Well I just got a Nintendo hard-on.
Please comment civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console
211–220 of 268 posts
Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand the multiple buying is because, unlike Microsoft and Sony, they never really invested in their online network to support this.
The Wii U shop knows what VC games you've already purchased for Wii, because it offers upgrade pricing for most of them. And there are a few games out there that do cross-buy between the Wii U and 3DS shops. The multiple purchase issue is a strategic/marketing issue, not a technical one.
I suppose this makes sense for the average person, as most people probably don't understand how to use emulators and what not. Oh well.
Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console
#213Sega tried something similar with mixed results [1], the two main differences being that: 1- Sega went for a "clone" rather than emulation (even accepts Genesis cartridges) 2- Nintendo's IP in the classic gaming space is unmatched [1] http://www.gamestop.com/genesis/consoles/sega-genesis-classi...
The most recent Sega units by ATGames are emulated, and they do an absolutely terrible job. Many of them have the FM sound channels out of tune with the SSG sound channels. It's a great way to get a terrible impression of the games offered for it.
The older TV Plug and Play ones, however, had a Genesis-on-an-ASIC, a native licensed silicon clone of the original chipset. These were super accurate, and could even have a cartridge slot wired to them by the enterprising modder. They ran at 3.3v, though, so things get quirky with a real cartridge without proper transcieving logic.
Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console
#214> Sadly you can't use your original NES carts with the console - something even the most basic "Famiclone" offers - and there doesn't seem to be any means of getting new games onto it. Would it really have been that much extra effort to make the console backwards compatible?
Including a compatible cartridge reader? Of course that's a lot of effort and costs, making the price point untenable. The beautiful thing about his console is that for the price of a new Nintendo game you're getting the console and 30 games, without any hassle (swapping cartridges etc.). It's certainly a compromise, but a very enticing one.
The NES cartridge's pin pitch is nonstandard, and making a new slot for it is actually a very expensive endeavor. You can get "close" with standard parts, but the resulting tolerance is extremely low.
Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ZIF connector on the original NES was unreliable. The carts are perfectly reliable. The NES 2 does not have the ZIF connector and doesn't have issues.
> The carts are perfectly reliable Depends on the cartridge. Any of the ones with a battery save (like Zelda or Final Fantasy) need to be opened up, have the welded in battery clipped off the board, have a CR2032 socket soldered on instead, and then put a new battery in and reassemble. It's a LOT of pain to get a NES cart with a dead battery working again. That's probably why they opted not to put a slot in this thin…
Replacing the battery takes a couple minutes. Many of those carts are still running. The number of decent NES games that used battery saving can be counted on your hands, so to call it a LOT of pain might be exaggerating a little.
Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console
#216It seems to be missing some critical features of the original. - Can't start a game and have the game loading screen distorted until the 7-8th attempt. - Can't blow in the cartridge until it whistles before playing - Can't stick 2 games in on top of each other Getting the game to work was half of the fun.
Can't stick my Game Genie in it, either...
Game Genie is why a lot of the older consoles have trouble connecting to cartridges; they built it with a slightly thicker interface, presumably to give it mechanical 'preference' over the game cart on removal, but it can permanently spread the console's pins.
Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console
#217HDMI out? I wonder if they're going to simulate NTSC TV artifacts such as colour bleed and dot crawl. These artifacts are important for correctly rendering NES games according to their original design [0]. [0] http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/C...
Slight rant, but I wish these CRT simulators could simulate decent CRTs, they always seem to emulate really shit ones with huge curvature and really exaggerated scanlines etc, can't they emulate a nice Trinitron TV or something. They always just look fake to me. (Yeah, I know there is possibly a bit of memory cheating, plus I used RGB SCART for the later period of CRT use that avoided the composite problems).
It's been a while, but IIRC higan has a filter that just simulates NTSC composite effects without simulating the whole CRT. It's especially useful for things like SNES pseudo-alpha transparency (which relies on exploiting NTSC composite artifacting).
Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console
#218Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
It says you can use the wii Classic controller, which is wireless
The Wii Classic Controller is most certainly wired, just it's wired to the wireless Wii Remote. You may be thinking of the Wii U Pro Controller which is fully wireless.
I wouldn't mind if it were just the fact that the Wii Classic Controller is wired. What bugs me is that the cable is really, really short: only long enough to run into something that you'd be expected to hold in your lap. Of course, that's exactly the use case it was designed for, so it made sense in that context. But it causes problems when you then want to plug it into something several feet away, like, say, the console.
Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
So was there an Nintendo in PAL format? (PAL tvs had 100 more lines and refreshed a little lower 25, vs NTSC's 30 frames per second) Seems like it would be a pain to make that work. Knowing the pain of PAL NTSC tv conversion.
The traditional game console solution for PAL consoles was to just have letterboxing with the extra 100 lines blank, with everything vertically squashed a little. Games usually didn't compensate for the lower framerate, so just ran slower. PAL console gaming was a GREAT experience, as you can imagine. Things got better from the Dreamcast onwards as they could software switch to 525 line / 60Hz modes (usually with PAL…
Not all moot with HD; we have new and exciting problems! Now we have issues with poor-quality cables not being able to negotiate 4K 60hz 4:4:4 chroma, the Vizio 2016 P series negotiating 4:4:4 but actually doing 4:2:2 internally ( https://hardforum.com/threads/2016-vizio-p-series.1896948/ // http://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/vizio/p-series-2016 if you're curious , there is also a long thread on AVSForum), etc. Good times.