Seedi - Retro Gaming System - (Indiegogo Campaign)

[Robotic Richard Simmons]

A Philadelphia based team is trying to raise $50,000 via Indiegogo (currently at $19k or 38%) as their goal for a CD based retro gaming console known as the Seedi Retro Gaming System. The system claims to be able to play CD console games from the PSX, Turbografx CD, Neo Geo CD and Sega CD.

It is also capable of playing ROMs for the NES, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, MAME (Arcade emulator), Game Boy (Original, Color and GBA), Atari 2600 and Turbografx 16/PC Engine. It will also have the capability of playing physical Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and Game Boy (with another adapter) cartridges via a Retrode adapter which is sold by itself. It will also feature controller ports for the Genesis and SNES.

It will feature save states, online multiplayer for some systems, filters, and the ability to back up and share saved files. It claims to be able to output to 1080p/720p via HDMI, will be Wi-Fi enabled, Bluetooth compatible and looks like it comes with a custom painted Dualshock 3 or DS3 clone controller. It apparently will work with USB controller, have an included 32gb SD card, run on a Quad-Core ARM CPU, be region free and open source. The cheapest base system you can buy is $125+shipping.

I am in no way affiliated with this project, I just found it via the CUPodcast and think it's interesting and wonder if they will meet their goals. It also makes me wonder if Sony would take action against them for using their controller. Indiegogo campaigns have a bad history of failing or not living up to the hype, so I'm cautiously optimistic, especially for the DOS CD emulation.

Thoughts?

 

[NIGGO KILLA]

i think i smell a shill

 

[PT 404]

Night Trap time, bitches.

 

[Robotic Richard Simmons]

i think i smell a shill

Nah, I am curious if this will succeed and have a way to play CD PC games without having a dedicated DOS/Win 3.1/95/98 box. I'm unbelievably skeptical considering how big of a failure the Coleco Chameleon was and that Polymega which I don't think anyone has ever seen.

I also think the cartridge adapter is really stupid. It's not like the Genesis is that hard to emulate. It looks like it would just add more clutter and I think it's a way for them to sell additional hardware to people. From the looks of it that's how you get the controller ports which is kind of a dick move.

 

[m0rnutz]

Let me know when they support PS2. I cba to buy and solder a new power switch.

 

[r00]

This is pretty retarded. Who has a load of turbografx and sega cd games lying around but no turbogragx or sega cd?
What kind of mongoloid has been sitting on a stack of dos games, waiting for an easy solution to the impossible task of installing dosbox?

 

[MagneticTowels]

A Philadelphia based team is trying to raise $50,000 via Indiegogo (currently at $19k or 38%) as their goal for a CD based retro gaming console known as the Seedi Retro Gaming System. The system claims to be able to play CD console games from the PSX, Turbografx CD, Neo Geo CD and Sega CD.

View attachment 290118

It is also capable of playing ROMs for the NES, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, MAME (Arcade emulator), Game Boy (Original, Color and GBA), Atari 2600 and Turbografx 16/PC Engine. It will also have the capability of playing physical Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and Game Boy (with another adapter) cartridges via a Retrode adapter which is sold by itself. It will also feature controller ports for the Genesis and SNES.

View attachment 290119

It will feature save states, online multiplayer for some systems, filters, and the ability to back up and share saved files. It claims to be able to output to 1080p/720p via HDMI, will be Wi-Fi enabled, Bluetooth compatible and looks like it comes with a custom painted Dualshock 3 or DS3 clone controller. It apparently will work with USB controller, have an included 32gb SD card, run on a Quad-Core ARM CPU, be region free and open source. The cheapest base system you can buy is $125+shipping.

I am in no way affiliated with this project, I just found it via the CUPodcast and think it's interesting and wonder if they will meet their goals. It also makes me wonder if Sony would take action against them for using their controller. Indiegogo campaigns have a bad history of failing or not living up to the hype, so I'm cautiously optimistic, especially for the DOS CD emulation.

Thoughts?

 

[TrippinKahlua]

Take your Wii, learn how to do Homebrew, and play any game you want.

Its nice how Nintendo got in on their own hardware, despite the flaws on their principles, but there's just too much over-saturation going on for these retro-throwback game machines. Its the kind of thing that led to the video game crash of 1983.

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

I wonder if they pirated the internal ROMs from GB/GBC/GBA/Turbografx/other consoles. Some companiesmight take a look into it, and they're Japanese companies, they don't like messing with their stuff.

Anyway, if you want to play pirated game images, install RetroPi on RaspberryPi, and it you want to play cartridge games, there's lots of 3in1 NES+SNES+Genesis clones already. The only new feature this toy will provide is playing original disk games, and I guess most of those disks have already rotten anyway.

 

[Ti-99/4A]

Another Orange Pi based console like the Retroengine Sigma

 

[Robotic Richard Simmons]

Metal Jesus Cow was sent a preview build of it.

 

[BillionBisonBucks]

I wonder if they pirated the internal ROMs from GB/GBC/GBA/Turbografx/other consoles. Some companiesmight take a look into it, and they're Japanese companies, they don't like messing with their stuff.

Apparently they make you dig them up and copy them over.

I'm not seeing anything in this system to really appeal. It's expensive for what it is, and what it is appears to be higan attached to a DVD drive. I could make a better emulation box than this out of actual garbage, and at that price point, you're WAY better off grabbing a vita or playstation TV, or even a Wii/U and doing the ten minutes of setup for homebrew.

Also, there's no way that DOS compatibility isn't garbage. DOSbox is great for what it is, but it takes a lot of setup every time, which is why DOS re-releases that use it typically have a custom version tied into the game's executable. I can't even imagine how exciting it would be to navigate those config menus without a keyboard.

 

[Ti-99/4A]

They designed a case and an autoloader for CD games. Everything else was done for free by other people. One of the RetroArch developers was talking about this system and the RetroEngine Sigma and they're so sick of this shit that they're aiming to design their own console from scratch and not use a garbage OrangePi board.

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

Also, there's no way that DOS compatibility isn't garbage. DOSbox is great for what it is, but it takes a lot of setup every time, which is why DOS re-releases that use it typically have a custom version tied into the game's executable. I can't even imagine how exciting it would be to navigate those config menus without a keyboard.

VGA + Soundblaster should be enough for most games.

The keyboard input was solved with this:

8. How will keyboard & mouse input work for DOS?
A: You can map the mouse and keys to your gamepad, use our phone app as a keyboard, or even hook up a real mouse and keyboard (wired or Bluetooth!)

I don't see a USB type A port, so connecting a real keyboard without Blutooth might involve some adapters. The phone app will most likely be shitty.

Also, since they already support keyboard input and emulate one computer system, I wonder why they didn't go all the way and emulate more of them. Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Apple II, Amiga etc. Especially Amiga, since it had superior graphic capabilities compared to PCs of that era. I mean, the other three also had superior graphic capabilities to PCs of their era, but it was back when IBM though black-white-cyan-magenta was an acceptable color palette, so it wasn't that hard to beat.

Also: No SNES emulation? Just when the big N reignited nostalgia to that system? Why?

 

[Ti-99/4A]

I don't see a USB type A port

Those are used to connect the Disc drive and bluetooth module as an orange pi lite only has two.
As for c64 and amiga emulation, the libretro retroarch cores are still experimental. Apple II doesn't have one and the rest there's no excuse, especially SNES.

 

[sasazuka]

This is pretty exceptional. Who has a load of turbografx and sega cd games lying around but no turbogragx or sega cd?

I *have* a Sega CD unit but it's a quarter century old and doesn't work very well anymore. If it works at all, I haven't actually tried it in several years. Plus there's the ridiculously limited internal memory for saves, although I think the internal battery for those died years ago.

I don't really have the money to support something like this and I suspect there may be a way to play Sega CD games right off the disk even just on this aging laptop if I find the right emulator, but the idea of having a brand new device that can play quarter century old optical media games more or less right out of the box (once you find the right BIOS files) is quite appealing.

 

[BillionBisonBucks]

They designed a case and an autoloader for CD games. Everything else was done for free by other people. One of the RetroArch developers was talking about this system and the RetroEngine Sigma and they're so sick of this shit that they're aiming to design their own console from scratch and not use a garbage OrangePi board.

Now, this is the sort of shit that gets my interest. An officially supported RetroArch machine hits that proper balance of 'People who know what they're doing' and 'Work I'd like to support'. Even if there's issues, I have a lot more patience for the people unifying all of emulation, as opposed to the dudes who bought a case die before they rightly knew what they were doing.

VGA + Soundblaster should be enough for most games.

I suppose with the CD focus that's true. I was super late to the CD party (Got a drive and Windows 98 at the same time), so what I remember as DOS gaming is really only the early part of it, with the entire latter section being leapfrogged by going from a 386 to a pentium.

Except...

DOS - Games requiring a 386 processor or below should run fine

See, I thought the 386 and CD-ROM basically had no intersection. I don't doubt it's possible to make a 386 recognize a CD drive, but were there actually any games released on CD for that chip? The more I read about this system, the more slapdash it seems.

 

[Ti-99/4A]

There were CD games that ran on a 386. The 7th Guest, Kings Quest 5 Space Quest 4 and that Star Trek game he played in the demo off the top of my head. There were others, but many of them weren't that good.

 

[Diesel Boogaloo]

See, I thought the 386 and CD-ROM basically had no intersection. I don't doubt it's possible to make a 386 recognize a CD drive, but were there actually any games released on CD for that chip? The more I read about this system, the more slapdash it seems.

Most adventure games.
I just noticed that I wanted to mention The 7th Guest as the best example of an early CD-ROM game... but then I noticed it wouldn't run on my sample configuration, as it required SVGA.

Dosbox can emulate a 486 and early Pentiums, but I think that what is starting to become a problem here is OrangePi's performance. Someone should see how well Duke Nukem 3D (33MHz 486 required) works on it. I did some digging and I've learned the following:
– Raspberry Pi 3 achieves 21000 cycles
– Orange Pi is like 50% faster
– 486 66MHz is equivalent to 26800 cycles, Pentium 100MHz is 77000 cycles
– so Orange Pi should handle emulating something like 486 66MHz or (non-existent) Pentium 50 MHz
– so yes, it will run Doom

Also, it's possible someone has some older games re-released in a form of a bundle on a CD-ROM.

 

[Ti-99/4A]

@DieselBoogaloo Yeah it runs the ARM ports of Duke3D and Doom fine. I own an Orange Pi Plus 2 and nearly had Doom 3 running on it.