So funnily enough, I found myself in a used games store killing time, and I allowed myself to be sold on a Retron 1 HD. Because I still have 2 boxes full of old NES games from my childhood, but no NES to play them on. I had no TV capable of accepting analog input anymore, so the HD output of the Retron 1 HD was a must have over just getting an authentic NES.

Turns out most opinions online on the Retron 1 HD are rather negative. Has high input lag, poor colors, the sound is off, and it has compatibility issues with games that have addon chips in the cart.

I did source a 20" CRT off Facebook Marketplace, switched my Retron from the HDTV to that, and wouldn't you know it, 3 out of 4 of those issues vanished! Turns out the thing is powered by a Nintendo on a Chip that natively outputs a composite signal, and the HDMI encoder was fucking up the input lag, colors, and probably the audio too. I'm assuming it still has the compatibility issues though. I can't test it however since I don't own any of those games.

I know FPGA is a thing, and generally considered the "correct" choice. But this Retron was $40 compared to $200+. It's also astounding to me that you can still get Nintendo on a Chip based systems. It's probably just an artifact of it's time, where the hardware was simpler, and the NES rolled out globally quite slowly and incompletely. There were regions where it remained profitable to manufacture bootleg hardware for years and years and years. And apparently, once developed, they just never stopped making them. Or there is some enormous cache of them somewhere that never runs out. It seems unlikely to me we'll ever see the like again for modern systems.

I'm using real hardware most of the time these days with Emulation 10% of the time for things 1995ish and later.

Even for YouTube it's about 95% hardware, mostly because I want to capture what running a REAL 8088-80486 machine was like right on down to the POST (with some convenience/speed built in by elminating bottlenecks with faster/bigger HDD).

For 80s games I use the Tandy 1000A with a V20, Compaq Deskpro 386s/20 with a CONFIG.SYS driver scalable "Blue Lightning" chip in it, and my NanTan FMA3500C will soon have PC Speaker out modded into it.

For most things 1988+ I'm using the Compaq at full tilt or one of my 486 DX4 machines (CN486, Versa M/75, NanTan FMAK9200D) depending on where I am and what I'm doing.

@Namrok Hi there, I think you did make a good deal here.

Most NOACs aren't perfect, but neither bad.
Small graphical glitches and imperfect audio are the most prominent examples.

The latter is because both the NES and Sega Genesis had an, um, unconventional audio stage.
They use some sort of inverter circuit or something along these lines.

The early clone consoles of the 80s were of high quality and had discreet clone chips, which were pin compatible with NES PPU, even!

PS: It was similar with Super F?micom, I believe.
Speaking of, SFC clone chips made today aren't bad either. In fact, they're better than NOACs.
They sometimes have twice the RAM of the real thing and a good clone of the sound module.

The drama about glitches with the SFX chip are mainly because of timing issues, I think.

Some consoles run at wrong Hertz setting (50/60 Hz) for their corresponding country (50/60Hz).

Especially the clone consoles sold in Europe* are a victim here, because they're usually being made for Japan and US market.

So they're jumper set internally on motherboard to 60 Hz and NTSC output.
(They can changed to 50 Hz, at least, however.)

That's great for most games, because the infamous PAL slowdown is being avoided.

Which in turn has the side effect, though that some games won't run correctly anymore.
Region check may fail, because 50 Hz timing isn't being detected on startup.

Same glitches happen with original, modden SFCs running at wrong setting, by the way.

Ie, a 50 Hz version of St?rWing (w/ SFX chip) needs to run at 50 Hz, too.
If the game and its SFX chip meets a console set to 60 Hz, it will show glitches, such as bars and flickering.

Same happens with 60 Hz version on a 50 Hz console.
Other games may run fine on either timing, except that they're slower/faster and may have a squashed screen.

The difference with modded originals is, however, that they can usually be switched between both 50/60 Hz anytime or use a modchip that does the switching appropriately on power on.
Clone consoles don't offer this feature unless being modified.

Edit: Sorry for the long posting.
It just came to mind, because it not seldomly happens that Europen gamers buy a clone console and then have trouble with their PAL games.
Unless it's an older 50 Hz clone console bought locally rather than via online shop. Sys 72 etc.

Edit: Changed joker.

(*The quality models, I mean, not the no-name models. Consoles with clone chips from China and Russia use 50 Hz, too and are compatible with European games so far.
Minus the lockout chip situation, of course.
But the chip is often not supported, anyway.
The game cartridges may have a different pinout, also. There's 72pin vs 60 pin difference. Dandy used 60 pin, like Famicom.)

ux-3 wrote on 2024-07-15, 06:56:

I just made an interesting, yet somewhat sobering experience by trying to play 'Elite' again. […]
Show full quote

I just made an interesting, yet somewhat sobering experience by trying to play 'Elite' again.

I played a purchased original in 1985 on the C64. I remember being very fascinated and playing this for a while back then.
In 1988, I got a copy for Atari ST. I recall the graphics and sound to be improved, but the game never got my attention again. Retrospectively, I attributed this to having completed 'Sundog' in between.

In the last 3 days, I took a look at the game again. The author hosts all versions of the game for free on a web site.
I played the C64 version on CCS64, the Atari version on Steem, the Amiga version on WinUAE, the two PC versions on a slowed 486.

In the process, I realized why the game worked so well back then: The manual created (and still creates) an expectation and imaginative frame, in which the game can operate! This it shares with all my favorite C64 games. (not many: Nato Commander by Sid Meier, Lords of Midnight and Elite)

The first version I tried to run was the C64 one, as that was the one I played some 40 years ago. It worked OK, but with spartan graphics. It still created a limited immersion for a few runs.
But I soon found and remembered the problems from the past. The game initially has three different challenges: trade, combat and docking. But steering is turning combat and docking into nightmares. I remembered that docking was hard back then. As this was my first 3D space combat simulator, I had nothing to compare it to in 1985. But today, the steering feels almost broken.

I then tried Atari ST and Amiga. Both versions look and sound much improved. On the ST emulation, combat was near impossible. The joystick response was way too strong. That I could not play. The Amiga version was better, but still felt very crude. Due to the steering problems, docking was much worse than on the C64.

The PC versions had the same issues so far. Steering is difficult and artificial, docking just a time consuming burden. Profits seem to be reduced in comparison. I never got far, as the game seems to run a bit too fast. I am down to a speedsys of 6. As reducing the PC speed doesn't change the game speed, I am not even sure if the game isn't just working as intended.

I could try dosbox, but I kind of lost interest.
In 1985, the game lived from creating an expectation through the manual and filling it as far as was technically possible back then. In that, it is totally different from todays gaming. The rapidly increasing possibilities rendered it obsolete quickly.
It has become an artifact from the early days of computer gaming: Interesting to revisit briefly and to recall a totally different approach to computer gaming.

I had Elite for the 48k Spectrum, but I didn't "get" Elite for a year... learning curve on that version was vertical.... Then, me and a buddy were allowed to hang in the tech lab over lunchtimes at school and use the BBC model B... there were only two or three games, one of them was Xonix, forget the second, the third was Elite... The monitor was a nice for the time Microvitec Cub RGB... on that machine, with crisper display, less input lag in this game, and of course being the original Elite platform, things just clicked, with practice one could use the scanner to roll the ship just right, pull up and nail the target. Orientation of the control system happened faster. I began to get quite into it then. After being able to figure it all out on that, I was able to see through the low res color bleeds on the Spectrum version and read the scanner now I knew what it was supposed to be like. Also was able to adjust for the slight input lag over BBC version. I could then play it somewhat well on the Spectrum. However that title on my machine had some issues around saving, and could also crash, and maybe I had some power glitch problems.... anyway, I could only typically get as far as you could in a full Saturday "sesh" of hours as long as it didn't crash.

So to my mind, BBC B is the ideal machine for Elite, if you can find a good emu.

Second fave version I have tried is the Amiga one, native, got quite far in that one.

PC version is only marginally above 48k spectrum version for me, not enough colors. I only play it on machines that can't do better than CGA, more of a try the machine out thing that for much enjoyment.

Elite plus is much better all round of course, I saw it on the Archimedes first and tried real hard to get the 'rents to buy an Archimedes, but hadn't they just bought a Spectrum a few years ago, "we have a computer at home..." The archimedes star faded a bit over the next few years and ended up buying myself an Amiga 1200 when I got my own income.

There is a free BBC browser version here:
https://bbc.xania.org/?disc=elite.ssd&autoboot

Elite remake "The new kind" also plays quite well.
http://www.elitehomepage.org/thirty/index.htm
I guess one problem is the added joystick in the later versions.