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April 11th, 2015 
Carl Williams 
It is looking like a June or July announcement for the RETRO Video Game System going to Kickstarter to look for crowd funding support. With that in mind, and the fact I like “analyzing” things versus re-writing news items from other sites, I am back with another article on the RETRO VGS (it is not often I get to analyze stuff in the “retro” community). This time I have more information on the RETRO VGS including a tentative price point for the console and the games and a game play video of Adventures of the Tiny Knight, the pack-in title for the RETRO VGS.
First let’s address the console itself. Recently on the Atari Age forums, Mike Kennedy (the head man on this project) using the screen name, Parrothead, released a bit more information on the RETRO VGS. First, the price. They are targeting $150 or $180, depending on the components inside the case and outputs. For that price they are planning on giving gamers four controller ports (two USB and two 9-Pin ports), HDMI and possibly Composite and S-Video and a power cord and Adventures of Tiny Knight. Okay, let’s analyze this info a bit. It has already been mentioned that the USB ports will allow gamers to use their own controller of choice (possibly alleviating concerns over the Nintendo Wii U Pro Controller). The 2 9-Pin connectors will allow gamers to use Atari 2600 or Sega Genesis controllers if they so choose.
The only controller shown so far is the Wii U Pro Controller which retails for about $50 and Mike is claiming that two controllers will be included in the system. I have to assume that the controllers won’t both, or either one will, be the Nintendo Wii U Pro Controller- that would leave $50 to $80 to put towards the actual console (if Nintendo Wii U Pro Controllers are the pack-in controllers). Even if you discount the retail price to about wholesale prices (knock off about 30%) then we are looking at $65 to $115 or so for console hardware development and manufacture. That is not a lot of a profit margin, again say 30%, which could be sitting at about $19.50 to $34.50 per console. That is possibly more than what Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft make per console sale but we are talking about an ultra-niche area of gaming (judging by the popularity of similar retro themed consoles). To increase the profit margin they will have to go with cheaper controllers such as reproduction units of say, the Sega Genesis controller (not exactly the best) or something else that uses the 9-Pin configuration which could be just about anything really since most wired controllers can be modified (at additional costs though).
Okay, now to the games. It has been mentioned that games will cost $20 to $50 depending on if it is an indie release or a big name publisher title that might be a costly license. I have a problem, a concern really, with this pricing structure as I don’t see it as viable and sustainable. $20 for a cartridge release just seems too low to turn a profit. Sure the empty cartridge cases were sold for $8 and we all know that is not the cost to produce them but when you add in circuitry, tooling and setup at factories to produce the necessary chips, circuit boards and the labels (and boxes and manuals) for these games you can see how quickly $20 turns into a “no one is going to release at this price”. The best chance I see of gamers seeing a $20 cartridge release on the RETRO VGS is going to be cartridge only and that will immediately lower the perceived level of quality across the board from potential fans.
What does concern me about this capability to “bring your own controller” is two-fold. For one, will they be releasing the console without controllers for a lower price point? Second, this will surely be a programming nightmare for developers- just look at the mess that Google and Microsoft face with various hardware configurations available for Android and Windows respectively. Could we be seeing a similar situation with the controller configurations on the RETRO VGS? Will developers purposefully do everything imaginable to reduce the number of buttons required to play their game? Anyone that has played Street Fighter II on the PC-Engine using a standard two button controller (or on Genesis with a three button controller) can tell you that simply sucks. This could be a problem for developers on this new console.
Enough of that discussion. Onto the game play of Adventures of the Tiny Knight via Gamester81 on Youtube.
As you can see in the later part of the video, there is not a lot of parallax scrolling (one level). As I mentioned over in one of my other articles, Adventures of the Tiny Knight is the pack-in title which is never the “best” the system can do but more of a tech demo that is a bit more fleshed out. That is how it has been since the first days of pack-in titles. Sometimes they are great pieces of gaming (Super Mario Bros on NES) and sometimes they don’t hold up so well over time (Altered Beast on Sega Genesis or Keith Courage on Turbo Grafx-16). It remains to be seen how well Adventures of the Tiny Knight will hold up.
The question at the end of the day is, are you excited for the RETRO Video Game System or not?
Sources: Youtube and Atari Age forums
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I think your assumption that these guys are shooting for ANY profit, let alone 30%(!) is faulty. If they break even with sales, this thing can be considered an ultra-niche success. I would assume that someone has some extra cash to blow on this vanity project and it’s going to be a loss, but at least they’ll have their “new console” at the end of it all.
Thanks for posting the coverage and analysis, it’s nicer to read this in blog form than in a discussion thread on atariage.
I used the 30% margin since that is the range that most businesses use. I have no clue what their real profit margin is. I have to agree though, this is more than likely an ultra-niche product than a mass market success (the Flashback consoles had the best chance of doing that but well, they haven’t).
Things might change. As more information is made available, I will do updates as I prefer doing these types of articles over rehashing news from other sites (though I try to pull the really cool stuff there too).
Thanks for the comments. As things develop there will be more articles.
And I just watched the video. It’s adorable, but seems like something that could be done in Unity without the need for custom CARTRIDGE-BASED hardware. Seems like someone really has a fetish for ancient tech. It’s so weird and misses the point of the old consoles, which exist to play game software. The cartridges were just a means to an end. Buying this machine would be like skipping having a smartphone or even a flip phone because PAGERS are just so darn cool.
In this day and age of $0.99 apps on devices that people already carry with them and digital sales on consoles/computers that are sub $5 per game I just can’t see how this is going to revolutionize the gaming world. I mean, $20 to $50 per game? That is going to destroy much of the interest most gamers are going to have for this console.
Even if they did get Konami to release Contra 5 or Snatcher “HD” on this thing, or Capcom releasing Street Fighter VI or Mega Man 12 or whatever, I just don’t see it being better, or cheaper, than the same game that will surely be released on Xbox One/360, PS3/PS4 and computers in digital format (not to mention inevitable on-line multiplayer capability).
Yep, all this. Games are so commoditized now. The focus should be on designing new games that hearken back to retro times (shovel knight etc) and leave the Atari Jaguar cases in the dentist office where it belongs.
[…] source: retrogamingmagazine […]
[…] gameplay footage, developer announcements (and retractions according to effected parties) and even price points on this thing. The reason we have not posted new news on this is well, there hasn’t been much […]
[…] have seen the announcement, and redaction, of developers and the reveal of the first, and pack-in, title for this console (and here). The news that has developed over the last few days is not exactly “great” from […]
[…] At this point I am unable to comment on the actual gameplay of the SNES/Wii U version since there is only the intro that has been shown off. So far as I can tell, both intros are the exact same so I am not sure that this is running on actual hardware yet (either the SNES or Wii U). More than likely it is running on a development hardware unit, yet to be compiled to the SNES binary or Nintendo Wii U code. Either way, I hope they are able to improve on the original gameplay video that we saw when this was RETRO VGS bound. […]
[…] are working on Adventures of Tiny Knight. This is a 2D side scrolling action platform title that resembled early Super Nintendo works. This was to be the pack-in title for the RETRO Video […]