Bob I think the retropie is the best way to play games Brad you know PC is the
way to go now oh no I hear some crybabies why did you build your own
Arcade Cabinet are the best your fake gamers get with the times
it's 2020 FPGA is the only way I important so I think the PI's the best
Good day guys, Austin here and in...
I'm sorry son but playing the original hardware is the only way to play nothing
this once a day we are taking a look at hardware how interesting is that now the
main thing that I want to get out of this video today is kind of bringing you
up to speed of what is available out there right now for us to enjoy our
games whether that be from classics from 30 years ago all the way up to modern
gaming there is different scenarios different budgets different kind of
setups and different kind of view points that many people like to follow there is
no right answer in all this it all depends on you the user which is best
for you whether that be because of the budget
whether that be because you've got an understanding family that allow you to
set up all these consoles from 30 years ago
underneath the TVs whether that be because you've got a supercomputer or
you want to invest in it just to get the most out of and push 4k resolution on
every game that is possible maybe you really want a whole meal in the accuracy
and go down the FPGA route then after spending all this money somebody will
always pop up and say well we can just put that in the raspberry pie
and to be honest the true it is the way that it is there is no right answer to
this a lot of the time we're playing games from 30 years ago and all as the
important thing is is that you are having fun I'm not trying to sell you
anything I'm not affiliated with any companies the only thing that I care
about is getting you guys up and running with games so what I want to do now is
kind of bring you up to speed the years 2020 and there is so many different
options of a borƄs but a lot of that revolves around
what is best for your user case scenario some of you may just want to switch
something on get up and running and enjoy the games some of you want that
feel of the original consoles and get that accuracy that you can from plane on
the original hardware that is fantastic it all is down to your budget your
suitability how technologically advanced you are how far you want to go into the
scene and of course how understanding your family are so in this video I want
to cut out all the elitism I want to get you just stuck into gaming talk about
the pros and cons see what's available out there right now so if you're just a
new user just coming into the scene maybe you'll find something just to take
and dip your toes into the wall to see if it suits you and for those of you
who've been in the scene for a long time maybe we can dispel some of those myths
maybe we can find something that you've never even thought about maybe we could
all learn something today because every day is a school day around there
even for me so without further ado let's get stuck in first off then the
Raspberry Pi and I know many people are going to turn their nose up sort of
raspberry pi but it's not like it was in the year 2020 the hardware itself has
come to fruition and many of the people in the scene have been called in behind
on the software they've really got the most out of this thing it was updated I
think it was about six months ago now and what they brought to was for the
price of 50 bucks ah it cannot be rivaled the great thing
about the Raspberry Pi is that I believe it's subsidized by the various different
governments and organizations because it is a completely educational bit of kit
it does bring modern technology into the home for pretty much the most affordable
price that you can get outside of gaming I mean you can run these to make a home
network server you can run a block for out your whole network so anybody on
your network browsing the Internet gets no more dodgy pop
oops our advertisements it can be an alarm system for your house it can be a
media server so everybody running whatever movies through whatever server
you have made can actually experience movie streamed over your home network to
any room throughout the house and of course it can be a desktop so you get
all the functionality that you would get from a PC costing three times the amount
into a little tiny box that you can browse the internet on you can do word
processing you can consume media it can just be a desktop environment for you to
get the most out of it and what's great for me is that it's an awesome
experience for the entire family people can learn to code however from a purely
gaming point of view ah things have progressed so much and it is so good to
reap the rewards of course as we talked about the Raspberry Pi got updated about
six months ago then obviously it's taken awhile for the
software to catch up to it it's only now that we're reaping the
rewards of people's hard work actually configuring it and getting to get the
most out of this newest hardware so unless you played at it recently you
don't know what you're missing out on a lot of the hard work that went into
setting up gaming setups on these raspberry PI's has been taken out as we
talked about with communities making all these different add-ons and setups that
you can do outside of gaming the same thing has happened in gaming people have
made it so you can just grab a image I'm not talking about the dodgy ones with
thousands of games all of them I'm talking one that has had a bit of TLC
with people who care you grab it you put it on an SD card you throw it inside
your Raspberry Pi you turn it on you link it to your network so then you can
simply just drag across all the games that you love from your childhood into
the correct folders switch it off switch it on and that is it you're up and
running all the front end is done for you all the game sets up and
configurations emulators all done for you it is literally just plug and play
once you've added you games and if something breaks turn it off turn it on
again and just straight back to how things should be just working it turns a
cheap tiny afford piece of hardware into an awesome bit of
gamey goodness of course for those of you who really wanna go down the rabbit
hole and get things work into the way that you want sit all those options are
already there for you you can change the resolution you can add textures you can
change whatever settings you want inside the emulators in terms of the front end
you can completely theme it however you want and of course you can choose a
different front end to suit your taste if it are how you want things set up you
can add background music you can add your own art you can do whatever you
want to your heart's content for those of you wants a go file more advanced now
when it comes to games and what systems it can run on the Raspberry Pi I think a
lot of you got to be happy with what it can do
in fact I would say that up to PlayStation 1 and down you grow up not
what you could have a comparison between that and a 3 grand PC of course you're
not gonna be able to push things to 4k resolution and take advantage of some of
the more accurate emulators and settings upon those emulators but for those of
you just want to play casually gaming there is no difference whatsoever there
used to be a big rumor going around that they were slow they were lucky they were
glitchy and when it first started out yes of course they were just didn't have
enough power to push but with the advancements of the hardware and the
advancements of the software and people working behind the scenes to get all
this up and running it is amazing the progress that they've made just make
this a complete gaming experience you will see a hell of a lot of enjoyment
just running games on this system the one place where I think it kind of falls
flat is obviously the more advanced systems there has been a lot of progress
that's been made there's a lot of settings that you can tweak in emulators
to get that lag down to a minimum and in a lot of cases
it's comparable to even emulating this on a switch the only thing is that is
some of those more intensive games what happens is you get a lot of variation in
that luggage now this is something hard for me to explain because it's something
that you feel rather than what you can see but let's take for example shinobi
it's on the Sega Agis on the switch and it can play
that game pretty well shinobi's very old I used to play the hell out of it back
in the day I know when things should happen on the screen I got the feel of
it from playing it year after year the thing is that when you play on the
switch there is some delay from when you press the button to when those little
throwing stars should come out now that can vary 8 depending on what kind
of game II playing it's not anybody's fault it's just the way modern
technology works whether it be the controller whether it be the display
whether it be just emulation in general there will always be some kind of delay
somewhere it's just the way that it works the great thing is with a switch
because it's pretty powerful that game can be handled very well the frame delay
or the delay of when the little throwing style should come out from when you
press the button is constant so it could be let's say for example three frames
always three frames so whenever you press the button you get to know it
within the space of just pressing that button a few times your memory and your
fingers get used to how long it should take for it to come out so once you play
for the first level you pretty know the feel of that game the problem is when
you play on a Raspberry Pi it looks beautiful it plays beautiful it feels
almost there but when you go through different stages within that game even
though it's quite an old game now there is parts where it can struggle so when
there is more taxing things happening on the screen that little three frames can
become let's say for example five frames but then it could be in another stage
and because you've tweaked your emulator really well it can go down to one frame
now that variation between five frames and one frame is absolutely huge when
you're trying to get to grips with the game now I know I know I'm being very
nitpicky here but you have to go into the Raspberry Pi with realistic
expectations it's not the ultimate gaming device it's not what it was
developed for it's just awesome that we have got kind of that power and those
people out there to put the time in to make all this possible in terms of
hardware it can do more the problem is that is still early days and development
to get those GPU drivers to get the kernels to get everything ported over
updated to take advantage of it so as the months and years progress we will
see more and more improvements more systems more these games really starting
to tie things down right now playable and very enjoyable I would say any
systems that are 8-bit any systems that are 16-bit
the Neo Geo games and the ps1 play like a dream the ps1 for me plays better than
the original consoles just because of the graphic enhancements that you can
put to it I'm not saying put all filters all over
it ps1 is a little bit janky nowadays let's prove that way but the games are
fantastic when you start to see the limitations with this is the-- nintendo
64 the arcade games the dreamcast and the PSP you really gonna have to attack
that on a game by game basis do a lot of tweaks do a lot of fiddling just to get
many of those even playable but for 50 bucks
nothing can even touch this but just in case you did want to go down a different
route there are other options available to you with more power giving you more
types of games other options that have got great support are the Oldroyd they
have an awesome team that make front ends that configure these emulators do
all the hard work for you just like the Raspberry Pi
there is also dell'arte panda alpha which is basically like a Windows 10
mini single board computer got the power roughly of a mid-range laptop that's the
great thing about these little single board computers you can do anything
because they are so small and now they're getting so so powerful for me
everybody should have own at least a Raspberry Pi because that offers so many
gateways into so many possibilities and it really gets your noggin are thinking
the new Neo Geo mini comes preloaded with classic SNK titles including King
of Fighters 94 King of Fighters 95 King of Fighters 96 King of Fighters 97 King
of Fighters 98 king of fire so while we're on the subject of single board
computers I think it's time to bring up those little mini classic consoles
pretty much every manufacturer and intellectual property has released one
now we've got Nintendo NES Super Nintendo we've got the Sega Mega Drive /
Genesis the playstation brought one out and now
we're seeing ones come through with Terkel graphics and the pc engine they
are obviously completely licensed from the manufacturer which means that you're
getting scalebound representations of what we remember as a childhood also the
games that are involved in some of these are super expensive nowadays so you're
getting the official license to played them there's no gray area there's
nothing like that they can just play them without spending in some cases
thousands of pounds on some of these games
now there's caveats with this of course the emulation is being run on a well
pretty much single board computer again which means that you're not going to get
the pinnacle of what you could be doing if you played this on a top-end PC or
FPGA and of course the original console but when it comes to just playability up
and running cheaply and pluton remember in the classics from back in the day
there isn't much of a better option also the great thing is these are just plug
and play you literally put them into the wall plug them into the TV and that's it
you're up and running you don't have to configure you don't have to change ROM
files you don't have to do anything you just switch it on and it's good to go
which means also that if you've got kids you want to show this to your family you
just want to put it in one of the little ones bedrooms or something like that
all as they can do is basically turn it off and on and play the games there is
no going into config files which crash the system or I don't know brick in the
entire thing unless they go to Chubby's inside a toilet there's no way of
breaking it to be honest which is another great aspect of this and of
course if you into that kind of stuff with the mod in and all the stuff
happening behind the scenes you can't add whatever games you want to these and
include in different systems depending on how far you want to take it but
straight out the box you cannot compare these to anything else in the scene
because they just look beautiful they're official and yes I got suckered in and I
bought the wall the only thing is that I've got different ways of actually
playing my systems but to be honest it's a little bit of history and it's a bit
of showing respect for those systems that you loved back in the day yep they
know that the console because they're cashing in on your
nostalgia but hey I'm willing to go along with it because it brings easy
functionality and old games back for people to own in the home without going
down the gray area or hiring them on virtual consoles that are be forgotten
from days to come it's just a great user friendly and family-friendly way for
enjoying the good times stop beaches careworn Here I am talking
about that PS triple the PS triple I talk about that we come on we come on
like that little control baby that looks like a dildo
now once the elitists out there the creme de la creme the original consoles
let's face it there is no more accurate no more better there is no more than a
static way of playing your retro games than on the retro consoles themselves
you get to touch it you get to feel it in some cases for the worst you get to
smell the original hardware itself and just having that is so nostalgic you are
owning in some cases parts of history in your hands you get in your possession
some cases what you had as a child and you still get to play in it just now as
you did back then it brings up so many memories just to hold the original
controller just to switch that box on just to put the cartridges you had from
back in a day into the actual console or computer itself booted up and just feel
everything about it from the BIOS the booting up to the games coming on your
display it is just such a romantic experience for those people who fell in
love for these games a long time ago and for those people who weren't rich enough
to own them back in the day sometimes it's now more accessible to pick up
these old games old consoles because they can be very cheap or of course
maybe you're just in a position of life where you can afford this kind of stuff
now however with most things like this there's quite a lot of caveats that go
along with all this uh and there are so many but it is so good and in many of
you out there they can be worth those caveats
but let's address the elephants in the room first we have got the big one the
CR TV things so every console that was basically from before I would say Xbox
360 and PlayStation 3 they didn't have natively a HDMI output most of our
modern displays need HDMI cables to run there are other ways obviously and some
TVs do have more analogue ways of going about things but even though it may have
the connectors just the way that modern TVs run you will have an impact of frame
delay so you'll have lag when you're playing your game now I'm not going to
go into too much detail explaining this because there are channels out there
completely dedicated to it this kind of talk needs a entire video to go into
technical detail however to keep this short and in layman's terms basically
the old-style consoles needed see our TVs the way that interprets a signal on
those CRT TVs is almost instantaneous so in layman's terms as soon as you press a
button on your controller depending on the game it would be instantaneously
happening on the screen now the way that modern technology works is that it has
to process the signal more so to get it blown up on a normal TV it would need
something for example like a scaler to get it to the size of your screen that
means that it has to be processed that means that it has some kind of latency
put on top of processing the actual signal now this in some cases can be
quite a lot of time it may be just a second but that second can be a
difference of life and death as to what happens in the game meaning that some
games the more twitch base one such a shooters and all that kind of stuff it's
almost impossible to play however if you're playing something like an RPG
then of course it's not going to make that much of a difference the signal may
look absolutely beautiful it might be crystal clear on your screen but the way
that it interprets your gameplay can just make it feel like a complete mess
and unplayable now that are ways to go around this of course you can go down
using an original CR TV television however trying to find one of those that
I still worked nowadays trying to find one that will last you for some time
it can be hard work you can pick them up for 10 bucks maybe a thrift store a
market out of someone's garage sale and it may work how long that lasts
mmm it depends I've had so many different CR TVs and a lot of the time
they just burn out whether it be capacitors blow the tubes go the colors
desync that maybe is just some kind of breakages trying to find a modern TV
repairman who's got the experience to fix these old TVs and be able to find
the parts for these TVs is almost impossible in 2020 of course you can go
down the PVM route these are the more professional type of monitors in some
cases you make it look you find a friend find one online somewhere and if you see
one you buy it straight away there is nothing better than a PVA but again
these are Golda's everybody's got onto it now and trying to source one is nigh
impossible of course we have got modern technology and there is a way to utilize
it the way that modern tvs work means that the signal has to be processed and
scaled now you can get something like for example a gaming monitor that will
give you what a millisecond of frame delay but trying to find one that is
cheap under a hundred pound nigh impossible trying to find one that is
big enough to put in your front room again impossible you can use TVs but
again these use input delay there is latency on there even on your most
modern console you can put it in game mode but there will always be some kind
of latency now i'll point you to a channel it's retro RGB these guys are
fantastic at what they do there's bountiful limitless information
regards to what kind of TVs is best suited for you and of course you can buy
third-party devices such as the OSS see the framemeister and the retro tink for
example now these are great but again you're looking into the hundreds of
pounds just for these devices so it depends on how far you want to go bring
in all this into consideration of yep you can get say for example and make a
drive our Genesis again cost you 10 bucks trying to get that playable on a
modern television it's another can of worms and something
that people need to consider when you go in down this route
then of course you've got the games now I love collecting games there is nothing
more beautiful than open up the original case in the instruction manual even
seeing those little inlays that used to get and in some cases demos it's like a
little time capsule of how games were back then but again these can be very
pricey some cases a couple of books but if it's a more salt after game title
then you're probably looking into modern game prices 40 50 bucks in some cases
then you've got the real rarities out there I think they can cost you into the
thousands of pounds so games another caveat czar all this the beautiful
they're absolutely fantastic and so nostalgic but it's another price to
consider when you get it into this you can get around it with things such as
like a never drive bay by Chris or some people I'll put some links stone-age
gamer for example they are fantastic get in the original games onto a cartridge
that you can put into your console and they work absolutely flawlessly in most
cases now technology is really advanced there's not many games that you can't
put on one of those cartridges that can play today but of course then you're
getting into the stage where you're not really owned in the game anymore there
is none of that nostalgia so where is the line cross between just playing your
digital games or to play in the original games I don't know I like it in all
kinds of ways for me just playing the games is the most important thing and
then for example the original consoles I can't have them all set up in my room I
course want to play them on the go sometimes I've calls once I played them
in the front room I want to play them in my office in some cases I want to play
them in my bed and I can't do that on the original hardware so in some cases
the original hardware just isn't suited to that kind of scenario we can live in
a lucky household where your wife is understanding but again you limited to
that one room you limits it to that one console so somewhere along the line you
gotta want to play that game somewhere else which is where all the other
options become available for us okay I don't care what kind of gamepad
you got cuz I'm on mouse and keyboard and it's just objectively better and now
onto the PC master-race oh this is the creme de la creme when it
comes to actual emulation as we know it of course like we talked about you can
play these on single board computers the Raspberry Pi you can hack a mini console
and get many other systems to work on there but when it comes to getting as
close as possible to the original hardware or in some cases pushing it
even further the only way to go is on a PC is the
only way that you're gonna have that much power now there are different ways
to go about it of course the PC itself it comes on
Linux comes on Windows there's also different operating systems you can
choose there's different parts you can get high-end pcs you can get low-end pcs
but the great thing is that on any kind of PC you grab more options available to
you than what you've got on one of those single board computers with that is the
caveat obviously of the price tag but with that can come if you want to spend
a lot of money modern-day consoles such as the switch such as the Wii U pushed
all the way back to the first games that were ever invented you can have pretty
much any console that was ever pushed out plus all the computers all on one PC
itself it also allows us to add functionalists as the systems that
didn't add it on the original hardware for example the Super Nintendo it was
born before the internet was which means that there's no online functionality
when it comes to the original hardware but with modern pcs you can load up an
app such as parsec there's lots of these different apps available to us that's
the great thing but we can take an emulator online we can gain with your
family your friends anybody you want all around the world all playing together in
one place on hardware that didn't have it in the first place
of course Nintendo themself they're not naive to modern technology they know how
it works and they know how to milk every last dime out of you also every console
that comes out they sell you Mario rivers and every console that
comes out I buy it every console that comes out and you cannot bring over your
account to bring the games that you purchased on the previous console even
on the Nintendo switch we can't even buy them anymore we have to hire them so
every month I have to pay over and over for the flexibility of playing all these
games online with my friends that I've already purchased over and over on every
console I understand though that people haven't got that time to invest into
configuring emulators setting up a front end with all these systems to play
however you want people sometimes just want to pay somebody and have that
brought to you with PC emulation thank god is 2020 you've now got the option
there is devices coming out now called the poly mega this basically is a
pre-configured PC it's got all the original port so you can plug in your
original controllers it's got the original cartridge base so you can just
plug in your original cartridges it's got dis slots so you can plug in
PlayStation games Saturn games whatever it is you want to play from back in the
day it's all available to you all through the power of the PC so I've got
a beautiful front-end of course it's all down to taste at the end of the day but
at least these kind of options are now coming out so you can legally play
whatever you want how would be want to play them if you do
want to get more information about the poly mega I'll put a link in the
description down below that are guided to a channel called modern vintage gamer
he's got his hands on one of these and he's a awesome source for hard work
emulation and cutting-edge technology within this scene is an awesome dude I'm
not saying that the poly mega is the best thing since sliced bread that thing
is so new that I haven't even got my hands on one to comment but I'm saying
that you can see the tides are changing people are fed up paying for the same
games over and over people would just like one kind of console that they can
plug in at home to get the best kind of compatibility with all their old games
as possible if they can configure it with a front end and all that kind of
stuff ah the future is here now I myself will
show you how to set up evelators to your heart's content well go into so much
detail that you can push them to the absolute limit
I'll show you how to get many many front-ends out there all configured
so you can sit back on your couch and just play the games as they were
intended or pushed even further I'm not affiliated with any front ends any
emulators any consoles or any party in particular in fact I'm not sponsored by
anybody however the only thing that's important to me is getting you guys set
up and playing games so as much as I would like to blow small smoke up a pcs
ass there is very much huge caveats that go along with this also big ones in
terms of graphics and huge ones in terms of sound first off the graphics the
emulation is only as good as a developer now that doesn't mean that the developer
of the emulators don't care are that they want to get inaccuracies sometimes
it takes years and sometimes decades to get accurate PC emulation and even then
the quest never ends you can never get as accurate as possible just due to the
limitations of PCs in general software and hardware in some cases arched aren't
compatible with the original hardware but developers will always strive to get
as close as they can to it in other words low-level emulation at the very
beginning you'll end up with probably high-level emulation where people are
just trying to get games to work but by no means are these accurate to the
originals whether they be color codes whether they be actual graphical
glitches whether it just be inaccuracies in general but those kind of things take
hard work so as accurate as they try to make them there will always be some kind
of inaccuracies it's just the way that emulation is but every day we get one
step closer the other thing of course is sound now most people are going to run
emulators through a Windows operating system the way that Windows works and
deals with sound is absolutely horrendous for example putting a
microphone to your PC set it up live you will more than likely find out that
there will be some kind of lag from when you talk to when you can hear it's just
the way that hardware and software on a PC works especially been run through
Windows Windows uses its own little drivers that automatically get
configured and set up and in some cases it can be a huge issue
in lag when it comes to sound so from input-output there is a delay you can
negate this in some cases by installing features - such as the old drivers cut
down on the buffer and try and get that delay as low as possible sometimes this
needs pretty powerful computers or it needs very specialist equipment in order
to do this sometimes it's just lucky and you can get away with it it depends on
your hardware but these are all considerations that you gotta take up in
some cases even if you do use this kind of software get the buffers down all
that kind of stuff you find out that other programs over the emulators no
longer work it's just compatibility in general with Windows it's a pain in the
ass so I just want to put it out there there are these limitations and there
are plenty more by no means is the PC and all-singing all-dancing
best way to do everything it's not it comes with huge limitations but it is
the most compatible out there to play as many systems and consoles and computers
as possible but you have got to consider all these kind of drawbacks in terms of
accuracy in terms of frustration and of course just the way that emulation is
it's the way that it works but it is an awesome option but by no means perfect
now as always on my channel I will show you how to configure all this I'll show
you how to set up emulators were to get them from were to get front ends what is
available out there and of course the hard stuff actually setting it up I
don't charge anything and in most cases everything is free of course except for
the games and in some cases front ends and very extreme cases maybe evelators
but I'll always give you a free option for everything for me I think that the
PC is probably the most rounded out of all these options that you've got why
well because more than likely in the year 2020 most of us will already have a
PC of some kind of standard and no matter what kind of PC you may already
own you'll be able to game on it in some kind of way the great thing is that in
some cases you don't even need to emulate pcs also play games are standard
but it's due game it's poison welcome to the future welcome to 2020
welcome to FPGA now I know many people talk about this and I know many people
may already know about this but there's many people out there that don't know
what exactly this puppy does they don't know the full extent they don't know its
capabilities they don't know why people keep on talking about FPGA in comparison
to just either playing the retro consoles are just firing up a Raspberry
Pi I mean if you were to look at what is playable in a Raspberry Pi it overtakes
what you can play on FPGA so where's the common sense paying a lot more for a
system that plays games that you can already play for just a quarter of the
price it's just crazy but it's not and the problem is that
many people out there don't explain it in layman's terms for just a gamer to be
able to understand the benefits of the way that FPGA is and you know what is is
well what is is is it can play shitty old games the best you will ever
encounter now for me it's about preservation I'm not talking about game
preservation I'm not talking about trying to save some game that was lost
in Japan in some crazy backend shop what I'm talking about is get in a way to
authentically play as close as possible everything that we've just talked about
I'm talking about input lag I'm talking about lag going to the screen I'm
talking about sounds exactly as they were I'm talking about the games
behaving exactly as they were on the original consoles as if you are playing
it for a CR TV I'm talking about the most authentic quality way to play your
games even more than the original console
you
I don't know many of you will be saying heresy they'll be shouting from the
rooftops from miles to come about what I've just said but that is true due to
the limitations in 2020 and the way we have to set up even our authentic
nostalgic retro consoles they all have an impact on the way that those games
are played that nothing like they were back in the day unless you're willing to
go down that route of paying for every console every game getting the CR TV and
set it up exactly as it was when you were a kid this is the only way to play
them as they were so like I said this isn't game preservation for me
this is gameplay preservation we've all played those old games especially from
systems such as the Nintendo now you can play ghosts and goblins on a Raspberry
Pi awesome game amazing you'll never complete it more than
likely there's too many glitches are too many inaccuracies it is so hard to get
that timing right to make jumps in the Turtles games it's so hard to complete
Mike Tyson's punch-out because it just doesn't feel as it was back then
there's too much today there's too much lag that just doesn't feel right it just
doesn't look right all those things put together make some games impossible to
complete even if I was to run this on a 5 + gigahertz PC with a 20 atti 32 gigs
of ram an end dot 2 nvme pushed out onto a monitor with 240 frames per second 1
millisecond response rate g-sync enabled all the bells and whistles you can ever
imagine all running through the most compatible emulator that we have today
it would still have inaccuracies and no matter how the great gods of developers
out there try to get around all this it will always have some kind of impact
somewhere along that chain it's just the way that modern hardware
translates our old hardware there's no way of getting around it now of course
with that kind of setup you grab a hell a time you're going to be playing a hell
a lot of systems and you're going to be able to get the most out of pretty much
all the games back in the day push them even
like we talked about earlier the thing is though it's just not the same
just some feel right sometimes that little frame that didn't show up that
little color palette that wasn't right that little death that you couldn't
explain is it because of the game or is it because of whatever you're playing on
now again you could have just as much fun playing off a Raspberry Pi seeing
people collect and play retro games all for different reasons
if the reason is that you want to play the games exactly how will you remember
and get the best kind of performance besting the kind of compatibility the
best kind of authenticity and accuracy as to what you had back in the day
utilizing modern hardware that is gonna last you for years future-proof
updatable and all the bells and whistles that you can get from modern technology
FPGA is pretty much the sensible choice to be honest FPGA is basically
recreating an entire system I'm not talking about the software I'm talking
about the actual hardware recreating it into a language or code that can then be
placed onto a single chip so that then can become that system to delve even
deeper the way this happens is each system is made up of various different
components as I'm sure you'll know let's take for example the sega megadrive that
was an awesome bit of kit from back in the day however to make a sega mega
drive you need something that will make the graphics happen you'll need
something that can make the sound happen you'll need a CPU you'll need all the
different various bits of components all put together in it's very much unique
way to make up a second Mega Drive that means that each one of those individual
components needs to be completely translated into this language and then
put onto these FPGAs so to take one component for example let's say the
motorola 68000 awesome little chip and that was utilized in many different
systems such as the Atari ST obviously the Mega Drive the NeoGeo the Atari
Jaguar it was utilized all over the place it was very popular but to get
that translated into some kind of code somebody has literally got to go through
Eva the schematics of that chip itself each and every trace each and every
component that makes one of those up and translate it into code if that isn't
available whether it because the plans have been lost time or maybe the
developer themself have never given that information out people can literally
under a microscope peel back the various different layers that make up that chip
and recreate it utilizing the actual eyes and
translating it into cold that way you've got to do that with each and every
component that make up every console every system every arcade every computer
that you want to get working the crazy thing is like we talked about the
Motorola 68000 chip was utilized in various different machines arcade
cabinets computers consoles so you can use that same bit of code over and over
in different systems to make up an entire system it's a snowball effect the
more of these little chips the more of these different processes the more of
all this hardware that gets translated into FPGA the more people can use it in
their systems that they want to make it's an entire ecosystem which is like a
snowball the more is made the more people can add to it the faster these
systems come out and now as this scene is maturing for almost seeing new
systems new consoles new computers and new arcades being released onto the FPGA
platform near enough on a daily basis and for me and you guys that is one
beautiful thing for the future okay so now we know what FPGA is and the
goodness about it how do we actually get our hands on getting all this technology
all this advancements all this in our lives well there's different roads you
can go down the FPGA is actually been around for some time and it's early
years I believe it was implemented on the retron 5 I wouldn't really go down
this route although it you know you're paying for what you get it's nowhere
near the kind of accuracy or compatibility like we've just been
talking about those are the early days and when it comes to actual quality FPGA
devices to the level I've just been referencing I would say for a one-off
the analog systems are absolutely fantastic those are the analogue NT they
did a Super Nintendo version and they did a Sega Genesis there may be some
others L and I think they are soon to be released in the handheld devices those
look absolutely fantastic me myself I don't own any those are too pricey for
me I would love to own one but I just haven't got that kind of financial
backing to go and spend on all those consoles they are very expensive
and I would say they probably are for many of you guys out there for those of
you who want to get the full resources and cutting-edge technology of what is
actually happening in real time I would go down the FPGA mister root now this
has become quite mature it's open source so many people are working on this all
around the world and like I said many of the systems are breaking on an almost a
daily basis there is different levels of accuracy for the various different
systems the mister can play but the great thing is there is so many
different systems that the mister can play compared to these one-off machines
of course you can flash the analog devices with the far-east software but
when it comes to an all-rounder all-singing all-dancing an entire
open-source community all working together to get all these different
systems consoles computers arcades all booting up and as accurate as possible I
would say that this mr. projects is probably the best option for most people
as it is open source lots of people from all around the world have got different
loves for different systems so luckily quite a lot of the most popular systems
that we remember from the 8-bit 16-bit the early computer days and many of the
early arcade games include a Neo Geo they are all now as accurate as the
original hardware or in some cases even better in terms of features you see
not only is the program the language all the features inside of it open source so
is the hard word itself which means that you can pretty much have any add-on to
have any functionality you wish coming out of it
so you can plug it into JAMA harness for example and play it inside an arcade as
if it was a cycle accurate actual arcade board of whatever game you want to play
you can just use a controller and have it as a console I system whether it be
the original controller that you want to play on or even a Bluetooth device in
terms of output it can be HD mi-24 kilohertz monitor 60 frames per second
CR TV it can be whatever you want because it's all open source and you can
pretty much buy wherever you want to transform it into whatever hardware you
want it to be the only one thing that is proprietary and you pretty much have to
buy is the brains itself it runs on a de 10 nano I believe that
this comes from Intel and it runs on a cyclone 5 chip that is the FPGA itself
this comes a stock with HDMI out so at least you can plug it into a TV or
monitor to get you up and running it also has a SD card slot so you can plug
some operating system or games onto there and it comes with a mini USB so in
some way you can get a controller keyboard or some kind of input to get
you up and running with most of the systems that you would want to play but
if you want to get every system every computer every arcade every console that
you can ever imagine working on this board you are going to need the ramp now
this goes up to 128 and I would encourage you to actually go that far
because it does future-proof yourself it is the most expensive obviously out at
the ball but this gives you everything that the system can play but also say if
you want a bit more functionality go for the i/o board this will give you the
on/off switch reset which isn't that important but for those of you want to
use monitors it will give you more ins and outs in terms of adapters
compatibility such as VGA and all that kind of stuff depends on what you
to add to the system or how you want to have it set up in terms of controllers
like we talked about it's going USB mini but you will probably need some kind of
USB hub so you can plug more than one adaptor in or plug a bluetooth adapter
in it is Wi-Fi it is bluetooth it is compatible of most of those devices so
you can get a lot more features by adding that kind of thing now like I
said the de 10 nano will probably bring you up to 100 to 130 UK pounds depending
on where you are in the world with shipping and all that kind of stuff the
prices of all this coming together will be different me myself in the UK plus
shipping it probably came up to 270 UK pounds I'm sure for those American
amongst us it will probably be a lot cheaper and depending on where you are
in the world you could beat me or you could be expending more money I cannot
comment I don't know but I'll put links in the description for trusted places
that sell all this and of course for more information along the lines if you
want to go into more depth I will be covering FPGA not just the mister but I
will be forking out for the analogs moving forward and I just really want to
get my teeth into FPGA in general there's a hell of a lot to cover a hell
of a lot to catch people in and there's a hell of a lot more depth that I can go
into with this it's just that this video is brought off forever so at the end of
the day that's FPGA in case you're interested this is what I
gave up I've got a beast of a PC which runs everything I've got all the
consoles you could ever imagine but this is my little go-to machine that runs
everything that I could ever imagine all in one place its FPGA which means that
it's everything we've just talked about plus it links up simultaneously with the
PC all inside this little keyboard I put it inside an Amiga 1200 because that's
the computer that is most iconic for me plus I wanted something that actually
has a keyboard because most of the things I play our keyboard related it
isn't been destructed there's no Amiga that's been torn to pieces it's all
recreated parts and even then I've also 3d printed a shell on the inside so
everything attaches to that in case and if it did get damaged by me putting
things inside of it it just kind of seals the deal it's all running for a
CRT v and in terms of controller I've got an arcade stick which is completely
modded to the kind of buttons and sticks that I like plus I've got an official
Super Nintendo that I've modded myself to give a wireless bit of approval
that's done with the 8-bit do mod I'm not sponsored by them it's just my
choice of controllers for all this I even like to keep it official or
something that just gives me that little glow inside so that is it oh yeah I've
got a tank mouse I don't use it because who liked balls at the end of the day
the wireless one is more than adequate and over it now that's about it Jesus
worked that is three weeks it's taken me to make this video I almost made it
there once and then my old PC decided to crash but I managed to save all the raw
files but I had to go through and edit everything again there's my poor
eyesight that's got going on at the moment it's taking me forever but some
kind of speech impediment that I seem to have from my mitigation oh it's all
crazy but the great thing is that it is now complete and it's now gay born from
regular uploads and I'm absolutely bloody loving this at the moment
I don't know we just get to enjoy the little things you like remember the good
times but most of all most of all you guys have a good day
you
