GameTank modern 8-bit Console

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

I've been seeing a lot of coverage of this thing in various places so I thought I'd check it out.

GameTank

Personally I'm interested to see where it goes, but I have some major misgivings.

Firstly, the lack of support for HDMI is baffling. Including RCA jacks is a cute touch, but not supporting the most prevalent video-connector type strikes me as idiotic. A bunch of modern TVs and monitors don't even support SD RCA anymore, so it feels like that's cutting off a chunk of the audience.

To make matters worse, I can't imagine many people investing in one at the current price and with the current look of the system. It's like $250 for a system that doesn't look all that great and that has almost 0 games on it.

The creator has said that they're pretty much targeting the "will program for fun" crowd, but they're also on about this being available to a wider audience at some stage, and has started advertising across Reddit and with these articles in various retro gaming sites. Seems like someone's passion project that they're hoping to spin into a new platform without anywhere near the right amount of forethought.

I will be super happy if this does well, proves me wrong, and features a healthy software library, but in the words of a random redditor: "why would anyone develop for this thing when they can make a game for an established platform like Pico-8 or just make a NES ROM?"

What do you guys think? Does thing have any hope in hell of surviving?

 

[Sorion]

well, at least the console it's open source, which means, a random guy can make their own version with HDMI support, but yeah, it's a bummer it doesn't support hdmi out of the box

 

[diet_orange]

Here's a thought: Why not include RCA and HDMI to cater to both? Also it looks interesting but I get the feeling it might go the way of the OUYA tbh

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

Here's a thought: Why not include RCA and HDMI to cater to both? Also it looks interesting but I get the feeling it might go the way of the OUYA tbh

Yeah this is exactly my point lmao why not have both of them? If it's already gonna be this expensive, at least try and capture more of an audience.

It seems nice and all, but I feel it's going the way of the dodo pretty quickly.

 

[PhaseJump]

I've been seeing a lot of coverage of this thing in various places so I thought I'd check it out.

View attachment 126396

GameTank

Personally I'm interested to see where it goes, but I have some major misgivings.

Firstly, the lack of support for HDMI is baffling. Including RCA jacks is a cute touch, but not supporting the most prevalent video-connector type strikes me as idiotic. A bunch of modern TVs and monitors don't even support SD RCA anymore, so it feels like that's cutting off a chunk of the audience.

HDMI is more than a video connector, licensed or not. You're talking about including a DAC or more complex hardware in an old machine using 6502 chips. It's not idiotic at all. It's outside the scope of what the machine even is. It is something you can build and 3D print yourself.

To make matters worse, I can't imagine many people investing in one at the current price and with the current look of the system. It's like $250 for a system that doesn't look all that great and that has almost 0 games on it.

It's 3D printed. Retro computers as brand new platforms are a thing. People develop software for them. Many of them are north of $250.

Look at the Commander X16, Foenix Retro Systems, even the Mega65, ZX Spectrum Next or the new Commodore 64.

They range from being original chipsets with dependency on FPGA for glue logic, all the way up to total FPGA hardware reliance.

The creator has said that they're pretty much targeting the "will program for fun" crowd, but they're also on about this being available to a wider audience at some stage, and has started advertising across Reddit and with these articles in various retro gaming sites. Seems like someone's passion project that they're hoping to spin into a new platform without anywhere near the right amount of forethought.

The CX16 has a future second-generation redesign in the works that will turn it into a game console with 1 slot and the 2 controller ports up front. It's not going to happen any time soon, and there is lots of development around it.

I will be super happy if this does well, proves me wrong, and features a healthy software library, but in the words of a random redditor: "why would anyone develop for this thing when they can make a game for an established platform like Pico-8 or just make a NES ROM?"

What do you guys think? Does thing have any hope in hell of surviving?

Surviving what? It's an open source, 3D printed, hobby platform you can build yourself.
It's homebrew jank from top to bottom, and it's been talked about for years already.

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

HDMI is more than a video connector, licensed or not. You're talking about including a DAC or more complex hardware in an old machine using 6502 chips. It's not idiotic at all. It's outside the scope of what the machine even is. It is something you can build and 3D print yourself.



It's 3D printed. Retro computers as brand new platforms are a thing. People develop software for them. Many of them are north of $250.

Look at the Commander X16, Foenix Retro Systems, even the Mega65, ZX Spectrum Next or the new Commodore 64.

They range from being original chipsets with dependency on FPGA for glue logic, all the way up to total FPGA hardware reliance.



The CX16 has a future second-generation redesign in the works that will turn it into a game console with 1 slot and the 2 controller ports up front. It's not going to happen any time soon, and there is lots of development around it.



Surviving what? It's an open source, 3D printed, hobby platform you can build yourself.
It's homebrew jank from top to bottom, and it's been talked about for years already.

I'm aware of The Commander x16 for sure, been a fan of Dave Murray on YouTube for years now and enjoy what's he's done with his dream machine.

My argument is that his project has never started to stray into anything other than enthusiast tech, whereas this project seems like it's attempting to break into a crowd-funded retail-like release with the excessive promotion via articles and stuff.

the GameTank dev has also literally said they're planning on making a pre-built version soon, so the 3D printed console Kit excuse starts to look a bit shaky imo. If its kept to the niche of people who want to program for it, I can see it doing just fine, but calling it "the next generation of 8-bit game" (Devs words, not mine) sounds like it's trying to be something it's not.

I guess I'm trying to say that rather than targeting a hardcore DIY, programmers console, or a retail pick-up-and-play system, the GameTank is trying to straddle that line and is likely to garrot itself stem-to-stern.

 

[PhaseJump]

I'm aware of The Commander x16 for sure, been a fan of Dave Murray on YouTube for years now and enjoy what's he's done with his dream machine.

My argument is that his project has never started to stray into anything other than enthusiast tech, whereas this project seems like it's attempting to break into a crowd-funded retail-like release with the excessive promotion via articles and stuff.

the GameTank dev has also literally said they're planning on making a pre-built version soon, so the 3D printed console Kit excuse starts to look a bit shaky imo. If its kept to the niche of people who want to program for it, I can see it doing just fine, but calling it "the next generation of 8-bit game" (Devs words, not mine) sounds like it's trying to be something it's not.

I guess I'm trying to say that rather than targeting a hardcore DIY, programmers console, or a retail pick-up-and-play system, the GameTank is trying to straddle that line and is likely to garrot itself stem-to-stern.

Yeah, 8bitguy's machine, and all the others have absolutely strayed into crowd funding retail bullshit. They're all mostly stuck there, with a fully released product and instantly they lose people's interest. The scope creep, delays, redesigns, and lack of a finish line crossing product has kept the CX16 scene baited and strung along for a while now. They more recently threw the 65C816 into the mix. I think it's a shit show.

Crowd funding is a bad idea for this thing outside trying to bump up the numbers of hobbyist developers already into it getting real hardware in their hands. It's not going to sell more than a few hundred consoles at best, with any and all of the delusional hype, marketing, or good will it can hypothetically get from the 8bit nerds on the internet. Most of them probably aren't even aware of GameTank, and will buy and collect crap they don't understand so it rots on a shelf.

Beyond that blatantly obvious reality, I think implying it should have HDMI is just throwing scope creep at it.

There are better software homebrew efforts going into existing consoles. NES, SMS, 7800, PC Engine. The Genesis and Gameboy beats all due to the SGDK and gbstudio.

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

Yeah, 8bitguy's machine, and all the others have absolutely strayed into crowd funding retail bullshit. They're all mostly stuck there, with a fully released product and instantly they lose people's interest. The scope creep, delays, redesigns, and lack of a finish line crossing product has kept the CX16 scene baited and strung along for a while now. They more recently threw the 65C816 into the mix. I think it's a shit show.

Crowd funding is a bad idea for this thing outside trying to bump up the numbers of hobbyist developers already into it getting real hardware in their hands. It's not going to sell more than a few hundred consoles at best, with any and all of the delusional hype, marketing, or good will it can hypothetically get from the 8bit nerds on the internet. Most of them probably aren't even aware of GameTank, and will buy and collect crap they don't understand so it rots on a shelf.

Beyond that blatantly obvious reality, I think implying it should have HDMI is just throwing scope creep at it.

There are better software homebrew efforts going into existing consoles. NES, SMS, 7800, PC Engine. The Genesis and Gameboy beats all due to the SGDK and gbstudio.

Yeah I think that the ease-of-access of developing for existing old-school hardware/emulation is one of the things that makes this the most confusing.

I'll concede that you've got a point on the HDMI front tbf. I recently discovered that my TV actually does support RCA through a hybrid Y/Pb/Pr component/composite port which baffled me, and until then I'd had to run everything older through a Scart-to-HDMI adapter, so I think I was overly salty about the HDMI thing lol

I will say one strong point about this thing is that you can build one yourself with just the blueprint and mostly off-the-shelf components. I just feel like the dude wants to keep targeting that area more and keep it as a fun project for enthusiasts. If not, I fear it'll end up as another RetroStone or something