Retro Systems you'd like to own

I would like to get my hands on a Nintendo Virtual Boy, since that is still missing from my collection.
I have mostly gameconsoles and no “home computers” but i geuss a C64 and zx spectrum count ?

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It’s ironic that VR is now such a big thing. As ever Nintendo were ahead of their time.

(I’ll never forget that in Pokemon Gold & Silver people were running around with their half-phone half-watch ‘pokegears’ way before the word ‘smartphone’ was in everyday use.)

Yeah, and Sega had the Sega Activator so you could virtually kick your opponent. Looks like most stuff was already thought of and we are just improving the tech behind it.

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I hadn’t heard of the Sega Activator before.

When I looked it up I found something else I want- the Sega Action Chair:

I bet that would be fun for controlling ships in space games.

Also aparently Sega was going to release a VR headset back then, but it got cancelled.
Are we even improving things or are people only just realising we have the tech to do this stuff?

Can’t wait for a modern day attempt at the Power Glove:

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here you go :
https://www.google.nl/search?q=vr+hand+tracking&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiApLjziuPWAhVSYlAKHTPpBxIQ_AUICygC&biw=1136&bih=662&dpr=1.25

Most modern attempts don’t look as cool or stylish.
It’s no fun unless it looks a bit pseudo-sci-fi or wacky.

The closest is probably Vive’s attempt:

The coolest bit of retro tech is how over-the-top it all looked.
For example, the epic “Steel Battalion Controller”:

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I would probably like to own a nintendo virtualboy. However they aren’t cheap enough for me to genuinely consider buying one :frowning:

Lol another mode for @jonne VirtualBoy mode, i geuss its 2 colors?

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And two pokittos for stereoscopic view :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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well, that’s one way to double your sales :smile:

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Don’t get a sega chair… It’s really poorly balanced, easy to lean back but a real challenge to lean forward.

The Powerglove is still the coolest gaming peripheral in existence. I mean, just look at how cool this kid is…

On seeing the steel battalion controller a thought immediately popped into my head…
But, It appears I wasn’t the first to have the idea. I really want one now.

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am i silly for just wanting a super nintendo? I’d be hella happy with it

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Just 1 system to play with ? sorry that is just too wierd… :smile:

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Well, he did ask about gaming consoles/systems, so I didn’t list my #2 retro system choice: an LSI-11 (the thing that MINIX, which is what Linus started from, was first written for), but only if I can get a WCS-11 module so you can change the instruction set. Without the WCS-11, it’s just a low end PDP-11, but I can’t think of any other home computer class device on which I can write microcode.

But honestly, with the Arduboy, the pokitto on the way, a new PyBoard and the Jumper T8SG I’ve got a lot of systems to play with now. They just aren’t retro.

Thank you Mike. Many people do not understand. Pokitto is retro, but only if you think about practical gaming limitations. But nothing else about it is retro: the same NXP Cortex-M0+ core is used in Bluetooth Mesh and Google (Nest) Thread-capable devices.

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Personally I like the terms ‘retroesque’ or ‘pseudo-retro’.
Pseudo-retro is more popular but I like ‘retroesque’ better, even if I’m the only one who says it.
Both terms capture the idea of ‘a (modern) thing attempting to look retro or mimic something retro’ at least.

When you say microcode, do you mean programming on the lowest hardware level like on this ?:

since i have one I tried programming it once, but reading and writing to a adres was just to much for me. At those levels there is no real guide or ide (you program it with the small lcd on it)
Altough it was fun to try.

No, I mean programming at the level below that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcode. Your code implements the instruction set for the machine. RISC architectures are basically vertical microcode (ala the WCS-11) cleaned up and sanitized a bit. Horizontal microcode has really long words, as the bits in the word map directly to gates in the hardware, and the timing constraints are settling times for the busses between components. The was a brief movement to expose that at the CPU level (a WISC CPU), but it never really went anywhere.

The ability to create new instructions is sorta mind-blowing. The PDP-10 had unimplemented op codes that each had an individual trap. Your handler got to interpret the instruction fields beyond the op code, so it was more like a new instruction than a syscall on a modern system.

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Retroesque sounds like a female body type somewhere between curvaceous and Reubenesqus.

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I think technically those are just regular adjectives but ‘body shapes’ isn’t a subject I’m well versed in, so who knows.
I know _Rubens_esque is a term named after Peter Paul Rubens, a famous painter, but probably only because I have a habit of ending up on odd Wikipedia articles and absorbing trivia. (That or it was on an antique programme.)

The suffix -esque is often applied to things to create words that mean ‘in the style of’, for example Escheresque to describe things in the style of M.C. Hammer Escher.
I think “retroesque” sounds fancier than “pseudoretro”.

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