_NetNomad

calling these “game boy clones” isn’t quite right because they don’t take physical cartridges, but this is a real shame. companies like them and Miyoo and Retroid have been carving out a nice niche of gaming devices between a fully locked down console and a Whole Ass Personal Computer but this tariff situation is gonna kill them in their tracks stateside

I’m reminded of that onion article, “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made An Excellent Point.” on one hand, as an independant musician who has many friends in different artistic fields, we all agree IP law is a net negative for us all. the threat of wrongly being accused of copyright infingement and being punished for it is very real, whereas the threat of having our work stolen is non-existant and wouldn’t matter anyway because we’re making fuck-all money in the first place. and the fact that we can’t legally iterate on existing music the way humans have for as long as we’ve had music until very recently is just criminal. it makes me absolutely sick

on the other hand, if IP law exists to protect small creators but in actuality protects corporate interests, and suddenly corporate interests think IP is bad, then we should be very worried. i said earlier that the threat of our work being stolen is minimal because we’re not making money, but with all this generative AI bullcrap, they’re using our art as raw fuel to displace artists entirely and burn the planet to a crisp. it makes me even more sick

not for nothing, the one-standard-multiple-manufactuters thing has been done before with sony and microsoft both involved. the real truth of this article is that the people yearn for MSX

joking aside i’d love to see something like that come back, because you get the convienence of a set standard that makes games Just Work like they do on consoles while offering way more options to consumers. i guess once the floodgates open on third party steamOS machines we’ll be halfway there

i’m personally the other way around- i live for FM soundtracks and can’t stand how muffled the SNES sounds compared to even other sample-based systems. beauty is in the… ear? of the beholder

despite my love for the Saturn, there’s no denying that between it’s bizzaro architecture and short lifespan to make way for the Dreamcast, it ended up leaving a lot on the table. thankfully the homebrew community is picking up more and more speed

if you’ll stretch the definition of console to include computers, the MSX Turbo-R is another example. it was an 8-bitter but with a souped-up, faster z80 meant to at least give it a fighting chance against the onalaught of 16-bitters, but the few games it’s known for are all RPGs that look great but don’t exactly flex the speed of the new processor. and while the MSX homebrew scene is massive and still pumping out games by the dozen, the Turbo-R is a rare target for new games with it still commanding 1000+ USD prices. someday!

as i understand it prices varied widely because ROM size was a huge factor, so a massive jrpg and a smaller superfx game could cost the same amount. i’d be very suprised if any developers just ate the cost of it considering the chip shortages of the mid 90s

it’s a shame that this period of chaos at SEGA ended up giving console add-ons such a bad name. people were willing to shell out for add-ons in the cartridge, with how well SuperFX games did even though you were essentially buying the same upgrade over and over. people were and still are happy to buy mid-generation refreshes too like the DSi or the Master System even though if they already had the system they had to essentially buy it again. add-ons like this are more consumer friendly and more environmentally friendly