as someone who doesnt know shit about that kind of stuff, could I get a TL;DR on what's going on in those retro console posts?
TIA
TL;DR: Fools soon parted with their money on a retro console that isn't really doing anything that a cheap Pentium 4 PC couldn't do for the consoles it's going to emulate.
So, business as usual.
Won't do it justice but basically some guy bought back the tools to mold the Jaguar shells (which were used to do medical devices or something) and ever since then has been fixated on making a fortune, or at the very least a meal ticket, off it. He is now convinced he can make a brand new console in a garage with other fifty years old dudes, that he'll get kickstarted a couple of millions for it, and that he could bring back giant expensive game cartridges back in fashion (because patches are the devil and all games released will be bug free thanks to their non-existent QA demanding it) and being distributed in stores. Such is the Power of
Friendship Nostalgia.
What the console is doesn't really matter, Mike Kennedy (the guy behind it... Imagine the Gremlin's dad except more from Cali and sleazier) has zero technical expertise and his machine has been announced successively as a retro machine capable of emulating everything from 2600 to SNES, then as a brand new console playing only new "retro styled" games and now as a new Colecovision thing. The price point fluctuated between 350 and 150$ depending on what month we were in. With no real hardware spec (apart from "it must have a Jaguar shell") there's of course very few games sure to be released on it but it hasn't stopped Mike claiming he was in negociations with Sega, Konami and al... because he called their receptionist or something.
They already tried to crowdfund it a few months ago but at the last minute went through Indiegogo instead of Kickstarter, apparently because they didn't know until the last few days that they needed a working prototype (which they don't have, since they don't even know what their machine is... Had a ton of CG renders of the plastic cases in all colours tho) to be on KS. When the Indiegogo went down in flames, they lashed out on everyone calling them out (like branding drunks a couple of retro podcasters being underwhelmed by their pitch : classy !) then ultimately accepted defeat, ate crow, apologized and promised to only come back when they know what they will be doing...
...Obviously not sincere, since they are back with yet another rebranded fake prototype, Jaguar shelled piece of shit to submit on KS.
There's a thread on AtariAge with all the drama, but it's long as hell. Neogaf has a couple good digest ones.
TLDR : The 3 Stooges do what even Nintendon't anymore