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Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

bitbuilt.net

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Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#41

Post by Keyframe »

segasaturn wrote: post #34
whalesalad wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo has been doing this ... forever? The switch is ancient tech, and was outdated the moment it was released.

Actually Nintendo consoles used to be powerhouses until recently. The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were all considered state-of-the-art in terms of performance. It wasn't until the Wii when they began cutting down on performance in favor of fun features like they had been doing in the handheld space.

Especially N64 - SGI indy in a small box. They did change the narrative after they couldn't or wouldn't compete on those numbers (rightfully so it turned out), however, they were always experimenting with controls and were highly influential in doing so.

appropriate username, btw, but that console is for another topic!

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#43

Post by Frenchgeek »

segasaturn wrote: post #34
whalesalad wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo has been doing this ... forever? The switch is ancient tech, and was outdated the moment it was released.

Actually Nintendo consoles used to be powerhouses until recently. The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were all considered state-of-the-art in terms of performance. It wasn't until the Wii when they began cutting down on performance in favor of fun features like they had been doing in the handheld space.

Pretty sure the NES was designed to a price point first and foremost. Especially after the video game crash. Hence the dirt-cheap 6502 derivative in it.

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#44

Post by chabons »

ladberg wrote: post #39
tomtheelder wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can what now?

The sensor bar isn't actually a sensor, just two IR blasters that the cameras on the wiimotes use for positioning. You can use any two sources of infrared light instead!

Before I knew this I had someone pull out their lighter and point the remote at it when our sensor bar died. Took me a little bit to figure it out.

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#45

Post by hatsunearu »

The "Thundervolt" reference in that post is a project where they cut up a Wii PCB to leave just the DRAM and the processors on the PCB, and then they slap an external DCDC board on top of that cut up PCB to provide power to it, while also undervolting it since you reduce the IR losses.

https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/thundervolt.62...

That is pretty insane.

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#46

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

bscphil wrote: post #13

So is this project (a) taking the real Wii parts and putting them on a smaller PCB, (b) a different design with a more efficient same-architecture CPU, or (c) an entirely new design that is emulating the Wii hardware? Can the device run the real Wii OS or is it running a replacement OS capable of launching Wii games?

There's a long history of people taking an original Wii motherboard and physically trimming the PCB with rotary tools (or a hacksaw) to put them in smaller enclosures, usually to make them portable.

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#48

Post by latexr »

haunter wrote: post #25
latexr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun video games never went away. Look for games by indie developers instead of AAA titles.

There are many fun AAA titles, more than one can play

The conversation’s context is fun games without needing the latest hardware.

Re: Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

#50

Post by yincrash »

bscphil wrote: post #13

So is this project (a) taking the real Wii parts and putting them on a smaller PCB, (b) a different design with a more efficient same-architecture CPU, or (c) an entirely new design that is emulating the Wii hardware? Can the device run the real Wii OS or is it running a replacement OS capable of launching Wii games?

Check out the short stack GitHub for an overview of how a previous mod was done. Literally chopping up the motherboard to the bare minimum then adding back things with daughterboards https://github.com/loopj/short-stack
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