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NT Analogue announces Super NT

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SmiteOfHand

Member
Some good details from the retronauts article. 14 months of work! Respect to Kevin and team. Anyone who thinks this stuff just comes together out of the ether, good to remember a lot of work goes into it.

https://retronauts.com/article/622/...-follow-up-mdash-and-this-ones-priced-to-sell

"We've been working on developing just the FPGA part for 14 months, virtually 24/7," says Taber. "But it's perfect. Literally 100% perfect. We tested 100% of the library; zero issues. Nobody has made a complete FPGA SNES before. [It's] easily 10 times as complex as an FPGA NES, like the Nt mini.
Click to expand...

"Kevin joined Analogue full time late last year. He's been working on the SNES FPGA core for the last 14 months — a mind-blowing amount of work and effort into just that single aspect of the product."
Click to expand...

Taber admits that analog video was a necessary (if somewhat ironic) casualty of the drive to a sub-$200 price point. "Super Nt is HDMI only," he says. "No analog out. The original SNES and SFC output RGB natively and are pretty reasonably priced, so it wouldn't really be offering much [from a perservation standpoint] to incorporate analog output. It increases the price substantially, and we wouldn't have been able to keep it under $200.

"If enough people are interested in having analog out, we'll make a limited edition with one. Otherwise, it's identical to the HDMI output on the Nt mini."
Click to expand...
 
dcx4610

dcx4610

Member
Still no explanation why this is so cheap compared to the NES version? I’d love an NES redesign with plastic parts for 99-150ish.
 
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Weevilone

Member
I'm pretty stoked about this. I was so close to picking up the Nt Mini so many times, and still likely will at some point.

This thing.. I threw the money down before there was even a thread.
 
A

Aeana

Member
dcx4610 said:
Still no explanation why this is so cheap compared to the NES version? I'd love an NES redesign with plastic parts for 99-150ish.
Click to expand...

Look in the post right above yours.

Two major reasons:

1) it's plastic
2) no analog out

There's also no controller included.
 
D

DOT DASH DOT

Member
Fularu said:
It probably works like the OSSC by doing a line4x pass and then applying scanlines
Click to expand...

Well that's awesome then! In the description they say:

"16bit in 1080p is stunning. Every pixel is razor sharp, producing an astounding level of clarity. You'll experience video quality so extraordinary - it's like playing SNES for the first time"

Does sound like it's gonna look very nice! I had to pre-order one, too good to pass up.
 
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Psxdad

Member
Now I am wondering if I should cancel my NT mini preorder since I was mainly planning on using the other cores and the SD slot of gaming. I'm assuming Kevtris will eventually port those cores to this.
 
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Weevilone

Member
You have to also figure that their previous expensively priced endeavors have given them the runway to produce this. We're now into complicated enough territory that it wasn't going to happen anytime soon without some significant bankroll, which the previous projects have provided.

Either we as a community are willing to fork out enough money for these things to make them happen sooner rather than later, or we have to wait while the people with the rare skills and knowledge peck away at it in their spare time. Fortunately it looks like they were able to financially compensate the right people enough to work on retro gaming full time (and then some).
 
J

Justinh

Member
Nerdkiller said:
Well, the extra features of the console would be nice for one, such as an added BIOS menu like on the old Nt Mini. The fact that it's fully region free is another. And perhaps the ability to over clock the console so's to a allow for games like Gradius III to run at a proper speed, much in the same vein as the Nt Mini's partypiece of allowing more sprites per scanline. It isn't simply just another way to play these old games on a PVM, but potentially the best way.
Click to expand...

Oh, those are good points I hadn't thought of.
 
K

KenzinFive

Member
Man, I'd be all over the Super Famicom design if I had some more disposable income. I have a Retron 5, but apparently the emulation for that is not great (plus I never use it).

Luckily, I was able to get a SNES Classic, so I'm not too hard up for SNES games. But it would be nice to have a respectable HDMI-capable system to play the SNES and Super Famicom carts I do own. Plus, I still own an original SNES, so I can just use the same controller I used 20+ years ago.
 
dcx4610

dcx4610

Member
I wanted the NT Mini but didn’t like the look or cared about aluminum casing. This, however is right up my alley. It has a nice SNES design, all HDMI and no frills. I hope they go back and redesign the NT Mini to look more like the NES and strip out all of the analog stuff.

If I could get both systems for $400ish or less, I think that’d be totally worth it.
 
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Lasthope106

Member
Will definitely get this once it's released. Gah damit with the controllers. I like the new design better than the current 8bitdo designs, which I just bought two of them.
 
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Sir_Crocodile

Member
Dreamwriter said:
Probably didn’t help at all. FPGA isn’t software emulation, it recreates the hardware functionality of the actual chips in hardware, flaws and all. Kevtris has to study at a lower level than emulators how exactly each chip works, sometimes even using acid to remove the top layers of the chips so he could connect an oscilloscope and see what’s happening internally.
Click to expand...

Byuu actually already did that, I remember him taking donations years back to get it done.
One of the snes emu scene guys, Lord Nightmare had a friend known as Dr. Decapitator who did them all (relatively) cheap.

I think without mates-rates it's an exceptionally expensive business.
 
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Lettuce

Member
Not sure why people are so hung up on this not having Analog outputs, if you want analog output save yourself some money and just get a proper SNES console
 
D

Dj Convoy

Member
Lettuce said:
Not sure why people are so hung up on this not having Analog outputs, if you want analog output save yourself some money and just get a proper SNES console
Click to expand...

Pretty much this. A SNES plus some HD Retrovision cables or a scart lead or whatever will do you just fine.
 
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catabarez

Member
This is awesome. If they do decide to do a limited run with analog out as well I will buy it immediately and retire my (self-modded) SNES Mini.

Hoping they decide to sooner than later.
 
T

ToD_

Member
sixteen-bit said:
Their CMVSes were trash, but they've gotten a lot cleaner with the AnalogueNT and NT Mini.
Click to expand...

Seriously. I bought a CMVS and it had terrible RGB quality (muted colors and noise/distortion). In addition, the PSU was bad and the battery was dead which prevented the UniBIOS settings from saving. Got the PSU replaced by Analogue, but they were not helpful with the RGB issues. Ultimately, I sent it to JNX to get the RGB quality fixed. Something is still off about it and I have since reverted to my AES.

That said, I have been using the CMVS arcade stick and have been pretty happy with that for Neo-Geo games.

I don't expect HDMI to have video quality issues, of course, so I'm sure these systems will be just fine in that regard.
 
S

SmiteOfHand

Member
Minor nitpick about the title but figured I'd ask because I don't actually know the answer. Is the company name NT Analogue, or simply Analogue?

I know the Analogue NT is a device they made, but not sure if the title is mishap with that or not?
 
C

CharlesDangus

Member
bachikarn said:
What does 1080p mean in this context? It is still a 4:3 image right?
Click to expand...
The Super NT, just like the NT Mini, upscales the consoles native 240p signal to either 480p, 720p or 1080p. This is all done internally and introduces no processing delay that you would see in a frame based upscaler like the framemeister. It's kind of like having a built in OSSC. The point of scaling the image before it gets to your TV is that TVs generally suck at this, especially for game content where you actually want to see the pixels. 1080p isn't an integer multiple of 240p so the 1080p option will produce a slightly letterboxed 960p image inside of a 1080p frame. The NT Mini also allowed you to fill the screen vertically by doing a 5x integer scale (1200p) with some scanlines cut off the top and bottom.

Basically it's mostly about keeping the scaling decisions out of the hands of your TV. And yes the games are 4:3 and the image will be pillarboxed. I think you can stretch to fit to 16:9 if you want but it would look like garbage.

Edit:
The holy grail is eventually an FPGA system that outputs 4K (2160p) video because 2160p is a clean 9x integer scale of 240p
 
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thepenguin55

Member
Very excited about this! Though I wonder what a Genesis by them would be like? I'd like to imagine something with multiple cartridge slots like a Genesis slot, Master System slot and 32x slot. Then it would have the necessary port on the bottom so you can plug in a Sega CD and use it.
 
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sw26

Member
As someone who is loving their SNES Classic and is fascinated by these kinds of devices and preservation efforts, I really want one of these despite the notable downsides of no longer having any actual SNES cartridges and also being in PAL-land which is the main reason why I never invested in a collection.

Help.
 
C

CharlesDangus

Member
Aeana said:
240p -> 1080p -> 4k
or
240p -> 720p -> 4k

The latter may look nicer since it would be doing integer scales at both steps.
Click to expand...

The NT Mini/Super NT's 1080p scaling wouldn't necessarily look better or worse than 720p on a 4K TV. It's just a Line4x (960p) letterboxed into a 1080p frame then upscaled 2x in both dimensions to 4K, or Line5x (1200p) cropped into a 1080p frame then upscaled 2x to 4K.

I guess it's up to the user whether they think a natively scaled windowed Line4x 960p (inside 1080p) -> 2x -> 2160p looks better than Line3x 720p -> 3x -> 2160p looks better.
 
S

SmiteOfHand

Member
sw26 said:
As someone who is loving their SNES Classic and is fascinated by these kinds of devices and preservation efforts, I really want one of these despite the notable downsides of no longer having any actual SNES cartridges and also being in PAL-land which is the main reason why I never invested in a collection.

Help.
Click to expand...

Assuming this gets jailbroken firmware you will be able to extract the roms from your SNES Classic and load them on here. Good incentive to have both, really, since you get 21 games, including Star Fox 2, for likely much less than tracking down all the carts and playing or dumping them that way. And even then there was no Star Fox 2 cartridge, so... It is the only legit way to go about it there.

The Ripping Thread recently has been covering how to extract your roms from the virtual console on Wii and Wii U, as well, as another means for those who don't want a bunch of carts, but want a legit path (or at least as close as we've got currently) to get games. Again, this assumes jailbroken firmware will be released, as well that you have a Wii or Wii U hanging around.
 
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