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Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

nintendolife.com

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Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#231

Post by msbarnett »

mikejmoffitt wrote: post #215
msbarnett wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A "couple of minutes" for a confident, competent solderer, which excludes about 99% of the target market for this thing. (Here's how to do it, if anyone's curious: http://www.retronintendoreviews.com/nes-cartridge-battery-re...)

And while overall most NES games didn't use a battery, many of the most popular ones (many of the ones included in this thing, in fact) do need a working battery. Final Fantasy, both zeldas, startropics, tecmo bowl, crystallis, kirby's adventure...

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#232

Post by endemic »

davexunit wrote: post #118
yoodenvranx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think Bomberman is missing, we had tons of fun with it (although we used to play super bomberman 5 on SNES)

Saturn Bomberman is where it's at.

My one wish in life is to experience 10 player Bomberman.

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#233

Post by CocaKoala »

wingerlang wrote: post #194
rasz_pl wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you do realize blowing on the cartridge works just as good as not walking under the ladder and avoiding black cats? As a matter of a fact it contributes to connector oxidation (moisture in your breath).

I was under the impression that blowing into it caused some moisture to get there and improve the .. conduction?

Nope. The problem was that the pins weren't seated properly. The solution to that is to take the cartridge out and put it back it.

Guess what happens as a side effect of blowing in the cartridge?

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#234

Post by Tiktaalik »

DominikR wrote: post #138
chongli wrote: post #19

HDMI 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...

Most younger persons might not care about this, but some are buying dedicated video hardware like the XRGB Framemeister to emulate the picture that you had back then on old CRT TV sets. (scanlines etc) I don't like the sharp and blocky video you see today on modern LCDs when using old consoles. I also don't like the video filters that some emulators use to make the games not look too pixelated. I just want it to look…

A Framemeister isn't just for the option of emulating scaliness, it's for being able to satisfyingly play old consoles on a HDTV period.

The built in upscalers in these TVs aren't designed for consoles and will mangle the video output into garbage.

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#235

Post by city41 »

chongli wrote: post #19

HDMI 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...

Honestly most (if not all) retro gamers don't feel that way. We prefer to see the actual pixels. The XRGB Framemeister upscaler is the most popular way to play retro games on modern TVs, and it provides a visual experience about equivalent to an emulator on a PC. The other popular way is to use an RGB monitor. Both provide pretty darn close to pixel perfect rendering.

I've never met a single gamer into old games that prefers the artifacts the old, cruddy CRTs we used to use had. We're all quite relieved they're gone, to be honest.

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#236

Post by Keyframe »

fredoralive wrote: post #151
chongli wrote: post #19

HDMI 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).

I can't wait for cheap OLEDs to start seeing CRT emulation that would look kind of like the real thing.

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#237

Post by TulliusCicero »

rasz_pl wrote: post #164
joeblau wrote: post #114

It 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.

you do realize blowing on the cartridge works just as good as not walking under the ladder and avoiding black cats? As a matter of a fact it contributes to connector oxidation (moisture in your breath).

I did it as a kid, felt silly after I discovered that it didn't work as an adult, then more recently discovered that it DID actually work. Or at least, it's been sufficiently successful for me (repeatedly putting in cartridges in NES/SNES/N64 without successful start, blow in them once, immediately starts working).

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#238

Post by Nexxxeh »

bsharitt wrote: post #208
apozem wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what worries me about Nintendo. With the possible exception of Pokemon Go, they aren't capturing new users. They make money off of loyal fans who grew up with Mario and Zelda. Do kids today care about Nintendo?

My kids(8 and 6) each have a 2DS and we have Wii and Mario and Zelda are among their favorites. Many of these are re-releases of old Nintendo games on either the virtual console or things like Mario 64 DS or Ocarina of Time for the 3DS, but also newer games like New Super Marios Bros and LoZ Twilight Princess. They enjoy these games right up there along size Minecraft and what ever that bear game my daughter plays.

Have they played Zelda: Skyward Sword? It's not as good as TP or OoT, but it's still really good.

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#239

Post by Nexxxeh »

apozem wrote: post #187
Tiktaalik wrote: post #180

This is a bit of a desperation move from Nintendo as they have pretty much nothing for the holidays for the Wii U with the NX still in development on the horizon. That said, at that impulse buy price point, I'll definitely pick it up and I'm sure it'll be incredibly popular with those that grew up with the system. This isn't the sort of product that really grows Nintendo's market with a new generation. I wouldn't be…

This is what worries me about Nintendo. With the possible exception of Pokemon Go, they aren't capturing new users. They make money off of loyal fans who grew up with Mario and Zelda. Do kids today care about Nintendo?

That may change when they eventually ship Zelda: Breath of the Wild next year. I think missing the Christmas window will hit them pretty hard. And it's supposed to ship on the WiiU and the NX simultaneously.

How many Zelda fans, myself among them, will have skipped the WiiU?

If BotW is as good as it looks to be, it may finally be the game the WiiU should have shipped with.

Until now, has there been a Nintendo console that didn't have it's own proper new Zelda for it, right up until the launch of that console's successor? I guess the Virtual Boy...

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#240

Post by Nexxxeh »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #144

Part of me wants to say cool, thanks for paying tribute and making accessible. Part of me wants me to say ugh, for being unoriginal and milking old products, while using incompatible controllers, especially considering Nintendo used to sue people in the emulator/ROM/clone community, who are the real heroes for keeping the magic alive. I'd rather people just spend $30 for a raspberry pi and a USB NES controller.

>using incompatible controllers

Aren't the new controllers specifically compatible with the Wii and WiiU?

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