A
programmable version of the ubiquitous
Sony Playstation. Designed as a
subset of the full developers kit, the
Net Yaroze offers a cheap(er) route to Playstation games design.
Net Yaroze is / was only available through Sony, it was never offered to
third party retailers. This is because Sony wanted to
foster a close
community (in the official
FAQ, Sony say: "In many ways, Net Yaroze members become a part of
SCEA's
R&D; activities.") and keep tabs on the progress made by the '
bedroom coders'.
Coding for the Playstation is an exercise in the
efficient use of
memory .. but this task becomes that much harder when coding for the Yaroze. Whereas their
counterparts with full dev kits have as much
RAM to play with as they want intially, only having to compress to the Playstation's 4MB limit at the end .. Net Yaroze coders only have that 4MB to begin with. This leads to some very efficient memory use, and is why Sony were keen to keep their eye on the Yaroze Development
scene.
Although I don't know the specifics (maybe a Yaroze
owner can expand on this) it seems that the Net Yaroze
package consists of the modified Playstation unit, and a bundle of
libraries and
engines. While you
own some of it, you only *
license* the rest .. on the
condition that you share your work with the Yaroze
community.
The Net Yaroze Playstation
The Playstation that comes with the Net Yaroze package is a modified version of the
consumer console. It's
black for starters, and doesn't have any of the
country lock outs of the various consumer units. Hence it's able to play discs from any country .. but not (apparently)
gold discs. As per usual, you'll need a
TV capable of displaying the output (
NTSC/
PAL) of the game you're playing.
As for the name 'Net Yaroze' .. Yaroze
(yarozei), or
phonetically
(ya row zey) means "let's do it together" or "let's
work together" in
Japanese. The 'Net' part refers to the developers network being organised via the
internet.