The STAR FORCE PI - Electronic Tabletop Mini-Arcade

[Greyfox]

Really sorry to hear and see this news, but I feel this will only make you stronger for the future en-devour on this wonderful little machine. We will continue to support what ever plans you have in the future here at RVG and take what has been learned from this experience and possible go down the licensing route to a manufacturer, there are lots of avenue to which to sell the product, like Fun-stock and the likes, Think Geek is another, they were the guys who made I-cade a reality from an April fools joke... so anything is possible.

Again my best wishes are with you for the future.

take care.

[zapiy]

I also believe personally that running it so close to Xmas would have played a part. I for one would have pledged last min if it was close but the fact remains the money would have impacted my Xmas festivities hence I wanted to wait and I bet many others did the same. I really wished I tried to convince you to wait until Feb. Anyway like you said, the extra coverage will surely help you succeed with a smaller campaign sometime next year.

[Saturn]

Good luck on the future plan. I too would have pledged but Christmas and time of year is killing most external plans for the $ atm. Will be keeping an eye out and can hopefully contribute in the future. Hoping for the best

[starforcepilot]

Cheers guys, this forum certainly helped a lot, and yeah Christmas may have contributed. so we'll see how far we can get with alternative production avenues more appropriate for smaller volumes. Good thing is that we've been approached by online retailers a lot to stock their webstores thinking we were already selling this, so we've made some traction Anyway, I'll keep you guys updated!

[TrekMD]

Sorry this did not pan out but I'm glad to see it is not dead.  Best of luck!

[starforcepilot]

A Most Triumphant Return or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the STARFORCE PI. Before we put this thread to bed, check out a video in which I reflect a little on our first Kickstarter campaign, its motivation and discuss a little what tomorrow will hold -> http://youtu.be/HLB_yTYBBq0 
 
Merry Xmas Everyone!

[starforcepilot]

Oh and here's a little Christmas present, from one nerd to all of you: here's the Marcel J. de Haan original poster 'Epic Landscape of Heroes' from the Kickstarter support tier, in glorious 5k resolution. Merry Xmas everyone, from all of us at STARFORCE PI -> http://tinyurl.com/hjk56bn

[Saturn]

That is incredible, thank you!

[TrekMD]

Good video and that poster is just awesome! 

[zapiy]

Great video, that poster is awesome..

Look forward to what you come up with in 2016.

[zapiy]

Another update from @starforcepilot




This year the STARFORCE PI Awakens!

With your help of course – our plan in the next few months will involve designing and prototyping the 3D models necessary for production, giving you a more rounded impression of the finished product. Afterwards, a pre-ordering campaign of 100 STARFORCE PI units will start! This pilot batch will also include some review and dev units, for tech journals and blogs, which allow us to showcase the system. People can try it out themselves, and generally gain a more concrete impression of the system. We'll also be able to give early versions to our software partners, so we can start solid optimization of emulation platforms to release with the system.

There will be some practical changes made with this STARFORCE PI compared to those presented in the Kickstarter Campaign:

Case:
Injection Molding will be replaced by Laser Sintering (more appropriate for small volume, but higher per-unit cost).

RasPi:
Rather than offering RasPi B+ or 2, we want to switch to RasPi Zero, to offset increased per-unit case costs. Its performance ranks between the B+ and 2, so a good compromise.

Controls:
It was clear most backers preferred the SANWA Joystick option, so we'll put SANWA controls in as standard!

Some benefits of a smaller volume means we don't have the rather large overhead and initial investment that comes from large volume production, assembly and testing. This should save us some money, but it does mean we have to switch to Laser Sintering, which generally makes the case 3-4 times more expensive than an injection mold case. Also, with the reduction of overhead and using the RasPi Zero, we should be able to switch from generic controls to SANWA controls without raising the pricepoint. This is a very preliminary estimate though; please don't see this as a hard promise just yet. Our priorities are to keep the general function and esthetic of the console the same, as well as the price.


The STARFORCE NEO – A Neo Geo Mini Videogame System

So how much would it cost to have original arcade hardware with a portable formfactor?

As I've mentioned in one of my videos, Bartop mods can be bulky and expensive. During the coming months we'll be in the 3D model development stage of the SFP production prototype, so there's little for me to build. I thought it'd be good to compare a decent portable arcade system that emulates several consoles (STARFORCE PI) versus a decent portable arcade mod with original hardware from the Neo Geo MVS. So I'm going to build the STARFORCE NEO – A Neo Geo Mini Videogame System.

I won't give you too many spoilers, but I can tell you it'll be quite a bit bigger than the SFP and that it's built around an original Neo Geo MV1C board, and it will be... Glorious.

[Shadowrunner]

Nice to see they're still going ahead with this, and the Starforce Neo sounds awesome! Looking forward to more info

[TrekMD]

Very nice indeed and good to see it still going!

[Saturn]

This is great news! Thanks for the update

[starforcepilot]

Cheers everyone, sorry I haven't visited in a while, it's been a busy deadline-time at work, but the good news is we're still going ahead with it! Bad news is, it's difficult finding an economical solution for case production in small volumes. But as I'm waiting for estimates of production companies, we've been covered by Retro Gamer!



So pick one up if you can, I'll see if I share the piece online and try to get a physical copy myself. It's a nice two-page piece, so I'm glad about that.

Furthermore, I've received all the parts I need to start building the STARFORCE NEO - A Neo Geo Mini Videogame System. It's gonna blow your mind, especially for the purists out there. I won't say much, but it'll have a scanline generator in there somewhere

Anyway, I'll keep you guys informed, and I'll post a hardware test of the STARFORCE NEO soon, maybe a picture or movie or something. Should be good!