Retro VGS Thoughts

Retro VGS, catastrophic disaster or disastrous catastrophe? Perhaps, spectacular train wreck. It's a good lesson for what not to do regarding projects like that.

I had been keeping tabs on it off and on for several months. I checked out some of the early hype interviews and I generally liked the pitches. I knew it was a niche product idea. I had no delusions it was going to be a dominant platform, but I saw that there was some appeal to it for me and others like me. It all sounded pretty good with cool features(FPGA) and a good price point($150). Of course we all know how that turned out.

I saw one person speculate that perhaps the funding campaign was intentionally designed to fail at this point. I was thinking the same thing simply because it was so poorly executed and so far from the promises, but I wouldn't know what benefit there would be to making it fail, unless it's some kind of power play behind the scenes. Here are some of my observations of what's wrong with the campaign:

1 - Price: As Game Escape mentioned, value for money is more important than the actual price, but the price is bad by any measure. There is little value as this niche console is in the price territory of the mainstream systems with comparatively weak specs(whatever they are exactly) and few games. The price itself is just too high for the kind of people who would be interested in this. The big problem with the price is that Mike Kennedy has gone out there and said that the target price of the system was 150 bucks, with a "chance" it could go up to $180. A statement like that indicates that some research had been done into the hardware design they wanted and that $180 is at the high end of the spectrum. At 150-180, a lot of people would have been willing to take a chance on the system. Even if they just end up with a few games, it might have been worth it to a degree to some people. Seriously, how does the price double? And then there's the shipping.

2 - Bye bye FPGA - Not only did the price double from what was promised, but the FPGA, one of the system's defining features and a big appeal to hardware nerds, has either vanished or shrunk considerably. It's hard to tell really. It sounds like they downsized it tremendously to the point where they can say they kept it in, but it will be useless compared to what was promised. But if they get an extra 1-2 million dollars, they can restore it to the level they had been promising all along. They were talking about this thing being $150 with the ARM/FPGA combo. Everybody loves a good bait and switch. Interestingly, it sounds like NG Dev Team, who would be a developer that would benefit a lot from the FPGA in theory, has Gunlord running on the ARM achitecture.

3 - No prototype - I've been reading about this disaster on Atari Age. I can't look away. While a prototype wouldn't exactly be cheap, according to people who seem to know about these things, a prototype wouldn't be ridiculously expensive either. A working unit would go a long way to convince many people that this project might be worth something, especially with the bait and switch on the pricing and features raising red flags. They don't have a prototype because they either finalized their specs within the last couple of weeks, or they haven't done so yet, which would explain the extremely vague listed specs and the fact that the FPGA is in stretch-goal territory.

4 - Insider info - For people that have dug deeper and checked some of the forum discussions, there are more details indicating mismanagement. Of course, it's hearsay, but it's believable, especially considering the sources. With talk of the hardware constantly changing, to adding components that added cost and little value, it seems like these guys have taken on way too much with this thing and have strayed from the vision. Going back to your Android-console idea, Game Escape, it seems like it might have been a better idea, especially now that the FPGA has been downsized and downplayed, to do that with an option for physical media(which is already flash based) and maybe run a highly-selective app store specializing in only high-quality, modern retro games so such games get more visibility among a smaller pool of games.

And there were some other issues worth mentioning:

-The sudden switch from Kickstarter to IndieGoGo looked suspicious. I'm not the type to look down on IndieGoGo as others do, but the switch to it seemed very sudden.

-Many of the listed games have been available elsewhere for a while. Pier Solar is easy to get as it's available digitally for many platforms, including Linux for guys like me. I have it for the Genesis, which means I went through hoops to get it, but I already have it. Gunlord isn't so easy to get, since NG Dev Team is done with the Dreamcast, but I have it there. I hope they release it digitally, as it's great.

-At least one developer/publisher has already pulled support from the RVGS. Some of the potential projects alluded to, like a sequel to a much-loved and long-dormant franchise, during the hype interviews has not materialized so far, though I didn't expect it to.

-At some point, there was talk of not using their flash memory for larger games(above 60-ish megabytes, maybe). Gunlord is a Neo Geo game in every way, including having lots of megabits. That translates to 78 megabytes. Maybe it's not too big for the flash. Shovel Knight was mentioned as being too large to be cost effective for their flash. The solution? Little hard drives in the carts. That was talked about. Maybe I'm ignorant and it's more feasible than it sounds, but it sounds crazy. But it seems to sound crazy to the people who know a lot more about hardware design and such as well.

-No ability to patch games is a bad thing and not a feature. I'm cool with not having to deal with constant system updates and such, but there have always been buggy games. Being able to fix major bugs is a good thing. I've seen it wisely pointed out that developers willing to support this would be smart to release their games digitally, work the bugs out, then eventually bring it to this system.


There are probably more issues and warning signs. I might have forgotten one or two, but I'm glad I got the little hard drives in there at least. And with your own thoughts on it, Game Escape, it's clear that there's so much wrong with this. I've seen it suggested, and I agree with it, that they're better off shutting the campaign down, regrouping, revamping their strategy, and trying again down the line with a much better plan. They can at least partially save face that way.

This story just gets weirder and weirder...What are we looking at? If this is a prototype (which it probably isn't), why did they wait until now to show it and why didn't they just use Kickstarter?