I was talking to some friends about the new snes repros retrousb is offering for sale now and we couldn't agree on what a fair price for the games would be. Right now star ocean on retrousb is $70. I said this was a fair price since everything is new AND a custom mask rom was manufactured specifically for this. Or at least, I assume a mask rom was made for these repros.
What do you think it cost to manufacture these, not including proto-typing or any of the pre finished product work. Just the cost of such a repro?
I'm pretty sure RetroZone doesn't use mask ROMs. If I'm not mistaken, you need something like thousands of copies to justify manufacturing new mask ROMs.
Depends how many you're making.
If you only made one it would be $5,000-10,000 to make the mold for a single case, $50 for a single PCB, and maybe $5 for the components. So it'll cost a couple thousand dollars to make one. Eventually you'd like to recover your mold cost though and you've obviously got to sell a ton of them to do that if you're not charging much for the case. The mold can't be considered the prototyping cost either, this cost has to be recovered at some point.
If the recovery cost of the mold is not considered, and 100's or 1000's of PCBs were ordered at once you'd be looking at $1 or less for a case, $2 maybe for the PCB, and component cost will be cut in half. So you could make them for $5-10 not including assembly labor, which can easily double the cost.
tokumaru is right about the mask roms. There is no reason why you'd go this route unless you like spending a large amount of money for the sake of spending money... OTP EPROMS are the most reasonable option.
Even pirates not use mask ROMs these days, you can find a flash ROM in a pirate cartridge for things like portable Genesis clones.
And I've read rumors on the Internets that even Nintendo had switched to OTP for DS games. Otherwise, Nintendo wouldn't have
invested in a maker of such memories that ended up getting bought by SanDisk years later.
Meh.
I have mixed feelings about this.
I think making carts like that are disrespectful to the game developers and the translators, and is a copyright infringement.
On the other side since there is people who "make" such carts from existing games and that sells them for a ridiculous price (and the like to ask advice on this board, and some people like to help them), the fact someone can buy a cart instead is not that bad. Although SO can technically be done from any cart if it uses that hack that removes the needs of the special chip.
I still don't say the point to pay $70 for a SO cart on retrozone when you could pay $140 instead and get a powepak which can play not only SO but also any other game, including your own.
While I do enjoy the powerpak, I still use the actual cartridges for games with battery-backed saves and vanilla Tecmo Super Bowl. (Luckily I have not had a battery die in any of my games yet...) Personally, I wouldn't pay for a reproduction, but not everyone has the time or patience to figure these things out.
Yes, currently the battery saves are handled very poorly on the powerpaks, but you eventually get used to it
The interface in incredibly corny, after choosing a .nes or .smc file you have to choose a .sav file from the start, even through there is 99.9% of chances you want to load something that is "identicalfilename.sav" in the same folder.
You also have not to forget to reset your console and save definitely the SRAM on your CF card or all progress you have done in the game will be lost forever even if you saved.
I have done this error a few times but now I took this habbit and I don't do it any longer.
You also have to pray that there is no power shortage or something like that when you play... because it you would loose all your progress since last play, even if you saved. Something like that also happened to me on SNESGT who crashed after two hours of progress, I saved but the result didn't go back to the .sav file. (the game was Star Ocean by the way, word is small isn't it ?).... now you're sure I'll use BSNES in the future and won't use SNESGT any longer.
However, on a real card you could loose all saves completely all on a power shortage so it's even worse.
Bregalad wrote:
Yes, currently the battery saves are handled very poorly on the powerpaks, but you eventually get used to it
The interface in incredibly corny, after choosing a .nes or .smc file you have to choose a .sav file from the start, even through there is 99.9% of chances you want to load something that is "identicalfilename.sav" in the same folder.
You also have not to forget to reset your console and save definitely the SRAM on your CF card or all progress you have done in the game will be lost forever even if you saved.
.
This is the only thing holding me back from getting a powerpak. My roommate has the snes version and I think for the price of it, it should handle saving better.
The SuperCard for Game Boy Advance handles saving
exactly the same way as the PowerPak. The only way it could be improved without including a separate microcontroller to save in the background would be through something like a "save state mapper" to commit the PRG RAM contents to CF early. SuperCard does this by patching games, but GBA games are more likely to have space at the end to take such a patch than NES games are.
I'm a compulsive saver, when typing on the computer I save my documents almost after every word I type. So I obviously like to save games as often as possible as well, and with the PowerPak I really don't feel safe, because I know that if something happens and the console accidentally powers off I'll lose everything since the last reset.
Bregalad wrote:
after choosing a .nes or .smc file you have to choose a .sav file from the start, even through there is 99.9% of chances you want to load something that is "identicalfilename.sav" in the same folder.
Do you have the latest mappers? File name matching has been in there a while, tho it is in a specific folder not the same folder.
Almost certainly the repro uses Flash Memory (NOR, Parallel Type). EPROMs I'm not even sure if they are manufactured anymore, and they don't last as long as Flash should. Also EPROMs (talking UV here) don't come in sufficient size.
I don't know what it costs for him to make. But $70 isn't that bad when you consider the game probably retailed for around $60 or more. Although then again that was a licensed cartridge which has collector value unlike an unofficial reproduction. But atleast from my experience with the PowerPAKs you should get a good quality product. It's up for you to decide. Like Bregalad said if money is the concern, get a PowerPAK and play the games that way.
And as BunnyBoy said, saving on the PowerPAK has been improved for a long time now. Yes you still have to hold reset but it automatically will load and save to a *.sav file of the same file name in your PowerPAK\Saves folder which makes it really easy. I was playing through RPGs recently which means all I had to do was turn on the system, press Start (to tell it I want to play the last game I played again) and then A to load it, it would already know the save file that needed to be loaded so I had the game loading up in 2 button presses and was playing very shortly after that. Saving is just a matter of holding the reset button for a few seconds and pressing 1 button. Hardly a bother. Far more reliable than relying on battery backed SRAM.
Quote:
File name matching has been in there a while, tho it is in a specific folder not the same folder.
Really ?
I haven't made this work. Would you mind explaining me how get the save matching to work ? And yes I have the latest mappers (I think, until they got an upgrade changed in the last few months ?).
I didn't know about the Start button to play the last game you played. This sound very convenient !
And yes I agree pressing reset for 2 secs and pressing the A button when you want to stop playing is not a bother, and that this system is more reliable than ordinary battery saves.
However, it is crucial that you remember to do that ! At the beginning when I was playing RPGs on my Power Paks I always forgot to do that and just turned the system off - loosing all progress.