As a working person, the post-holiday transition back into life routine is always a challenge. As with the end of a vacation, it can be an abrupt readjustment from a point another routine was just getting used to. That is one thing I enjoy about my own blog: the freedom to write whatever whenever, and so long as this Wix site here remains a private casual column the standard of creation pace is what I alone hold myself to. This is going to be an interesting year...the end of support for Windows 10 in 2025 means I already have to contemplate more than one computer system upgrade for our household and I have yet to decide if I can tolerate sticking with Windows (privacy concerns are legitimate but moot in my case; if Microsoft ever decided to turn malicious and ruin my life they already acquired ample information to do so many years ago) or hop a ticket onto the Linux train, a question contingent on what is available next year that best supports my continued retro gaming interests. The blog should be unaffected at least since Wix is operated entirely within a web browser of choice. What, you thought I had the upcoming US general election in mind? Of course I do, however there is a factor of that still up for determination here in Texas but rest assured I am already considering which of the many possible topics to adopt for my annual Spirit Post (please provide feedback: is that a good name?) in a couple months. I will say it is nice to be able to operate with inside information, proving it is worthwhile to get involved in a local political group and make actual contact with one's elected officials.
Anyway, sometimes I get writer's block to due not having too little but too much juggling in my head. I opt today to write a shorter post based on fruits of some of my more recent research, my writing warm up exercise for 2024. Besides, with there once again having been more than a month since the last post (but can anyone be blamed for taking a holiday break?) I think I owe at least something to keep the flow going. Home Arcade Without Emulation Anyone who heard of Neo Geo knows it had two variants with identical core hardware: one a traditional full-fledged arcade board and another the elite (games were huge and expensive but in turn users were guaranteed the full arcade experience) home console of the 4th generation. Basing home consoles on arcade systems or vice versa was nothing new even back then; as I wrote in multiple posts last year this was an approach Sega dabbled in many times. However this particular approach, using the exact same hardware to the point of making game cross-compatibility simplicity itself, was less common.
In other words, for example, the Neo Geo cartridge may have had identical data and routines to that of its arcade counterpart, but the same cannot quite be said of a Sega Saturn CD being identical to its Sega Titan cartridge sibling. Even though the game data itself may be a practical match, functionally there is still at least one significant difference that necessitates the game being ported instead of merely having its data format translated. With these systems gone retro and emulators overtaking real systems, that the core hardware is similar enough for the emulator to accommodate both home console and arcade equivalent can muddy the fact that they are close enough yet NOT the same. The point being gotten to is that if the hardware really were that close all it would take was a change in data executable routines to enable a home console to play games for the arcade system it shares specs with, which was not the case with Titan-to-Saturn or NAOMI-to-Dreamcast because obviously there was more to the porting process than that (after all: game design for coin operated settings, as it should be, differs because home players typically invest more into games thus the fleeting arcade experience will no longer suffice; Sega along with other game companies who cut their teeth in arcades often learned this lesson the hard way). Neo Geo proved unique in this regard because it was designed to match its arcade hardware and provide that same experience to the niche audience who wanted it at home; SNK specialized in fighting and other arcade-type genres so this actually worked fairly well for them. On the other hand: despite many home consoles having the same technical arcade system capacity it has often been a source of gaming lament that a favorite title never got ported home, leaving emulation the only chance to experience it for many.
There are two examples of a new hope on this front I want to focus on today, both of which necessitate minor hardware modifications to the home console for compatibility purposes (which involve physical alteration of electronic components which is not for beginners). Upon success, a translated executable can be run on the console resulting in the home arcade experience with no emulation involved. Since the executables should be able to account for home console controls nothing in gameplay should be lost save for those few games with unique arcade control systems. Dreamcast Atomiswave (used by SNK more than Sega, ironically) was a post-Dreamcast idea to produce a budget arcade system with leftover boards originally made for Dreamcast consoles. Unlike NAOMI, which was developed alongside Dreamcast but not closely identical to it, Atomiswave was essentially a Dreamcast console put into an arcade interface (like Sega Mega Play was to Mega Drive/Genesis). Since hardware is that close a match, a homebrew-modified Dreamcast can run a translated Atomiswave executable as-is. Unfortunately, due to being a fan of Sega but not SNK, I have little interest in this modification and would rather see Dreamcast emulation advance to the point of opening up the full NAOMI and Hikaru libraries (which as of this writing only DEmul manages any fraction thereof).
Xbox What I do have interest in is the fact that Virtua Cop 3 is one of those hit Sega franchise games made inaccessible by not having received a home conversion, still the case as of 2024. Despite how easy it is to homebrew-enable any Xbox without need for any hardware modification, adjusting it to run Chihiro games is unfortunately more complicated due to a key hardware difference: Chihiro comes with double the RAM of Xbox. The necessary RAM chips are still simple to acquire but applying them to an Xbox is not beginner's work; there was a family business online that specialized in this and other Xbox hardware modifications however they are presently closed due to health issues. I am no electronics technician; whenever I read the word "solder" I tend to go in the opposite direction. Hopefully someday another experienced amateur can step up to offer this as a professional service, but for the sake of a single game the only alternative may be to wait for Xbox emulation to catch up (Cxbx-Reloaded appears to be the best choice today despite its lower Xbox game compatibility to xemu; the former is a Windows-specific executable translator while the latter is a true emulator, both approaches having their strengths and weaknesses). Any hardware approach will come at cost but it is notable that a RAM upgrade, while it offers no discernable benefit to the vast majority of Xbox games, opens up a greater world of possibility with the fruits of the Xbox homebrew scene (especially if paired with a larger hard drive).