Nintendo Ressurecting Classic NES Games to the GBA 214
The Pi-Guy writes "It seems contradictory to Big N's massive anti-emulation stance to introduce the GBA as an emulator itself! An official N press release states that there will be "full classic NES games for download to the GBA"." Probably not so much Duck Hunt, but it sure
would be sweet to get SMB3 on my GBA. Then I could go blind!
How is that Contradictory? (Score:1)
Re:How is that Contradictory? (Score:1)
Nintendo can bite my shiny metal ass.
Re:How is that Contradictory? (Score:1)
--pi
Re:How is that Contradictory? (Score:1)
Re:How is that Contradictory? (Score:2)
YAAFA (Yet another acronym-filled article (Score:3, Informative)
SMB3 = Super Mario Bros 3
They aren't against emulation. They are against people other than Nintendo providing the emulation.
Re:YAAFA (Yet another acronym-filled article (Score:1)
Re:YAAFA (Yet another acronym-filled article (Score:1)
Nor am I CaptainObvious [slashdot.org].
I am ObviousGuy [slashdot.org].
Is this actually emulation? (Score:1)
Bad news for existing emulators? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bad news for existing emulators? (Score:1)
Re:Bad news for existing emulators? (Score:2)
Re:Bad news for existing emulators? (Score:2)
Perhaps if people tried competing there would be competion. The GameBoy originally won out because it came out first and had a lot of good games. Since then no one has tried to compete, so of course they have a monopoly.
Re:Bad news for existing emulators? (Score:2)
It has the power.... (Score:1)
I've been happy with my GBA, kinda reminds me of my old NeoGeo Pocket Color.. It is interesting seeing sega games on it, thats for sure, I remember the rival thoes two had back in the SNES/Genesis days.. ;)
It'd be nice to see a lot of SNES games ported over tho, like Bust a Move (Bubble bobble), Super Mario World, etc..
~slak
Re:It has the power.... (Score:1)
Re:It has the power.... (Score:1)
Re:It has the power.... (Score:1)
Re:It has the power.... (Score:1)
Re:It has the power.... (Score:1)
Hmm, I coulda sworn I didn't misspell that... (Score:2, Funny)
Thanks Taco!! I forgot to add the spelling error into my article.
Classic (Score:2)
Super Mario Brothers 3 is already coming out (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Super Mario Brothers 3 is already coming out (Score:1)
Contra!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right A B A B Select Start
I can't think of any other game that wasted more of my youth other than perhaps Pac Man. I'd definately buy a GBA if I could play good old regular Contra on it.
Re:Contra!? (Score:1)
kids these days... (Score:1)
down down
left right
left right
B A
start (select start for two-player)
A B A B is right out.
No one knows the code (Score:1, Funny)
http://www.i-mockery.com/pixelpals/comics/22.pn
I've been doing this for a while now. (Score:1)
They're not "anti-emulation" (Score:5, Insightful)
Those classic NES games are their IP. Granted, they're years old and not that many people have the systems to play them on anymore, but actions like this show that they're still commercially viable.
The problem with emulators is that of the ROM. ROMs can be distributed anywhere and everywhere, over file-sharing devices, eMail, and ftp warez sites. Due to the widespread theft of games in this manner, it's understandable that Nintendo doesn't support emulators.
From Nintendo's standpoint (which is quite legal), emulators encourage theft. They are accessories to the piracy of their IP, and I for one support their stance.
It's their games. They should be able to decide how to licence and distribute them.
Re:They're not "anti-emulation" (Score:2)
Up until a month or two ago they claimed ALL EMULATION WAS ILLEGAL since emulators only had one illegal use.
After a back-and-forth between their legal department and myself, detailing legal uses of emulation (like playing Elite, a freely available NES game, or new game development) the offensive comment disappeared from their website.
Check the internet archive [archive.org] for different versions of their legal FAQ.
P.S. A hero is me!
Re:They're not "anti-emulation" (Score:2, Interesting)
What's your point? It's still an illegal copy of their intellectual property. It's their choice, not yours, as to how they licence it. If they cannot licence it and constrict the destribution of it via their licence, then who are we to whine whenever some corperation steals GPLed code and closed-sources it? It would be blatent hipocracy.
Arguments of "well, you can copy it! capitalism doesn't apply!" are irrelevant.
Yes, it's an ethical choice to be made, but spouting corporate morality (piracy = theft = lost sales =
I suggest you reread Plato, and his arguments about supporting the law. By not supporting the ethical laws of the land, you are simply inviting anarchy.
Re:They're not "anti-emulation" (Score:1, Troll)
Of course IANAL, I'm just anal-retentive.
Re:They're not "anti-emulation" (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see good and bad points from both sides of this argument. I am a strong supporter of Nintendo, but also like being able to get access to games that would otherwise be impossible to play (not every NES game will be ported to the GBA).
However, I must say that your point that I have quoted deserves to be highlighted, because it's exactly right. If the way Nintendo licenses their software can just be ignored, why not ignore the all-high GNU General Public License too?
Re:They're not "anti-emulation" (Score:2)
"Piracy", a word that basically means violent theft, is no more accurate a description of the illegal copying of intellectual property than the word "theft" itself.
the irony was lost on me i guess. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the irony was lost on me i guess. (Score:1)
Re:the irony was lost on me i guess. (Score:2)
It could also be argued, although with less of a slightly less solid basis, that emulation lets us share our games again. My friends used to let me borrow their Nintendo games, but now that there are no longer physical copies of the games for them to give me, how are they supposed to share the intellectual property that they've paid for and are legally allowed to share with others? Emulation seems to be the closest way for them to do that.
Re:the irony was lost on me i guess. (Score:2)
Re:the irony was lost on me i guess. (Score:2)
Nintendo has also claimed in various different venues that emulation (regardless of ROMs) and importing games (or anything, really) are against the laws of the United States of America. No one gives a shit, most importantly the courts of said country.
This really isn't anything new for Nintendo (Score:1)
But the whole idea behind this is pretty neat. Including bonus games, whether they are new games or ports of NES or SNES in GameCube games and letting you copy them to your GBA ahould be fun.
I wish (Score:2)
But I know this is impossible due to licensing reasons
Good Games? Or good memories? (Score:3, Insightful)
Were the games back then really good or not? By todays standards, will they still be entertaining for any length of time?
I know everyone has great memories of older games, but is that because we played them when we were kids (in my case at least), or were they really decent? I remember wasting many hours playing Mike Tyson punchout on NES. By todays standards, that game was a joke. Punch left, punch right, uppercut, dodge.
I guess it all comes down to how much will they charge per game, and is it worth it for the time you will spend in front of them now.
-Pete
Re:Good Games? Or good memories? (Score:1)
Re:Good Games? Or good memories? (Score:5, Insightful)
And for the record, even by today's standards the gameplay of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out is not a joke. Maybe the graphics, but video games are still all about reflexes and skill (see any good FPS), not how many buttons/moves are involved in playing the game.
Re:Good Games? Or good memories? (Score:1)
By today's standards, Mike Tyson is a joke!
Who cares if it's pointless nostalgia? (Score:2)
Re:Good Games? Or good memories? (Score:2)
I can honestly say the game still plays wonderfully, and dispite the fact that Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was largely ignored because of it's poorly timed release (just around the end of the SNES lifespan) I can honestly say this game in every way is classic Mario fun.
As for even older games, I have recently had quite a bit of fun with the original Legend of Zelda, and a few really obscure titles such as Snake Rattle and Roll, Life-Force, and Blaster Master.
So yes, some of the older games are STILL great fun today. This doesn't go for all of the games, but there are some gems that even though they don't live up to what we expect from games today, they're still classics.
On another topic -- have you noticed that if something is done artistically, it continues to look good even when it's medium becomes obsolete?
A great example of this is the original Super Mario Brothers game. The music is just barely polyphonic and there aren't any more than 8 colors on the whole screen at any given time but hte game is still presentable and playable. It just LOOKS good, even given the limitations of the platform.
It just goes back to the simple rules of art. Video games are, after all, just art. Interactive Art.
Re:Good Games? Or good memories? (Score:2)
Re:Good Games? Or good memories? (Score:2)
Re:Good Games? Or good memories? (Score:2)
Well I don't know about you, but me and a bunch of friends pulled out the original NES and the 50+ games we have for the system a few months back... And the games are still as fun. Remember back then the graphics were rather shitty (I can say that cause they said it on Cop Drama
Remember: Good graphics != good games. Stuff from the old days is just as fun as it was when we were kids, and maybe a bit more so since we don't usually lose our temper as quickly as we did back then.
Thankyou Nintendo. (Score:3, Insightful)
While Sony and Microsoft are trying to battle against each other with their powerful graphics, Nintendo are making games that are targeted for their fans.
Super Smash Brothers catered for all Nintendo fans and so are upcoming Metroid Prime and Mario Sunshine (which seems to be more gameplay focused then graphic focused).
And now this... I applaud Nintendo for making such a good choice of not letting the past die.
God, you people (Score:5, Informative)
The games are downloadable to the GBA, yes. But that's only after you unlock them playing another game, Animal Crossing (known as Animal Forest + in Japan) for the Gamecube. Now, there's something you have to understand about Animal Crossing: 95% of people will not like this game. Imagine The Sims crossing with the talking animals found in Disney movies. That's a hint of what Animal Crossing is all about. You play the game for literally months before you can save up enough money to buy yourself a decent house, and winning NES games is purely luck-of-the-draw.
I've talked to people in Japan who have been playing the game literally for months, and they just won their first Famicom (Japan's version of the NES) game. And it's not like they play it for a day, then pick it up next week. No, no, the game continues even when you're not playing it, using the Gamecube's internal clock. The game knows when certain things happen (raffles, sales, etc) and will not let you jump in to play them later.
Also, the NES games are stored in local RAM on the GBA. Once you power it down, you're done. You gotta reload the game from your Gamecube.
Re:God, you people (Score:4, Funny)
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I don't have a Services CP. I run Linux. Running NT on a server at its own risks...
PPA, the girl next door.
Re:God, you people (Score:2)
Anit-Emulation? Bah! (Score:1)
What they don't like is the whole concept of so-called 'abandonware', the providers of which often tend to assume that software not currently for sale.. is abandoned (when in reality, the publisher has some several years before copyrights and publishing rights expire).
Then there's the whole deal with ROM trading openly illegal files.
Emulation == good.
Theft == bad.That is of course, IMHO.
-GiH
Well it's about time! (Score:1)
But here's what I'm really interested in seeing: Nintendo offers a legitimate way to play your favorite old games. How many people will now take Nintendo up on the offer, or will you still keep using your emulated to play downloaded ROMS? We get all upset with companies for not providing a way to get to the material we want (ROMS, MP3s) thus 'justifying' our use of questionable methods for access (think pirating). So the question at hand is when one of those companies changes, do you take them up on the offer?
I've known quite a few people who have said, "Well, if the record companies would just offer good MP3's at a decent price, I'd support them rather than getting them off of Kazaa." or "No one makes these old games now anyways. If Nintendo offered their own emulator for a reasonable price, I'd do it. But they don't, so playing these ROMS I just downloaded is okay." I'm sure you've heard similar (somewhat faulty) logic. If that was you, well, now you don't have any excuse. So are people going to support Nintendo, or can big companies just never get it right?
Re:Well it's about time! (Score:1)
Re:Well it's about time! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well it's about time! (Score:1)
DW III GBC however doesn't it. I think.
wait a minute... (Score:1)
what about all of us out there in the world who don't own a GAMECUBE? Will they come up with away to transfer games another way? All in all it is a good marketing ploy for nintendo if you have to have the gamecube to do this. Yet all i can think about is all the little kids who will miss out on great games because they don't own a GAMECUBE.
I would love to see the original zelda on the GBA. Nothing would be having the best Zelda game ever on a portable device!
Download from a Gamecube, not the net... (Score:2, Informative)
Take a deep breath and relax...
When they say ``download full classic NES games to the Game Boy Advance'' they mean ``Download a port of an NES or SNES game from the GameCube Animal Crossing game to the GBA''. This has been covered in most of the console gaming publications, print and web.
Nintendo is not shipping a general NES emulator for the GBA. They are producing GC games that can use the GBA as an intelligent peripheral capable of disconnected use. Animal Crossing isn't the first game with this type of GC/GBA connectivity [nintendo.com]
So unless taco is planning on playing through the GC version of Animal Crossing, he will
have to go blind the old fashioned way....
I don't think that's mario, Taco (Score:3, Funny)
I think it's too much time spent in your room alone that's causing that one.
Now I have a reason! (Score:1)
The old games were better... (Score:2)
I actually lucked out and found a guy on eBay selling newly-built 72-pin connectors for the original NES and it worked like magic. Spent days playing Kung Fu, Contra, Gauntlet, Double Dragon, Bionic Commanod, MegaMan, Ikari Warriors, etc.
I think another thing people overlook is that due to the constraints of these older console systems, game developers had to be as optimal as possible and they did everything in assembly. Zelda and Metroid, as complex as they were for games, they took up like 700k worth of code each. Far cry from that 1.6 gigs of drive space Diablo 2 takes up
--Jon
Re:The old games were better... (Score:2)
You think thats good, the original Super Mario Brothers game took up only 32K IIRC. They accomplished this by using certain portions of the code twice for different things. What I mean by this is that they would jump to a data byte for a different instruction. For example if they had $C000 8A 9A A8 A9, 8A would be an instruction and 9A would be its data (depending on the instruction, I don't actually remember the 6502 opcodes) but, if you jump to $C001, 9A would then be considered an instruction and A8 would be its data. By doing this, they have essentially made the same piece of code do two completely different things. It is this kind of programming that just doesn't happen anymore.
Cause of blindness (Score:1, Troll)
That would come from too much masturbation, something that is free of charge. You won't need Nintendos help with that.
Paperboy (Score:1)
What's contradictory? (Score:2)
Of course, they shouldn't be able to prohibit emulators, which don't violate copyright, from being written. What they should be able to crack down on is the on-line distribution of copyrighted material.
Will they port 'Lesbian Tennis'? (Score:5, Funny)
The review of Naked Lesbian Tennis [i-mockery.com] for the NES.
CmdrTaco, Please Explain (Score:1)
What the GBA has become (Score:1)
Re:What the GBA has become (Score:1)
Afterburner! (Score:1)
Probably not so much Duck Hunt, but it sure would be sweet to get SMB3 on my GBA. Then I could go blind!
Taco, you should check out the Afterburner internal lighting kit from Triton Labs. I just got mine a couple of weeks ago - it was not that fun to install, but well worth the effort. It really makes the GBA worth every penny, and proves my biggest gripe - there is no excuse not to include a backlit screen in the whole Game Boy line. I haven't even noticed a drop in battery life!
Animal Crossing (Score:2)
The game mentioned in the article:
http://www.nintendo.com/games/gamepage/gamepage_m
...looks very interesting and innovative, in both a gameplay and a graphics sense. No idea how downloadable NES games integrate into the "Animal Crossing" world though -- maybe the Animals all play old-school NES?
~jeff
I wish (Score:1)
Relatively old news (Score:4, Informative)
Animal Forest + has been out in Japan for a while and this has been known about for a while. I doubt it will be very popular over here since it's a very different type of game, but in Japan the game is pretty popular. Still, it's one of the games I'm looking forward to most (call me sucker for cutie-cutie Japanese games that are unique to all the "me too" games out there).
Captain Rehash (Score:1)
If it is for a reasonable cost.... (Score:2)
What's wrong with Duck Hunt? (Score:1)
And what about the huge number of options to choose from? (ducks or plates)
Are the "Ressurecting" Bad Spelling? (Score:2)
They edit? (Score:1)
I found this little chart (Score:3, Interesting)
In:
Donkey Kong
Excitebike
Punchout!
Ice Climber
Pinball
Baseball
Unsure:
Balloon Fight
Super Mario Brothers
Tennis
The Legend of Zelda
Mario Bros.
Donkey Kong 3
Donkey Kong Jr.
Golf
Clu Clu Land
Clu Clu Land Disk Version
Low Chance of Making it:
Donkey Kong Jr Math
Wario's Woods
Out:
Gomokunarabe
Mahjong
So, while there are some good games on there, they are the REALLY 1st gen NES games, with not a lot of depth. I loved pinball and excitebike as much as the next kid, but they are "play an hour and get sick of it games" to me at least. (i think the NES got a little better with time Especially when it game to sports games).
I have my doubts about whether they would actually release Super Mario Bros. or Zelda, seems like it would be smarter to hold onto those for a future GBA release.
Too bad they couldn't get the cooperation of the 3rd parties on this. I would have loved to earn Mega Man 1-6 and maybe some RPG's. (i know, thats unreasonable.)
Mario Bros. (NON-super) should make a great (albeit simple) GBA game.
Re:I found this little chart (Score:2)
Mario Bros. is already available for GBA. You can find it on both Super Mario Advance, Super Mario Advance 2, and in the upcoming Super Mario Advance 3. It's accessible from the title screen and needs no secret code to unlock or anything. Just press Start and go. Plus, it's even multiplayer and you only need one cartridge to make it happen (2+ GBAs, though, of course).
Contradictions (Score:2)
That's like saying it is contradictory to tell your wife not to go around having sex with random men, and then wanting to have sex with her yourself.
Anyone else miss the days when to be a technonerd or geek, you had to be smart enough to make simple inferences, such as that Nintendo's anti-emulation stance is not actually against emulation as a technology, but rather against certain uses of emulation? What the hell has happened to the nerd/geek population?
Populous! (Score:2)
It isn't the first time... (Score:2)
It isn't the first time, part two... (Score:2)
Re:It isn't the first time, part two... (Score:2)
I'm reasonably sure that the hardware inside the GG wasn't that different from the Master System.
Go Blind? (Score:2)
Johnny? Are you okay, you've been in there for a while. You aren't playing with your GBA are you?
NO MOM!
Nintendo do produce a GameBoy emulator (Score:2, Interesting)
Sod NES games ... Amiga games! (Score:2)
If you're a big fan of Sensible Soccer, why not sign the petition [kickme.to] to get it ported to the GBA?
Re:Super Mario Brothers 3 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Super Mario Brothers 3 (Score:2)
Re:Super Mario Brothers 3 (Score:1)
Re:Super Mario Brothers 3 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Gameboy Advance with backlight (Score:2, Informative)
Have fun!
--pi
Re:Gameboy Advance with backlight (Score:1)
Re:Old games on the GBA have already been released (Score:4, Informative)
Super Mario 3 is not out. Super Mario World is out. Super Mario 3 was the last SMB game for the NES. Super Mario World was the first SMB game for the SNES. They are different games. If you want to give Super Mario World a number, it would be Super Mario 4.
Re:Old games on the GBA have already been released (Score:2)
mark