I remember seeing that good old C= on PC's advertised in catalogues a few years ago (probably more like 15 years ago really), sounds like the same thing.
I'm all for the oldbie manufacturers getting their hands dirty, but not like this!. How about a portable Amiga, like the GP2X but for Commodore stuff - right now a lot of ex-Amiga users are in a prime age group of 30-40, there could be a lot of market for portable retro gaming, and the Amiga could do so much, and could be doing so much. We're always gonna need 2D art, we're always gonna need tracker music - there's surely a niche that could be filled. A nice big touch screen amiga with stylus for example, loaded with DPaint - I'd love something like that - I'd BUY something like that, I wouldn't buy a PC just because it has a retro logo on it.
Emulation is great, I love it, but it's not ideal - trying to play StyxDS, the ST emulator for the NDS (getting this Rich) falls about 8 miles short.
I love Captive, if I had to go to a desert island that would be the 1 disc I'd bring. Now the whole idea is that your a prisoner armed only with a laptop computer, and you have control of these 4 robots, and the game is a lot like Dungeon Master, except hardcore, lots of enemies and weapons and stuff like that. So imagine my disapointment with playing it through Styx. The NDS touch screen could have made the game amazing, like the sort of thing you could sell all over again, 17 years down the line they could sell this, just by letting you move by tapping the keys on the DS screen. A proper DS interface for it would be great, but Styx on the DS with it's touch screen should have been plenty. Nope. You can't just tap an area of screen and have it register as a mouseclick, that would be too cool and convenient, instead you use a fake touchpad, like on a cheap Dell laptop you get this little box to drag your stylus around to make minor movements of the mouse. Pathetic.
Games like Captive on a good sized screen but still portable could be an industry in it's own right - targetting adult gamers who like portability, privacy, and classic straightforward gameplay - point and click adventures, dungeon adventures, RPG's, text adventures, business simulation games, gambling games... There's market potential out there for this stuff, and the Amiga is a great platform for it - but they'd rather play with badges (we don't need no stinking badges!).
If anyone says Tablet PC I'll stab them - anyone here ever tried being portable with a laptop unless they absolutely had to? - it might sit atop your lap, but it's still a PC, your still gonna roast your chestnuts before the thing boots up, it's still gonna be slow, and it still can't take a punch.
Sorry, rant over, see this is why I'm not allowed a PA system.
