrated on just a few receivers (ie Candy Crush) so most dont earn anything/much, but that market seems to be more than willing to spew out money.

In addition, there are many different pricing models for indie games on PC. FTP games, $1 games, $5 games, $40 games. It's not that you have to move to cartridges to charge money for your game.
However it simply might be that FTP would earn you more money. Which doesnt mean that people dont spend money on games anymore.

Wow, the C64 actually was my first computer and i even still had the machine until i moved recently.
I wouldnt buy a game for it though nowadays. I just dont see any reason to. I guess im just not overly nostalgic.

So why wouldnt those people want their game to reach the largest audience possible?

 

I have to believe that they would want as many people to play their game as possible. At least so long as achieving said audience did not compromise the vision of their game in any way. This is where the real catch lies. How many games have to sacrifice the developer's vision in order to bring in the bigger audiences?

 

That's awesome. Another C64 user from long ago. lol A very popular machine.

So many people (and especially the media) label it nostalgia. I won't completely discount that as a factor but it really goes beyond that. It is about doing something different. Being a part of something unique and not doing the same thing as everyone else is doing. At least for me that is a big part of it. While I no longer have my C64 it would be kind of cool to mess around programming the hardware sprites and so forth in Assembly language again. It's also the personal challenge of working within those limitations in the case of something like the C64. I try to do the same thing in everything I do. Always have. Like instead of taking advantage of high res and millions of colors all of my game projects are in a low res and very limited palette. Just because it helps to make it more challenging. But for something like the C64 it is even more so with the RAM limitations, CPU speed and so forth. These days everybody and their brother can make mobile games and desktop games and so forth. Not sure how many would do the same for something like the C64 in Assembly or this new RetroVGS system.

 

I've got a fairly decent collection of hardware. Almost never find myself getting around to working with any of it though. A few times it strikes my interest but the sheer effort of clearing a space and setting it up just keeps me from doing it.

 

I understand that. I have my Amiga in storage in the garage. I've been working on various projects in the house for the past 11 years always thinking of setting up a big table in the back room and turning that into the Amiga development area. Always something else to check into though as far as programming and game projects are concerned. If it hadn't been for things like Blitz, XNA and Unity I would have set it up by now. Thinking I will definitely do that soon though just for the heck of it. I am curious how the 3.5" floppies have held up over the years. lol

 

My experience has been that my 5.25" floppies hold up better than my 3.5" ones. I doubt they'll hit the 100 year goal of this console but I wouldn't put it past them to get a good deal of the way there. They're at the one-third mark as it is.

 

Maybe they would want their game to reach the largest audience that would appreciate that game, and not just the largest audience overall. A lot of people create art that they know will be enjoyed by a smaller audience than other art attracts. Nothing new or odd or wrong with that at all.

 

Hell yeah. An Amiga 500 was my third computer. I spent so much time on that thing. Learned 3D on it (Lightwave) and started my first forays into digital music with it, too. I'll keep my old nick-name to myself, but... If you ever see some of the old Amiga demos (and PC demos) from the demo scene back in the day, I'm on a few. Just checked some out recently on an emulator (found them in a demo archive online). Good times.

 

And that's why I'm targeting the dreamcast, the console for people who will truly appreciate my game. Seriously? If you really want to find the people who will enjoy the game, you make it so that they can just play the damn game. If there is any kind of barrier to entry, you are probably making a slight F*** up. And for some reason I'm inclined to believe you'll agree while we are on the Unity forums, a game engine where it's next targetable platform is a toaster.

Relegating yourself to some backwoods ghetto is not the way to cultivate an audience. For one, that's assuming you actually know your audience, and that no one outside the audience you understand will ever appreciate it (a gamble anyone who knows anything about business would ever take, growth is usually a good thing).

 

I don't think it's ever going to be about business. It's for the joy of it, a nerd toybox, nothing wrong with that.

 

But for me it was about the content not the random piece of hardware that powered it. Playing such classics as Super Mario / duck tales, original Metroid, Double Dragon.. That's where the nostalgia comes from.

Which of course you can play these type's of games on pretty much anything, you can even plug your phone's into monitors nowadays.

It's like having an 80286 PC, just for the sake of having an 80286 ..! Not saying that's an issue, but ultimately outside collectors a bit pointless.

 

It's ok if you don't get it.

 

I collect Silver Age comic books, early science fiction pulps, and first edition literary books. All of which I could more conveniently find and enjoy on modern day electronic readers without the expense and hassle. Yet, I go out of my way to hunt down and aquire the actual items and read them. If that seems strange to you then you most likely won't understand the appeal of a thing like this console. And that's ok. Different people like different things.

 

Would you make art that only near sighted people can see? The publicity would probably be good, but what's the value in arbitrarily limiting your audience (especially when you aren't likely to encapsulate your entire audience)?