Retro console to hit Kickstarter this summer

It seems like we might have a new 16-bit console with cartridge-based games to look forward to, designed in the same mould as Atari's last console, the Jaguar. It's Mike Kennedy, publisher of Retro Magazine, who's going to launch a Kickstarter campaign this summer for Retro.

Venture Beat has spoken to Kennedy about his plans, and he says: "This goes back probably two and a half years. The timing just wasn't right, I didn't think, at that point, for the console I wanted to bring out, which was going to be a cartridge-based console to play new games on cartridges. It's not like the Retron 5 where you can plug in your old NES carts. There are lots of ways to play your old carts on a variety of other clone systems."

Kennedy continues by explaining more about the concept for Retro: "What I wanted to do a couple years ago was make a brand-new console that just ran off carts again. It's all solid state technology, right? A cartridge-based system, just like the Atari. You can still find Ataris at the swap meet, cartridges, 30 years later, plug them in and it all works. To me that's the coolest technology out there, with that longevity. A lot of us grew up with it. The kids these days are going to miss out on that."

We can look forward to games like Shovel Knight and Retro City Rampage, but Kennedy is also talking to big-name publishers to get classics back since they are getting hard to find and often don't feel right on the newer consoles:

"We're trying to talk to some big-name publishers about bringing back old fan favorites on this thing, or sequels. That's actually why I'm up here in San Francisco, meeting with a third party developer that's done a lot of third-party development work for Sony and Capcom and Konami and Sega. We'll be partnering with this group to lead our charge into those types of companies to work out licensing deals for some of these games that they haven't monetized in 10-15-20 years. As you know, there's a lot of games out there that people would love to see brought back."

Kennedy explains that he doesn't think smartphones are a good alternative either, and that these old games need old school wired controllers. He also explains what kind of games he would like to see on Retro:

"A lot of these games wouldn't come back and play real well on mobile. You play retro remakes on mobile, right? The touch screen is horrible. There's just no way around it. For retro-style games, you need precision control. You don't want any controller lag. You need that zen-like experience that a wired controller can give you. There's a lot of these games that we think, with the right treatment and the connections involved - it's possible we might be able to go out and bring back some of your favorite NES-style or Super NES or Sega Genesis games as sequels. We're putting down our wish list of what titles we would like to see brought back."

Check out the full interview over on Venture Beat, it has plenty of interesting tidbits, like why the Jaguar casing is the deal breaker that made this possible.