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Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

kazeta.org

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Re: Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

#101

Post by cornstalks »

lproven wrote: post #70

This sounds potentially interesting, but the website is so vague it's criminal. I have absolutely no idea what the "console gaming experience of the 1990s" was. What console? What experience? I've only owned 3 games consoles in my life. An original XBox, a gift from a friend which I immediately hacked to be an XBox Media Centre and used daily for years but never played a game on again. A PS2. And now a Wii for my kid…

The page does say it, though it might be easy to overlook if you don't understand the significance of the statements:

> Zero setup

> Direct to gameplay

> Distraction-free gaming

> Use SD cards or other external media as carts

The 90s gaming console experience was:

1. Grab your game cartridge.

2. Insert cartridge into console.

3. Turn on console.

4. Play the game.

There are no steps between 3 and 4. The console booted directly into the game. It was fast and there was no messing with multimedia experience stuff (like Xbox or PS later introduced).

I have no experience with Kazeta but this is what I would expect from its homepage.

Re: Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

#102

Post by voidUpdate »

npteljes wrote: post #57
brabel wrote: post #2

Before reading this I didn’t realize how today gaming is different from 80’s and 90’s gaming , to the point Kazeta is a thing! I thought that mostly, CDs had replaced cartridges and loading games became slow, but apparently subscription plans, online chat and “micro transactions” are now accepted as standard gaming?!

Of course. Physical media is long out. What was the last time you saw a laptop with a DVD drive? On PC especially, online is first. Games come with update managers, "launchers", and that's the absolute standard - publishers either roll their own, or submit to established ones like Steam. Micro-transactions are accepted, but far from universal. People bemoan them for some reason, but I'd say that the vast majority of…

I have several laptops with a DVD drive, so the last time I saw one was last night

Re: Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

#103

Post by ninetyninenine »

lproven wrote: post #92
ninetyninenine wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

She is 5. I bought it less than 2Y ago. If you don't understand something then it is not OK to blame the mental faculties of the author.

[flagged]

Re: Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

#104

Post by DSMan195276 »

cout wrote: post #51
vanderZwan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an OS that mounts/searches all drives (such as an SD card reader) for the first available KZI file which is a format that describes how a specific game is run (the runtime, additional gamescope options, etc). I hope it also supports putting multiple games on one cartridge and choosing between them at boot time? Don't see a reason to waste a multi-gigabyte SD card on a single ROM of a few megabytes.

Is it still possible to buy smaller SD cards in bulk, maybe 8mb or 16mb? The smallest I could find was 128mb for about the same price as a 2gb card. While I like the idea of physically separate cards for each game, at $10 per card it seems economically limiting.

As an alternative you can still buy small flash drives in bulk (Amazon has listings of 128MB ones for less than a dollar per drive). They don't look as good as SD cards on their own but you could rip out the internals and place them in 3d printed enclosures, which could be an even better result.

I would assume the quality of those things is not great, but the design of this system means they're basically read-only so that should hopefully help them survive longer.

Re: Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

#105

Post by masklinn »

pansa2 wrote: post #29
masklinn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While they’re flash rather than rom, the switch 2 still supports physical distribution media.

True, but the way they work is more like discs than ROMs: their data isn’t immediately available but needs to be loaded into RAM.

True, but the low latency and constant-ish access patterns of flash makes a lot of its performance characteristics closer to ROM than CDs, even with the intermediate copy.

Re: Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

#107

Post by npteljes »

voidUpdate wrote: post #102
npteljes wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. Physical media is long out. What was the last time you saw a laptop with a DVD drive? On PC especially, online is first. Games come with update managers, "launchers", and that's the absolute standard - publishers either roll their own, or submit to established ones like Steam. Micro-transactions are accepted, but far from universal. People bemoan them for some reason, but I'd say that the vast majority of…

I have several laptops with a DVD drive, so the last time I saw one was last night

That's cool! They rarely come with them though these days. I have taken a quick look at two large webshops of my location: one had 1200 machines with 0 of them having an optical drive, and the other had 5500 machines, with 2 of them having optical drives.

Re: Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

#108

Post by robbbbbbbbbbbb »

SomeoneOnTheWeb wrote: post #91
robbbbbbbbbbbb wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the lack of a built-in SD card slot might make the Minisforum options less attractive

Right, if you specifically want to use an SD card and not USB, and don't want to add an adapter either, sure the A5 is the way to go.

Yeah, definitely boils down to how much of a factor the aesthetics of the 'tiny carts' is for you in the whole experience. I can imagine some creative modding that would make a collection of themed USBs just as appealing, if not more :)

Re: Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

#109

Post by flufluflufluffy »

cornstalks wrote: post #101
lproven wrote: post #70

This sounds potentially interesting, but the website is so vague it's criminal. I have absolutely no idea what the "console gaming experience of the 1990s" was. What console? What experience? I've only owned 3 games consoles in my life. An original XBox, a gift from a friend which I immediately hacked to be an XBox Media Centre and used daily for years but never played a game on again. A PS2. And now a Wii for my kid…

The page does say it, though it might be easy to overlook if you don't understand the significance of the statements: > Zero setup > Direct to gameplay > Distraction-free gaming > Use SD cards or other external media as carts The 90s gaming console experience was: 1. Grab your game cartridge. 2. Insert cartridge into console. 3. Turn on console. 4. Play the game. There are no steps between 3 and 4. The console booted…

I think it’s confusing particularly because it pushes the whole “zero setup” thing, then when you go to the docs to figure out what the heck the thing is it describes a long list of things one would need to do in order to set up a working physical machine running Kazeta and the cartridges etc... The website itself reads like it’s an app you can just download and run, while at the same time hinting that you’re gonna need to do a fair amount of physical stuff without really explaining the whole thing.

Re: Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

#110

Post by philistine »

lproven wrote: post #70

This sounds potentially interesting, but the website is so vague it's criminal. I have absolutely no idea what the "console gaming experience of the 1990s" was. What console? What experience? I've only owned 3 games consoles in my life. An original XBox, a gift from a friend which I immediately hacked to be an XBox Media Centre and used daily for years but never played a game on again. A PS2. And now a Wii for my kid…

Simple mathematics will help you here. All three consoles you mention all came out after 2000, which means this is not what the project is trying to replicate.
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