The fact that it didn't work the first time he plugged the cartridge in, took it out, blew on the contacts, then reinserted it, and it worked (4:20)... They're targeting your nostalgia! That, my friends, is a finely crafted con!
Yeah, looks super fake. At 6:00-6:04; two little caps, seven SMT parts, and an unknown black box (inductor?) are the only components present to support eleven separate connectors (there are two double USB ports plus others) !! And I couldn't see anything underneath either to support them.
This is sooo fake... as an engineer the board layout makes no sense, all that analog outputs need various IC's with their own lot of pasive components, clocks, etc. At minimum a couple of DACs, maybe all that is hidden behind that huge cooler, but that also does not make sense, putting those near the heat source with all that empty space. Then there are all those cuts in the video while trying to hide them, and also saying it will support Saturn and Dreamcast when just those two systems would take years of coding work for a small group of people and knowledge in the level of Sega engineers. this smells like sh*t
Seems pretty trustworthy to me. I would’ve gotten this had I not preordered the new Uranus FPGA project that my uncle’s neighbor’s drinking buddy told me about. It may have cost me my parents’s stolen retirement funds, but on Uranus’s twitter they showed a gif of a 100% functional RTX 5090 core so when it ships in 2030 it’ll all be worth it.
This is really good. You were careful to not speculate and to instead describe all the evidence you see and what that evidence tells us. Im loving this channel
I won't bash content creators preordering it just in case its real. I suggest preloaded cards if you do. No one else should even consider buying until reviewers have them in hand. It could fail even if it were real because of how secretive they were from the start. I'm cautiously optomistic.
Not even Sus at this point. Kevtris reacted to it and said there's literally no way the board can even support dogs or even work as anything 😂 I recommend looking into his breakdown.
FWIW, they replied to my question asking why there were cuts in the video and their response was that it was to cut out the loading times. Do I believe that answer? No lol.
I’m Spanish and to me this is really funny. Those cuts when loading games, the mouse double click sound in the uncut version, and the attitude of the presenter… everything is so awkward and weird that makes me laugh. Hopefully no one is putting money in this…
I’m German and to me this is really funny. Those cuts when loading games, the mouse double click sound in the uncut version, and the attitude of the presenter… everything is so awkward and weird that makes me laugh. Hopefully no one is putting money in this…
@@VideoGameEsotericaI think they will say that it were not enough monetary support in the pre-orders no matter the real outcome of that, so the project will get cancelled and they will keep the money, as they clearly said that there are no refund with the pre-orders if they don’t get enough support… This is the only logical explanation I can think of for this mess of product reveal and presentation… will see
2:29 i yelled wtf. Underneath that massive heat sink would be a grid of vias and capacitors. Nobody would build a PCB with that many blind vias to have a perfectly smooth bottom copper plane like that. However the smaller chips on the left side would be plenty to read the game cartridge connectors and store data onto the mass storage flash card. But not much else.
The heatsink is for COM Express Mini module, so there's a cutout in the heatsink, and the actual computer with all the heavy lifting sits on an SMD mezz connector lives in there, you get yourself USB video power and you're golden. Though there's no reason to say there is anything at all under the heatsink.
Having the Master System cartridge that close to the heat sink is probably not the best design decision. Also using a legacy format like Compact Flash for storage isn't a great idea either. The dedicated slot for SG-1000 over say Game Gear is kind of insane too. There are like 50 SG-1000 games and most of them are unobtainium, there are almost 400 Game Gear games that are easy/cheap to get. They'll probably say you can get an adapter later on but logically that makes no sense. You make an adapter for the SG-1000 games if anything. Edit: One thing that I did notice was the main menu for the SuperSEGA reminds me of RetroArch, RetroArch has a theme which copies the PlayStation UI wave effect.
I'd still be happy if this thing turns out to work and be it only for systems SG1000 to Saturn. But even to my untrained eye that PCB looks oddly blank.
The board makes indeed no sense. Where is the wiring to HDMI like you said. Also no one has done Dreamcast FPGA so far and suddenly these dudes figured it out near perfect 1st try. You would also think a person who is able to make such a complex FPGA machine knows that blowing into a cartridge does nothing. Get some alcohol and a q tip lol. Overall it smells like one big scam. Would highly advise against pre-ordering as other said already. 💯😂
Yes lol, and a million around the board in general! It's no more than a PCB the same size as the shell, with connector and some IC positions... Next to nothing routed.
Pretty sure even my 1st gen Raspberry Pi has more filtration on its board than any SuperSega... 😉 (And it's probably got better capability to soft-emulate Dreamcast games too i.e. _Actually start_ them! 😉)
It looks to me like they routed the front USB Port (Joypad) directly to the back USB Port (white USB Plug). That would kinda explain how they fake the controls. The rest on the board is just mockup... (5:50 in the Video)
Around 6:00 the heatsink fan is spinning while the power switch is in the off position. That is a little confusing because the lights are on, the same lights when the power is in the on position. Am I missing something?
I remember early mockups of that, 3D renders of components randomly thrown on a board with no rhyme or reason. Then hot gluing IO ports to a cardboard.
The heatsink is made by iWave and it's for COM Express Mini modules. These modules are SoM system on module (they call them COM computer on module) and say an Ultrascale+ (as they show in another picture) would have video right on there so no chips on output are not surprising. But i also can't figure out what COM Express Mini module it would be in particular. Also a Crucial RAM stick is seen in video, while COM Express Mini should have RAM on the module and doesn't really foresee the external connection. The PCB they use for the website background looks super fake though, even though it's a small portion, just the complete routing is bonkers and lack of VRM, plus i wouldn't trust whoever soldered that to make functioning solder joints. So although i can't see for certain, i wouldn't be surprised if the PCB in the video is a dummy. Scariest part is that they want a SEPA mandate for one of the order options. You would be spectacularly misguided to give someone you don't 200% trust a SEPA signature.
@@VideoGameEsoterica That would imply that there is a limit on damage, but it's worse. Using the SEPA mandate, they can withdraw any amount of money from your account anytime they like, and most of us... just don't pour over bank statements every 2 weeks because normally SEPA abuse is a quick business-ending move so it doesn't ever happen when you're dealing with larger companies that want to still be around in a year. But you never know with one crazy guy, normal business logic just doesn't apply to them, and even if you send a SEPA withdrawal, they still have a then-invalid copy of the old SEPA mandate with signature, they can file it with another bank and continue using it and the bank wouldn't know at first that the mandate has no validity.
@@VideoGameEsoterica It's worse than a one time withdrawal option. A bad player, not a company that wants to stick around, can cause unspeakable amount of displeasure if they have a SEPA mandate from you.
missing hdmi chips, missing voltage control chips, missing level shifters for gpio(you don't think a modern 20-14-7nm fpga runs at 12/5v like a master system/genesis do you, lol), wierdly low trace count around memory/cartidge slots and fpga, to say nothing of how sparse all the jelly bean stuff is, where are all the smd caps and resistors and diodes.
@@VideoGameEsoterica in fact i have another complaint, why is the dimm socket so far away, its well passed the maximum trace length for signaling, that thing needs to be right close to the fpga.
@@luminusone I'm reading through all of the comments, and love how people are breaking down why this is a scam. This is definitely more complex than the Coleco Chameleon, but clearly some sort of scam.
It's fake if you ask me! Take a look at the routing on pics of the PCB top and bottom. ElectronAsh pointed me towards this and there are many issues regards layout that suggest its pretty clearly a fake, or so badly designed it looks super fake. Lack of VRM / vreg stuff, QFP chips with litterally no traces top or bottom side - if routed on internal layers, would be very difficult to achieve and wouldnt make any sense in anyones mind. Ash pointed out the DDR slots - with nothing around them, no caps, no resistors, no traces, no VRM. SUPERFAKE would be a more appropriate name. I smell a Kickstarter coming?!? Anyone pre-ordering this...
The project is a complete scam. If it wasn't they'd tell us 1) which FPGA chip they are using. 2) what cores they're using. 3) if they're not using any existing cores, who is making them. DO NOT GIVE THESE PEOPLE ANY MONEY.
The strangest thing is the lack of decoupling caps on a number of the ICs. And where are the vias that would be dropping the signals to inner layers? Are they ALL under the ICs? That’s at least a gross violation of the manufacturers’ design recommendations, I’d bet. It looks very much like someone plopped some components into the design with no regards to function and spun it up. The only time this might ever be done is if you’re just trying to test a form factor for any DFM issues, in which case the boards aren’t expected to be functional.
As many of you already stated (plus my 2 cents): - no vrm circuitry for the different power rails - routing of traces that connect to ceramic caps are sensless - no decoupling caps around or below the chips (which is mandatory) - ram is too far away from cpu/fpga - this will ruin your signal integrity - no voltage shifting circuitry for the old 5V cartridge slots - no dacs for analog out - no hdmi transmitter or filter circuitry - solder bridges on the hdmi port (where tv is connected to) - no passive filters anywhere - the orientation of the power switch ...and many more red flags! even for a mockup - this is bad!
That loading screen in between the game launching looks bizarre as well, not something you’d expect on an FPGA based system more like a modified raspberry pi retropie build or something
I would buy one, however seemingly it only takes "cardridges"...I only have cartridges. They should at least spellcheck the vaporware before showing it off 😉 Guessing the thing under the giant heatsink is a Raspberry Pi 3/4/nano running a custom Emulelec U or somethingI to let him launch specific games from the options using standard software emulators. The Dreamcast running with slightly lower framerate but seemingly perfectly smacks of underpowered SBC
Very fishy. I’m behind on your videos and watching from oldest to newest, but I see you have another vid about this and have to know where this story goes🤪
I'll wait till a Mister successor for a possible Dreamcast core or an Analogue product that I can trust. This seems like smoke and mirrors and is way too fishy.
The fact that the bottom of the board is so bare with so few traces is very strange. The only theory I've got for this thing even functioning is if under the heat sink and fan is some kind of integrated x64 platform module. Still it doesn't seem like there are enough traces for that to even work. The laptop ram is somewhat telling though.
FYI, some FPGA's have built-in LVDS lanes, with which you can directly make DVI/HDMI output. Then you do not need a separate chip to serialize the video data. The Altera Cyclone does not have it, but for instance the Lattice ECP-5 does. So not seeing this chip does not have to mean anything.
@@VideoGameEsoterica If this is a real product, it is hard to imagine they would use a Virtex FPGA. Linn used it in their DS streamer, but that is a $2K+ product. But the Virtex has SERDES built-in, so it is capable of (very) high speed serial data.
@@VideoGameEsoterica I just saw that on a thumbnail of one their videos a AMD Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC XCZU2CG is shown. From the specsheet: "All UltraScale architecture-based devices support differential standards beyond LVDS, including RSDS, BLVDS, differential SSTL, and differential HSTL".
@@VideoGameEsoterica From the specs it seems to have even less logic elements than the Cyclone 5 on the Mister, so pure FPGA seems indeed to be impossible. But we don't know for sure what hides under that heat sink. Love your videos, please keep us informed!
Its unknown if they plugged anymore devices in beside the one in the rear and the xbox in the front but the HUD at 8:00 has 3 USBs not highlighted but not greyed out with 1 being greyed
I have seen working new PCB of genesis and NES splice together that has circuitry that’s much more complex than this. This board look like a very rudimentary incomplete school project. I’m still sceptic on this project.
I will personally not get. This Supersega doesn't support native 32x cartridges so for me is a no go! I am actually looking forward for the "GF1 Neptune" 32x FPGA console being made by a Brazilian company.
That first clip of the guy holding the board whilst wearing a white jacket. There's a black spot on the wall behind him that keeps flickering in such a way that it makes me think the footage was stabilised. Shooting handheld with a phone lends the material an air of [i]verité[/i] but post hoc stabilisation makes the footage feel overly smooth and adds a level of artifice which ruins the intention. And someone below mentioned about blowing into the cartridge. Nope. This is some y2k-era "blow in here to stop the light blinking LOL" meme. This feels like amateur hour bandwagon jumping.
Look it's real simple they only show what you they want you to see. And you can tell his over exaggeration of all his movements .. this is a scam until proven otherwise
@VideoGameEsoterica it's also used as a distraction. Like the blowing on the cartridge. That is so your brain shifts to some nostalgic moments so you think " oh that's funny I remember that" or " I wonder if the reason it didn't work is bc he needs qtips and ISP 😆" Penn&Teller these guys are not. That shit is running on emulator more than likely. Those cuts in video WOULD NEVER have to happen unless there is "something" they dont want people to see. Whats worse is seeing this guy fakes move around like he's reacting to a game.
Haha yes. I didn’t go that deep in the vid but part of my career experience is years negotiating with athletes and their agents. You learn real quick to read a room and body language and notice when someone is trying to convince you of something as a bluff
It's a shame, this is someone just about all of us wished was real, who wouldn't finally want Dreamcast on FPGA? But there are more red flags here than a soccer storage house. I could have sworn I saw that Crazy Tazi video before too, months ago, I had the same skepticism then that it seems far too early for it to a FPGA Dreamcast core to be running this well. I remember seeing about a year before someone attempting a Dreamcast core and it barely rendered a handful of the polygons on the BIOS menu. What I am confused about though, is what is even their endgame here? This seems like a lot of work for a scam, months of pretending you are creating a product just to get some $3 pre-orders in? Even if they go as far as to claim the full thing is releasing and take the full $350 or so payment, that will only work the first time if people never get something/get a clear fake product, and many will likely be able to get a chargeback. They even said they will limit orders to one per person, limiting how much they can rip off people. Even this being a scam doesn't add up.
Even if they had a 100% working prototype, their approach is enough to dissuade me from ever backing something like this. The first strike was promising everything when they had nothing. 2nd strike was the presentation once they had something, making them look (at best) inept, at worst scam artists. 3rd strike was asking for money without anything more than a green board and a hand-drawn mockup. Even if this thing hit the shelves, it looks monstrous and not something I would want displayed under my tv.
@@LelandReview You're playing an Intellivision Amico on your TV? Or you're playing some game that was supposed to come out on Amico, but didn't? Genuinely curious I didn't follow the story arc recently.
@@jerryklein3 Yep I'm playing Intellivision games on Amico Home on my TV. After the chip shortage made releasing a console impossible they came up with a genius plan that all video game companies should do. They made the Console into a app called Amico Home instead. And it runs on nearly all devices. I play mine on Nvidia Shield TV Pro. Making Amico Home even more powerful then Switch. They are planning to release the Amico controller separately so It can be used to sync with Amico Home. Really console hardware is nearly identical for every system these days anyway. Only the controllers are different. It's so funny hearing people call Amico a scam. They fell for the lying clickbait from Pat and Ian that said Amico went bankrupt years ago. They were way off.
the pcb doesn't make sense, where are most of the traces to the chips or the cartridge slots? i would expect a lot of via's too, unless there's some way to move signals between layers I don't know about. I'm not an electrical engineer but that board looks super fake, like someone mocked something convincing up on PCB way and then soldered a bunch of unconnected components to it.
if they're indeed programming a core for dreamcast in VHDL(and know all the ins and outs)...maybe make a clone of it instead? probably hard to score the original processors and chips but...is there no modern cheap ones than can be underclocked in order to mimic it?
There is a stunning lack of traces and components on that PCB. Edit: The way he handles the board, tossing it around so that there's no clear focus on certain components, is extremely suspect. Even in the second close-up, they're clearly avoiding showing clean shots of certain areas.
Hehehe, it's running on nothing more than a mid-level FPGA, an SH4, and a Power VR IC!!! ;) Joking (can't believe I feel like I should qualify that, but I've gotten some comments on my comments on other videos lately that make me think I should qualify more of my jokes...) :D
In the video shown on MaddLittlePixel here was a frame where the Fpga chip model was visible. Looking at the "XCZU2CG Datasheet" (An Xilinx Ultrascale+ Zynq) it has 6 Arm processors (four of them upto 1.5 ghz) & a Mali GPU along side the FPGA fabric. So I guess you'd have to be happy with it effectively running on a GPU (or worse, an Android app), with the Fpga bringing the data into the Ram stick from the cartridge ports. Very suspect specification for the claims & explains why it looks like the emulator. The chip is real - but it might not be a pure Fpga emulation of the CPU & GPU cores of the dreamcast.
@@VideoGameEsoterica I was thinking the GPU - being a Mali - is an omap derivative (power-vr heritage / iphone type gpu) - that might explain the perfect OpenGLES implementation you were all seeing visually. And yeah - CPU wise that chip is very beefy. It does seem to have a similar level of FGPA logic units as the MiSTer chip, so perhaps all the other cores for the 8 & 16bit sku's are MiSTer like, but the Dreamcast feels suss.
Electronics Engineer here - it looks like it could be real but if it is, it has been designed by amateurs. Also looks like they soldered the smt pins of the hdmi connectors but not the grounding / retention through-hole pins. And they don't have any ESD protection next to the connector. So I'd say it's possible but nothing here tells me for sure that it's real. Certainly not enough to send money. If it is real though, looking at the traces, it has to be a four layer board. It's impossible to tell how many layers from these videos though.
This thing has no discernible bus topology, no power handling, no vias, no IO components, etc., etc.. Is it possible that all the required IO and support hardware is implemented in FPGA? I don’t think so, simply because nothing about how the board is laid out would make any of that make sense (also, why would you waste precious FPGA space on that). Also, where’s the analog hardware that’s absolutely needed for the composite connections and such. I’d be very surprised if this were real.
I posted as a reply to someone, but it made me think more about this whole situation: it is almost a mockery, like they are intentionally trying to be bad at this, to show how corrupt and idiotic the "kickstarter" industry is.
I'm no expert on hardware like this, but if it is a scam, it seems strange to me they are prepared to show their faces on video interviews. Maybe they could still hide their location but if their country was known then getting ID'd and having legal cases against them would be a real possibility I'd imagine. Or maybe hiding identity is still easier than it seems these days.
So they've showed their faces, I wonder if they also used their real names. Is there any legal recourse when this goes tits up? All the preorders are through stripe.
The fact that it didn't work the first time he plugged the cartridge in, took it out, blew on the contacts, then reinserted it, and it worked (4:20)... They're targeting your nostalgia!
That, my friends, is a finely crafted con!
I dunno if I’d use the word “finely”
@@VideoGameEsoterica True, True!
That's too much credit.
😆😅😂🤣
I think the are targeting your wallet. Not a chance I'd pre-order anything from these folks.
Crudely lol
Nobody should
HAHA that’s one of the emptiest boards I’ve ever seen. It looks like they just ordered a bare board and slapped some I/O ports and a heat sink on it.
It’s missing many crucial components
Yeah, looks super fake. At 6:00-6:04; two little caps, seven SMT parts, and an unknown black box (inductor?) are the only components present to support eleven separate connectors (there are two double USB ports plus others) !! And I couldn't see anything underneath either to support them.
@freshneyorg exactly. So many missing components
Something smells and it's not my feet.
It may ALSO be your feet 🤣
This is sooo fake... as an engineer the board layout makes no sense, all that analog outputs need various IC's with their own lot of pasive components, clocks, etc. At minimum a couple of DACs, maybe all that is hidden behind that huge cooler, but that also does not make sense, putting those near the heat source with all that empty space. Then there are all those cuts in the video while trying to hide them, and also saying it will support Saturn and Dreamcast when just those two systems would take years of coding work for a small group of people and knowledge in the level of Sega engineers. this smells like sh*t
Agreed, and ElectronAsh said all the same stuff to me before I made my own mind up!
The board is the telltale and even people outside EE who know what to look for can spot things immediately
Seems pretty trustworthy to me. I would’ve gotten this had I not preordered the new Uranus FPGA project that my uncle’s neighbor’s drinking buddy told me about. It may have cost me my parents’s stolen retirement funds, but on Uranus’s twitter they showed a gif of a 100% functional RTX 5090 core so when it ships in 2030 it’ll all be worth it.
Lotta fun in Uranus coming up!
As a Spaniard and enthusiast of retro gaming and the fpga community, i’m ashamed of this. It’s a complete joke doesn’t represent us.
I don't think you should apologize as a spaniard. It's not like you don't have american people scamming too
Not Spain’s fault :)
A lot of great retro gaming stuff is created by Spanish guys, we know this is just some scammer.
not Spain's fault nor anybody know your achievements. You and he don't represent the whole Spain Country so nothing to worry
At least it's not _Hecho en Rei-NO « Unido »!_ If we were trying to develop that thing here, 3/4 of the country would be on fire by now! 🧯🇬🇧🔥😉
This is really good. You were careful to not speculate and to instead describe all the evidence you see and what that evidence tells us. Im loving this channel
I let you make the decisions :)
Please, no one preorder this. So sus
That’s what I said in the last vid. Nobody give them card info
I won't bash content creators preordering it just in case its real. I suggest preloaded cards if you do.
No one else should even consider buying until reviewers have them in hand.
It could fail even if it were real because of how secretive they were from the start.
I'm cautiously optomistic.
Not even Sus at this point. Kevtris reacted to it and said there's literally no way the board can even support dogs or even work as anything 😂 I recommend looking into his breakdown.
@marcrics I’ll have an update tomorrow
FWIW, they replied to my question asking why there were cuts in the video and their response was that it was to cut out the loading times. Do I believe that answer? No lol.
Funny the next day they don’t cut and the loading times are mere seconds
I’m Spanish and to me this is really funny. Those cuts when loading games, the mouse double click sound in the uncut version, and the attitude of the presenter… everything is so awkward and weird that makes me laugh. Hopefully no one is putting money in this…
I’m German and to me this is really funny. Those cuts when loading games, the mouse double click sound in the uncut version, and the attitude of the presenter… everything is so awkward and weird that makes me laugh. Hopefully no one is putting money in this…
Nobody should put money in. At all
@@VideoGameEsotericaI think they will say that it were not enough monetary support in the pre-orders no matter the real outcome of that, so the project will get cancelled and they will keep the money, as they clearly said that there are no refund with the pre-orders if they don’t get enough support… This is the only logical explanation I can think of for this mess of product reveal and presentation… will see
@Nilbelec that’s a lot of work for 3 euros a pop 🤣
@@ElDaumo 🤣
If they're faking it at least they're putting in more effort than MARS
Great video VGE! You make some very valid points and criticisms!
It was an interesting video to make
the board is just in early access guys. Buy now, get traces later. He'll surely finish it with time!
Traces are DLC
@@VideoGameEsoterica They're downloadable like RAM? Nice!
Would you download a car? 🤣
Not chancing that here! I live in the UK, so I have to pay import duty on anything I download from Spain... 🙃
2:29 i yelled wtf. Underneath that massive heat sink would be a grid of vias and capacitors. Nobody would build a PCB with that many blind vias to have a perfectly smooth bottom copper plane like that.
However the smaller chips on the left side would be plenty to read the game cartridge connectors and store data onto the mass storage flash card. But not much else.
Yes that pcb does not have the prerequisite parts on it for it to do much of anything
The heatsink is for COM Express Mini module, so there's a cutout in the heatsink, and the actual computer with all the heavy lifting sits on an SMD mezz connector lives in there, you get yourself USB video power and you're golden.
Though there's no reason to say there is anything at all under the heatsink.
Very possible
Having the Master System cartridge that close to the heat sink is probably not the best design decision. Also using a legacy format like Compact Flash for storage isn't a great idea either. The dedicated slot for SG-1000 over say Game Gear is kind of insane too. There are like 50 SG-1000 games and most of them are unobtainium, there are almost 400 Game Gear games that are easy/cheap to get. They'll probably say you can get an adapter later on but logically that makes no sense. You make an adapter for the SG-1000 games if anything.
Edit: One thing that I did notice was the main menu for the SuperSEGA reminds me of RetroArch, RetroArch has a theme which copies the PlayStation UI wave effect.
Odd decisions all around
On a serious note, why is he obscuring the device while operating it? It comes off as suspicious.
Exactly
I said this before, this really screams scaaaam. It is so obvious. There are so many red flags but i must admit this is quite interesting
It’s interesting to point out that for sure
I'd still be happy if this thing turns out to work and be it only for systems SG1000 to Saturn.
But even to my untrained eye that PCB looks oddly blank.
It is oddly blank. Thats for sure
The board makes indeed no sense. Where is the wiring to HDMI like you said. Also no one has done Dreamcast FPGA so far and suddenly these dudes figured it out near perfect 1st try. You would also think a person who is able to make such a complex FPGA machine knows that blowing into a cartridge does nothing. Get some alcohol and a q tip lol. Overall it smells like one big scam. Would highly advise against pre-ordering as other said already. 💯😂
The board is missing many crucial components
Not a single crystal in sight.
To be fair, could be using a clock generator, and I can potentially see a few ceramic resonators behind a few of the chips.
A few components but not enough
Also, aren't they missing like a zillion capacitors around those ports and connectors?
Haha just a few
Yes lol, and a million around the board in general! It's no more than a PCB the same size as the shell, with connector and some IC positions... Next to nothing routed.
Hence why I put the DE10 on screen to display the differences :)
Pretty sure even my 1st gen Raspberry Pi has more filtration on its board than any SuperSega... 😉
(And it's probably got better capability to soft-emulate Dreamcast games too i.e. _Actually start_ them! 😉)
Why does he remind me of Cain from Robocop 2?
Haha I kinda see it
It's probably an emulator and one of the situations where we'll get the money now and figure out the real logistics later.
Big vibes in that direction
Maybe his belly hit the controller button when he leaned forward and it put the revs up.... 😂
As always, cheers for the content.
🤣 you got me to laugh out loud with that one
It looks to me like they routed the front USB Port (Joypad) directly to the back USB Port (white USB Plug).
That would kinda explain how they fake the controls. The rest on the board is just mockup...
(5:50 in the Video)
Around 6:00 the heatsink fan is spinning while the power switch is in the off position. That is a little confusing because the lights are on, the same lights when the power is in the on position. Am I missing something?
Nope you aren’t missing anything. Just more oddities
If it’s legit, why is he blocking your view of the TV most of the time? Why not just show the goods? Why does he need to be in the shot at all?
So you can’t see the controller inputs
The FPGA Wars of 202x. We are here for it
Sadly as any hobby gets bigger things like this pop up
It's the Caleco Chameleon all over again...
Strong chameleon vibes
Try the Amico.
@@Code7Unltd the chameleon was a Graphics card in a Jaguar shell. More fitting for the Super Sega.
I remember early mockups of that, 3D renders of components randomly thrown on a board with no rhyme or reason. Then hot gluing IO ports to a cardboard.
@ccricers yes it’s been odd the entire time
The heatsink is made by iWave and it's for COM Express Mini modules. These modules are SoM system on module (they call them COM computer on module) and say an Ultrascale+ (as they show in another picture) would have video right on there so no chips on output are not surprising.
But i also can't figure out what COM Express Mini module it would be in particular. Also a Crucial RAM stick is seen in video, while COM Express Mini should have RAM on the module and doesn't really foresee the external connection.
The PCB they use for the website background looks super fake though, even though it's a small portion, just the complete routing is bonkers and lack of VRM, plus i wouldn't trust whoever soldered that to make functioning solder joints.
So although i can't see for certain, i wouldn't be surprised if the PCB in the video is a dummy.
Scariest part is that they want a SEPA mandate for one of the order options. You would be spectacularly misguided to give someone you don't 200% trust a SEPA signature.
Wow, I didn't even know what SEPA mandate means, after reading about it, I think this scam looks even scammier than it seemed at first.
Good find on the heat sink!
That’s what I said in a vid. I’m sure the pre order allows them to draw the entire amount at will
@@VideoGameEsoterica That would imply that there is a limit on damage, but it's worse. Using the SEPA mandate, they can withdraw any amount of money from your account anytime they like, and most of us... just don't pour over bank statements every 2 weeks because normally SEPA abuse is a quick business-ending move so it doesn't ever happen when you're dealing with larger companies that want to still be around in a year. But you never know with one crazy guy, normal business logic just doesn't apply to them, and even if you send a SEPA withdrawal, they still have a then-invalid copy of the old SEPA mandate with signature, they can file it with another bank and continue using it and the bank wouldn't know at first that the mandate has no validity.
@@VideoGameEsoterica It's worse than a one time withdrawal option. A bad player, not a company that wants to stick around, can cause unspeakable amount of displeasure if they have a SEPA mandate from you.
missing hdmi chips, missing voltage control chips, missing level shifters for gpio(you don't think a modern 20-14-7nm fpga runs at 12/5v like a master system/genesis do you, lol), wierdly low trace count around memory/cartidge slots and fpga, to say nothing of how sparse all the jelly bean stuff is, where are all the smd caps and resistors and diodes.
They are still in the parts bin 🤣
@@VideoGameEsoterica in fact i have another complaint, why is the dimm socket so far away, its well passed the maximum trace length for signaling, that thing needs to be right close to the fpga.
Exactly. Ram is always butted up against the CPU or in this instance the FPGA chip
@@luminusone I'm reading through all of the comments, and love how people are breaking down why this is a scam. This is definitely more complex than the Coleco Chameleon, but clearly some sort of scam.
I expect this is a scam. Not a chance I would spend my money until released and proven to work.
Even I no longer will “to see what happens” put an order in just for the vid
It's fake if you ask me! Take a look at the routing on pics of the PCB top and bottom. ElectronAsh pointed me towards this and there are many issues regards layout that suggest its pretty clearly a fake, or so badly designed it looks super fake. Lack of VRM / vreg stuff, QFP chips with litterally no traces top or bottom side - if routed on internal layers, would be very difficult to achieve and wouldnt make any sense in anyones mind. Ash pointed out the DDR slots - with nothing around them, no caps, no resistors, no traces, no VRM. SUPERFAKE would be a more appropriate name. I smell a Kickstarter coming?!? Anyone pre-ordering this...
The layout is…not right
@@VideoGameEsoterica Nothing about it is right lol
@@VideoGameEsoterica Keep up the great work btw! You post so regular, and always interesting whatever you put up!
Plenty more coming :)
@@VideoGameEsoterica 😎
The project is a complete scam. If it wasn't they'd tell us 1) which FPGA chip they are using. 2) what cores they're using. 3) if they're not using any existing cores, who is making them.
DO NOT GIVE THESE PEOPLE ANY MONEY.
Nobody should give them money
They shot themselves in the foot showing the underside of the pcb. The cartridge sockets have no traces running to them.
I didn’t point everything out so people could have a little hunt :)
They wouldn't necessarily be visible.
No they could be in the middle of the PCB in a multi layer design
@@VideoGameEsoterica good point
The strangest thing is the lack of decoupling caps on a number of the ICs. And where are the vias that would be dropping the signals to inner layers? Are they ALL under the ICs? That’s at least a gross violation of the manufacturers’ design recommendations, I’d bet. It looks very much like someone plopped some components into the design with no regards to function and spun it up. The only time this might ever be done is if you’re just trying to test a form factor for any DFM issues, in which case the boards aren’t expected to be functional.
Are there any traces going to the cart ports at all?......
Not visibly
Using "SEGA" in the name, lol.
Just one of numerous issues
I will stick with my Taki Udon MiSTer.
As one should
Honestly just waiting for the TV card in a Jag case moment at this point. 😐
We’re nearing that level it seems. Chameleon territory
The scammiest of scams
The vibes are all wrong
I for one will look forward to the future Snopes Game Room video that highlights this in a his Kickscammer video series
I’d watch it
They should have called it MegaSEGA FPGA. 😤
MegaImaginary
Is the power rocker switch wired backward? Power was on when the switch was in the off position
A very good question
You have a weatherman’s delivery I love it
Haha appreciate it
As many of you already stated (plus my 2 cents):
- no vrm circuitry for the different power rails
- routing of traces that connect to ceramic caps are sensless
- no decoupling caps around or below the chips (which is mandatory)
- ram is too far away from cpu/fpga - this will ruin your signal integrity
- no voltage shifting circuitry for the old 5V cartridge slots
- no dacs for analog out
- no hdmi transmitter or filter circuitry
- solder bridges on the hdmi port (where tv is connected to)
- no passive filters anywhere
- the orientation of the power switch
...and many more red flags!
even for a mockup - this is bad!
Hence them moving it around so rapidly on camera
Can we all agree that original DCs are plentiful and feature crystal-clear progressive VGA outputs? There’s no real need for this yet!
Yes it would be fun to have but it’s really not essential
this is that system in the jaguire shell all over again
I'm getting Amico vibes.
And Chameleon too
That loading screen in between the game launching looks bizarre as well, not something you’d expect on an FPGA based system more like a modified raspberry pi retropie build or something
Def has those vibes going
🤔
So many questions
"CARDRIDGE" huh...
Hey I mean that’s the least weird thing haha
VGE can't stop me, I will order over 9000 of these!!!!
Send me one 🤣
I would buy one, however seemingly it only takes "cardridges"...I only have cartridges.
They should at least spellcheck the vaporware before showing it off 😉
Guessing the thing under the giant heatsink is a Raspberry Pi 3/4/nano running a custom Emulelec U or somethingI to let him launch specific games from the options using standard software emulators.
The Dreamcast running with slightly lower framerate but seemingly perfectly smacks of underpowered SBC
The Dreamcast shouldn’t appear as a perfect core minus the framerate
Wow, what a great product. I'll be sure to be playing this along with my Intellivision Amico and Coleco Chameleon.
The holy trinity of hilariously not real
That blow in the cartridge is comical 😂
Haha it got me to laugh
I mean the dude has a ponytail.
That's the most trustworthy hairdo one might have.
Mullet but only if at a carnival
@@VideoGameEsotericaBro, what's up with the dude's white Miami Vice jacket, then shirt with popped collar, and then unpopped 🤨
The world may never know
@@robbiej111he's obviously a Sega fan. Those guys are weeeeeeird 😂
@@robbiej111he's trying to convince us it's not a scam with the reputable appearance of a Miami car salesman from the 80s
Coleco Chameleon V2?
It’s got those vibes
Looks like an old GPU, somthing like an NVidia GeForce 3 or a shiny new ISA card. lol
It looks like…random bits
If it sounds to good to be true... then she's probably going to say no. That's my motto.
🤣
I love how the Xbox controller decides it's player one before he even turns the console on
🤣
Very fishy. I’m behind on your videos and watching from oldest to newest, but I see you have another vid about this and have to know where this story goes🤪
And what a weird and strange story it is haha
In the words of Shark Tank, I'm out.
Haha not a big investor eh?
That circuit board screams "fake"
And it’s screaming quite loudly
I'll wait till a Mister successor for a possible Dreamcast core or an Analogue product that I can trust. This seems like smoke and mirrors and is way too fishy.
Wise
The fact that the bottom of the board is so bare with so few traces is very strange. The only theory I've got for this thing even functioning is if under the heat sink and fan is some kind of integrated x64 platform module. Still it doesn't seem like there are enough traces for that to even work. The laptop ram is somewhat telling though.
Yes nothing on the pcb looks like it could output an image or execute code currently
FYI, some FPGA's have built-in LVDS lanes, with which you can directly make DVI/HDMI output. Then you do not need a separate chip to serialize the video data. The Altera Cyclone does not have it, but for instance the Lattice ECP-5 does. So not seeing this chip does not have to mean anything.
This one apparently needs the extras
@@VideoGameEsoterica If this is a real product, it is hard to imagine they would use a Virtex FPGA. Linn used it in their DS streamer, but that is a $2K+ product. But the Virtex has SERDES built-in, so it is capable of (very) high speed serial data.
@@VideoGameEsoterica I just saw that on a thumbnail of one their videos a AMD Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC XCZU2CG is shown. From the specsheet: "All UltraScale architecture-based devices support differential standards beyond LVDS, including RSDS, BLVDS, differential SSTL, and differential HSTL".
Their chip would not be able to run Dreamcast it seems per specs
@@VideoGameEsoterica From the specs it seems to have even less logic elements than the Cyclone 5 on the Mister, so pure FPGA seems indeed to be impossible. But we don't know for sure what hides under that heat sink. Love your videos, please keep us informed!
the front HDMI could be a SNAC adapter considering its near what I assume are 4 input ports, there were some HDMIs on the back
6:51 you get an "hud" image on the top of the screen with 2 usb, 4 dsub, and 2 more Usb which I assume are for inputs
Its unknown if they plugged anymore devices in beside the one in the rear and the xbox in the front but the HUD at 8:00 has 3 USBs not highlighted but not greyed out with 1 being greyed
Could be SNAC
I have seen working new PCB of genesis and NES splice together that has circuitry that’s much more complex than this. This board look like a very rudimentary incomplete school project. I’m still sceptic on this project.
Many people are skeptical about it
@@VideoGameEsoterica yeah mate. No doubt about it. It’s great to be well informed about this through discussions. Thanks for sharing.
Happy to do it. I don’t want anyone to lose their money
I will personally not get. This Supersega doesn't support native 32x cartridges so for me is a no go!
I am actually looking forward for the "GF1 Neptune" 32x FPGA console being made by a Brazilian company.
The Neptune looks promising for sure
Compact Flash card? Really? I retired my last one about ten years ago. What’s next, Microdrive?
Honestly to me that’s the least weird thing. NAOMI NetBoot systems still take CF cards for individual NAOMI games. So that like makes 10% sense
@@VideoGameEsoterica it's 2024. Using compact flash on new stuff is weird.
It is weird. But it’s by far the least weird thing
@@MarkCurtis-u6o CF can be great though, lower latency than SDIO, and perfect f you need UDMA or ATAPI.
They still have uses. I have like a dozen in my desk drawer
That first clip of the guy holding the board whilst wearing a white jacket. There's a black spot on the wall behind him that keeps flickering in such a way that it makes me think the footage was stabilised. Shooting handheld with a phone lends the material an air of [i]verité[/i] but post hoc stabilisation makes the footage feel overly smooth and adds a level of artifice which ruins the intention.
And someone below mentioned about blowing into the cartridge. Nope. This is some y2k-era "blow in here to stop the light blinking LOL" meme. This feels like amateur hour bandwagon jumping.
The entire production level of the content is odd
Look it's real simple they only show what you they want you to see. And you can tell his over exaggeration of all his movements .. this is a scam until proven otherwise
I did mention the over exaggerations and button presses that don’t match the actions on screen. People overact when they want to convince you
@VideoGameEsoterica it's also used as a distraction. Like the blowing on the cartridge. That is so your brain shifts to some nostalgic moments so you think " oh that's funny I remember that" or " I wonder if the reason it didn't work is bc he needs qtips and ISP 😆" Penn&Teller these guys are not. That shit is running on emulator more than likely. Those cuts in video WOULD NEVER have to happen unless there is "something" they dont want people to see. Whats worse is seeing this guy fakes move around like he's reacting to a game.
Haha yes. I didn’t go that deep in the vid but part of my career experience is years negotiating with athletes and their agents. You learn real quick to read a room and body language and notice when someone is trying to convince you of something as a bluff
@VideoGameEsoterica same here similarly jobs. This entire video imo is a work.
WWF style
It's a shame, this is someone just about all of us wished was real, who wouldn't finally want Dreamcast on FPGA? But there are more red flags here than a soccer storage house. I could have sworn I saw that Crazy Tazi video before too, months ago, I had the same skepticism then that it seems far too early for it to a FPGA Dreamcast core to be running this well. I remember seeing about a year before someone attempting a Dreamcast core and it barely rendered a handful of the polygons on the BIOS menu.
What I am confused about though, is what is even their endgame here? This seems like a lot of work for a scam, months of pretending you are creating a product just to get some $3 pre-orders in? Even if they go as far as to claim the full thing is releasing and take the full $350 or so payment, that will only work the first time if people never get something/get a clear fake product, and many will likely be able to get a chargeback. They even said they will limit orders to one per person, limiting how much they can rip off people. Even this being a scam doesn't add up.
Get enough pre orders with pre auths for total balance. Even if you get 100 people…100 x 350 is 35K. Not huge but I mean it’s 35k
im saying no its tommy tallarico all over again and knowing fpga and emulation im saying no way
Best to stay away
@@VideoGameEsoterica its a shame if this was real and its not this would give a nice step forward to fpga but lets hope where wrong
Even if they had a 100% working prototype, their approach is enough to dissuade me from ever backing something like this. The first strike was promising everything when they had nothing. 2nd strike was the presentation once they had something, making them look (at best) inept, at worst scam artists. 3rd strike was asking for money without anything more than a green board and a hand-drawn mockup. Even if this thing hit the shelves, it looks monstrous and not something I would want displayed under my tv.
From start to finish it’s been a mess
100% rugpull scam. Reminds me of Amico. The compact flash port made me literally LOL.
That’s honestly the least weird part. NAOMI NetBoot uses CF. Everything else though…oof
Funny part I'm playing Amico on my TV as I read this :D So now Im wondering if this new SEGA is better then it looks too. And just getting bad press.
@@LelandReview You're playing an Intellivision Amico on your TV? Or you're playing some game that was supposed to come out on Amico, but didn't? Genuinely curious I didn't follow the story arc recently.
@@VideoGameEsoterica I didn't know that about NAOMI NetBoot. I don't think these guys are thinking that far ahead with this though lol.
@@jerryklein3 Yep I'm playing Intellivision games on Amico Home on my TV. After the chip shortage made releasing a console impossible they came up with a genius plan that all video game companies should do. They made the Console into a app called Amico Home instead. And it runs on nearly all devices. I play mine on Nvidia Shield TV Pro. Making Amico Home even more powerful then Switch. They are planning to release the Amico controller separately so It can be used to sync with Amico Home. Really console hardware is nearly identical for every system these days anyway. Only the controllers are different. It's so funny hearing people call Amico a scam. They fell for the lying clickbait from Pat and Ian that said Amico went bankrupt years ago. They were way off.
the pcb doesn't make sense, where are most of the traces to the chips or the cartridge slots? i would expect a lot of via's too, unless there's some way to move signals between layers I don't know about. I'm not an electrical engineer but that board looks super fake, like someone mocked something convincing up on PCB way and then soldered a bunch of unconnected components to it.
Your read is accurate
if they're indeed programming a core for dreamcast in VHDL(and know all the ins and outs)...maybe make a clone of it instead?
probably hard to score the original processors and chips but...is there no modern cheap ones than can be underclocked in order to mimic it?
I don’t know what exists of the SH or PowerVR line these days and even then no clue what portion of the DC instruction set would still be in there
Isn't the HDMI are too far from the FPGA without any additional logic components 😅
There is a stunning lack of traces and components on that PCB.
Edit: The way he handles the board, tossing it around so that there's no clear focus on certain components, is extremely suspect. Even in the second close-up, they're clearly avoiding showing clean shots of certain areas.
Yes they are trying to keep it moving so you can’t focus on it
Hehehe, it's running on nothing more than a mid-level FPGA, an SH4, and a Power VR IC!!! ;) Joking (can't believe I feel like I should qualify that, but I've gotten some comments on my comments on other videos lately that make me think I should qualify more of my jokes...) :D
Haha it’s the internet. Always gotta qualify jokes
Hmmm...Maybe they have a de10 nano hidden under that heatsink?
Performance would be better haha
SuperSega is SuperFake
That’s the vibes
I'm no engineer but how does this motherboard function without several capacitors? Magic? Pixie dust?
Exactly
A new way to play old master system games… impressive pshh
😆
In the video shown on MaddLittlePixel here was a frame where the Fpga chip model was visible. Looking at the "XCZU2CG Datasheet" (An Xilinx Ultrascale+ Zynq) it has 6 Arm processors (four of them upto 1.5 ghz) & a Mali GPU along side the FPGA fabric. So I guess you'd have to be happy with it effectively running on a GPU (or worse, an Android app), with the Fpga bringing the data into the Ram stick from the cartridge ports. Very suspect specification for the claims & explains why it looks like the emulator. The chip is real - but it might not be a pure Fpga emulation of the CPU & GPU cores of the dreamcast.
It could all be software and they try and claim hybrid
@@VideoGameEsoterica I was thinking the GPU - being a Mali - is an omap derivative (power-vr heritage / iphone type gpu) - that might explain the perfect OpenGLES implementation you were all seeing visually. And yeah - CPU wise that chip is very beefy. It does seem to have a similar level of FGPA logic units as the MiSTer chip, so perhaps all the other cores for the 8 & 16bit sku's are MiSTer like, but the Dreamcast feels suss.
It all feels suspect. From top to bottom
Electronics Engineer here - it looks like it could be real but if it is, it has been designed by amateurs. Also looks like they soldered the smt pins of the hdmi connectors but not the grounding / retention through-hole pins. And they don't have any ESD protection next to the connector. So I'd say it's possible but nothing here tells me for sure that it's real. Certainly not enough to send money.
If it is real though, looking at the traces, it has to be a four layer board. It's impossible to tell how many layers from these videos though.
Yeah ok, further inspection, I'm pretty convinced it's not doing what they say it's doing. There is plenty more wrong.
Seems pretty thin for four layers
So much
@@VideoGameEsotericayou can do four layers in 1.2mm fairly readily.
The way this big guy theatrically use his whole upper body strength to press a button. 100% BS!
It’s over the top theatrical
This thing has no discernible bus topology, no power handling, no vias, no IO components, etc., etc.. Is it possible that all the required IO and support hardware is implemented in FPGA? I don’t think so, simply because nothing about how the board is laid out would make any of that make sense (also, why would you waste precious FPGA space on that). Also, where’s the analog hardware that’s absolutely needed for the composite connections and such. I’d be very surprised if this were real.
It has nothing but red flags
I posted as a reply to someone, but it made me think more about this whole situation: it is almost a mockery, like they are intentionally trying to be bad at this, to show how corrupt and idiotic the "kickstarter" industry is.
If only it was satire
Too sketchy. They need to show the fpga chip. Show the back of the tv. Show it being hooked up and turned on.
Exactly. And they show this?
The fpga is an important indicator. Has to be powerful enough to run the Dreamcast but not so powerful that it prices most customers out.
@Bulbachar exactly. Fine line to walk
I'm no expert on hardware like this, but if it is a scam, it seems strange to me they are prepared to show their faces on video interviews. Maybe they could still hide their location but if their country was known then getting ID'd and having legal cases against them would be a real possibility I'd imagine. Or maybe hiding identity is still easier than it seems these days.
It’s all just so confusing
It's a social experiment.
It’s definitely a…something
Put it in an Atari Jaguar shell and I'm sold!
🤣 you never know
I have yet to see a video that doesn't seem fake or somehow doctored. No way would I be putting any money into this project.
I genuinely hope nobody does
They're doing their best to seem sketchy. I wouldn't trust these people with a bag of pennies. It all points to an industry ritual.
It’s an odd one
“it’s a trap” - kernel
Haha def is
@ thanx for the reply. Subscribed
@RockyFluffyWhiskas 👍
Looks legit, to me.
**places preorder**
What could go wrong?
🤣
For god's sake, at 6:53 to 6:55 you can see a window edge popping up in the screen, that's an emulator running on Windows or Linux... ROFL.
Ooh I’ll have to look closer
So they've showed their faces, I wonder if they also used their real names. Is there any legal recourse when this goes tits up? All the preorders are through stripe.
Rarely there ever are any consequences sadly