[HN Gopher] Leaked Game Boy emulators for Switch were made by Ni...
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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.
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