Yeah I remember him saying that on the MLiG. The Mister uses the same chip (the Cyclone V) and they said it should be able to power the PS2 (Smoke Monster said it on his stream and he was drunk so who knows) from what I’ve heard but that it would take a lot of effort.
When they (Analogue) do a CD based console I think that opens the doors to other cd consoles on the same machine or even making an add-on for other machines. I would be very down to buy a SG CD for the SG. I am not very interested in buying long in the tooth CD based systems and I am trying to find a way to run all of my older consoles via hard drive or sd card so I don’t have to rely on that hardware.
The problem isn’t the capacity of the fpga, it’s more the amount of work to reverse engineer and implement complex systems.
If you suppose ~1 year of work to get an FPGA SNES going, it could take several years of work to get an FPGA N64 going, and adding more engineers likely won’t help to speed that up much.
The N64 is many times more complicated, perhaps even an order of magnitude more complicated, as it has an Silicon Graphics GPU on board and is less well documented in general than the SNES is.
PS2 even moreso; both are in the realm of it likely would never happen due to the amount of work required to get there.
There was an amazing write up by an ex retroarch developer on why the GPU and rasterization process is so stupidly complex with all the custom microcodes and RDP behaviour but they threw a hissy fit and deleted everything which is a shame. But even the CPU is really fast compared to the other consoles of that generation, that alone would be a huge chunk of the current FPGA’s overhead to handle. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done full stop but it would take years and years to develop to the same standard as a 16 bit machine.
Who is to say that he hasn’t been working on the N64 for years already?
Back to reality.
The N64 already has a HDMI option and the console is relatively cheap. There really isn’t a reason for me to go that route. Either way, whatever they make, I will probably buy (cause I have little impulse control with retro).
It’s interesting that Polymega turned out to be a software emulation box, Mega Sg turned out to be “hybrid emulation” and MiSTer has quietly collected dozens of cores and just needs a nice industrial design for a case.
Polymega coined the phrase, essentially using FPGA and interfacing electronically with any custom chips on the cartridges so they don’t have to put them in the FPGA. But they spun it as a positive. But then they dropped the whole FPGA angle after E3 and it became another software emulator box.
I’m not sure if the Analogue devices use special chips in this way, hence my “quotes”
Well that’s not how the Sg works. The entire Genesis/MD is emulated by the FPGA. It’s full FPGA, not hybrid.
Anyway on the subject of predictions, I can see Analog circling back to Neo Geo as an FPGA eventually after PS1. Then taking a hiatus to sus out more complex stuff… maybe N64… maybe Saturn.
I don’t see Neo Geo but I’d be excited to see that if they did. I’m still on camp PS1 as the next major release.
I’m interested to see if the jail break allows loading roms from the SD card like the NT mini and Super NT. If the SG allows all that, then the Neo Geo would be awesome because one can assume you could do the same.
@Kawika the only special chip SMD game that comes to mind is Virtua Racing.
@Televator ah, I thought it had 32X compatibility through the additional connector, but it’s actually Sega CD. Still, support of the extra board means hybrid to me.
I’m intrigued to see how things develop closer to release.
The only question mark for me is the Sega CD aspect. It’s the only supported platform the website does not list as being “totally implemented into Mega Sg via FPGA”.
This “hybrid” label seems needless. The SNt doesn’t incorporate special chips in the FPGA either and effectively works like a real SNES because it’s not like the SNES incorporates special chips into its hardware either. That’s why the chips are special. lol I mean if it just flat out didn’t support those games would it not be “hybrid emulation” anymore?
That’s because you have to plug it into an SCD to play CD games. Then the Sg can do the scaling voodoo to SCD games.
And pretty meaningless too. Emulation is emulation regardless of how you interface with real controllers or carts imho.
It was always software based emulation but people flipped their lid at the merest mention of an FPGA without looking at what it was actually being used for. Hybrid emulation is a great piece of marketing fluff to make their software based emulation seem more impressive and accurate than it actually was.
I didn’t realize you were talking about the Polymega. I thought you were talking about the Analogue SG. I was like…
because I thought you were saying that Analogue was marketing the sega cd add on as hybrid emulation. I guess I need to not read posts when I am half awake. I thought to myself, no way would analogue use that in their marketing but I didn’t want to specifically call you out because like I said, I never heard it that way. /shrug
I wanted the Polymega to be a FPGA cycle accurate machine that didn’t use software emulation. I was hoping that another company was taking Analogue’s way. In the end, I would be so much happier if I could buy the ultimate multi console fpga machine. That might end up being the MiSTer but one can hope that the MiSter might usher in more options from Analogue. I would love to see them do a multi console and a cd add on. Hell, if they could make more of those slot carts to be compatible with non-sega machines like PCE Hu cards, that would be awesome.
I don’t see the PCE and Neo Geo selling like gangbusters (I could be wrong) because of the costs of the software and the consoles not being as popular with the average consumer in North America.
I agree with the above. Analogue should continue producing Super Nt, get the Mega Sg out there, and then add an NES compatible machine to the lineup that maybe adds Game Boy/Game Boy Color to the mix via cart converters in the same way the Mega Sg is doing.
I just don’t think the need is there for Neo Geo or TG-16 because the games are prohibitively priced for most people.
