Retro VGS, Now featuring the Atari Box and any other weird systems

More and more info is dropping each day about this new consoles which is retro inspired, it will be on kickstarter soon.

Here's the web page for it. but the facebook page here has been the best source for info.


I did put info in the retro news section but this is getting a bit more traction behind it, what do you guys think are you going to back, went to see all the games or just not bothered about a new retro system.

I really enjoy playing the odd retro game from time to time, but to design a console and build and sell it's future around the past sounds a bit mental.

It is but also quite cool but I'm dreading the kickstarter money it needs and how much pledges will be as there is special edition consoles, 20 games hopefully at launch which some will need backing and bundles with consoles and games.

I would maybe go $200 for a system with a few games but I can see this being more like $600 and that's PC money which will have all these games on and we don't know how much more it will get supported out of the gate.

It's fine if all the homebrew games that come to Dreamcast fro instance also come to it but I would be buying them on Dreamcast not VGS unless there a good price and worth getting.

I've looked at the website and I don't understand. Does it play original SNES etc. games, or is it a new hardware with arbitrarily low specifications?

The new hardware which might have above PS1 specs in the final build, nothing is set in stone yet.

But I don't know if it needs loads of power for retro inspired games, I have heard there in talks with Yacht Club.

I hope they do ramp up the specs at least - I imagine there's a peak between cost and specs. If they deliberately limit the hardware, then I'm out - it's just making life difficult for others.

The thing is how powerful do you go, as I know PS2, Cube, Xbox & DC are retro but they still feel rather modern to me and only one of those gets homebrew/indie support whom will be bringing games to the VGS and if it's PS2 like games that's kinda missing the point of the system.

I know Pier Solar HD is coming and that will run at the same resolution etc as the PS4 version and I guess if Shovel Knight does come it will be the same as Wii U etc and that's the games that the VGS will hopefully get and do we need POWER! for that.

But I would like to see what a 3D game does look like on it.

We have a price of $300 which seems a bit steep but it now can run games using Unity for instance and adapters will be available to play NES games on it which in turn will be out in HD .

But that $300 could soon rise to more like $600 as do you want a extra controller, games are $20-50 each, do you want a special edition console etx

The kickstarter does launch this month and I will check it out but I think I'm going be priced out on something I thought was going to be a new retro system up to about PS1 specs, then something that could play Grow Home.

That it's in current gen consoles prices and if you want retro you can get a lot of could stuff that sort of money,

Sorry, I don't want to troll this all the time, but this doesn't need to exist. At all. If it was a £20 novelty Argos thing, maybe, but no-one should be deliberately forking out current-console prices for deliberately archaic hardware.

But its not even archaic now if it can run Unity & some other up to date engine, that it's going against what it was meant to be which was a system to play retro style games which likely come to another console anyway.

Like Pier Solar made for Mega Drive now on almost everthing, it is nice to have a cartridge and I've got no issue paying up to $50 for that but the console is to much. The original planned price was $150-199 which I think is reasonable if you look at Neo Geo X which doesn't play new games.

From what I've read they need 7,000 people to buy one which I do think they'll do easy as people do spend silly money on retro and homebrew games always seem to sell well.

Honestly it running Unity scares the hell out of me since (and it's not the engine's fault) a lot of "devs" use it to make utter trash. It makes me question if they made it Unity compatible just so they could shovel a load of content onto it, regardless of quality.

Even if you don't regard it as archaic (I do, you can run unity on a phone), that's a ludicrous price for an inherently gimmicky system. Ou-yah, that's not good, that's a death sentence.

Much as I miss cartridge days, this isn't a solution.

It's been pretty much cancelled now due to behind scenes which has actually got them a lot of press for the wrong reasons.

Er... good. Sorry.
Dave Houghton explains better than I can.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I really enjoy playing the odd retro game from time to time, but to design a console and build and sell its future around the past sounds a bit mental.

I saw news about this for the first time today, and basically thought this.  Also, what Jimbob said.  Nobody's loss.

I don't know how you can say that Jimbob, Good...Sorry. As this was a teams dream to make a new retro system. If you tried something and failed we wouldn't go good.

I'm a fan of the idea but they do need to sort the price out, show it working and get games they've promised to maybe come to the system. As if it gets Shovel Knight, Shantae, Pier Solar for instance that's fairly decent.

masofdas wrote:

I don't know how you can say that Jimbob, Good...Sorry. As this was a teams dream to make a new retro system. If you tried something and failed we wouldn't go good.

I did feel a little guilty after initially writing that, but the more I thought through it, the more quickly that guilt dissipated. It's not so much the deliberately-archaic product that irks me (although it does a little) but more the spiel that the devs were attaching to the product - the claim that it avoids all of the "hassles" that the modern world of consoles have. I would argue that taking a casing mould (or in fact is it the actual casing) of an existing product and ham-fisting it into something else doesn't seem like it'd be any more durable than a supposedly-delicate XBOne/PS4. And although we lived quite happily in a gaming world before the internet, the early prototyping seems to suggest the mentality of the developers hasn't shifted towards "we've got to get this right; we can't patch it". And then to slap a price tag on it which would suggest they either (a) hadn't thought about what they were going to end up with having to do, or (b) assumed no-one would associate (or care abouit) the price of something with the relative technological power of its components.

If I tried making a thing like this, and it failed, and I'd asked you to pay £100s for it, I'd expect you to say "good", because it'd discourage me from misjudging what people would/should pay for. I mean, I can work on the machine that'd replace your Blu-Ray player if you like... the format's a bit like VHS, but I've invented an arbitrarily different tape size, spool speed, that sort of thing. It's got an HDMI cable at the back, but note that it's designed to output a video quality that reminds us of the good old days, when SD+frame blur was the norm, and pausing gave us a little dance.

So no - I hate being mean to anyone - and if someone who was working on it, I'd probably apologise to them, personally if possible. But I'd really ask them to sort out their hubris, for the sake of the world.

But gaming was better back in the day though with none of these updates or installs. Stu is not a fan of modern gaming for instance.

I think the VHS and Blu Ray comparison is unfair as it's rather different also likes of Shovel Knight has shown people want oldschool games and if that was on the VGS that could only be a good thing and show the system is about games the main thing.

That's my issue with it along with the price games, get the retro inspired games on it, to make it worth while.

But I'm someone buying new dreamcast games in 2015 & beyond, that I could just be a little crazy.

I'll have a go at lazy devs/publishers who knowingly launch a busted project on day one with the 'we'll fix it later mentality.'

However patches are here to stay for the simple reason that modern games are a lot more complicated than older titles, and certain titles, no matter how well play tested, are going to have at least some launch issues for that reason (games like fallout). It'll be interesting to see if AAA publishers go down the early access route, and basically use the community to help patch their work before an official release as time goes on though, over a small testing team, although that will not work for every type of game. None of that makes updates less irritating granted, but now stuff can get fixed whereas before if there was a bug, it was there either forever or until a re-print.

When you say, "gaming was better back in the day." You have to remember that that was also a day in which you had no idea that an MGS V would come out, or a World of Warcraft, or Oblivion or whatever. Complex AI, massively multiplayer games, huge open worlds, those are just some of the innovations which have occurred since I started gaming on the Gameboy, and I can't wait for more.

But even if you just want that good old style then here's the kicker. Steam, and to a lesser extent the console equivalents, just make a retro console completely unnecessary. I could buy Unity, an asset pack, and put a game on steam right now. With no effort. That's shitty, but it does at  least mean talented people can put their stuff on the store with minimal barriers to entry. A talented team making a retro game can go right ahead and put it on steam, while publishers are getting better at putting their classics up on console stores and Sony/MS/Ninty are getting better at getting indie titles on their stores.

Modern hardware, even a poop laptop, can support good old games. So a retro console must fulfill these criteria: Looks cool, has cool games already, is cheap, before most people are even going to consider buying one.

With regards to Shovel Knight, I would say that that merely proves people love great games, not necessarily retro games. Pixel/Sprites are both valid art styles, and people should accept that they don't have to mean retro since every year we have games come out using such a style. More to the point of a retro console though, the success of Shovel Knight across all current gen platforms exemplifies that great 'retro' is doing well in 2015.

I suppose one could make the argument that they want more, much much more, in the way of stylistically old games. But think about this, even whenever back in the day was, how many titles were great? How many were average, or just plain shit? I'd wager the ratio isn't so different from modern consoles, and that a retro system would have a few gems and a ton of trash, just like the average for every other system. On that basis, I just don't see the need for one. Maybe for physical copies?

Bottom line, if a studio or individual really wants to make a retro game, and if someone wants to play a retro game, all the tools already exist. So why buy/develop for a gimped console?

You mkae some great points Muss, I think there plan was take all these retro inspired games like a Shovel Knight and put them all on one system, it was also getting stuff like Gunlord which came out in 2014 (I think) for Dreamcast & Neo Geo on it. That devs wouldn't really be making a gimped version of the game but just bringing across along with some PC only titles that all have the retro inspired approach.

The question is the price as would I but SK on a cartridge (a proper one not a 3DS cart) for £30 yeah sure as how cool would that be but would I pay $300 for a system to play it on No as I can play a digital version on my PS4, XBONE, WiiU, 3DS, VITA or PC and most will have one of those. So how much is the coolness factor worth/ and having all these games in one place to me, I would maybe go to £179.99 at a push.

This would only be a real seller if you could use the original media in it... which would push the costs through the roof. Then through the clouds. As it stands, I'm going to agree with Jimbob's assessment of the whole thing.

Muss, that's a blinder of a post.

ZeroJones wrote:

This would only be a real seller if you could use the original media in it... which would push the costs through the roof. Then through the clouds. As it stands, I'm going to agree with Jimbob's assessment of the whole thing.

They were planning add-ons to fit where the Jag CD would have of plugged into, but then theres the Retron 5 for $160 which plays all the retro stuff, the VGS should of been that but with a slot for the a Jag cart and new games for that.

Muss and Zero have been much more eloquent than I was - thanks, that's what I meant.

I have much less of an issue with the Retron 5, as that's primarily designed as replacement hardware, to play games you might already have, but with which e.g. your console has bit the dust. I'd perhaps argue that it too is a little too expensive, but I can totally see myself purchasing one eventually (probably in 10 years when there's a version with a Gamecube disc slot!).
Conversely, I do wish that the makers of the obsolete consoles would take the money that people would spend on e.g. the Retro VGS and fund a better way to access old game software, whether it be via the original medium or digitally. Of course, the latter is (as us frustrated eShop goers will attest) usually down to lapsed rights; it's more hassle than it's worth trying to secure a game of niche interest. And I suspect Rare were constantly on the borderline when "updating" their NES output for Rare Replay. So I don't know if I have a solution to that.
But for new software, no, there's absolutely no need to produce a deliberately nerfed console, unless it's significantly cheap / accessible (see the comparison between the success of, say, the Ouya and the Raspberry Pi).

The VGS was based on something which was cheaper and one of the reasons it's been put on hold because of that, as I don't think the original guy was in the loop. Plus they decided to build on it to have this variable system that it would turn into a 2600 if you wish then a PS1 if you wish some how by what cart was in the slot.

Like you say Jim about the original medium, take the Dreamcast it's got games coming out in 2017 (which I've backed / will back on kickstarter) it's going to out life the Wii U with games. But you got to have a working Dreamcast to play the game and how many of the 10.6m are working & that's today what about in 2017.

Where there plan was to take those DC games along with some other games as there is still SNES titles coming out but not as often and put them all on one system, basically they wanted a one unified that could do all the old systems that are still developed for along with getting the retro inspired games that don't come to old system like Shovel Knight.

Maybe they should of contacted the guys behind Retron and worked on something as the Retron 5 can do most system anyway that adding something in to run a Neo Geo or Dreamcast game couldn't of been that hard.

It's back as