Sup. In general, this is a one-stop thread for retrogaming. Considering how time has flown past, I guess everything up to the PS2/XB/GC era can be considered as retro (fuck me, nearly 20 years since that gen started and nearing 25 if you count the Dreamcast as the start).
Retrogaming can cover emulation, hardware, clone consoles, literally anything that's too old for kids today to appreciate properly is good enough
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STANDARDS----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before moving onto the consoles in turn, it's a good idea to get to grips with the video standards and tech used. I'll just do a quick rundown and expand on it later:
NTSC/PAL & 50/60hz: These are the two most widely used video standards, with enough of a difference between them to make a gigantic difference between what one region experienced to another when it comes to gaming.
NTSC (Never (Twice) the Same Color) was/is predominately used in Japan and the Americas with PAL (phase alternating lines) being used in the UK/EU/China and elsewhere - with some regions such as France using a slight variant called SECAM (cant remember). NTSC has a resolution of 525 TV Lines and a standard framerate of 30fps for video and 60hz refresh. PAL has a superior resolution of 625 lines and a larger colour range, but a reduced refresh rate of 50hz. Now, the majority of games were designed for NTSC displays which is why PAL gamers got shafted. Lazy PAL conversions (such as the majority of Sega titles) simply slowed the game down by 17.5% to acheive the correct 50hz refresh rate and displayed the same NTSC resolution with large borders. It was hell.
RGB/Composite/S-Video/RF:With RGB, video is transmitted via four lines - Red, Green, Blue and Sync. This offers the most accurate and closest to source image and colour. RGB is usually transmitted by EUROSCART or JP21 (they look the same, but are wired differently) connections. As the name implies, SCART was standard in the UK and Europe/Aus. Almost without exception, every CRT and LCD to date in these regions support RGB natively. It was never a standard in America however - in America the best TVs could display was either Composite (yellow jack, combined signal), RF (shitty aerial cable/prong of hell) or S-Video (closer to RGB, relied on lumaseince similar to component, but not widely supported). Component became a later option in the HD era, even on some CRTs, but component is not a native output on retro consoles with the first such examples being in the PS2 era. There's also a wide range of sync types when dealing with RGB signals - so yeah, shit can get confusing.
What makes all of this even more confusing to begin with is that not every console supports RGB out of the box. Not every console supports S-Video. Some region consoles support RGB when others don't (GameCube). Some have regional lockouts on video outputs (Wii). Luckily you can hack the shit out of most of them and bend them to your will. On the topic of RGB:
NES/Famicom:Do not support RGB by standard. Can be added in using Viletim's NESRGB board or Kevtris' Hi-Def-NES board. Not a mod for the beginner. Worth sticking to NTSC with this one as most PAL games are beyond fucked and there's no real way as far as I know to region mod a NES sucessfully.
SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis/Master System: RGB supported as standard, and the console is easy to region mod. good guy sega
Super Nintendo/Super Famicom: All standard SNES consoles support RGB via the Multi Out port right out of the box (although PAL and NTSC consoles must use different SCART cables due to wiring differences). The second revision of the SNES, the SNS-101 and SFC Jr, do not support RGB natively and need a simple mod to enable it via an RGB amp.
Playstation and Sega Saturn: RGB output as standard on all models and revisions. Region setting is based on disc software. no modding needed at all, unless you want to add a modchip for true region free/backups without disc swapping.
N64: Does not output RGB out of the box, but first revision boards can be modified easily. All others output S-Video nicely or can be modded using Viletim's N64 RGB board or the expensive but awesome UltraHDMI board for HDMI output.
There's other examples, but the best bet is to browse
http://retrorgb.com/ as it goes into far more detail than I could for each console.
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DISPLAYS/SCALERS----------------------------------------------------------------------------
here's a range of various methods to display your consoles on a modern display from the cheap and nasty £20 HDMI adapters on Amazon to the high range OSSC and Framemeister. Simiarly there's a wide range of CRTs ranging from the cheap and shitty to the ludicrously expensive/excessive. I couldn't decide what I wanted so I ended up with both an OSSC and a CRT - and they each have their own huge plus points and drawbacks. I made a review of the OSSC a while back at
http://richretro.wordpress.com/ (don't worry, I don't get any money from this - it's just to document my stuff and help others out) which goes through my thoughts of it (it's a superb piece of kit, but not for anyone who hasn't read up on what their consoles can output).
If you can get a decent CRT with RGB input though, definitely go for it. This is my JVC broadcast monitor I got for cheap and added RGB input to:
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CONSOLES----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not going to list every generation and console - man, that's too much. Especially when wikipedia has such a nice article already done:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_home_video_game_consolesAnyhow enough of that, share your favourite games, talk retro and share setups and shit I guess.