Thank you for the inspiration. This project, however, is practice for actual development. I will not officially release it. I'm just watering down Dark Souls for the (here we go) Sega Dreamcast, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Game Boy Advance (not the two older Game Boys because of lack of buttons), and PS1. Just so you know, this list was decided before I posted this topic.

I will start working on Saturn, Dreamcast, DS, and GBA now. Any help for the other consoles is welcome.

From what I understand the Raspberry PI is close to what the older consoles were hardware and development wise. Why not make a game for that first before tackling the other consoles? Because, from everything that I've read, you need to know an extraordinary amount of assembly and computer engineering to make heads or tails of those consoles and their tech manuals.

I'm just watering down Dark Souls for the (here we go) Sega Dreamcast, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Game Boy Advance (not the two older Game Boys because of lack of buttons), and PS1

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I will start working on Saturn, Dreamcast, DS, and GBA now

But why? What do you possibly hope to gain from the experience of targeting all of these different consoles? They're nothing like each other, and they're nothing like modern consoles. You know what is like a modern console? PCs! And PCs are also like--I daresay identical to-- PCs. Between PCs, PS4, and XBone you've got like 70 percent of the home gaming market as it exists today, and all of them have AMD CPUs and GPUs little different than the ones on store shelves right now.

And the Saturn is literally the last place you should start. Set aside whatever false conception you've got that all this work you have laid out is important. I *enjoy* this kind of useless intellectual adventure, I *enjoy* reading arcane technical manuals, I've been programming in some form for 22 years, I've done GBA programming, I've done embedded systems programming and bare-metal programming in the DOS days (which are not unlike early console programming in many ways, save the exotic hardware) -- I JUST BOUGHT A 20-YEAR-OLD 486 COMPUTER TO RUN DOS BECAUSE i HAD A WILD ITCH TO RELIVE MY HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAMMING DAYS, AND I WANT TO SEE HOW MUCH i CAN PUSH IT WITH ALL I'VE LEARNED THESE PAST 15 YEARS, JUST FOR FUNSIES!

And still I have not one actually inkling to ever attempt programming a Saturn in any serious measure. Its high-level architecture can be summarized in three words -- Complicated, Obscure, and Bizarre.

And you talk of single-handedly "watering down" a recent AAA blockbuster.

You can learn good lessons by programming limited systems. You can learn those lessons effectively from just one or two of those systems. You can learn those lessons effectively from the one or two least complicated among them. You'll learn by being forced to do without modern conveniences and hand-holding, not by throwing yourself against the obscure ghosts, gremlins, and hobgoblins of abandoned futures past.

Pick PC, or if you really must the GBA or Dreamcast. Choose one and don't even think about the others. Find out how difficult any one of them is, and understand that those are the least of the troubles you're asking to find.

And if you choose to ignore this advice, at least try to promise yourself that you'll have the humility to start back at the beginning when it all comes crashing down and you're frustrated, because I really get your enthusiasm and want to do all the things all at once. I had piles of notebooks full of game designs well beyond my means, controller and console designs, stories, characters, and gameplay mechanics. There's nothing wrong with daydreaming, in fact its a great thing in moderation, but you can set yourself up for harm if you tie your expectations too closely to it before you're ready. I honestly want to see you succeed in smaller, attainable victories, and all I've said thus far is the best advice I can give you from lived experience.

This advice is too good to ignore. Most of what you told me (stick to PC, don't make this project your main one) I was already doing. The only reasons I did this project was to have fun and challenge myself (and also so my parents would let me play Dark Souls). I am already a PC developer with a demo version of a game that will be released soon. It would be foolish to make this project my main one, I don't know anyone who would mainly develop for an old console (except if there is literally nothing else to do, which is never). I have better things to do (finish my console prototypes and send them to my friend and uncle, work on my PC releases) than this. I will only develop this for Dreamcast, GBA, and DS (because I plan on trying to make 3DS games with my engine). Thank you for knocking the sense into me.

By the way, buying a 20 year old computer just so I could program it sounds like something I would do.