[HN Gopher] Leaked Game Boy emulators for Switch were made by Ni... ___________________________________________________________________ Leaked Game Boy emulators for Switch were made by Nintendo, experts suggest Author : takiwatanga Score : 110 points Date : 2022-04-19 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com) | CobrastanJorji wrote: | For those of you who aren't up on your Nintendo emulation pricing | schemes, here's the current model. If you want to play an old | NES, SNES, and N64 game, Nintendo makes those available on their | current console, the Switch. However, unlike other games, those | classic Nintendo titles are not for sale. Instead, you may access | them via a monthly subscription, "Nintendo Switch Online." | | However, the N64 titles are behind a second paywall. If you want | to play Mario 64, you need to sign up for a SECOND monthly | subscription called the "Expansion Pack." Also however, if you | want your kids to also be able to play N64 games on their | profiles, that requires a "Family Membership." | | Nintendo ties a few other perks into the plan, like a really tiny | Amazon Prime, so the base subscription also unlocks online play | in general (like an XBox or Playstation subscription), and | expansion packs for certain games require the second | subscription, like the latest features for Animal Crossing or new | tracks for Mario Kart. | | Charging me $20 to play Ocarina of Time is a lot, but it's a | reasonable price that I would probably pay well before I started | looking into emulation. But renting Ocarina of Time to me for | $80/year is just awful. | widowlark wrote: | Finally. This barely helps, but at least now there might be some | access to legacy portable games that does not require a | significant monetary investment and/or piracy | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | > ... that does not require a significant monetary investment | and/or piracy | | Unfortunately, we're talking about Nintendo. I'll be hoping | with you but I'm not holding my breath. | circa wrote: | I agree! I hope it's real. Very exciting. I love so many | classic GB games | whateveracct wrote: | It's all about the EverDrive on original hardware. Gameboy Player | is especially nice (either on a CRT of upscaled with a separate | tool) | konfusinomicon wrote: | every day that nintendo doesn't make it simple and available for | people to play all the games from the past, 100 people discover | emulation. the barrier to entry as far as technological know how | to procure and operate said emulators has gotten easier and | easier as the years go by. they in turn tell more people, who | keep the news flowing to more and more and more. the losses by | nintendo, and the publishers of games added up over all that time | must be astronomical. imagine the emulation capabilities of | launchbox combined with a library of roms the size that most the | target demographic could pirate online with a negligable amount | of effort, on a non jailbroken ps5 or xbox or switch. these | companies are missing out on so much cash flow from what are | essentially dead revenue streams. and customer satisfaction would | be through the damn roof.. | lostgame wrote: | >> every day that nintendo doesn't make it simple and available | for people to play all the games from the past | | Due to licensing, this isn't possible. So there'a going to be | an infinite amount more days like this. | konfusinomicon wrote: | an unfortunate reality indeed. and the worst part is, that | the ones who hold the license are the ones really missing | out. And us peons are banished back to launchbox land, to so | many games that even just the act of nostalgically scrolling | through them is enough entertainment for an evening | Al-Khwarizmi wrote: | Even just supporting first-party titles would go a long way. | In the particular case of Nintendo, many, if not most, of the | most universally acclaimed classics are first-party games. | mattl wrote: | What first party NES and SNES games are you missing from | NSO? | initplus wrote: | Why would any sane consumer purchase those games when | Nintendo has no track record of honoring purchases? | Nintendo aggressively cuts off access to consumers past | purchases in the hopes that they buy the same retro games | again on the new system. Not just by not sharing retro | game purchases between systems, but also not even letting | consumers still download their purchases on older | systems. | | It's like buying a book that's set to self-destruct a | decade from now - no sane consumer would buy such a | product. | mattl wrote: | I bought a couple of Virtual Console games on the Wii. | Those same games were transferred to my Wii U system with | an SD card. The same games are now included on the | Nintendo Switch Online service and many others too. | maybeOneDay wrote: | Which is to say: you had to wait for years for them to | come out on Switch, and then pay again. Forever. | mattl wrote: | No, I'm pretty sure they were available very early after | I bought the Switch console. Maybe within a year? | | Late 2006 I bought the Wii and then the Wii U in 2014 and | now I pay the family plan at maybe $70 a year? | | Doesn't seem different to buying songs on iTunes in 2006 | and now paying for Apple Music every month now. | LukeShu wrote: | NSO is a subscription, not a "purchase". | | There are good arguments to be made against subscriptions | in comparison to purchases, but lots of "sane consumers" | _do_ buy in to such subscriptions with volatile content | libraries that might have pieces of content self-destruct | at any time (Netflix and Hulu). | | Plus, an NSO subscription is needed for online play, so | many consumers have subscribed to NSO to play online with | their friends, and access to the NES and SNES libraries | is a freebie bonus. | mathgeek wrote: | The games in question are for handheld systems (Game Boy | and Game Boy Advance, specifically). | mattl wrote: | Seems like the sentiment is that Nintendo should have all | their first party titles available. | CobrastanJorji wrote: | Okay, sure, there are plenty of great old games that Nintendo | doesn't own, but there are also many properties that Nintendo | has complete ownership of and can easily make more available. | They can definitely lower the wall on those. | bduerst wrote: | Isn't this what Nintendo is already doing? | | https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/2021/the-classic- | ga... | matheusmoreira wrote: | They can't do it. Most of the games in their console libraries | aren't theirs, they belong to third parties. They can't even | offer it for purchase. I've been wanting to buy the older Ace | Combat games on PlayStation for years but they never come due | to idiotic licensing issues nobody cares about. | | Copyright industry will always defeat itself. Anything short of | everything humanity ever created in one place fails to compete | with copyright infringement. | postingposts wrote: | Hey you know, it's a good thing! This helps you not be | attached to the past, and let's be honest here... people make | things for money, not love or art. Otherwise they wouldn't | copyright it. | matheusmoreira wrote: | > it's a good thing! This helps you not be attached to the | past | | What an interesting way to spin into a feature the | copyright industry's inability to give people what they | want. You know what else is a good thing? Emulation. | Amazing thing. | | > people make things for money, not love or art. Otherwise | they wouldn't copyright it. | | Not only is this false, it's a huge factor in authenticity | and quality. We want creators who have an intrinsic drive | to create, who something to say, who have a vision they | want to realize, who would create regardless of profits. | Nobody cares about cheap cash grabs. The money is meant to | fuel their creations. | tsol wrote: | I'd argue people make things for money AND love. It's just | the money you need to survive, and the love is just nice | and fulfilling-- so you can guess what people end up | hyperfocusing on | postingposts wrote: | Uh, it's not love if you're doing it for money. It's | work. You might enjoy the feeling of getting paid but | that's not love. | munificent wrote: | _> people make things for money, not love or art._ | | People make things for all sorts of combinations of various | amounts of money, love, and art. | | The idea that motivation must be purely extrinsic or purely | intrinsic is false and toxic. It demeans paid work and | discourages people from seeking meaning in their jobs. | postingposts wrote: | It's my perspective. I think that money is toxic and | demeaning. You won't change my perspective on that. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Seems to me those 3rd parties would want access to that cash | flow, even if Nintendo took a percentage for making them | available on the latest system. The app store model. | endisneigh wrote: | I'll never understand why Nintendo doesn't do a subscription to | play any old game older than say three generations. | | Nintendo is in the best position - since they never focused on | specs all of their consoles are easily emulate-able. | | There's really no excuse. Even from a revenue perspective I'm | confident they'd make more money this way. Make it so it works on | any device - again Nintendo can do this because the consoles | don't require great computers to emulate. | | You probably could run 100 gba emulators simultaneously at 120fps | on a modern commodity desktop. | idonotknowwhy wrote: | The did focus on specs prior to the wii. | | GameCube > ps2 (apart from disc capacity) N64 > Ps1 (again, | apart from storage) | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | I pay for Nintendo Switch Online, which includes access to a | handful of games from the NES and SNES consoles. If I want to | pay more I could also get access to games for N64 and SEGA | Genesis (SEGA Mega Drive outside of North America if I'm not | mistaken). | | I would have to assume (may not be correct) that Nintendo | Switch Online will roll over to their new console(s), albeit | under some other name, including the emulation software and | game access. | owlninja wrote: | The Virtual Console on Wii did not continue on. | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: | You mean in that you can not play the Virtual Console on | Wii anymore. (It does help to point out that they can | choose to end the service whenever they want.) | | It is still a point that the games which were made | available on the Virtual Console could still simply be made | available on Nintendo Switch Online. It seems to me that | the Virtual Console for the Wii (in effect) became the | emulators that were made available with Nintendo Switch | Online. | causality0 wrote: | That's the standard every other platform has moved to. If | I buy a game on the play store I can use it on any | android I own. If I buy Banjo Kazooie on the Microsoft | store I can play it on my 360 or Xbox one or series x and | probably the next five consoles Microsoft puts out. | Nintendo's rabid anti-consunerism will bite them one day. | 0x0 wrote: | Sorry but no, the play store will prevent you from | installing old apps on new phones very soon. https://deve | loper.android.com/google/play/requirements/targe... | causality0 wrote: | I wonder if they'll still do license checks for | sideloaded APKs. | hbn wrote: | Historically, porting console games from one to the next | isn't always the easiest task since the hardware is so | specialized. I think it's been fairly easy for Microsoft | because they basically just put out a standard PC every | console generation, and their controller design has been | pretty much exactly the same since the beginning. But | Sony and Nintendo have had some weird hardware. The PS3 | was infamously difficult to develop for because it had | some wacky architecture under the hood, and we've only | recently seen somewhat capable emulation efforts for it. | | And Nintendo's in a particularly weird situation where | even if it wasn't just the underlying architecture, the | consoles all have some kind of "gimmick" where you | couldn't really play them on a different system without | rethinking the entire game. Like, if you bought a Wii U | game digitally, the game was designed around being played | on a TV with a secondary resistive touchscreen | controller. How would you play that on the Switch, where | you only have one screen which may be either on the TV or | handheld, and it's capacitive instead of resistive? | Nintendo has ported some Wii U games to Switch, but they | involved manual work to change how some stuff works. Same | with when they port Wii games to it. Super Mario Galaxy | was made for a Wii remote and nunchuck, and had a lot of | motion control gameplay elements that had to be | redesigned to work on Switch. | mattl wrote: | Xbox 360 was PowerPC based. | causality0 wrote: | _Historically, porting console games from one to the next | isn 't always the easiest task since the hardware is so | specialized_ | | Yeah, it's tough when the consoles have roughly | comparable performance. When they don't it's less so. | Amateurs without access to source code got the Dreamcast | to run Playstation games better than the Playstation. | They got the PSP the run N64 games. They've gotten the | Switch to run everything from the Dreamcast down. It's | less work than that for internal developers; Nintendo | basically made an N64 emulator for the Gamecube as a lark | just to offer a free pre-order disc with Wind Waker. | nfRfqX5n wrote: | game licensing seems like it would be a massive issue | hsbauauvhabzb wrote: | Modern vintage gamer (a decent youtube free vintage gaming | advocate) cites this for the original Xbox but I think it | affects Nintendo also. | Firmwarrior wrote: | I learned about this when I read the book "Console Wars" | | Nintendo has always been all about artificial scarcity and | increasing their products' value that way, ever since the early | 80s | | If Nintendo put out a subscription service with 3500 games, it | would de-value all those games in the long run even though it | might earn more revenue for the next few years. | phatfish wrote: | There is also the issue that most of those 3500 are never | going to played for more than 5 minutes and will just be | there as a curiosity. | | There are the classics still worth playing, and the cult | titles that hit some nostalgia button for a significant | number of people. Beyond those it's just not worth it for | Nintendo to even format a jpeg of the box art. | | Personally I prefer a curated list with the scans of the | manual and some history behind the game like they provide | now. Otherwise you are in decision paralysis looking at 1000s | of titles with no clue which is worth your time. | | Them trying to ring out more money on top of the base Switch | Online subscription for N64 games is my main issue. If they | had not done that I would likely have subscribed again. The | drip feed is a little too slow also, but I don't have the | free time anyway so it's not a deal breaker. | | As it stands I'll wait for my Steam Deck and not be able to | decide which ROM to play on there ;) | Gigachad wrote: | I think Nintendo knows that people don't actually care that | much about playing game boy games. They are boring and | unpleasant by todays standards but they hold a strong | nostalgia factor. So they drip out bits of content and sell | it at a high price while a subscription service would just | remind everyone how little they care about playing very old | games. | skeeter2020 wrote: | But somehow Disney does this - how many purchased VHS movies | before they went into the vault? What's their secret? | effingwewt wrote: | I remember the games had to be ordered via catalog (toys r | us, jc penney) and took 6+ months to arrive. | | Blockbuster ate their lunch with rentals. BB and Hollywood | Video went to town on this with the SNES with guaranteed in | stock new games for rental. | | On the switch Nintendo charges insane prices for re-released | (read- emulated _and poorly_ ). If you want to play their | shitty emulation of an N64 game it's like $70 US/year. | | Publishers want to get to the point they charge us per minute | played or per boot. | | I'm over Nintendo, and I once cherished my complete | collection of Nintendo Power mags with all alternate covers. | bredren wrote: | I believe Disney did this with its films over the 80s and | 90s. People built collections of these VHS tapes in big | plastic boxes, it was a thing for an "old" film to get a | release. | math-dev wrote: | this was us! | RajT88 wrote: | When you think of "Playing a long game" when applied to a | tech company, you probably think "longer than the next year". | Maybe you think "the next 5 years". | | Nintendo was founded in 1889. They are for sure playing a | long game measured in decades. They definitely don't obey the | same "laws of physics" other console manufacturers seem | beholden to. | | It's unwise to think Nintendo is acting out of ignorance. | babypuncher wrote: | This checks out. Nintendo really only seems interested in | using their back catalogue to create a value offering when | they are struggling to sell hardware. Hence why a lot of | first party GameCube and Wii U games got reissued in $20 | "Players Choice" SKUs late in their respective console's | lifecyles while they Wii and Switch launch titles have | remained full price. | shkkmo wrote: | > If Nintendo put out a subscription service with 3500 games, | it would de-value all those games in the long run even though | it might earn more revenue for the next few years. | | It also might expand the fan base loyalty to their valuable | IP franchises. | cruano wrote: | And also de-value the newer games and/or remakes, I for one | tend to buy "The newest zelda" if I'm itching for any zelda | game, but if I had easy access to 10 older zelda titles | that'd be it | kevincox wrote: | Why would they did that when they can make more money porting | the games, touching up the graphics and rereleasing them as | "new" games every generation? | duxup wrote: | That's on the Switch to some extent. | fuzzer37 wrote: | Albeit with a limited library (Although I'd say nearly every | game worth playing is already on there, besides a couple N64 | games). For reference, with the Switch Online subscription | you get | | * NES | | * SNES | | * N64 | | * Sega Genesis | | I guess you could argue that Gamecube isn't represented yet, | but that's the only major out of date system that isn't | included (Understanding that almost any game playable on the | WiiU is also on the Switch). | LukeShu wrote: | You don't get N64 or Sega Genesis with the basic Nintendo | Switch Online subscription, you need to go for the more | expensive "Expansion Pack" subscription to get those. | | The N64 library is quite small, and only has a handful of | games. I mean, the ideal N64 library is also quite small: | only 306 North American or PAL (~English language) games | were ever released. But 306 seems so eminently _achievable_ | that it makes the small selection of games on the service | that much more dramatic. | Legion wrote: | > Although I'd say nearly every game worth playing is | already on there, besides a couple N64 games | | I'd say it takes a very narrow view of what's "worth | playing" to say that. | | To me, the Switch Online emulation services are defined by | what they're missing. | fuzzer37 wrote: | What would you say they're missing? I mean, all of the | NES, SNES, and N64 Mario games are on there, along with | all of the Zelda games on those consoles. Nearly all of | Nintendo's IP's are on there. I can't really imagine | anything that it's truly missing. | LukeShu wrote: | Nintendo IPs: Donkey Kong 64. Diddy Kong Racing. Kirby 64 | (Crystal Shards). Any of the Pokemons. Any of the | Bombermans. Excitebike 64. | | Non-Nintendo IPs: GoldenEye. Any of the Tony Hawk Pro | Skaters[1]. Either Duke Nukem. Doom 64[2]. The second | Banjo-Kazooie. Wave Race. Earthworm Jim. | | [1]: Pro Skater 1 & 2 have been released for the Switch | separately from NSO; $40 for both of them as a bundle. 3 | has not been released for the Switch. | | [2]: Doom 64 has been released for the Switch separately | from NSO; for $5. | duxup wrote: | The non Nintendo IPs are necessarily Nintendo's to use. | Adraghast wrote: | > all of the NES, SNES, and N64 Mario games are on there | | Super Mario RPG isn't. | | Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy 6, Mega Man X, TMNT. I'd even | pay a couple bucks to waste an hour playing Bart's | Nightmare again. | | Pokemon is a nonentity. | | It'd be a hell of a nostalgia trip to play Rampage, | IronSword, Monster Party, Linus Spacehead, Treasure | Island Dizzy, Super Robinhood, or Boomerang Kid. | Alex3917 wrote: | > since they never focused on specs all of their consoles are | easily emulate-able. | | I dunno, the NES and SNES emulators all tend to be terrible, | except for the NES and SNES Classic. | WastingMyTime89 wrote: | Both the NES and the SNES have emulators which are cycle- | accurate including the weird peripherals and cartridges with | strange extension. They are by far the easiest system to | emulate properly nowadays. | cortesoft wrote: | Really? I have never had any issues playing old NES and SNES | games on RetroArch. What makes the emulators terrible? | RajT88 wrote: | Weird glitches. Flicker, or colors being wrong. Things | running at the wrong speed. Things not rendering right. | Sometimes the game crashes at certain spots. | | A lot of games have been perfectly playable on emulators | since the 90's, but they may not have been totally | representative of the look and feel on the original | hardware. If you look at emulator compatibility docs they | frequently will list an estimation of how faithful it is to | the original hardware, and as well denote, "Completable" | (i.e. you can actually play the game all the way through | without something devastating happening, or you getting | stuck because a door never opens or something like that) | aidenn0 wrote: | Mesen and bsnes are both pretty close to flawless for the NES | and SNES respectively. | prophesi wrote: | My guess is that this will be officially released as GB/GBA apps | for the Nintendo Online service once the eShops for the Wii U and | 3DS are discontinued next year, | stanford_labrat wrote: | Being unable to find a legit way to play GBA games was what got | me into emulators in the first place. Eventually I "cracked" my | Nintendo 3DS and turned it into a homebrew console, which was for | me a really interesting and fulfilling technical challenge. It | basically allowed for the whole Nintendo handheld catalogue | (barring technical capabilities of the hardware itself), as well | as some really cool customization. Highly recommend if you're | looking for a handheld device that can play most Nintendo games | pre-Switch. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-19 23:00 UTC)