This is probably getting off-topic pretty bad from the original subject (sorry), but...

funkboy Wrote:We need consoles sold... what if Sega (or someone else) started making them again, and included independent games with the system?
That processor is plenty powerful for a lot of things, and it could be made for a very cheap amount (I imagine) at this point in time, since the technology is a little older.

That's a great idea.

It's a very nice technology, from a price to performance ratio perspective. Actually the Naomi console boards are the same as the DC, but they have double the system RAM and double the VRAM. Older Naomi boards would only read the game from ROM, but they now have GD-Roms just like DCs. There's a new board coming out from Sammy (grr.. ) that is basically a DC for an arcade cabinet.. can't remember the name now, it starts with an A.

Anyway, it's possible they might come back later and ask DC indie/homebrew folks to improve their games for an all-in-one type thing... I know that's happened before for other platforms. But again if you go to Lik Sang or somewhere like that, you can get a DC for $30 and the new games are around $15. Not so bad.

So (to try desperately to get back on subject ) if anyone wants very cheap / free console coding experience, there ya go.

I think, if you really want old school (console) games, you should take a look at emulators. Most of them even offer the old skool gameplay.

I wonder if it would be possible to have each console manufacturer add support for some sort of a software emulator, so that independent developers can develop their games to that emulator, allowing them to make only 1 version for all consoles.
A little bit like Java for computers.

...anybody remember the XGameStation?

@Dan Potter: there's also of course the (seemingly) much more widely supported GBA homebrew scene, although I haven't done any GBA coding for months now... I've been away too long from GBA coding; PERN now features SNES homebrew tutorials

sealfin Wrote:@Dan Potter: there's also of course the (seemingly) much more widely supported GBA homebrew scene, although I haven't done any GBA coding for months now... I've been away too long from GBA coding; PERN now features SNES homebrew tutorials

Depends on what you mean by "supported". I've spent a lot of time mother-hen-ing the DC scene (as have others), so in that since I think it's been very well supported. Been doing a lot less of it since I got my Mac though...

Oh and the new Sammy board is called "Atomiswave".

maaaaark Wrote:Very much so. PC casual games (mostly 2D) market is HUGE. I'm not sure what to say about the Mac side, but my company is working to change that

I can only hope this means you're porting GameMaker (http://www.gamemaker.nl) one of the best 2D game tools on the PC side, to the Mac.

Err, on second thought, it's 60,000 lines of Delphi code so probably not.

In response to the OP, of course there is. Look at what DirectX did: after removing DirectDraw in Dx8, they put it back in Dx9.

funkboy Wrote:We need consoles sold... what if Sega (or someone else) started making them again, and included independent games with the system?
That processor is plenty powerful for a lot of things, and it could be made for a very cheap amount (I imagine) at this point in time, since the technology is a little older.

That's a great idea.

In terms of technology, we're slightly past "smaller and cheaper"

I would love that as long as it's $ < 50, unlike a certain new NES clone

I also remember being interested in the XGameStation when it was first announced, then being disappointed by the price

sorry for being off-topic

aaronsullivan Wrote:Dragon clash:
I wish Nintendo would re-release the a combined/condensed NES + SNES. They could even sell all the games on optical discs to save money because entire games could easily be loaded into RAM, now.

have you seen this yet?

http://www.discreaderror.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=695

That was just people blowing a single quote out of proportion. They won't be free unless it's a specific promotion for a game or just for a limited time use (timed trial.) Instead, I imagine, they'll be cheap. It's still pretty cool. One place for all your nintendo needs. Now, I did get to thinking, could you load up an SD card with a fan ROM and get it to run on the Revolution? Unlikey, but still fun to think about.

http://gamehouse.com/
http://playfirst.com/

Hard to argue that there isn't a market for them when these folks seem to be making plenty.

-Jon

One thing I found at all to well is that by voting actually brings up the thread, so whoever voted on this thread actually brought up the thread...

There should be a warning on this kind of thing, I did by accident on some other thread.