[lproven]

This sounds potentially interesting, but the website is so vague it's criminal.

I have absolutely no idea what the "console gaming experience of the 1990s" was. What console? What experience?

I've only owned 3 games consoles in my life.

An original XBox, a gift from a friend which I immediately hacked to be an XBox Media Centre and used daily for years but never played a game on again.

A PS2.

And now a Wii for my kid.

For any website or any publicity material it is always a mistake to rely on shared experience, because whatever your experience, there are billions of people out there who do not share it.

So don't rely on it. Say what your product is and does and how it does it.

This page does not.

[mulletbum]

I have to say, this is not targeted at you. I know exactly what a 1990s gaming experience is like and xbox is the console that killed it completely.

[ramon156]

Never assume the reader knows what you're talking about, that's bad writing.

[bondarchuk]

Could one be forgiven for assuming on the internet that people know what "console gaming" or "the 1990s" are? I expected the worst reading this comment thread before clicking TFA but it's really very straightforward.

[lproven]

Well of course I know. But I never owned a games console in the 1990s, I've never played a game on a 1990s console, so I have no clue what aspect of the experience is being captured or not.

[MithrilTuxedo]

It really depends on the context.

Everyone's bandwidth would be saturated if no one assumed their reader knew what they were talking about, but assumption is a form of lossy compression that allows both miscommunication and misunderstanding.

[GuinansEyebrows]

conversely: never assume the writing is for everybody :)

[lproven]

My point is general.

That's what I was talking about.

Don't assume -- especially when writing. Always explain because people outside your target audience will read what you write and they may go on to buy a million of your product, or give you a job, or something.

[ninetyninenine]

Suggestion: Stop giving instructions to people and talking down to them, people generally don't like this.

[carra]

Not saying you are wrong about that, but if you don't know about 90s console gaming and you only used the XBox as media center you are likely not the target audience for this project anyway.

[philistine]

Simple mathematics will help you here. All three consoles you mention all came out after 2000, which means this is not what the project is trying to replicate.

[cornstalks]

The page does say it, though it might be easy to overlook if you don't understand the significance of the statements:

> Zero setup

> Direct to gameplay

> Distraction-free gaming

> Use SD cards or other external media as carts

The 90s gaming console experience was:

1. Grab your game cartridge.

2. Insert cartridge into console.

3. Turn on console.

4. Play the game.

There are no steps between 3 and 4. The console booted directly into the game. It was fast and there was no messing with multimedia experience stuff (like Xbox or PS later introduced).

I have no experience with Kazeta but this is what I would expect from its homepage.

[dan353hehe]

I got a patch:

  @@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ The 90s gaming console experience was:
  
  1. Grab your game cartridge.
  
  +1.5. Blow into the cartridge slot for some reason to make the game boot on the first try. But in reality you are slowly destroying the contacts and making the problem worse.
  +
  2. Insert cartridge into console.

  3. Turn on console.

Fixed it.

Honestly though, the experience of just turning it on and being in game was great. I had access to an NES and an SNES growing up and have a lot of great memories playing games with friends.

[Eduard]

one more patch/pull request:

1. buy your second game (130 DEM in 1995 / 109 EUR inflation-adjusted for 2025 / all the money you saved for weeks age-adjusted) for your new Sega Saturn.

2. notice it doesn't load on your console

3. be told that you have to send everything in to have it repaired (in retrospect find out that Saturns often had faulty CD drives)

4. wait three weeks (an eternity age-adjusted for a 12 year-old) until you get your console returned

5. finally play

[flufluflufluffy]

I think it’s confusing particularly because it pushes the whole “zero setup” thing, then when you go to the docs to figure out what the heck the thing is it describes a long list of things one would need to do in order to set up a working physical machine running Kazeta and the cartridges etc... The website itself reads like it’s an app you can just download and run, while at the same time hinting that you’re gonna need to do a fair amount of physical stuff without really explaining the whole thing.

[bondarchuk]

The 2nd and 3rd words on the page are "operating system", it is obvious that an operating system must be installed before it can be used.

[lproven]

Great! Thank you. That's much more helpful.