hey guess what

I don't know who this Nintendo's witch is, but I'll get the lube.

It's a $300 portable consumer electronic device. It's smaller than a tablet, but bigger than a phone, with a worse screen than either. It has bits that can fall off. It has moving parts that stick out. All it does is play childrens' games made by one Japanese company.

So, yeah, that lube thing.

Yup, it looks like I'm basically going to pay ~$360 to play Zelda. Ugh.

Actually it's coming out for Wii U, maybe I'll buy it on that.

I'm getting it on Wii U.

My wife told me that the new Mario game reminds her of Sonic 2006. lol.

I actually think that it sounds kinda neat seeing as it's essentially a replacement for the DS but it comes with a Super Game Boy.

That said, £280 is about £80 more than I was expecting. And the whole point of Nintendo hardware is Nintendo games, and the only release title draw is Zelda.

What do you mean super game boy?

I _wish_ they'd do a steam-like service where I could buy "super mario world" and then play it on every console from now until I die. Instead of having to re-buy it every few years. I'm so tired of that.

.

If only there were some way to "emulate" these old consoles.

Like maybe some kind of, I dunno just spit-balling here, emulator program?

Programs are pretty much obsolete but I like your thinking. Perhaps some kind of emulator app.

Emulation is hard to get right, slow, doesn't take advantage of the native platform hardware, will never be cycle or graphical accurate for new systems in a million years, and requires special hardware to work using the legal original copies of the games you buy.

To me it just seems that there are too many other options to buying many versions of the same game just to be able to play it. For one, I really don't get what the big deal is with just using the old consoles. I get that newer screens might not have the right connectivity but it can't be that hard to get a screen with composite inputs, is it? I do have a couple old CRT TVs for odd uses like this as well. I'm fine playing a SNES game on a newer screen but if I want to play Lethal Enforcers it's to the garage since the old lightguns aren't compatible with newer sets. If the old console has **** the bed, there are inexpensive clone systems but I haven't yet researched the pros and cons of the various units. On top of that, flashcarts over a really great alternative to using the original cartridges and run on the original hardware. I've been thinking about picking one up for the N64 at some point especially since I have been unable to locate my cherished copy of Resident Evil 2. From a preservation standpoint I actually think it's pretty important to keep electronic versions of these old console games and it's also ridiculously easy to obtain them.

It's only now that I can get pretty much flawless PS2 emulation, with top of the line hardware. PS3 emulation is still a long way away. Which is a shame, given I dont want to lug around PS3 hardware with me when I'm moving around.

I don't have a modern Nintendo console but isn't emulation what is occurring in Brian's case anyway?

But it's not flawless. It's a distinctively non-flawless high level emulation. The SNES is the newest console with cycle accurate emulation and it probably will be for a very long time.



1. It doesn't need to be. Nintendo has the source code for their games.

2. Emulators created by the people who designed the hardware aren't even in the same ballpark as emulators created by reverse engineering.

I figured as much. The games are either run through emulation or ported in a manner superior to others. I don't have any experience with Nintendo consoles newer than the Gamecube other than the DS handheld.

It was that thing that let you play Game Boy games on your TV [but through a SNES].

Ah. The DS is fine. My problems with the DS/3DS are that the screen res is way too low and a lot of the games are too gimmicky. For example a couple of the zelda games that came out for it were touch-screen only which really sucked. You had to drag the stylus where you wanted Link to go and then tap/swipe when you wanted him to strike. It really made the controls a lot less precise which isn't what I wanted in a zelda game. They made up for it in the latest one for 3DS where you can merge into the walls. That one still had some stupid crap where you had to blow/spit onto the DS and I think even a couple of spots where you had to yell at it. That kind of crap is just stupid and needs to be removed. But I get your point; there have been many times I had wished I could play those games on the big screen instead of cramping my hands and face into the tiny DS screens. I just wish Nintendo had packed enough power into the switch to run the games at 1080p. Oh well.

By the time any stores actually have it in stock I'll probably have a pretty good idea of whether it's worth it. Nobody around here has the NES Classic either. Nintendo sucks.

All existing Nintendo consoles supporting old games (starting with the Wii VC) use an in-house developed emulator by Nintendo. It's far from perfect even for NES/SNES, especially the graphical output.

The Nintendo Switch is not a replacement for the DS, and Nintendo has outright said so. This is important to note, as apparently Nintendo is quoting a maximum battery life of less than 3 hours when playing the new Zelda game.

The NES Classic is apparently pretty bad as well. It is also an emulator box, and apparently has some serious flaws, like massive audio delay on the order of several frames.

I'll take a Raspberry Pi with an SD card full of ROMs anyday. I refuse to pay for the same game for the nth time if the experience is anything less than stellar. They've had like a decade to figure this crap out.

Great, so it won't be a competent handheld either.

Is the main battery user replaceable? It seems, at a glance, next to the vent. I wonder if the thing runs hot.

Now I think about it, this device would have 3 batteries total since the Joy Con attachments need to run off their own power.

I guess Nintendo need to exercise the Switch's marketing to its full potential cause Wii-U-on-the-go-but-not-really doesn't sound ...great?

I've been waiting for a Thinkpad laptop that can handle bigger models and CAD stuff (that I can also take to a site), and I see a good number of people disappointed that the new line doesn't contain Pascal GPUs yet. I don't know much about mobile GPUs and Pascal seems (to be marketed) as the next Big Thing, could the Switch using a Pascal architecture GPU been a game-changer in terms of performance and battery life?

Let me rephrase that since I suck at this, is the Switch a significant amount worse off than what it could have been if they took more time?

I think it was around 20% power improvement? I calculated it but don't remember. That's the ballpark though. Faster and longer battery life with Pascal.

The Switch is using Nvidia's X1 chip. I don't think the X2 ("Pascal") is ready yet, otherwise nVidia would have used it in their new nVidia Shield release at CES.

It's a good chip, for mobile/tablet purposes. It's not going to amaze as a console. The Pixel C has the same chip if you're interested in looking up benchmarks on battery. Otherwise, the nVidia Shield is basically what it'll do when plugged in. Great for media consumption and mobile apps. Not great for console gaming.

The NES classic seems like a nostalgia grab for some people but I've personally never seen the point. Your comment about the Raspberry Pi was pretty much exactly what I was thinking in terms of a great project and way to play the games for someone like Brian or me with our children. Just too many alternatives to be stuck with Nintendo's Force Choke on these games.

Zelda Breath of the Wild looks like it would be an amazing PC game.

Have I said that enough times yet?

It's so much easier to just go to Target or wherever and just pay $60, go home, plug it in, and play it. Don't worry about cobbling together parts, getting viruses from torrent sites while downloading illegal roms, finding new aftermarket controllers that don't work half as well as the original NES ones, going through 8 different emulators to find the best ones for the games we like to play, etc.

Is it just me or does Brian make some not very hard things out to be much harder than are actually are?

>Cobbling parts

It's pre-built. You plug in power and an SD card. Maybe throw it in a case if you're feeling fancy.

>Getting viruses from torrents
There's so many reputable sites for roms now this hasn't been an issue for like a decade.

>Aftermarket controllers
The Pi setup supports Xbox, PS3/4, Wii bluetooth, or hell, just get a USB adapter for the original NES/SNES controller. All out of the box supported. Bonus points: the controller cable isn't like, 2 inches long like it is on the NES Classic.

>Finding the best emulator
RetroPie already did this for you. Out of the box they're all configured and ready to go. The only things that are still fiddly are systems like PS1 or some really garbage N64 games, as they still aren't emulated perfectly. Anything older is amazingly good and honestly better than even the NES Classic.


All you do is toss the roms in the right folder and you're good to go. If you want to get fancy, you give it internet access and let it index them too for artwork, etc. It runs a UI designed for controllers on a TV and is easy enough to use that even my nephew can handle it.

Dolphin and Higan. You're welcome.

Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

oH YEEAHHHHH

s/hard/time consuming/

Everything is easy when you already know about them and have already done it. It will take at least a few hours right? And likely more. Vs. ~10 minute trip to target and ~5 minutes to unbox and hook up, and we'd be playing. Plus 8 hours of surgery and 10 weeks of recovery to make my arms longer.

Could be a cool project for them, especially with the Pi. Maybe you can spin it like that.

Dunno. My first emulator for the NES was the NEStical and had a hairy ballsack as a desktop icon. We definitely moved on from those days, friendlier too.

Kinda miss the tacky UI of the ZNES.

The last thing I need in my life at this point is another project.

Apparently English was much harder for me than are actually are! Sheesh. Kind of cool, though, that pretty much nobody care about it now because phones.