Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Aluminum NES Maker Announces Smaller, Cheaper Analogue Nt Mini (polygon.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the newer-is-always-better dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: Analogue, the company behind the aluminum NES known as the Analogue Nt, is releasing a smaller, less expensive version of its console this January. Known as the Analogue Nt mini, the new version of the long-sold out hardware will be 20 percent smaller and carry a lower price: $449. The original Analogue Nt was priced at $499, but its tinier successor will outclass the original model with a better offering, the company says. The mini will comes with RGB and HDMI output (1080p/720p/480p) built in. The console will include a wireless 8Bitdo NES30 controller and Retro Receiver -- compatible with PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Wii and Wii U Pro Controllers -- as part of the package. In addition, the Nt mini will support over 2,000 NES, Famicom and Famicom Disk System games.

5 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Re:HDMI? by OrangeTide · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well maybe it makes sense if you don't have analog inputs on your TV?

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  2. Price Point by darkain · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For those that didnt RTFA, there is a reason for the high price point of this console.

    They are not using emulation like the Retron consoles. This isn't the usual Famiclone either. They sourced actual 30 year old Famicom CPU and Video chips to build this custom unit, then hacked the video chip to connect to a custom HDMI output chip so there is no digital-analog-digital conversion process at all. This is straight digital video right from the original NES video chip right to an HDMI chip without any converters. *THIS* is impressive, to say the least.

    If nothing else, this entire unit is actually quite the impressive custom hack of 30 year old hardware.

    1. Re:Price Point by Michalson · · Score: 4, Informative

      You're wrong, but it's not your fault since the article Slashdot used is extremely short on information so you simply made an assumption based on existing information.

      The original $500 Analogue Nt is indeed based on NES chips recovered from used Famicom (Japanese NES) consoles. However the $450 "mini" version announced does not include any NES components and is instead based around the Altera Cyclone V, a FPGA (field-programmable gate array) chip. This is essentially emulation in hardware. But a FPGA can't perfectly replicate the timings and quirks of the original Ricoh 2A03 that powered the NES and the maker seems to acknowledge this in the fact that the mini version adds user deployed firmware (revised FPGA code) updates.

      This makes their approach not much different from software emulators, patching away emulation inconsistencies as they are found by end users. The only difference is the software emulators have had a mostly open source approach and 20 years of incremental improvements to get the NES library right, while this will be a closed source effort by a small company with an entirely different approach to emulating the NES, requiring that they basically start from scratch. And at $450 per unit they may have a limited number of testers.

    2. Re:Price Point by newcastlejon · · Score: 2

      For those that didnt RTFA, there is a reason for the high price point of this console.

      They are not using emulation like the Retron consoles. This isn't the usual Famiclone either. They sourced actual 30 year old Famicom CPU and Video chips to build this custom unit...

      You read the wrong FA; this story is about the successor to the model made from 30 year old stock. The Nt Mini uses an FPGA to emulate the original hardware.

      If nothing else, this entire unit is actually quite the impressive custom hack of 30 year old hardware.

      Except that it isn't. It's a much more impressive thing than cobbling together off-the-(dusty)-shelf chips in a shiny box.

      --
      If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
  3. Re:Free of compromises? by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Notice the guy having to use a CRT to play Duck Hunt.

    Not exactly free of compromises.

    That's because of the gun controller - the guncons of most consoles is really a photo transistor. The lens in the barrel narrows the field of view of that transistor. What it's looking for is a bright spot on the screen - when you click the trigger, the game notes the delay from the vertical retrace (blank) and when the photo transistor triggers. That delay gives you the X,Y coordinates of the shot and the game uses it to determine if you hit the object.

    In some games, it's obvious - you pull the trigger, and the screen turns white briefly as the scan begins by drawing white and seeing when the transistor fires. Others are more sensitive and just rely on the fact that the transistor can see the part of the screen where the electron beam is, or they just turn the targets white to see the location. (In high speed footage, you can see the bright spot drawn by the electron beam in a CRT).

    Of course, modern TVs don't have a rapidly moving bright dot so those guncons just don't work anymore. It's why the Wii has the "sensor bar" which is emitting two red dots that are used to spatially track the Wii remote, or the use of AR style tricks with the Wii U tablet controller.

    Don't get me wrong, you can use the guncons but not in a single frame - you basically have to rapidly scan the screen with a bar after firing - you send a white bar on a black screen down and across to see when the photo transistor fires and use that to get your coordinates. The lower resolution you go, the faster you can scal - you can do two frames for a leftr/right or up/down dtermination, 4 frames for a corner, etc.