/vr/ - Retro Games

>battery dies
>EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE every time you turn on the console

that was not at all necessary.

>>10620087
>BEEEEEP
>Skrch-chrrrr
>whirrrr....
Dreamcast has such soulful sound effects.

>>10620057
No, I never used it for anything. I would have preferred a larger memory card instead, the storage on these was pathetic.

>>10620057
Didn't it have a Tamagotchi on it?

>BEEP
No.
Why was Sega so retarded with batteries? It fucked up the Saturn really bad, the Dreamcast a little less. But it's a shit feature.

>>10620121
At least VMUs don't require a battery to retain the save files. That fucked up the Saturn much worse.

>>10620128
Yeah, but they last around a month and a half max. That's retarded.

>>10620095
They actually did release a "MU", where instead of having the screen and controls it just had expanded storage.

Naturally it was only sold in japan.

>>10620057
>visual memory unit
>doesn't show you screenshots of the most memorable moments in your dreamcast gaming history

Imagine if instead of a shitty tamagotchi thing it was a full blown GBC. Sega would've been saved.

>>10620291
yeah anon, I’m sure that’s what could’ve saved them.

>>10620057
i wish it had more games, just for the novelty of playing a simple game on something so tiny.

The chao garden turning it into a tamogatchi pet on your vmu that you take around and raise was genius. Unfortunately it just isn't developed enough and comes across as a tech demo. Could have been the vmu's killer app imo, especially at the time

It was a really cool idea, but the batteries barely lasting two months if you're lucky kills all appeal to it, especially when even taking the batteries OUT of them doesn't stop the load ass beeping noise when you turn the console on.

>>10620057
I'm not sure that it was a good idea. Nintendo is the one that puts most effort in to ideas like that, and well they released Wii U, which is a console built on similar idea.

>>10620057
I'm not sure it was a good idea. Every implementation of that idea has been a failure. Yes, Pocket Station didn't do terrible commercially, but it also doesn't matter all that much. Nintendo is the one that puts most effort in ideas like that, and well they released Wii U, which has been a failure. I think Wii U had a good idea regarding proper implementation, but it never took off.
I think it has a potential as an idea, but never took off.

>>10620057
Had the battery life been better it definitely would have been more well received. The thing dies in like 2 weeks if you use it semi regularly and it uses TWO batteries just to achieve that compared to other similar things that just used 1 and lasted for months on end. Better yet they should have used a rechargeable battery, cost would have probably gone up and maybe made it bulkier but it would have been worth the trade off.

I have a modded VMU that has a rechargeable battery and its awesome I take it with me everywhere.

>>10620057
What I want, is something similar to the VMU but works as a USB drive instead of a proprietary memory card. This would be perfect for playing games at home or on the go. Preferably around the same size and with the same unlit LCD display, but a proper backlight would be fine too.

Does anyone know of a way to plug a VMU into a PC and move files between it? Don't necessarily need it to work ingame but if I could for example download the Chao minigame in an emulator and then move it to a real VMU and then back when Im done that would be great. I know you can sort of do this if you have a real Dreamcast hooked up to the network but that seems like a really tedious process.

>>10620182
They had these worldwide too, just not released by Sega.

>>10620856
I don't know if you can plug it directly into your PC, but dreamshell + dreamcast serial card sd adapter should be sufficient to move save files between PC and cosnole.

>>10620057
No. One of the first things I bought for my Dreamcast was a third party memory card that had way more storage and no dumb screen.

>>10620057
Cool as a novelty and when certain games actually used it for checking your stats as you play but since most just display a logo of the game it's wasted potential.

I used it for Chaos, until the novelty wore off. And yes, I absolutely fucking hate batteries for anything relating to consoles, especially internal clock batteries. Who the fuck cares if it can keep the time?

>>10620526
I feel like selling VMUs with mini games like chao garden already in the memory would had been cool and a good way to sell VMUs, especially to people that weren't interested in the dreamcast

>>10620182
I think there was a madcatZ style knockoff I got for my 2nd controller that was just a memory card

They're great conceptually but the battery is a well known issue. If you want you can install an internal battery and charging board to make a rechargable VMU, it's a shame power supply technology wasn't quite there yet as it would have turned a cool idea into a viable product people would want to carry around like the far more popular tamagotchis. You could probably pull off this technology even better nowadays by using a phone's NFC to store and share minigames and save data.

>>10620057
I was disappointed the Switch didn't come with something similar for streetpass, because the Switch battery was low enough as it is, so it couldn't do it itself. They literally have the Pokewalker they could've repurposed into some sort of wireless VMU

>>10620057
Very cool idea bogged down by hardware limitations of the time and execution. 1 VMU has as much memory as a single PS1 memory card (1 megabit or 128 kilobytes). The problem was that games were constantly getting bigger and save data sizes kept increasing. So in reality, a single VMU will fill up much quicker than a PS1 memory card. Many sports games basically require you to dedicate an entire VMU to them to function properly. You can use it as a tiny handheld to play minigames. Cool, right? Yes... but don't get too carried away as you won't be able to store too many on a single VMU and they occupy the same space as saves do. I suppose the idea was to get you to buy a whole bunch of them and make profits that way, but Sega wasn't in a market position to extort customers...

>>10622816
>because the Switch battery was low enough as it is, so it couldn't do it itself.
Wut? V2 and later have amazing battery life compared to any version of the 3DS.

Why are you fags complaining of how much memory it had? It was released in 1999 you stupid fucks.

>>10623043
And a year later PS2 would come out with 8MB memory cards. That's 8 MEGABYTES, not megabits. 64 times the storage space of a single VMU.

>>10623050
Can you play games on the PS2 memory card?

>>10623072
No, but I can put way more saves on them :^)

>>10620057
For all of about 10 seconds until it drained the expensive (compared to anything NORMAL like AAA) dual-batteries.

You would think after putting a battery-guzzling RTC chip that was powered off the same battery that was the only thing keeping your saves alive on the Saturn they would have learned not to be dipshits with batteries, but they went even stupider with the Dreamcast.

The only reason I believe the VMU even keeps your saves when the battery dies is because it was probably cheaper and easier by that point to use non-volatile memory, otherwise I fully would have expected them to use battery-backed SRAM again in these things. They were already stupid enough to make it require dual-CR2032s instead of something normal like AAAs while also making it drain them in months and then emit an ear-piercing screech every time you turn on a Dreamcast with it's batteries dead.

Even Sony screwed up less with their optional PS1 accessory version.

it was a cool gimmick at the time. the best feature was being able to call plays offscreen in 2 player nfl2k

>>10620526
>>10621197
Don't worry, they eventually got it right... when they ported the game to a Nintendo system.

>tamagotchi’s are for homos
Heh yeah they're for girls

>>10620856
I had this old thing. While it's "main" purpose was to clone a VMU.... for some reason... it also supported plugging it into a PC and copying the VMU over. I am assuming that the software/drivers won't run on a modern PC anymore though.

Apparently where was some memorycard called a Nexus memorycard that used the same cable for the same purpose. Now that I think about it, I know where my Double Power still is but I think I lost my cable. Wish I could find a pinout of it, it was just a simple semi-proprietary connector to parallel cable.

... oh wow, not only did I find the pinout: https://www.consolecopyworld.com/dc/dc_nexus_vms2pc_lead.shtml

But EMS's old website is somehow still up along with their downloads for this and other stuff they made (even has a broken flash animation on the front page)
http://www.hkems.com

>>10623040
Big doubt

>blocks your path

>>10624210
>Blocks YOUR path

>>10624267
ITM: Relevant countries

>>10624267
Strange how some american versions of games like FF8 and Ridge Racer 4 supported PocketStation compatibility regardless of it not leaving japan.

>>10620057
I stll don't understan how the pocketstation could have a faster processor, more memory and battery life than the VMU. How bad is sega at hardware design?

>>10624352
IIRC it was because of that mess that Sony enacted a policy with the PS2 that games cannot support a peripheral that is not released in that region yet.

And they really fucked people in the US over with that one, since the HDD came out IIRC close to the PS2's lunch in Japan, so close that some early units actually lacked the internal HDD port and needed an external adapter.

But since FFXI was the only game that required the HDD... and Sony was trying to push their own shitty Everquest Adventure out the gate first, they drug their feet HARD in releasing the HDD in the US until their stupid MMO came out first. Which meant not only did a shitload of games that had HDD support in Japan axe the feature in the US because of that policy, but a whole HDD software suite intended for the HDD never left Japan.

The manual for my PS2's HDD had half of it's pages dedicated on how to use it's software. Features that let you play stored music, view photos, download demos, etc... they even left that shit in the manual but the software was never released in the US.

>>10620057
The minigame shit was just capitalizing on the tamagotchi fad, sure, but having a personalized screen on your controller could have been amazing if more games took advantage of it. Being able to pick your plays in football, for example, is an obvious one, but had more games focused on using it more for things where hidden information could be valuable, it would have made for a fun gimmick.

>>10620057
>tamagotchi’s are for homos
Tamagotchi's what?

>>10624389
I think Code Veronica used it to display your current health? I think other games used it to display ammo or other such things. But yeah, sadly most games seem to have just displayed their logo on it and that's it. There was many ways a lot of games could have made use of it far better.

(I also recall at some point some game wrote a stupid unremovable icon of what looked like a teddy bear with pins in it that just displayed over anything else from then on until I formatted my VMU, I think it was a Spawn game that did that.)

>>10624386
Oh, Sony sabotaged FFXI?

>>10624531
That's my personal belief. They took advantage of their existing policy of no support for peripherals not released in that region yet to basically force-delay FFXI outside of Japan, since FFXI required the HDD while Sony's 1st party competitor Everquest Online Adventures did not.

So by intentionally delaying the release of the HDD outside of Japan for seemingly no reason they basically prevented FFXI from releasing. Their Everquest Adventures DID release before the HDD came out mind you.

Also FFXI launched on PS2 first, and was planning to launch on consoles first in the US as well, but eventually launched on PC first outside of Japan. This was still before the HDD was released outside of Japan.

While I have no proof, it all adds up. The policy itself wasn't made to delay FFXI, I doubt FFXI was a thing when it was made, but after it was made Sony realized they could abuse it to basically hold back FFXI until they got their competitor out the door in the US and EU first... and in doing so completely fucked over many people in the US and EU because tons of games with HDD support in Japan had to remove it in the US version.

I recall that both Xenosaga and Kingdom Hearts were among the many that had their HDD support removed. IIRC Xenosaga (or was it Kingdom Hearts? Maybe both) not only let you install a portion of the game to HDD to lessen load times but also let you save directly to the HDD instead of a memory card, and doing so gave you 99 save slots instead of whatever the limit was for memory cards.

>>10624556
Kingdom Hearts have a great install screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eS-B7tUj0Y
FFX also had it, not a good install screen though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20XBikJwbZw

Your theory makes perfect sense. I've read that policy was result of them trying to sell memory cards. PS2 has atrocious loading times. I didn't want to play some sequels because the first game had terrible loading times, despite loving the first game.
They didn't add HDD install options after fat model was released, because slim doesn't have HDD support.

It is weird to see they went all out against Square though. FFXI's PC version is missing some special effects, because they built it around PS2. I also remember they censored Policenauts and Hideo Kojima hada fight with them because of it. Final Fantasy and Metal Gear were their core games.
Sony seems all kinds of bad during PS2 era. It's no wonder they crashed. There were also reports of corporate in fighting . I remember reading they put Ken Kutaragi on LCDs for him to take the fall.

>>10624419
The second the VMU came out and then later on when GBA-GCN connectivity and all the way through when the Wii U became a thing I was waiting for a game that let one player with the personal screen control a game's environment while the other three had to navigate it. Like a Mario game where one person was actively building the stage and the others were trying to beat it. Being able to move objects, set up obstacles, and just all around be a dick. Sadly nothing like that ever manifested.

>>10624352
Evidence that it was probably intended for an international release when those games' were being printed.

>>10624753
*games' manuals

>>10624701
>I was waiting for a game that let one player with the personal screen control a game's environment while the other three had to navigate it.

Isn't there a game mode like that in ZombiU?

>>10624753
Pretty sure this is the case. Similar things have happened before. The Twin Stick is advertised in the Virtual On manual for Saturn despite it never coming out in America. The American Marvel Super Heroes release also supports the RAM cart. I guess the idea was that either the Pocketstation was planned to come out at the time or that they'd leave the functionality there for anyone who imported it so long as it was unobtrusive.

>>10624701
What about Nintendoland? Or that Pac-Man game for the GC that used the GBA link?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fipU4sKmQg