I’m sure there are people out there that will leap at the opportunity to buy one of these, but between emulation with modern controller mapping, and og hardware on a CRT, I’ve never stopped playing N64 games since 1996 and the prospect of buying another $250+ piece of hardware just doesn’t appeal to me. I guess if you totally missed out on the 64 era, this is a great way to bypass the tinkering emulation requires to get to a playable state (N64 peeps already know), while getting the technically best image quality possible, and be a buy. The N64 has a fantastic (albeit sort of small) library of bangers. The issue now is finding carts that aren’t priced to the moon.
Yeah, with the need for the cartridges, I don’t know who this appeals to. I would think it appeals to people who already have a library of games, but they also probably have original hardware, and running on a CRT is probably ideal, not a modern display in 4k. The CRT hides the low detail from the time and has built-in AA, so it (subjectively) looks better.
So, if it’s not for those people, is it for new people? In which case they better be loaded because getting the games isn’t easy. In which case, getting an original console probably isn’t an issue.
Native 4k output instead of a crappy upscaler or a RetroTink which costs more alone than this Analogue product. N64’s native composite is laggy and hideous on a flatscreen TV, you need something like this or a retrotink or a CRT to make the games look good. Even if the Analogue couldn’t play ROMs off an SD card (it can, if Analogue’s previous products are any indication), you could just stick a Summercart in it.
I personally am a ride-or-die CRT player for my retro consoles, but big CRTs are getting rarer and living rooms less accommodating. And N64’s library has a ton of absolutely killer party games that are best experienced on a big TV with your friends, not a dark retro cave on a 20" CRT the way SNES RPGs are. If someone I knew wanted to go a “step past” emulation, I’d absolutely recommended this thing as the second shopping list priority. In order (imo):
Real N64, Real CRT, Summercart/ED64X7 (most authentic, and also cheapest if and only if you can source a CRT that fits your needs)
Analogue 3D, HDTV they already have
Real N64, RetroTink, Summercart/ED64X7 (more expensive than option 2 even if they already have the console and summercart lol)
Real N64, RetroTink or CRT, buying real copies of games at jacked-up collector prices
That’s why these things are always “so close” to being done. You hear the milestone is near, and then it disappears. I have a theory Nintendo waits for as long as they can so people invest a lot, then they send the papers. In a way it discourages people from even starting imo.
Edit: why is this being downvoted. Nintendo slowrolling developers is just like, my opinion man. It’s not controversial
If there is any type of authentication between the cartridge and console that gets bypassed, that would technically be a violation of the circumvention portion DMCA. They have used this exact tactic before and that kind of authentication has been used as long ago as the og NES.
I believe the FPGA modules are written with 100% unique, non-Nintendo code. Maybe the only issue could be the cartilage connector? I’ve had an Analogue Pocket for a while and that project hasn’t been taken down.
Apparently Ryujinx the switch emulator has been removed even though it used unique code and the speculation is the owner got paid off to delete it. Makes me wonder if they get you either one way or another
If your hobby is making Paper Maché Owls, and one day Hobby Lobby calls you and threatens to sue you in criminal court for millions, or you can silently stop your hobby?
Unless you have millions to burn, you give up your hobby, because it’s not worth ruining your life over.
The console doesn’t officially support ROMs. It must run games off the original hardware carts.
However, there’s a fairly simple hack to get ROMs to play on the SD card slot of the Analogue Pocket that many suspect was unofficially developed by Analogue themselves.
Man anyone saying this is a bad thing has never been through arbitration before. It’s basically a room full of lawyers getting paid to waste your time and money just to fuck you over later. Course as I type that it kind of sounds like all lawyers…
Because it's not quite the good-faith gesture people are making it out to be; it's a cost-saving measure for Valve. From the consumer standpoint, very little actually changes, as the average user isn't taking Valve to court in the first place. It's not as if Valve is suddenly lowering their legal funding in conjunction with this move; they'll still defend themselves harder than most consumers would be able to, and will win their cases in court instead of in arbitration, which is even more costly for the consumer when they lose.
While arbitration favors companies, so do the courts. If anything, this just makes it more cost-prohibitive on the consumer side to make Valve face the law.
So if it's worse for the consumer for valve to allow class action lawsuits, then should the consumer see all the other companies who force arbitration as the better outcome?
Nah, not really. Technically, this is better. But only marginally so, and unless Valve does something catastrophically, egregiously abusive with the Steam platform, then the people who will actually benefit from this are few and far between. Valve wouldn't just say "come sue us" if they weren't wholly confident that they weren't about to be losing any cases any time soon.
This isn't some huge "win" for the people; gamers aren't gonna rise up over this. For 99.999% of Steam's userbase, this is an entirely lateral move. Valve are the only ones who will see any tangible benefit from this.
Other companies didn’t pay the arbitration fee so valves system was a bit better than the rest. Realistically, the consumer always gets fucked.
The point is more that Steam is getting praised for this, while it’s just to make class action lawsuits, like the one they were just served with for their anti-competitive and monopolistic behaviors, much costlier for the other party.
Except it doesn’t make class actions more expensive, because it removes the step of invalidating the arbitration clause.
Footing the bill for arbitration was pro-consumer. They abandoned the whole thing because of bad faith frivolous lawsuit spam trying to extort settlements, not for any other reason.
Twofold: One, they lost a case in arbitration that basically said arbitration isn’t usable.
Two: Lot of companies do arbitration to avoid court, which works fine and is cheaper if you’re not getting taken to court much. If 75,000 people that could do a class action suit all go to arbitration though, the benefit is lost. Lawyers threatened that. 3 grand a arbitration case x 75,000 people == 225 million dollars on fees alone.
Big win for consumers, at least in the US. People tend to do better in courts here than they do in arbitration (where one side pays the judge(arbitrator)).
"Specifically, the named Plaintiffs won binding decisions from arbitrators rendering Valve's arbitration provision unenforceable for both lack of notice and because it impermissibly seeks to bar public injunctive relief."
So none of these stupid clauses are valid? FOO FYEAH!
its not exactly for the positive reason you think. theyre trying to prevent the class action lawsuit going around the (UK?) right now and realized when a certain amount of people take the arbitration, it gets fairly costly, so they reverted on that clause.
regardless fuck arbitration, its like paying off judges but even more transparent about it.
its basically doing the right thing for the wrong reason (reverting arbitration cause not for thr consumer, but for their wallets)
Valve's contributions have singlehandedly revolutionized the Linux gaming scene. They're the only reason I can play most of the games I own. I don't worship them, exactly, but I do think very highly of them.
This for sure. Making games easily accessible on linux have lead to a lot of people not having to deal with windows anymore.
It is the same effect as a kidnapping victim beeing grateful when someone comes to release them fom the torture rack. It is not strange that valve gets a lot of goodwill from their actions.
Would i sish more people did as steam does? Ofcourse! But none do, so we are grateful for steam. I think they saved pc gaming. And not only for linux.
Before proton we used wine. And wine will continue development with or without steam.
If anything the open source community did more and gave steam a firm platform to build on.
Edit: And to add an observation steams push for Linux is a reaction to Microsoft becoming a contender in the PC games market place. Its not for our benefit anymore than for valves.
I’m pretty wary of corporate propaganda, but from the article this sounds like a pretty clear case of some greedy people taking advantage of Valve offering to cover all arbitration costs. Yes, they’re doing this to cover their ass, but it’s not a malicious move and I don’t see how it could be interpreted as anti-consumer.
I mostly like Valve, and agree that going too far with Stan-ing over a company is dumb. However I think the majority of people that tend to greatly support Valve comes down to both pushing tech and games forward into better consumer directions, and that they are currently not joining in on the mass enshittification as other companies (but of course all big companies can and will do some level of that given enough time).
With regards to pushing tech, they have done more (in at least the last 10 years) to force Linux to be seen as worth supporting. Their efforts to actually add to projects that were already around has been game changing. And that they kept actually putting time, money, and resources into it even after their initial efforts with Steam Machines and the original SteamOS didn’t gain traction on a mainstream level. The Steam Deck keeps outshining the other options even while being technically less powerful specs and they are putting work in to make sure things like drivers are released to help people that choose to install Windows.
But all the positive stuff will only keep happening so long as people don’t start feeling locked out or cheated. I forget a lot of the time how bad many users hated them back when the original versions of Steam were released. Many of the issues people had and were concerned about were valid and could have tanked Valve if they didn’t do everything they could to address them. If they start pulling shit like EA or really any of the console companies have done. Then it will be their time to see massive losses and get all the hate that is deserved.
I would if it had any lasting power. I mean, can’t they just push out another eula update 6 months from now when this change is no longer useful to them?
Fuck arbitration, of course, I’m just not expecting this to really mean anything.
A friend of mine bought one at MSRP to add to his collection along with the likes of Anthem and Babylon’s Fall. He also picked up Suicide Squad for this reason, but he found that he unironically really enjoys that game while it’s still operational.
Right? For a game to be a collector’s item, it needs to still be able to function in its intended capacity. Additionally, they need to be considered good. Most games that become a collectable do so when they transition into the “classic” category, usually 20+ years after they released. In 2050, no one’s going to think, “Oh man, Concord was hailed as a masterpiece in its day, I need to own that piece of history!”
arstechnica.com
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