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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

#251

Post by stepvhen »

_b8r0 wrote: post #59

I'm amazed noone here has mentioned RetroPie[1]. A model B Raspberry Pi or even a Zero (if you can get one) should play NES games perfectly fine. You can get USB NES controller adapters pretty cheap or some knock-off USB NES controllers instead. I have a SNES-USB adapter for my setup that takes two SNES controllers. [1] - https://retropie.org.uk/

the snes emulator on retropie, last time i used it, didnt render music properly, in that every time there was a glissando or vibrato, it would get stuck on the flat tone, making final fantasy vi sound awful. i ended up using another setup for my playthrough but i was disappointed, i sill havent found a decent use case for my rpi. anyway hope they updated that emulator.

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#252

Post by cuckcuckspruce »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #199
davb wrote: post #49

I'm really interested in the architecture of this thing. I'm guessing ARM running a NES emulator (rather than ports of the games), since they've got such great experience doing that on the 3DS. If it's hackable, this would be a fantastic gadget. As a project box alone, it looks really pretty. HDMI out, USB power, and controller inputs make it really appealing. Depending on headers and connectivity inside, hacking a U…

Informed speculation seems to suggest that this is a 3DS (or at least the bits of a 3DS required to emulate an NES). All the games listed with it are available to buy for the 3DS, and the 3DS already supports the "save state" feature. One notable missing game is Castlevania III which apparently gives emulators trouble.

Castlevania III in the US uses the MMC-5 mapper[0] which is relatively complicated as far as mappers go. Most modern emulators have no issue with it, but many cheap Nintendo-on-a-Chip clones have it[1]. Castlevania III in Japan used expansion audio through connectors that were not available in the US, and thus has enhanced sound compared to the US counterpart.

Emulation systems, such as the Retron 5, deal with Castlevania III with no issue.

[0] http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/MMC5

[1] To see a common NES clone struggle and die in the process of playing Castlevania III, see this video from Satoshi Matrix: https://youtu.be/OnPv1xHsbvg?t=13m56s

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#253

Post by Fej »

city41 wrote: post #244
chongli wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself. I prefer to have accurate rendering, especially for something like pseudo transparency which straight pixel displays always get wrong.

But I challenge the notion of "accurate rendering". Only America had crappy TVs. Europe had SCART and Japan had RGB21. While America was suffering through a blurry mess, everyone else had beautiful RGB output. I strongly contest the idea that developers "intended" games to look that way.

He's referring to a certain trick used to create neat transparency effects on CRTs. Like this one: http://i.imgur.com/9pI7cK3.png

Of course, that was most certainly intended, and the effect could be seen on any CRT (afaik).

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#254

Post by Zancarius »

delecti wrote: post #20
hoodoof wrote: post #15

God I hate being nickle and dimed. It should include everything needed - two controllers and a power supply FFS.

The power supply is USB. I'm more than okay with not getting yet another USB brick with every new device. Not getting the controllers to me is a separate issue, but it does include one, and as far as I can tell, only the original NES, 30 years ago, ever came with more than one controller.

> and as far as I can tell, only the original NES, 30 years ago, ever came with more than one controller.

If my memory serves me correctly, my SNES came with two, but I certainly believe that was the last offering from Nintendo that did. Later bundles might not have included the additional controller, though.

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#255

Post by city41 »

Fej wrote: post #253
city41 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I challenge the notion of "accurate rendering". Only America had crappy TVs. Europe had SCART and Japan had RGB21. While America was suffering through a blurry mess, everyone else had beautiful RGB output. I strongly contest the idea that developers "intended" games to look that way.

He's referring to a certain trick used to create neat transparency effects on CRTs. Like this one: http://i.imgur.com/9pI7cK3.png Of course, that was most certainly intended, and the effect could be seen on any CRT (afaik).

That isn't actually a CRT effect. A good quality CRT would look like the left picture. For example Mega Man X4 is often cited as using this "effect" as well, http://www.mattgreer.org/articles/sega-saturn-and-transparen.... But here's the same game running on my arcade CRT monitor: http://i.imgur.com/SAUkg5J.jpg

And my arcade monitor is not a good CRT at all (sadly...). Good CRTs look like this: http://imgur.com/a/Ad0pe In the last photo of the fighting game, that "grid" pattern in the back of the meters would look like the Sonic waterfall on bad CRTs, but is clearly defined on good ones

There are some CRT specific effects. For example the black shadow under the ninja in this video should be rapidly moving back and forth between each character to accomplish a transparency effect. But most modern TVs can't do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYsa8NQICnY

(For the record good upscalers fix that shadow effect.)

My point is that the article that started this thread that claims old games are supposed to look like this http://i.imgur.com/Pq2Yra4.png is just utterly not true. It's a terrible myth that someone who is misinformed started.

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#256

Post by tdy721 »

baby wrote: post #248
tdy721 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, too bad your MacBook Pro doesn't allow HDMI in.

Wait does that mean I can use my laptop's screen as a hdmi screen?

HDMI ports can work that way, if the software is in place to support that kind of functionality. However piracy concerns or laziness seem to have trumped that option on the market today.

Yes you should be able to, but no you probably can't

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#257

Post by chongli »

city41 wrote: post #255
Fej wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's referring to a certain trick used to create neat transparency effects on CRTs. Like this one: http://i.imgur.com/9pI7cK3.png Of course, that was most certainly intended, and the effect could be seen on any CRT (afaik).

That isn't actually a CRT effect. A good quality CRT would look like the left picture. For example Mega Man X4 is often cited as using this "effect" as well, http://www.mattgreer.org/articles/sega-saturn-and-transparen... . But here's the same game running on my arcade CRT monitor: http://i.imgur.com/SAUkg5J.jpg And my arcade monitor is not a good CRT at all (sadly...). Good CRTs look like this: http://imgur.com/a/Ad…

It's a terrible myth that someone who is misinformed started.

You didn't actually read the article, did you? Look at the image right after it [0]. Look at the shading on Samus and the pillar nearby. This image clearly demonstrates that the original artwork was designed to achieve a dithering-like effect due to the presence of colour bleeding in the signal. This effect occurs even on higher-end CRTs. What you are complaining about is the bloom effect of the phosphors, a separate phenomenon.

[0] http://i.imgur.com/TpAc9Cn.png

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#258

Post by city41 »

chongli wrote: post #257
city41 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't actually a CRT effect. A good quality CRT would look like the left picture. For example Mega Man X4 is often cited as using this "effect" as well, http://www.mattgreer.org/articles/sega-saturn-and-transparen... . But here's the same game running on my arcade CRT monitor: http://i.imgur.com/SAUkg5J.jpg And my arcade monitor is not a good CRT at all (sadly...). Good CRTs look like this: http://imgur.com/a/Ad…

It's a terrible myth that someone who is misinformed started. You didn't actually read the article, did you? Look at the image right after it [0]. Look at the shading on Samus and the pillar nearby. This image clearly demonstrates that the original artwork was designed to achieve a dithering-like effect due to the presence of colour bleeding in the signal. This effect occurs even on higher-end CRTs. What you are comp…

Yes I read the article and many, many more like it. This myth has been perpetuated for decades now. It's like the NASA pen and the Cosmonaut pencil or we only use 10% of our brain. A myth that people commonly believe because it just sort of feels true based on their own experience.

The article specifically talks about CRT televisions with NTSC signals. So he's clearly an American. He also talks about how his shader was created to recreate what games looked like in his youth. That's fine. But that's his youth (and incidentally, my youth too). The problem is to suggest that how the typical American saw video games at home in the 80s and 90s is somehow representative and correct and what the developers were shooting for.

Have you ever seen an old video game on a very good CRT? Perhaps a Sony PVM or BVM? Even some of the nicer consumer Trinitrons will do. Color bleed is practically nonexistent, and it's very easy to clearly make out every single pixel the artist laid down. I included several examples in my previous reply. This would be true of 80s and 90s arcade games, most of which got ported to home consoles. It's also true of 80s Commodore 64 and Atari computer games, 90s PC, Mac and Amiga games, and basically every game played in the 90s in Europe, as they've had proper SCART with analog RGB since the 70s.

Now to be fair, the NES natively outputs composite video straight from the PPU. So you could maybe argue the case for this specific console. But every console since in the SD generation output s-video, RGB and/or component.

In your original comment you said "these artifacts are important for correctly rendering NES games according to their original design." But Nintendo released an arcade version of the NES called the PlayChoice 10 which completely lacked any of those artifacts. Metroid was released on the PlayChoice 10, and so in that environment there would be no "shading" caused by dot crawl and bleed in the background tiles.

EDIT: and to credit the article, he does state he is trying to recreate the look of his 80s TV. So I was a little harsh on this particular article. But these articles still bug me, because they lead to comments like yours where things like "according to their original design" get said.

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#259

Post by MagerValp »

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).

The good ones do! Try Micro64, its CRT simulation is completely configurable and you can set it up to match a high spec CRT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1qEP2vMe-I

Re: Nintendo re-releases NES as mini console

#260

Post by chongli »

city41 wrote: post #258
chongli wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a terrible myth that someone who is misinformed started. You didn't actually read the article, did you? Look at the image right after it [0]. Look at the shading on Samus and the pillar nearby. This image clearly demonstrates that the original artwork was designed to achieve a dithering-like effect due to the presence of colour bleeding in the signal. This effect occurs even on higher-end CRTs. What you are comp…

Yes I read the article and many, many more like it. This myth has been perpetuated for decades now. It's like the NASA pen and the Cosmonaut pencil or we only use 10% of our brain. A myth that people commonly believe because it just sort of feels true based on their own experience. The article specifically talks about CRT televisions with NTSC signals. So he's clearly an American. He also talks about how his shader w…

Now to be fair, the NES natively outputs composite video straight from the PPU

The NES is the only console I have been talking about. It is the topic of the original article. I am well aware that this is not how any other console works.

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