Now that the dust has settled, what went wrong with mini/classic consoles? What went right? What should new mini consoles have to really be worth the money?
I dream of a neogeo aes mini with the ability to play online.
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They are just ARM emulator boxes. A MiSTER will get you better emulation, a raspberry Pi will get you the same emulation but free unlimited ROMs, any chink handheld will get you the emulation but portable.
They're a hard sell for this reason and because all of the hardware purists will just insist on buying the original hardware at absurd prices anyway. Otherwise I like them, but realistically they shouldn't be as expensive as they are - my $15 Walmart stick can play all of the same games and more
Not surprised that Sega and Sony suddenly started copying Nintendo yet again
These types of consoles have existed for 20 years.
SEGA was actually among the first along with Atari to start officially supporting these kinds of consoles, in fact you can still find them pretty easily
Sort of. SEGA's (really some BR company) early attempts were clone consoles. Awful system-on-chip designs that deliberately failed to properly clone the original hardware so they didn't have to pay any license fees to Yamaha.
Atari was even worse, their mini consoles didn't even attempt to clone Atari hardware, they were usually NES-on-a-chip hardware where some poor sods had the unenviable task of porting chasing-the-raster 2600 games to a sprites and tiles setup with fixed ROM characters. By taking advantage of the fact that most 2600 games used static graphics and being really choosey about the games they could make it look like they achieved something other than a piss poor hack job. But scratch the surface and the hack became clear.
When Nintendo demonstrated the incredible sales potential of using GOOD software emulation on a modern(ish) ARM SoC SEGA copied THAT and got M2 to do a high quality emulator for a generic chip. Unfortunately M2 couldn't do any low level work on the SoC driver so they wound up with painful amounts of audio latency. But hey ho.
>What went right
NES, SNES, Mega Drive
>What went wrong
PS1
PS1 is the most powerful when hacked tho, right? I bought the nes, snes and ps1.
Full collection on nes, small usb with snes on snes classic, external hdd for entire ps1 collection. I'm going to buy the sega one thats coming out later because its the same model of genesis I had, hoping its powerful enough to run n64,
I say all of this, and I have a Steam Deck with every game from NES to PS2 available to me on one drive.
Reddit
What went right was how hackable they were.
My local target still has 3 playstation minis for $30. Should i pick one up or nah.
Get them for the controllers.
I would get em
They resell for more than that due to emulation so I'd grab them.
I'd be more interested in mini consoles if they were emulating shit that was hard to emulate like Saturn or Xbox.
Get one for emulation and one to resell several years down the road.
It's shit out of the box (and uses PAL roms for a lot of games) so you need to hack it to get any real use out of it.
Sell the other 2 and keep the 1 for basically free.
Shitty selection of games.
Yeah you have MGS, Resident Evil, and Tekken 3, but the rest blows.
I'd honestly prefer VR missions to playing MGS again.
>MGS
Bummer that the PSC only came with digital controllers. I would've KILLED for USB classic-style Dualshocks.
PS1 picked the weaker versions of some of the best PS1 iconic franchises for reasons that I can't understand. Maybe licensing for stuff like Twisted Metal.
>What went right
Price
game choices
normie features like rewind
>What went wrong
Emulation (sound and lag were noticeable)
Not allowing you to pay for more games
>Do better
Allow internet
Use something other than a cheap board
Go the Legends ultimate route and offer BYOG
SNES>Genesis>TG-16>NES>PS
MD>PC Engine>PS>SFC>FC
What should new mini consoles have to really be worth the money?
At minimum:
>30 games
>two controllers packed in
>competent emulation, I can't believe this actually has to be said
>if it's a console that had analog controller options, make the bundled controllers analog-capable
>USB for the controller interface
>Pure out of the box playing experience (NOT the sole metric that matters before some morons come in saying it is.)
1.Super Nintendo (US Variant)
>Earthbound, Super Castlevania IV, Super Punch Out, and the better Street Fighter II Port,
2. Mega Drive (US and Asia Variants)
>Japan's library here blows, whichever one of these two you like more comes down to preference.
3. PC Engine (US Variant)
>Personally would prefer Salamander over having dating sims but eh.
4, Rest
5, Famicom Mini (Shonen Jump Variant)
Its all shitty shonen jump games, die hards only.)
But yeah unless you're a diehard purist you should be hacking these, especially the Playstation one.
PS1 mini seriously pisses me the frick off. That thing could have been a nice get officially. Instead they put out pure fricking garbage and sales suffered for it. People would have been all over PS1 mini if it was done right.
Because Sony doesn't care about their past and just did it for a quick cash grab. Meanwhile Nintendo tried to be as accurate as possible while staying in budget and Sega got people who to code an actual decent emulator instead of relying on the shitty system on a chip consoles like AtGames does.
Don't know how the Neo-Geo or TG-16 minis are as I never got them.
I heard the TG-16 mini was actually good as well. Its only really the PS1 mini that sucked the hardest.
The TG-16 mini has a great selection, lots of effort went into it, good quality system, but the input lag is just a smidge too much for it to be great, especially since many of the games are twitch shooters and tough as nails platformers.
The only one that's really any shit is the PS Mini
You can make all the complaints you want about any other mini console, but you have to try to frick up as hard as sony did with the PS Mini.
>STILL IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2XXX AND WE STILL NOT HAVE A SEGA SATURN MINI
BUT HEY HOW ABOUT 43,112 VERSIONS OF GENESIS WITH SHITTY SONIC 3 AND MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEAH HOOO!!!
I think Sega said recently it's because with current supply shortages they would be too expensive to produce and sell.
i own them all
SNES > GEN >>> NES > PS1
>SNES
great controllers, great ui, good default games, comfy modding, quality default emulator. i use it the most. if i need to play ps1 games (which all run well), i use a wii classic controller.
>GEN
same as above but i like the controller and selection of games on the snes a little more (this isnt system bias; i think the libraries of the snes and genesis are equally good)
>NES
same ui as snes and same modding scene as both of the above, but the built-in emulator has unacceptable audio lag, and a separate controller is needed for anything that isnt nes.
>PS1
terrible split modding scene with no good singular option (plus theyre both headaches to get installed properly), default games are PAL versions, default library is ass. still very much worth it at the $20 clearance price i bought it at because the controllers arent so bad, but it's the one i use the least.
all of them have good cases, good controllers, and good performance on all systems ps1 and below. and yes, i do own a raspberry pi, which i owned before any of these. the snes mini is a comfier experience than anything you are running on the pi.