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[JoeM86]

Miiverse is a system feature. And Fullblox running pretty badly in 3DS is an indication that their standards aren't as high as you may praise them. Welcome to reality!

Fullblox doesn't run badly on a standard 3DS. You're clutching at straws.

Miiverse is also the most minor 3DS feature. It's not a core feature like BLOODY SLEEP MODE.

So they're moving on to super game boy and virtual boy now?

No. They shifted their Virtual Console focus to the Wii U since the NX is to absorb Wii U architecture so they can just shift the games over straightout.

 

[Doczu]

So they're moving on to super game boy and virtual boy now?

So much lost potential here. Could make a few quick cash-in games with just adding colors.

 

[Beren the Empty-Handed]

I didn't know there was that much love for Stadium. I remember owning it and playing it, but it was pretty bad! It took all the charm away from pokemon.

I found it to be quite the opposite. It let me battle my Pokemon in 3D, and against really tough opponents, far more so than anything the GB games threw at me. I could battle my friends too. Then the games give you rare or one-of-a-kind Pokemon (Baton Pass Farfetch'd is still garbage, but it was a cool novelty, and the original let me get a truckload of starters and Eevee), the Dodrio GB Towers are still the best way to play those old games, and my friends and I still play the mini-games.

 

[Sakwoff]

Is it done to the level Nintendo find acceptable though?

Considering what Nintendo usually deems acceptable for emulation, I think Homebrewers are fast exceeding that point.

Some of Nintendo's emulators are delivering absolutely deplorable results.

 

[JoeM86]

Considering what Nintendo usually deems acceptable for emulation, I think Homebrewers are fast exceeding that point.

Some of Nintendo's emulators are delivering absolutely deplorable results.

How so? Without using the word filter, which I do agree should be an option and not mandatory, please say how the Virtual Console emulators are providing "deplorable" results.

 

[UncleSporky]

There's not much point trying to convince joe on this: He just repeats the company line even when it's blatant lies or utter stupidity, as he has done for months if not years.


GBA Games are totally doable on 3DS and the argument that they can't sell them because "missing features" is just stupid, when all those features are also missing from DSiware games, which are sold fine on the 3DS eshop.

I'm sorry if the struggle of having to remember to choose to use an in game sleep option is too hard for some of you to comprehend, but that's not a good enough reason to hold back the games.

It's not that they can't, it's that they won't. If you think it's stupid it's not the guy posting about it, it's Nintendo's standards.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/07/we_cant_release_virtual_console_games_any_faster_as_it_would_impact_new_development_says_iwata

Development of Virtual Console titles require detailed manual work, such as testing if the software runs smoothly on each platform, or making sure the content is appropriate under the various standards currently in place. Thus, we occasionally receive opinions that our pace of releasing new Virtual Console titles is slow, but if we use much of our human resources on such detailed manual work, we would not be able to develop new titles, so we are currently researching how we can efficiently develop Virtual Console titles with limited human resources.

This is also the company that unnecessarily pays to get its old games rated by the ESRB.

 

[Balb]

How so? Without using the word filter, which I do agree should be an option and not mandatory, please say how the Virtual Console emulators are providing "deplorable" results.

I can't speak to the N64 emulator as a whole since I only have one game that uses it but I can say that Super Mario 64 on Wii U VC has noticeable input lag which is unacceptable for that kind of game.

 

[hosannainexcelsis]

It's clear that Nintendo stopped putting any real effort into VC on either console a long time ago. I imagine that whatever team handles their emulators is busy getting things ready for NX, it would be a massive boon for their next platform if they launched with a serious retro game service and not the drip-fed mess we have now.

Given Nintendo's treatment of Virtual Console until now, I'm not going to have any faith in NX Virtual Console until I see it. It doesn't seem to be a big priority for them, despite the fact that the release schedule for their platforms is already so thin.

 

[sixteen-bit]

That's sad to hear

 

[Starwolf_UK]

I don't understand how this works. IIRC the same thing happened with SNES games where Nintendo was done and didn't want any more releases?

We don't know but it is at least one of the following:
-NOA suck
-Nintendo don't care about older systems on VC anymore and any NES/SNES game you see are one still lingering in the queue.

I don't understand at all how pitchforks aren't being raised over this and the SNES games on Wii U. Natsume is ready to give us Lufia 2 and Nintendo don't care. Companies tend to respond to sustained angry shrieking but I guess Nintendo fans don't really care either.

Pitchforks come out alright but only for Metroid Zero Mission.

SNES
...
Super Tennis Published by Nintendo in USA+Europe but not Japan. Developed by TOSE. It is assumed that Tonkin House (who published it in Japan) withdrew from gaming. Not sure the fate of its parent company Tokyo Shoseki either. I'm saying it is unlikely...
...
Wario's Woods - We got the NES version Plus the SNES was never released in Japan outside of an undumped and no known copies BSX broadcast. Non-Japan games don't seem to be a priority considering how recent Star Tropics release is
...

N64
...
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Bold me please.
...
Animal Crossing How can I eligible outside of Japan? I'm Japanese only.

Total remaining eligible first party titles outside Japan: 21

I've added a few comments.

Nintendo wants machine accurate, not machine approximate emulation. Approximate isn't too hard, you just got given you a link to some homebrew that does it, but Accurate just isn't possible with the 3DSes power as it takes a lot more grunt than the little thing has. Here's an old article about what it'd take to get it going on PC from 2011
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/...-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/
Involved stuff right?

Do they now? Perhaps you can explain why these load times are completely hardware inaccurate and also inconsistently so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzWif_Jqt7Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trr6xSDnFxo
One game is faster than hardware the other is slower.

Or perhaps we can finally stop pasting this arstechnica article and trying to claim Nintendo made BSNES on 1/4 of the processor power.

What's wrong with the N64 emulation?

It is weird in places:
https://youtu.be/SH6rzYqXlb0?t=45m11s
It is both faster and slower than hardware for the same game lagging extremely badly in the video shown above.

They probably tweak the emulator for each and every game to make it work correctly, and they should be able to do that for 3DS as well.

That is exactly what they do. Each package is a self contained emulator and ROM. Does it add a lot of work? No if you did all purpose you would have to test everything when you make a change.

 

[UncleSporky]

Or perhaps we can finally stop pasting this arstechnica article and trying to claim Nintendo made BSNES on 1/4 of the processor power.

Could probably just say Nintendo wants to emulate their games as accurately as possible, and per their assessment the 3DS cannot properly handle some console emulation up to their standards.

I mean, I'm not sure what other conclusion you would draw. You could trot out the old classic "lazy devs" line, I suppose.

 

[Boney]

Everyone thinks they've been getting ready for the NX, but we've been through that song and dance before.

 

[Shizuka]

I fail to comprehend how "sleep mode" is such a huge and major feature to refrain Nintendo from selling GBA games for the 3DS completely. Just like many people mentioned here, I'm sorry, it's not as important as you make it out to be.

 

[Finale Fireworker]

NX better launch with a full, comprehensive, VC library without bizarre color features and incorrect aspect ratios.

Or I just won't buy it.

I've accepted that I'm more interested in Nintendo's legacy titles than their newer ones, and all I want is the ability to play those games in one space.

 

[entremet]

I'm still buying games on the original Wii VC.

Such a great selection--including TG-16, Neo Geo, and Genesis.

Also most have 240p support so the look awesome on a CRT.

With the prices on SNES and TG16 carts these days, it's a great legal option. The only problem is the lack of licensed stuff due to legal reasons of course. And of course, it doesn't have everything. But it does have some really great games.

And TG16 is in 480i so it doesn't look as good.

 

[Finale Fireworker]

I'm still buying games on the original Wii VC.

Such a great selection--including TG-16, Neo Geo, and Genesis.

Also most have 240p support so the look awesome on a CRT.

With the prices on SNES and TG16 carts these days, it's a great legal option. The only problem is the lack of licensed stuff due to legal reasons of course. And of course, it doesn't have everything. But it does have some really great games.

And TG16 is in 480i so it doesn't look as good.

We were so spoiled by the Wii VC.

 

[Novel Mike]

This is why I think Nintendo needs to expand. Unlike some of the other companies they are relatively small and so resources are clearly being drawn away from things like VC when it should be a huge priority and they should be marketing it more.

They claim they don't want to bring the Pokemon games because you can't trade and battle but thats the thing, these would sell like crazy WITHOUT those features and if you are that worried about it then have a 'new' version (Lets call it Green if its the original generation XD) that allows you to catch all 150 pokemon and changes the trade evolutions to a level up evolution at say level 50. You still can't trade or battle a friend but at least you can complete the game like it was originally intended.

They literally could be printing money and providing a constant steady stream of games for these systems but they just... aren't. They should open a new relatively small division just to provide a steady stream of retro games that people want, and securing rights and third party retro games as well.

Nintendo has the greatest libary of Retro games and it hurts me to no end that they aren't using it like... at all.

 

[Spieler Eins]

NX better launch with a full, comprehensive, VC library without bizarre color features and incorrect aspect ratios.

Or I just won't buy it.

I've accepted that I'm more interested in Nintendo's legacy titles than their newer ones, and all I want is the ability to play those games in one space.

The Dena program might give some clarification on its future soon. Maybe they finally bring real Nintendo accounts that already secure current VC titles for the future.

If not, expect another fresh start with Mario Bros. for 5 bucks on NX and once again even worse support and new problems replacing darkened screens and such.
It's pathetic that the far superior accumulation of titles on Wii will forever be locked away separately.

 

[UncleSporky]

I fail to comprehend how "sleep mode" is such a huge and major feature to refrain Nintendo from selling GBA games for the 3DS completely. Just like many people mentioned here, I'm sorry, it's not as important as you make it out to be.

"You," as in the person making the post, or "you" as in Nintendo?

It's not as important as Nintendo makes it out to be, certainly. But it's their reasoning regardless.

If not for lack of mostly-accurate emulation and full system features, why else do you think they're leaving money on the table?

 

[Garlador]

"You," as in the person making the post, or "you" as in Nintendo?

It's not as important as Nintendo makes it out to be, certainly. But it's their reasoning regardless.

If not for lack of mostly-accurate emulation and full system features, why else do you think they're leaving money on the table?

Nintendo often leaves money on the table. They're weird and follow the beat of their own drum, bucking popular trends and fads and continuing to act like they're in the SNES days and they can dictate terms on games and game developers, even if it hurts them long-term.

It's poor reasoning, largely because things like "sleep mode" are features that weren't a part of these games when they were released, so retroactively adding in new features to games never designed for them isn't smart business when, what gamers want, is just the game at all.

Nintendo's biggest advantage over Sony, PC, Xbox, and mobile is arguably that it has the greatest library of games of all time. They squander that advantage by sitting on that library and not releasing it on new systems for admittedly arbitrary reasons.

 

[Shizuka]

"You," as in the person making the post, or "you" as in Nintendo?

It's not as important as Nintendo makes it out to be, certainly. But it's their reasoning regardless.

If not for lack of mostly-accurate emulation and full system features, why else do you think they're leaving money on the table?

You're supposing they're leaving money on the table for sleep mode. Have they ever confirmed it's their reasoning? That makes even less sense.

 

[UncleSporky]

You're supposing they're leaving money on the table for sleep mode. Have they ever confirmed it's their reasoning? That makes even less sense.

Nice dodge of the question.

 

[chaobreaker]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/...-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

No offense Joe, but I don't see why you're pointing to bsnes, a PC emulator that is aiming for 100% perfect emulation, when Nintendo is at most looking for their VC games to just work with little to no hiccups. Homebrew SNES emulators apparently run fine on then 3DS, so I don't see why Nintendo couldn't start just releasing SNES games for the 3DS eshop.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

That's fine, I have homebrew channel doing the job that you won't do, Ninty.

 

[Shizuka]

Nice dodge of the question.

Leaving money on the table for several reasons, the same as Nintendo dropping the pace with 3DS VC like this thread mentions. Leaving money on the table for sleep mode? No, just no.

 

[PtM]

Isn't that arstechnica article about building a simulator though? Only glanced over it, but apparently it's about accuracy.

 

[ZOONAMI]

Gameboy advance, snes, 64, and GC vc is what I hope to see a lot of on NX. I don't really care about regular Gameboy, nes, or even wii/wii u bc.

 

[UncleSporky]

Leaving money on the table for several reasons, the same as Nintendo dropping the pace with 3DS VC like this thread mentions. Leaving money on the table for sleep mode? No, just no.

Still doesn't provide any sort of answer. "Several reasons," great.

There are more reasons than sleep mode regardless. The games don't have a proper wrapper like other VC releases, because they can't really support it with the downclocked hardware mode they run in, no button remapping, can't comment or post screens in Miiverse when it's running, all sorts of things.

It can't run to the standard of quality that Nintendo thinks they need to meet with all of their 3DS software. Yeah, everyone else thinks it's stupid. That's irrelevant.

 

[Somnid]

Nintendo seems very resource constrained on VC. It seems like the same team handles both Wii U and 3DS which is likely because they don't make a whole lot from this. This is a place where sharing a platform could be really beneficial as they'd be able to port emulators to wherever and that makes a bigger base for all games.

 

[Triforce141]

Well, at least the Zelda and Wario Land games got released.

Spoiler

R.I.P. Metal Gear: Ghost Babel release

So they're moving on to super game boy and virtual boy now?

Why didn't Nintendo ever do a port/remake of Virtual Boy Wario Land on the eShop, I'll never know?

Right, so here's the current list of first party titles that have yet to be released (focused on Europe). I may have included some titles that are out, as I haven't updated this list in a while

NES
Nazo no Murasame Jo - Japan only

Wait, I thought The Mysterious Murasame Castle came out for 3DS VC in all regions.

Spoiler

Don't mess with my dreams of playable Takamaru in Smash.

 

[sörine]

Is it done to the level Nintendo find acceptable though? And note that it's being done on the N3DS, not the 3DS

That's not true at all, BlargSNES has excellent compatibility for old 3DS (basically perfect for non-chipped games like Mario World, ALTTP or Super Metroid) and it was developed by one person using only partial system resources (one CPU core, no GPU, about 45MB RAM).

If you're talking about Retroarch then yeah CATSFC and SNES9x run slow but those aren't as customized, also have the RA/RGUI layer running in the background and still also aren't using full system resources.

There's no real doubt 3DS would be capable of fullspeed SNES emulation on non-chipped games, it already is. And with full system resources, official hardware docs, devkits and Nintendo software engineers I bet they could probably get DSP, C4, SA1 and SDD1 games running too. "Not possible" literally isn't an excuse here, it's already happened with Homebrew and from Bandai Namco's various official efforts (like the BDZ Super Butoden 2 SFC rom that comes as a preorder bonus for their new DBZ Ultimate Butoden games).

 

[jholmes]

I found Sony handling of ps1/2 games on psn to be lacking at best but Nintendo is at a whole other level of clusterfuck.

Yeah, how well do those games work on the PS4? Sony really putting Nintendo to shame there all right.

To the point in the OP, it's been said but Natsume said the same about the SNES and we just got a SNES game on Wii U last week.

 

[Vandole]

How much money is really being left on the table though. Does anyone actually know or is that just the go-to catchphrase?

The average 3rd party VC title usually has a couple hundred reviews on the 3DS and far fewer on the Wii U. After the revenue split with the 3rd party they probably get around $2 or $3. For every review we can assume 10 to 15 people don't leave one?? I just don't see Nintendo getting more than a few thousand dollars per game, which probably offsets any conversion and Miiverse costs.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I really don't see VC games as big money makers for Nintendo or anyone for that matter. Maybe for a company like Natsume that lost their cash cow (no pun intended) and want to try to get anything they can, but for a big company I don't see enough revenue being generated that they'd want to spend a lot of resources on it.

 

[gbrewski]

No offense Joe, but I don't see why you're pointing to bsnes, a PC emulator that is aiming for 100% perfect emulation, when Nintendo is at most looking for their VC games to just work with little to no hiccups. Homebrew SNES emulators apparently run fine on then 3DS, so I don't see why Nintendo couldn't start just releasing SNES games for the 3DS eshop.

Honestly, homebrew SNES emulators don't really run "fine" on the 3DS. Even on the N3DS, you are forced to choose between fullspeed emulation with poor audio that is often in the wrong key, or more accurate emulation that runs at half speed. I tested it and found it severely lacking.

People don't understand how weak even the New 3DS's CPU is, and how demanding even decent SNES emulation can be. And before anyone mentions the Wii, remember that it has a much stronger CPU than the 3DS.

 

[sörine]

Yeah, how well do those games work on the PS4? Sony really putting Nintendo to shame there all right.

To the point in the OP, it's been said but Natsume said the same about the SNES and we just got a SNES game on Wii U last week.

Natsume said Nintendo wasn't accepting more SNES games for submission and given what we know of the long queue they keep that's completely possible. Two of the games released after Natsume's statement was Namco's Metal Marines and Pac-Attack, both of which were esrb rated for Wii U nearly a year before that.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Nintendo VC on 3DS has been a shit show , fuck.

 

[chaobreaker]

Honestly, homebrew SNES emulators don't really run "fine" on the 3DS. Even on the N3DS, you are forced to choose between fullspeed emulation with poor audio that is often in the wrong key, or more accurate emulation that runs at half speed. I tested it and found it severely lacking.

People don't understand how weak even the New 3DS's CPU is, and how demanding even decent SNES emulation can be. And before anyone mentions the Wii, remember that it has a much stronger CPU than the 3DS.

Wtf? Did Rich! deceive us all with that thread?

 

[Vena]

Nintendo VC on 3DS has been a shit show , fuck.

It's not going to get better either, its being axed because its being phased out.

Writing is on the wall.

 

[A Link to the Past]

It's rather amazing how poorly Nintendo handled the 3DS eShop overall. VC almost immediately slowed to a trickle, with the only major bumps being when they started to re-re-release NES games. It's entirely embarrassing how little hindsight they had on cross-platform purchases, too.

 

[UncleSporky]

Why didn't Nintendo ever do a port/remake of Virtual Boy Wario Land on the eShop, I'll never know?

I'd say they want everyone to forget about the Virtual Boy failure, but then they keep putting references to it in various games like Animal Crossing.

It's possible that the two eye views generated by the game for Virtual Boy are not compatible with the two views needed for 3DS. Like the stereo separation is too great, or too little. And they probably feel there aren't enough people who would have nostalgia for it to spring for a game with so little attention ever paid to it.

 

[Vena]

It's rather amazing how poorly Nintendo handled the 3DS eShop overall. VC almost immediately slowed to a trickle, with the only major bumps being when they started to re-re-release NES games. It's entirely embarrassing how little hindsight they had on cross-platform purchases, too.

3DS wasn't built with much online foresight and a lot of its features are slapped together. Its no wonder its being neglected, none of it is going to carry over.

 

[sörine]

Honestly, homebrew SNES emulators don't really run "fine" on the 3DS. Even on the N3DS, you are forced to choose between fullspeed emulation with poor audio that is often in the wrong key, or more accurate emulation that runs at half speed. I tested it and found it severely lacking.

People don't understand how weak even the New 3DS's CPU is, and how demanding even decent SNES emulation can be. And before anyone mentions the Wii, remember that it has a much stronger CPU than the 3DS.

Wii CPU: single core PPCG3 @ 729 MHz
n3DS CPU: quad core ARM11 @ 804 MHz

And did you ever try BlargSNES on o3DS? It's pretty remarkable.

 

[gbrewski]

Wii CPU: single core PPCG3 @ 729 MHz
n3DS CPU: quad core ARM11 @ 804 MHz

And did you ever try BlargSNES on o3DS? It's pretty remarkable.

Whoops, I was thinking of the 3DS processor specs. Not sure to what degree threading could be leveraged in emulation, but good call there.

And I haven't tried Blarg yet, maybe that will actually turn me around. Honestly, I was so repulsed by RetroArch's performance that I kind of soured on the whole thing.

EDIT: Just because it's been nagging me, saying "804 MHz" to describe the N3DS processor is a bit disingeuous. It's a quad core CPU with each core clocked at 268mhz and one core set aside for OS--not really appropriate just to sum the clockspeed of the remaining three cores. It will work better than the Wii's processor for certain specific scenarios just by virtue of having multiple threads available, but I wonder how easy it would be to optimize emulators for multiple cores. As I understand, most emulators are designed to only use one CPU core because it creates much less of a headache.

 

[Gonzo The Great]

Everyone thinks they've been getting ready for the NX, but we've been through that song and dance before.

Exactly. I heard the same shit before the Wii U came out. Then they started trickling out games like NES Donkey Kong and Ice Climber for five bucks a pop. Not to mention the N64 emulation is somehow worse now than it was on the Wii.

 

[Anth0ny]

I didn't know there was that much love for Stadium. I remember owning it and playing it, but it was pretty bad! It took all the charm away from pokemon.

Pokemon Stadium let you play the gameboy Pokemon games at 4x speed


For that reason alone the stadium games are incredible. Of course, a theoretical stadium VC release would have to be compatible with a theoretical Pokemon RBY release.

 

[Best Nintendo Fan Ever]

Exactly. I heard the same shit before the Wii U came out. Then they started trickling out games like NES Donkey Kong and Ice Climber for five bucks a pop. Not to mention the N64 emulation is somehow worse now than it was on the Wii.

And people will continue to this day to defend the emulation as good enough or looks fine to me. How the hell did the emulation on Wii U get WORST from the Wii?

The only beacon of light is the GBA emulator made by M2.

 

[sörine]

Whoops, I was thinking of the 3DS processor specs. Not sure to what degree threading could be leveraged in emulation, but good call there.

And I haven't tried Blarg yet, maybe that will actually turn me around. Honestly, I was so repulsed by RetroArch's performance that I kind of soured on the whole thing.

EDIT: Just because it's been nagging me, saying "804 MHz" to describe the N3DS processor is a bit disingeuous. It's a quad core CPU with each core clocked at 268mhz and one core set aside for OS--not really appropriate just to sum the clockspeed of the remaining three cores. It will work better than the Wii's processor for certain specific scenarios just by virtue of having multiple threads available, but I wonder how easy it would be to optimize emulators for multiple cores. As I understand, most emulators are designed to only use one CPU core because it creates much less of a headache.

No, each core is 804 MHz. No one adds up cores to give a MHz clock. Old 3DS has a dual core ARM11 @ 268 MHz.

And while one core is reserved for the OS, bkgd apps and eye-tracking, so far homebrew only uses one core too iirc. Forget SNES, n3DS could probably do N64 VC if Nintendo wanted to. Homebrew is already getting PS1 at playable speeds (provided you have kernel access for dynarec).

And people will continue to this day to defend the emulation as good enough or looks fine to me. How the hell did the emulation on Wii U get WORST from the Wii?

The only beacon of light is the GBA emulator made by M2.

The DS emulator is also solid, although I find the setups awkward for some games and no button config is stupid beyond belief.

SNES isn't bad visually (unlike NES/N64) but the input lag takes some adjustment.

 

[gbrewski]

Each core is 804mhz?? This is the first I've heard of that. I don't disbelieve you, but could you link me to a source on that? Everywhere I've looked has said quad core @ 268mhz, but I know that the internet is a dark place full of misinformation.

EDIT: Nevermind, found it on 3dbrew. I had no idea this machine was so powerful! Thanks for the learnings.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

There have been multiple reasons why this would not be done. One of them being due to the virtual console features not being able to be used. Even the Ambassador games had to run in DS mode and couldn't be put on sleep mode.

So what? Honestly, does anyone care THAT much about save states? And let's not forget: GBA games played on the Nintendo DS couldn't use sleep mode either.

I actually love the fact that my GBA Ambassador games run natively if for no other reason than that it saves tooooons of battery. If I'm ever on a long train ride and my battery is running low, I can boot up Minish Cap or something and keep playing for several hours before the system dies.

 

[Vena]

So what? Honestly, does anyone care THAT much about save states? And let's not forget: GBA games played on the Nintendo DS couldn't use sleep mode either.

For the most part, no one cares about the VC to begin with. Its token.

Everyone thinks they've been getting ready for the NX, but we've been through that song and dance before.

Exactly. I heard the same shit before the Wii U came out. Then they started trickling out games like NES Donkey Kong and Ice Climber for five bucks a pop. Not to mention the N64 emulation is somehow worse now than it was on the Wii.

I think Boney is talking about general development and resources, not the VC.

Not that the situations are actually comparable for numerous reasons.