Slashdot Mirror
SNES Portable
Tha_Zanthrax writes "This guy is really good: the same dude that built a portable PSX a while ago and has also made some really old Atari 2600 portable has did it again. This time he 'compressed' a Super Nintendo System. The comicbook-like intro is nice to."
An ability that would be really nice is being able to store ROMS on a memory stick or something. That way you could download obscure games and play them on this thing. It works great for computers with SNES9X and ZSNES; why can't it work for this?
Why would someone want this? I guess if SNES is more addictive for you than heroin, maybe this'd be up your alley.
I don't know about you, but even though I own some newer systems, the ones I play the most are NES, Atari, and SNES. Who cares if they aren't current, they are FUN.
Also, the games on SNES are a hell of a lot more entertaining than the games on Cellphones. If I wanted to play "Snake", I would load up QBasic on my 486.
The fact of the matter is that many gamers love playing older games. New games can be fun, but I often find myself longing for the days of 2D, side-scrollers. Myself and those like me would love to have portable NES & SNES systems.
Besides, a system like this is GREAT for buying old games at Flea Markets, etc. You can test to make sure the games work right then & there! That's enough right there to justify having one of these.
um...didn't Nintendo already do this? I think it's called Gameboy Advance
GBA isn't binary compatible with Super NES. Thus, even though you have ports of many Super NES games, you don't have ports of anything by Square (FF, Mana, Chrono) because Square and nintendo no longer talk to each other after SMRPG and FF7.
However, this curse becomes a blessing once you get GCC for ARM and a $50 "MBV2" PC link cable: you can easily write your own code for GBA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Well, what is special is that this guy built it himself. Not with the help of a team of engineers and a fabrication plant. But in his garage with the full sized console and components that could be found at radio shack. What fun is buying a portable unit when you could build one yourself. That man is true to the origional hack philosophy, reverse engineering something for the sake of fun and knowledge.
Okay, the comic book intro and story was worth a laugh, but jesus christ, can't he actually show us what the damn final product looks like? I was anticipating at least one high res frontal non clipped shot of what he actually built. Now I read through the article to know what the back of it looks like, what the battery looks like, and what the internals looks like, but I still haven't seen the actual finished product.
The "commercially produced portable PlayStation" is the PSOne, and it's sort of awkward. It's basically a console with an optional screen attached. You still need to hook up the controllers externally, it needs a constant power connection to run, etc. It's only barely portable, whereas his PlayStation Portable is a complete unit that fits in your hand and can run either on batteries or a wall connection.