Kickstarter Launch & Neo Pocket Flash Masta NGPC 3D Printable Cart Shell

Posted on by Flavor Posted in Game Pie Advance, NGPC Flash Cart — 4 Comments ↓

Freeplaytech Kickstarter

Freeplaytech Kickstarter

If you didn’t notice, we have launched a new product line called Freeplaytech. Under that, we are using Kickstarter to produce two products: Freeplay Zero and Freeplay CM3.

Head Over To The Kickstarter Campaign

The Freeplay Zero (which was previously called Game Pie Advance) is a DIY kit that we are producing to allow you to pair with your own Raspberry Pi Zero (or Zero W) and make a customized handheld gaming console.

The Freeplay CM3 is a DIY kit that comes with the processing power of the Raspberry Pi 3 built in allowing you to build a customized handheld gaming console.

NGPC Neo Pocket Flash Masta 3D Printable Cartridge Shell

NGPC Neo Pocket Flash Masta 3D Printable Cartridge Shell

We have also had some work done on a NGPC cartridge shell that you can 3D print. I don’t know if this is the final design or not. I had a purple version printed, and it needed a couple minor tweaks to the lid. Since implementing those tweaks, I have not yet reprinted the lid. I thought some of you guys might want to try it out.

If you do try it, let us know in the comments. If you remix this, please comment here and post your remix.

For example, one thing you may want to edit is the “lip” of the lid where you grab on to pull the cartridge out. That makes printing a bit more difficult, because you need to support the print. You may want to flatten that out and just add a slit for your fingernails to grab onto. A flat lid would be easier to print directly on the print table.

NGPC Neo Geo Pocket Flash Masta 3D Printable Cartridge Shell via Thingiverse

Flash Masta Now Open Source Software

Posted on by Flavor Posted in NGPC Flash Cart, WonderSwan Flash Cart — 4 Comments ↓

The Flash Masta Desktop application is now open source. This is the desktop application that is used to interface with the Neo Pocket Flash Masta and WS Flash Masta cartridges via USB.

I just feel like I don’t have the time to properly maintain this code any longer, so it should finally be released to the community. It should easily compile under Windows, macOS, and Linux. This is the source code to the application found on our downloads page, and it has been released under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, we are offering 10% off of Neo Pocket Flash Masta cartridge orders for the next 10 days. Just use coupon code open-source-10 (expired) to get your cheap flash cartridge. As always, we would love it if you would share this news on Twitter, FB, forums, etc. Let us know if you do. The coupon should be good through the end of March.

You can find the source code here, on GitHub.
https://github.com/TheFlav/Flash-Masta-Desktop

Price Cut – Neo Pocket Flash Masta Now Under $50

Posted on by Flavor Posted in Game Pie Advance, NGPC Flash Cart — 7 Comments ↓

It’s a big day for us here at the Flash Masta project. You may not have realized it, but, up till now, we have been soldering all the Flash Masta products by hand. We have experimented with many different ways to apply solder or place parts, but it’s basically been a lot of manual labor to produce each cartridge.

Today we received our first batch of fully assembled Neo Pocket Flash Masta circuit boards, and we are pretty excited about the result. Not only will it take us less time to make these cartridges, but we can now offer them to you for a cheaper price. It’s a win-win, and I’m hoping that you guys are excited about it, too.

The Neo Pocket Flash Masta 32M flash cart can now be purchased for under $50. We are hoping that you could help spread the word a bit, too. If you wouldn’t mind, please post this news on Twitter, Facebook, reddit, forums, etc, because we are hoping that this will bring new developers and players to the NGPC platform. I always feel a bit odd self promoting this stuff, so help is always appreciated! I tried to make it easy by making the links (Twitter & Facebook) pre-populate some information for you.

I do want to be clear that there is a small catch to that $50 price I mentioned. Because it is getting more and more difficult to find the plastic shells to use for these flash carts, we are changing the way we sell the Neo Pocket Flash Masta. In the past, the circuit board that we produce came bundled with a USB cable and pre-installed inside of a plastic Neo Geo Pocket game cartridge shell. Now, we are offering these “extras” as options.

If you already have a plastic game shell that you could use, you can purchase the Neo Pocket Flash Masta without the shell for under $50. If you don’t have an extra game cart/shell (but you still want to cut and drill your own), you can purchase it with an uncut shell (a sacrificial game). If you want to just plug-and-play without doing any extra work yourself, you can buy the Neo Pocket Flash Masta circuit board already installed inside of a pre-cut shell.

So happy with how my #GamePieAdvance build came out! – Zach, AZ, USA


You can see all the options here:
http://www.flashmasta.com/product/neo-pocket-flash-masta-usb-32mbit/

In other news, we are again taking preorders for the Game Pie Advance kits. This v2.1 kit has some minor changes from the v2.0 kit that are mainly to do with the placement of parts and other issues that make it easier for us to produce. If you’re interested in having a handheld Raspberry Pi, check out our product page for the GPA at http://www.flashmasta.com/product/preorder-game-pie-advance-gpa-diy-kit_v2-1/. I you want to see our showcase of customers’ completed builds, that’s here: http://gamepieadvance.com/showcase/.

Game Pie Advance: Now Taking Preorders

Posted on by Flavor Posted in Game Pie Advance — 12 Comments ↓

Don’t worry! The marks on the screen are actually on the lens protector.

I wrote up a little post over at the Game Pie Advance site about Pre-Selling GPA v2 DIY kits. Since the store is actually hosted on this site, I figured I should post about it here, too.

If you want to just jump to the product page, there’s plenty of info there.
http://www.flashmasta.com/product/game-pie-advance-diy-kit-v2/

Otherwise, I’ll give you a brief description of what it is here. The Game Pie Advance (GPA), as you may already know, is a project we’ve been working on to allow you to put the RetroPie Linux distribution on your Raspberry Pi Zero and fit it all inside of a GBA shell. The end result should mostly look and feel like a GBA, but it will be running a system made for emulation.

If you don’t already know about RetroPie, you should probably head over to their page and learn a bit about it. https://retropie.org.uk/

As far as this pre-sale goes, we are collecting orders now, so we can purchase PCBs, LCDs, and other parts. We are also engineering in a couple new main features like battery charging and the option to add X/Y buttons. See the GPA DIY preorder page for more info about all that stuff.

Also, I’d like to ask for your help a bit here. As we’re trying to “kickstart” this version 2 kit with help from preorders, I’d be awesome if you could share links to this project wherever you might think it’s appropriate.

Thanks!

Black Friday 2016

Posted on by Flavor Posted in NGPC Flash Cart — 4 Comments ↓
thanksgiving1024x768-1-470x352

This image doesn’t have anything to with this post, but it brings back fond memories.

There hasn’t been a lot to publicly announce lately, so I’ve been fairly quiet as far as posting articles goes. The last time I posted here was August.

Today I am in the Thanksgiving spirit, and am spending the holidays with family. Today someone brought the Thanksgiving newspaper that is always full of Black Friday advertisements, so it reminded me that we were considering trying our own BF sale here.

Coupon Code: EXPIRED

Well, I have to run. I was just hailed to come get lunch (not Thanksgiving dinner quite yet).

WS Flash Masta Finally Available PLUS Announcing Game Pie Advance

Posted on by Flavor Posted in Game Pie Advance, WonderSwan Flash Cart — 26 Comments ↓

WS Flash Masta GreenWow. I really can’t believe that it’s been so long since I’ve posted an article here. I’ve been crazy busy. I’m currently working on several projects, and I have 2 to discuss here today.

First of all, the WS Flash Masta cart is finally available on the site. I just put up a page for it. I hope people still remember about this project. 😉 If you want one, please read the product description before ordering. The project is going quite well, but I want you to know exactly what you’re getting before you make a purchase.

Game Pie Advance (spinning)Next, I want to show off another handheld retro gaming project we’re working on. Yeah, I know it looks like a Nintendo Game Boy Advance. That’s because it’s living inside of a GBA shell, but it’s a full-blown Linux machine running RetroPie. We are calling it the Game Pie Advance.

We are making a custom circuit board that fits inside of the GBA shell (making use of the original buttons) and integrates with a backlit LCD to bring you a handheld retrogaming extravaganza. No, I don’t really know what that means, but I thought it sounded cool. I may have more details here or at http://www.gamepieadvance.com in the near future. For the short term, the plan is to build up 5 working units and auction them off on eBay to cover some of our costs and gauge interest. So far, we have 1 built and working. I’ll leave you with a video of that one.

UPDATE: I listed the first built on eBay. http://www.ebay.com/itm/322231541500

WS Flash Masta shipped to early adopters

Posted on by Flavor Posted in WonderSwan Flash Cart — 13 Comments ↓

The flash cart that we’ve been developing for the WonderSwan is finally being sent to early adopters. If you recall, we had a survey for people that were interested in getting one. We have contacted everyone that responded positively. Those are now being shipped out. If you didn’t receive an email and expected one, let me know.

Thread For Early Adopters To Discuss The WS Flash Masta
http://forum.freeplaytech.com/thread-4411.html

As I will be out of town for a bit (starting yesterday), we have set up a forum thread for people to discuss the WS Flash Masta. Please feel to check that out and add your results there.

SNK Neo Geo Pocket Keychains & Flash Carts In Stock

Posted on by Flavor Posted in NGPC Flash Cart, NGPC General — 3 Comments ↓

IMG_9032We have a new batch of Neo Pocket Flash Masta USB cartridges back in stock today. To go along with them, we also have some new (semi-experimental) NGPC keychains.

Check them out here:

Comment here to let us know what you think of the keychains. When I first had the idea to make them, I tried to save the cartridge stickers. You can see in the product photos that some keychains have an original sticker on the back. Once we actually did the rubberizing process, many stickers curled up. I think the ones without stickers may look the best, but we have also tried Flash Masta stickers on some. Which is your favorite?

P.S. I was really pleased with the response we got to the WonderSwan early adopter survey. We are now waiting for some PCBs to arrive, and then I expect to be contacting people in a few rounds of emails (based on the responses we received) to start the preorder process for WS Flash Masta.

WS Flash Masta Pre-Presale

Posted on by Flavor Posted in WonderSwan Flash Cart — 20 Comments ↓

Many people have been asking about pre-ordering the WS Flash Masta. I’m warming up to the idea, but I first want to get an idea of how many people are truly interested in this.

If you have a desire to pre-order the new flash cart that we are creating for the WonderSwan, then please follow this link and sign up. Think of this as a pre-preorder. This is not a first-come/first-serve sort of situation. Just sign up. I’m thinking that we’ll have this form up for a week or so. I really just need to understand what level of commitment people have and how many people are willing to take this early-adopter step.

SUBMISSION FORM CLOSED. Thanks for all the responses.

The signup page details a bit about the state of the WS Flash Masta cart and some of its current limitations. This is not meant to scare you off. I just really prefer to be open about this stuff. I don’t want anyone to jump on-board and then be disappointed.

Personally, I would prefer to have something completely ready before opening it up to the public, however I know that we could use some help with money, testing, and maybe even coding. If you go into this thinking that you are helping “kickstart” a process that has been slow moving, I think that’s a good attitude.

I’m always very pleased and humbled by the community here, and I’m excited to see how this early-adopter presale works out to benefit everyone. Thanks!

Just Before April Fools (WS News & NGPC Stock)

Posted on by Flavor Posted in NGPC Flash Cart, WonderSwan Flash Cart — 12 Comments ↓

WonderSwan Flash Masta Cartridge 3-31-16I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to fool them, so I’ll try to publish this just before all that starts happening. There has been a lot happening here. In some ways I have nothing much to report, and in other ways, I have too much going on.

First of all, some of you may already be aware, but we have re-designed the circuit board for the WS Flash Masta cart. You can see it to the right (or click on the pic for a larger view). As you may notice, it has an on-board MicroSD card. I had some issues talking to the cartridge and having the cartridge communicate with the SD card at the same time. I have come up with a fix, but, sadly, it will require a new PCB revision. 🙁 On the upside, we were able to fit all the goodies on a circuit board that doesn’t stick out of the WonderSwan. Woooooo!

The plan is to make sure that’s all that needs fixing, make another set of prototypes, and then do a run of 25-30 boards for you early adopters that want to jump on it ASAP. I know there are plenty of people that have been excitedly waiting for our release. I wish it was a quicker process. I apologize for that.

In Neo Geo Pocket news, we continue to play with the manufacturing process. The last few times we have built up 10 or so boards, they’ve sold out almost immediately. Because of that, we continue working toward a better “mass” production method. We now own a LitePlacer to potentially help the process along. So far we haven’t worked out the kinks in the process, but we hope that it will be a very effective way of producing PCBs once we get everything tuned.

In the process, however, we have built up a bunch of NGPC USB cartridges and will likely be building more in 2 weeks or so. If you want one, here’s where to go: http://www.flashmasta.com/product/neo-pocket-flash-masta-usb-32mbit/

At the time of writing this, we have several units in stock (ready to ship). I will try to update this when they sell out. They sold out very quickly again. We will try to make more ASAP (maybe in a couple weeks).

Have A Happy April Fools Day, Tomorrow!

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