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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

#61

Post by camgunz »

slightwinder wrote: post #59
stuaxo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but we didn't realise what we were throwing out. Having a tangible thing somehow makes it mean more, think about picking out a record or CD to play and leaving it to play as opposed to scrolling through infinite music to choose what to play.

The simple reason is: picking things is annoying. Organizing physical objects is even more annoying, especially if they are bigger. Then you need more physical objects, to organize the physical objects you use, this takes up even more space. And physical organization is also very limited. You have no database, no dynamic filters, no metadata... At the end, having a tangible thing wears off very fast and just becomes…

A lot of people in the retro gaming space have the conflict you describe. On the one hand, there are a lot of games. Like, a lot. Some (many?) games have multiple versions even! And this is without talking about mods and homebrew.

On the other, there's something deeply "unmagical" about loading up a huge menu of games. Even if they're organized in some way (console, genre, studio, whatever), even if you include box art and info, it's simply not the same experience. Most retro gaming channels I watch on YouTube talk about this phenomenon--mostly in the context of "why do you have shelves full of games".

Different people will think different things about this. I have a 77 square meter home (~830ft2) and like, I'm not fitting all the games I ever bought in this place, let alone all the albums, books, etc. I have flash carts, hard drives, and a kindle keyboard v3. I kind of chalk it up to "life is a beautiful struggle". Friction is good, actually, it enriches life, and these kinds of little agonies are fun to just discuss and find common experience over.

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

#62

Post by SomeoneOnTheWeb »

robbbbbbbbbbbb wrote: post #58

Such a cool concept! For anyone who didn't slog through their docs, the recommended hardware system (and the box in their product shots) is the Geekom A5 https://www.geekom.co.uk/geekom-a5-mini-pc and the 8BitDo Wireless controller https://www.8bitdo.com/ultimate-2c-wireless-controller/ Those + some SD cards and a spare evening for setup makes this a really tempting £400 project.

For the same price you have the Minisforum UM760 Slim which should be 100% compatible and provide VASTLY superior performances. Or you can check cheaper models that would have the same level of performance as the A5.

Geekom make nice products but they are usually both very expensive and very noisy compared to competitors. Their selling point is mainly their top-notch design, but I find these to be function-over-form most of the time.

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

#63

Post by robbbbbbbbbbbb »

SomeoneOnTheWeb wrote: post #62
robbbbbbbbbbbb wrote: post #58

Such a cool concept! For anyone who didn't slog through their docs, the recommended hardware system (and the box in their product shots) is the Geekom A5 https://www.geekom.co.uk/geekom-a5-mini-pc and the 8BitDo Wireless controller https://www.8bitdo.com/ultimate-2c-wireless-controller/ Those + some SD cards and a spare evening for setup makes this a really tempting £400 project.

For the same price you have the Minisforum UM760 Slim which should be 100% compatible and provide VASTLY superior performances. Or you can check cheaper models that would have the same level of performance as the A5. Geekom make nice products but they are usually both very expensive and very noisy compared to competitors. Their selling point is mainly their top-notch design, but I find these to be function-over-form…

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

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by ofrzeta »

I am currently working on something like this for audio, basically just like a MP3 player with full size SD cards that plays automatically when you insert them (for kids). It's actually quite hard to find full size SD cards these days and when you do they are comparatively expensive (opposed to current micro SD cards).

Also I wanted to have low capacity like 128MB, so the concept "one album, one card" (as in the OP - "one game, one card") makes sense. These are even harder to get and more expensive (in terms of money per storage). Naively I thought that obsolete hardware should be cheap.

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

#66

Post by opan »

ZaoLahma wrote: post #4
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?!

Yep. Most games nowadays are released broken and incomplete. Being able to patch a game after release truly is both a blessing and a curse. Then they throw microtransactions on top of the already rather ugly mess. Microtransactions were supposed to finance free to play or "live service" games where they paid for new content over several years, but (of course) they've found themselves into what's solidly not... that.

>Being able to patch a game after release truly is both a blessing and a curse.

Very true. We got stuff like Minecraft, Terraria, and Core Keeper that got updates to improve the game at no additional cost for years after release, but we also got early access games that sell you on a potentially good future game, and only sometimes deliver. Starbound is a disappointment that often comes to mind.

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

#67

Post by 112233 »

ofrzeta wrote: post #65

I am currently working on something like this for audio, basically just like a MP3 player with full size SD cards that plays automatically when you insert them (for kids). It's actually quite hard to find full size SD cards these days and when you do they are comparatively expensive (opposed to current micro SD cards). Also I wanted to have low capacity like 128MB, so the concept "one album, one card" (as in the OP -…

Super interested in something like this. Currently there is no easily operated audiobook player for elderly or people with severe arthritis.

My eventual workaround was cheap bluetooth speaker (because expensive ones did not remember playback position inside a track) and a whole heap of super low capacity usb drives.

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

#68

Post by sgbeal »

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…

> Micro-transactions are accepted, but far from universal. People bemoan them for some reason, ...

Because, for one, with them came "Pay to Win". Nothing good comes from Pay to Win except that someone lines their pockets.

A professor once told us that something like 1/3rd of people have personalities which are prone to become truly addicted to something. Microtransactions, regardless of their justification[^1], actively target personalities which are especially prone to instant gratification and the endorphins triggered by spontaneous purchases.

[^1]: They _are_ fundamentally justified - it costs money to keep any digital service going, and tons of it for a service like an MMORPG.

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

#69

Post by sgbeal »

pansa2 wrote: post #22
voidfunc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been living under a rock for the last 15+ years? I haven't touched a CD since the late 2000s.

CDs specifically are obsolete, but games on optical media are still a thing. Unlike ROM cartridges, which AFAICT died with the GBA in 2008.

> Unlike ROM cartridges, which AFAICT died with the GBA in 2008.

Look up the Gameboy 3DS :).

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

#70

Post by lproven »

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.

For any website or any publicity material it is always a mistake to rely on shared experience, because whatever your experience, there are billions of people out there who do not share it.

So don't rely on it. Say what your product is and does and how it does it.

This page does not.

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