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ndiddyyesterday at 7:40 PM1 replyview on HN

Assuming this is well done, it's an extremely cool product. The original Neo Geo systems and cartridges are ridiculously expensive on the used market and bootlegs are rampant. Even though they're charging $90/cartridge, that's still thousands of dollars less than what a lot of these games go for used.

The biggest concern I have is accuracy. SNK wouldn't be able to just start manufacturing their old chip designs from the 90s again because a lot of the chips in the Neo Geo from other companies are no longer made, such as the 68000, Z80, and YM2610. This means that they'd have to make a new SoC that incorporates the IP from those chips. At that point there's no real benefit to the ASIC over an FPGA. It means the system costs less to produce, but if they find any inaccuracies in their new SoC design they won't be able to release an update to fix them. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm not going to place a pre-order until they release more details about what exactly is going on under the hood.


Replies

NoMoreNicksLeftyesterday at 8:49 PM

There must be three dozen commodity Z80 clones, no? I get it that the other asics and dsps are impossible to source, but that's a strange example.