Det var länge sedan vi fick en ny 16 bits-konsol med spel på klassiska kassetter, men snart har vi en sådan att se fram emot - komplett med samma design som Ataris sista enhet - Jaguar. Det är Mike Kennedy, utgivare av Retro Magazine som i sommar ska starta en Kickstarter-insamling för konsolen han döpt till Retro.
Venture Beat har pratat med Kennedy om planerna:
"This goes back probably two and a half years. The timing just wasn't right, I didn't think, at that point, for the console I wanted to bring out, which was going to be a cartridge-based console to play new games on cartridges. It's not like the Retron 5 where you can plug in your old NES carts. There are lots of ways to play your old carts on a variety of other clone systems."
Kennedy fortsätter med att berätta med om konceptet för Retro:
"What I wanted to do a couple years ago was make a brand-new console that just ran off carts again. It's all solid state technology, right? A cartridge-based system, just like the Atari. You can still find Ataris at the swap meet, cartridges, 30 years later, plug them in and it all works. To me that's the coolest technology out there, with that longevity. A lot of us grew up with it. The kids these days are going to miss out on that."
Vi kan bland annat se fram emot spel som Shovel Knight och Retro City Rampage till formatet, men Kennedy pratar även med stora utgivare för att få ge ut klassiker som blivit svåra att få tag i och heller inte känns riktigt rätt till nya konsoler:
We're trying to talk to some big-name publishers about bringing back old fan favorites on this thing, or sequels. That's actually why I'm up here in San Francisco, meeting with a third party developer that's done a lot of third-party development work for Sony and Capcom and Konami and Sega. We'll be partnering with this group to lead our charge into those types of companies to work out licensing deals for some of these games that they haven't monetized in 10-15-20 years. As you know, there's a lot of games out there that people would love to see brought back."
Smartphones är annars en vanlig lösning för att spela gamla spel, men Kennedy tycker inte alls de duger och menar att det krävs enkla handkontroller med sladd för rätt känsla. Han berättar även vilka spel han skulle vilja se till Retro:
"A lot of these games wouldn't come back and play real well on mobile. You play retro remakes on mobile, right? The touch screen is horrible. There's just no way around it. For retro-style games, you need precision control. You don't want any controller lag. You need that zen-like experience that a wired controller can give you. There's a lot of these games that we think, with the right treatment and the connections involved - it's possible we might be able to go out and bring back some of your favorite NES-style or Super NES or Sega Genesis games as sequels. We're putting down our wish list of what titles we would like to see brought back."
Verkar det intressant, så läs hela intervjun hos Venture Beat, där finns massor av godsaker som information om varför Jaguar-skalet är en stor del av anledningen till att detta blir av. Hur sugen är du på en retrokonsol? Kan du tänka dig att Kickstarter-finansiera?
