Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sean Mirrsen]

Even going so far as to call emulatiors of any type the biggest threat to gaming, and denying the users right to own a backup of legally purchased software.  Branding someone who only wants to ghost their 3DS in case of failure a pirate.

And then of course there is that case where they literally just downloaded a mario rom off the internet, threw it on their store basically unaltered (it even still had the header at the top of the rom when opened in a text editor that tells what emulator it was made for) and charged money for it.

I'm not sure if you know, but file headers are a thing. They are needed to let the program know where to start reading data, and whether the data it's being fed is actually valid. Any NES emulator will read a NES rom, the NES header is ubiquitous, and the rom-dump contents are going to be the same regardless of who does the dump. It's the same how I can look into the rom provided with the Sega Classics Collection version of Phantasy Star IV on Steam, and find the same damn data in there as in a regular romdump off the net, obviously with the specifics of the header datablock altered enough to not load into regular emulators. Other than the datablock, same four-byte SEGA headers.

Also in case of the Switch, you are able to make a backup of any downloadable games you have just by downloading them to an SD card. You won't be able to use that SD card on another Switch, but you'll be able to have a backup of your downloaded data. Of course, it's kind of pointless since your purchases are now linked to your account, but still.

[Neonivek]

Yeah but when Nintendo comes out with... I dunno... the Switch 2... they won't let you port any games you got on the Switch over to the new console.

And this is ignoring that if Nintendo discontinues the Switch it might do something to your game library (As some people have recently found out about some consoles deleting games no longer in their store)

[Sean Mirrsen]

Yeah but when Nintendo comes out with... I dunno... the Switch 2... they won't let you port any games you got on the Switch over to the new console.

And this is ignoring that if Nintendo discontinues the Switch it might do something to your game library (As some people have recently found out about some consoles deleting games no longer in their store)

The GBA could play GB games. The DS could play GBA games. The 3DS plays DS games. The WiiU plays Wii games. I don't know, Nintendo seem to usually provide backwards compatibility whenever it's physically possible. Since all Switch-family devices going forward are going to run on the same hardware architecture and OS kernel, I wouldn't worry too much about the next Nintendo console not having compatibility with the Switch.

[Neonivek]

I was referring to your digital library.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I was referring to your digital library.

I don't think you ever had a "digital library" with Nintendo before. Isn't it only with the Switch's introduction, that your digital purchases are actually tied to your account, rather than the device?

[Shadowlord]

If you've paid for roms to run them in the emulator on your console, you've had to rebuy them with every new console, haven't you?

[Frumple]

Did just strike me the backwards compatibility thing is increasingly odd. Do believe some consoles these days have had some degree of USB support, harddrive style space is getting larger, and by and large there aren't any emulators that are very taxing on that front to begin with, with an occasional exception regarding saves/save states.

You'd think it'd be relatively trivial to ship a system with a full emulator suite for previous systems,* and then either let it read off a flash drive or make a handful of USB capable converter type things for the older stuff so you can just plug in an old cart or disc and run it in the noted emulators. That'd be something pretty future proof, too, since USB or something compatible with it probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

I can guess at various fiscal reasons to avoid it, but the technical ones seem like something that could be solved with relatively little difficulty or effort, insofar as such projects go.

*There'd be issue there for newer stuff, but hell, I'm pretty sure the actual system makers would have an hella' easier time cooking up a sufficiently functional emulator than hobbyists et al do. Actually just struck me, too, that it's almost weird there's not just that for sufficiently old systems. It'd be a bit of a publicity coup, and likely cost basically nothing save the undermining of the second hand market for older stuff, which the console makers already basically hate.

---

... any case, I've seen folks playing with the switch, now. Breath of wind LPs that are starting up (I don't care about spoilers et al cause the chances of me getting the system or the game is basically zero, unless several tens of thousands of dollars magically appear in a banking account in my name), some have face cam type stuff that include the controller/machine/whatever the thing is. It... looks rather clumsy, and it's been pretty obvious that while controls haven't been a major issue, ergonomics and whatnot appear to be causing the occasional problem. Anyone touched the thing and have comment to give?

[endlessblaze]

The controls feel perfectly fine to me

[Wiles]

Apparently Nintendo views dead pixels as a feature of LCD screens, not a defect. 

Taken from the Nintendo UK website:

Small numbers of stuck or dead pixels are a characteristic of LCD screens. These are normal and should not be considered a defect.

Fuck that! I returned two 3DSs to the store until I got one that had a screen without defects. I'd do the same with the switch.

[Ozyton]

So if dead pixels on the Switch are a feature, how come they never showcased it during any of their reveals or presentations?

[Krevsin]

So it seems like the Switch is following the traditional route for Nintendo handhelds. The first version has some significant hardware problems (apparently the stand can scratch the screen and you can put in joycons backwards onto the controller, causing them to get stuck) but the second version will probably fix them.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I don't think putting the joycons on backwards gets them stuck (you may be thinking of the wriststraps), but otherwise, yeah. Anybody want to take bets on whether Nintendo is going to provide any kind of upgrade service?

I mean, most of the things are easy to fix. The joycons' main issue is an awkwardly placed antenna (Spawn Wave reportedly managed to boost effective range on his joycons up to 40 feet by messing with the antennae), the scratching problem requires a strip of soft fabric atop the dock's plastic guide rails, and... that's about it as far as general issues go. Everything else is either occasional faulty units, or software deficiencies that will just be patched out/in. And of course there's going to be a 64GB version.

[Ozyton]

My Switch has been perfoming fine. I don't take it out of the dock so I don't know if it has scratches on it, and I'm sitting at my computer while playing (on a 20-something inch screen) so I'm only a couple feet away so signal strength isn't an issue. Of course, I'm not everyone, so it's not that there aren't legitimate concerns, they just don't concern me =p

[Mookzen]

Is it really that hard for Nintendo to build-in NES/SNES/DS/whathaveyou emulators, which take negligible HD space and resources, into their modern consoles and provide a proper online store with most old classics available for a reasonable price, would it not make perfect sense? If this was the case I would buy the Switch without hesitation and I suspect both software and hardware sales in general would be booming. As it stands - nah. Zelda is cool and all, but not really worth introducing another sure-to-be seldom-used gadget into my life.

[Neonivek]

Yep my prediction of 'The good version' was accurate once again.

Isn't pessimism great when it is always right?