[0] http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/C...
(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'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.
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 approximately (emulating it perfectly is probably out of scope for this price) as it did back in the 80ties. Hope Nintendo provides an option for scanlines.
The built in upscalers in these TVs aren't designed for consoles and will mangle the video output into garbage.
(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.
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 USB port or SD slot for expansion would be a fun project.
There are already Wii controller accessory to USB adapters available. And at $9.99 for the controllers, those could be fun too (to be used separately on other platforms, like the RPi).
That's not to say I won't be getting one purely to play as intended, but I would be interested in picking one up to hack.
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.
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
I'm pretty sure it wasn't emulation, but actual miniaturized Nintendo-clone hardware running the original (pirated) ROMs. I have a hunch this isn't emulating, but is instead playing "on the metal." The hardware (as the article mentions) is easy to clone, and as such should be insanely cheap to produce in volume.
The profit margins on these consoles is going to be great.
That would be true if it was an emulator or "bare metal". The beauty of IP!
[0]https://www.pi-supply.com/product/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-new...
Im also thinking might be able to use authentic controller but cut of the connector and instead wire directly to the Pi's GPIO.
Really surprised people expect it's anything more than one of these but with official licensing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System_...
They're extensively bought into the ARM ecosystem. They already have a NES emulator on ARM (3DS NES Virtual Console). ARM SoCs are so incredibly cheap (look at the low volume RasPI with its HDMI output and now WiFI). The Nintendo hardware engineering teams have extensive ARM experience. There will undoubtedly be a business requirement for platform security (wrt the bundled games). This is, from Nintendo's perspective, a solved problem on their portable console platform.
Over a long period and at high volumes, sure - a NES hardware clone might make for a cheaper BoM. But that's not where the cost is here. It's in the engineering, initial supply chain and manufacturing startup. Sticking with ARM keeps all of those costs down.
Build a lightweight OS (based on the 3DS/2DS OS), able to run the same the same binaries, with the same libraries and you've cut out a massive amount of software engineering work and expense.
Ship some stripped down 2DS/3DS hardware, and you've saved a lot of hardware engineering work and expense.
I'd actually be surprised if it wasn't extremely close to the 3DS/2DS in terms of architecture, minus the IO, battery and secondary ARM CPU.
Simple ARM chip + software emulator means you could just do everything one one chip without headaches. Plus it'll likely be cheaper.
Edit: if only it had River City Ransom...
But yeah, 60$ for the kit? Crike that's cheap.
For example, I have Kid Icarus via the Wii Virtual Console, and Mega Man on the 3DS Virtual Console. Why can't I play those in both places? Why do I have to pay _another_ $5 to play Mega Man on the Wii U? Especially now that Nintendo's online account stuff has shaped up to be pretty good. I'm not even sure if I can play the Wii-purchased Kid Icarus through my Wii U… or do I have to load up the Wii virtual console and then download it onto there? (That I haven't checked.)
I don't need all 700 games to be happy, but for $5 per game — for something that we know is basically just an emulator/ROM, I feel like I shouldn't get penalized for continuing up the upgrade path within the company.
But a cute little Nintendo replica? I would never buy one just as a nostalgic paperweight. But if it plays games, even if it may not have much expandability or interoperability with Internet systems? That's very appealing to the kid in me, even though my Wii U has been collecting dust for the past year now.
- 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.
The actual trick is to stick the game in, and after you push it down, you then slide it with your finger to the left or right about a half-centimeter to align the pins correctly, hit reset, and it's good.
[1] - https://retropie.org.uk/
Anyone in the market for hardware, I've found that the abilities of various devices tend to be overstated. Pi2 was in fact good enough for close-to-perfect NES, almost good enough for perfect SNES (fine for many games if you can tolerate the occasional slowdown or audio glitches), could play Mario64 acceptably but pretty much no other N64 games. Bizarrely decent at Playstation.
I'd imagine the Pi3 is pulls off SNES very well, just judging from the specs, though I don't have one yet. Be aware that these games will not look right without beefier hardware that can handle CRT shaders to (sort-of) correctly fuzzy-up the image. So, not a Pi. I now run Lakka on an Asus chromebox, which was about double the price of a Pi with a decent power adapter and not-hideous case, but can do the CRT shader thing and handles later consoles much, much better. Emulation on x86 tends to be more stable and better supported (faster) in general, so know you'll be on second-class (though rapidly improving!) platform if you go ARM.
Try out several controllers before settling. I found that the easiest solution (XBox360) failed my usual test of Punch Out and Super Mario. Couldn't block or dodge worth a damn in Punch Out (unsurprising given the 360's Dpad's reputation) and kept running into bottomless pits in Mario (I found switching between the "A" and "B" face buttons to be too slow). The 360 controller made it feel like the emulator input was lagging, but it in fact wasn't. PS3 controller works well for me. Wii Classic Controller Pro is even better, but I have yet to find a to-USB adapter that isn't messed up in one way or another—last one I tried would periodically register a bunch of wild analog stick input for no obvious reason, making it useless for N64 and Playstation. A big Retroarch-specific benefit of a PS3 or Wii Classic Controller is that you can use their home/menu buttons to bounce to the Retroarch menu, saving you from configuring a button combo for that—IIRC the 360 controller wouldn't let me use its home button for that purpose.
That's a problem with the emulator, not the hardware. I have a work-in-progress Mupen64Plus fork that can play all N64 games at full speed or better on the Pi 2 with only minor occasional slowdowns (that should all be fixable). The problem is that the emulator plugins were all designed for GL 1.x era fixed function hardware, which is very different from what you need to make software run well on tiled architectures like the VideoCore IV. It's not easy to get them running—I had to add an SSA-based optimizing shader compiler, for example—but it all ends up working out fine in the end.
I would like to try running N64 games on even cheaper hardware like the C.H.I.P. at some point. I think they have a good chance at running at full speed.
The biggest problem with the Raspberry Pi for this kind of stuff is that the software, which mostly consists of lightly optimized ports of old emulators written for Windows, holds the hardware back. If you compare instructions-per-clock of CPUs and fill rates of console GPUs from that era with the relevant hardware on even cheap modern mobile SoCs, the latter blow the former away. It's just that the games of that era pushed the hardware to its limits, while the emulators on the Pi don't even come close.
A little pedantic, but Lakka is based on OpenELEC (and may have switched to LibreELEC by now). OpenELEC/LibreELEC are buildroot based OSs that boot straight into Kodi. Neither are affiliated with the Kodi project - but the devs get along and communicate.
Last time I tried this, some of my favorite games were super laggy (Yoshi's Island, Super Mario RPG) presumably due to having to emulate additional processors (Super FX, SA-1, etc.)
edit: Oh wait, this is NES we are talking about. Nevermind, I'm sure NES runs fine. I'll leave my comment up for anyone wanting to talk about SNES emulation.
Retropie is amazing, but there are a lot of emulator options available, and some don't seem to work out of the box.
http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5428
[1] I guess it depends on how sensitive you are to lag in the first place...
But this is official, with licenced legit games from Nintendo, so some people prefer that.
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 surprised if it outsells the Wii U this holiday.
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...
Right, Left, Down, Up, A, B
It's apparently sold out now, but it was a $500 NES built using clones of hardware, and with modern video and audio output. Jeremy Parish has a writeup over at USGamer: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/analogue-nt-review-for-the-r...
Also the Retro Freak: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-cyber-...
Each of these devices have their own issues though.
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 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.
The genesis one is pretty bad quality and while it has some good games built in there's lots of not very good one off third party games the creator built in for increased gamecount.
Would it really have been that much extra effort to make the console backwards compatible?
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.
I hope (and assume) it could be updated somehow though e.g. usb or micro sd
Depends if it's a NES on a chip type system like most clones, or if it's something like an ARM SoC device running an emulator[1]. If it's the former it would be possible with just space issues for the slot, the latter would be quite hard, certainly more trouble than worth for a cheap novelty device.
[1] It uses Wii controllers and has save states so it seems a bit more than the average clone at least.
Oh well, I'll probably buy one to play games with my kids, most mainstream games today are too complicated to learn and I don't really find them fun despite how technically amazing they are.
The 3 and 5 year old also love newer games like Minecraft (the 5 Y/O is finally starting to enjoy building, instead of just flying around with a diamond sword and a bucket of lava f'in shit up), and my 7 year old plays a lot of NBA 2k16, but they are in love with the classics right now.
Aren't the new controllers specifically compatible with the Wii and WiiU?
It's not even compatible with the old nes controllers. At least with a pi, you could rewrire a nes controller to the GPIO or SPI.
It should include everything needed - two controllers and a power supply FFS.
I was frustrated that some Nintendo portable consoles don't come with an AC adapter, until a few years in, I had bought a couple of special edition consoles and realised I've got three Nintendo DS chargers. Their adapter design has been stable for many years, so only first-timers actually need to buy a charger.
I suspect the NES mini will ship with a bundle via the official Nintendo store that will include an AC adapter for those in need of one. They'll also likely do a two-controller option too. Their bundles are really appealing for the portable consoles.
I don't think any console ships with two controllers unless it's part of a bundle or special edition these days.
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.
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.
Not saying the classics don't stand the test of time, but some of those old games are better as a memory.
Most of SNES games have aged much better than their NES counterparts, Super Metroid, Zelda, Chrono Trigger are still terrific games that I could play even today, while I agree that most NES games feel too old.
Dude spend two years developing this product and literary launched last week http://www.game-tech.us/blog/2nd-day-of-packaging-hi-def-kit...
price was somewhere around $150
Normally you'd expect Nintendo of all people to get it right, but from what I've seen of the Wii virtual console titles, they frequently don't.
They have such a big catalog of games they could do things like "Complete game X and Y, and unlock game Z". Things like that are super cheap to do, but add a lot of value to the product.
IMO, they should create a cheaper version of something similar to the Analogue NT[1], with built-in network connectivity that you can use to purchase and download legal roms.
Also I want to see a Nintendo Classic Gameboy once. Please!
The SNES controller wasn't too much over NES, and the layout comparable... for example, I prefer the updated graphics versions of the Super Mario Bros series released on SNES to the original... not to mention a lot of other great games.
For example some great games like Final Fantasy 1 were never released in Europe.
Also the controller can be useful for those that want to play games from the Wii Virtual Console.
It won't work for retro-gaming, but it's a possible path forward for gun games on modern consoles.
Also, the hardware was crap. Even though the games were made for 4:3 monitors, the system shipped with a 16:9 phone screen (likely because 4:3 screens are harder to source cheaply nowadays).
Typical Nintendo "75% right" and "25% how did they screw this up"
ps: no cartridge, no blow. sad ;)
That said, I'd buy this thing from Nintendo if you could add games to it. I'd give them an extra $1 or $2 per game. Gotta have Tetris & RCR!