Post by: Terranigma Freak on May 21, 2004, 04:26:20 AM
Sure there's the SNES and NES emulators for GBA but those aren't perfect. For one thing, the graphics will have to be either squished or not everything will fit on screen. Now with the NDS, I think a TRUE PORTABLE SNES will finally become a reality. It has everything the GBA lacked and then some. And really, why stop with just SNES? I'm sure the DS can emulate pretty much every 2D system ever created. Nes, Snes, Genesis, Turbo Graphics, GameGear, Neo Geo, WonderSwan Color, Neo Geo Pocket, Gb and GBC. Can you image being able to have so many systems with you, and they're all portable!?
Post by: Ian Sane on May 21, 2004, 07:22:12 AM
Post by: jasonditz on May 21, 2004, 08:08:59 AM
Post by: Bill Aurion on May 21, 2004, 08:13:42 AM
Post by: jasonditz on May 21, 2004, 09:38:24 AM
Post by: Bill Aurion on May 21, 2004, 09:43:11 AM
Post by: jasonditz on May 21, 2004, 11:39:22 AM
Post by: DJSapphire on May 21, 2004, 12:50:14 PM
-Deej
Post by: joeamis on May 21, 2004, 06:20:09 PM
Many people still believe to this day the Saturn was the best hardware for 2d games. It would be interesting to see how well the DS could emulate the best Saturn 2d games, ofcourse they would have to be stripped down considerably given the large amount of memory.
Post by: Grey Ninja on May 21, 2004, 06:50:23 PM
Reminds me of poor GBA.
Post by: ActorJ on May 21, 2004, 07:03:14 PM
However as I understand it, a an encryption system used for some game means that even powerful PCS can have trouble emulating Neo Geo. With that in mind I will leave it people with more knowledge than myself to speculate further.
http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/details/neogeo.htm
Post by: darknight06 on May 21, 2004, 09:24:17 PM
Post by: Terranigma Freak on May 22, 2004, 05:55:00 AM
Grey Ninja, did you even read the post? It's about the DS running roms of other systems. Not PC running DS emulation. It's DS running the emulation. Remember how Nintendo says the DS isn't backwards compatible with GB and GBC, who needs backward compatibility when the DS can easily emulate them and play the roms?
Post by: Bloodworth on May 22, 2004, 08:03:25 AM
Also, everyone ought to keep in mind that the new DS cards can hold more than just 1 gigabit. That number is listed as the minimum size. Unlike optical discs which have a set limit, you can easily triple or quadruple the capacity of semiconductor memory in just a couple years. So DS cards will surely exceed the memory limits of Saturn and PS1 games eventually. And since this is a newer and cheaper format than traditional cartridges, it may increase even more dramatically than previous cart sizes on N64, etc.
Post by: Bill Aurion on May 22, 2004, 08:06:43 AM
Post by: ActorJ on May 22, 2004, 08:30:07 AM
It's not the porcessor speed, it's lack of memory. If your PC has less than 256mb of memory, some Neo-geo games presentd a real problem. Makes senese that this issue would be magnified greatly on the DS.
Post by: joeamis on May 22, 2004, 12:40:56 PM
Quotehttp://]http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/details/neogeo.htm
Originally posted by: ActorJ
The largest size possible for Neo Geo games was 128megabytes, or 1 gigabit, which, conveniently is the same size as a DS card. Of all the memory, only a small portion of it was actually used for storage of the game, due to the fact that the neo geo system did not have any memory, it was all embedded with the game on the cart. So storage capacity is not an issue.
[L=http://darkwatcher.psxfanatics.com/console/details/neogeo.htm
Cartridges don't have limits as far as how much memory they can have. The Neo Geo console did have memory which was very similar to the SNES memory, given the size that Neo Geo carts were much larger than SNES games the faster speed of the Neo Geo processor made up for this compared to SNES's. I was off in saying Neo Geo carts are larger than DS carts due to not sleeping for 48 hours, the largest Neo Geo cart I've seen weighed in at roughly 900 megabits.
Sorry for including NGCD and Saturn but I thought you did mean them when you said: "I'm sure the DS can emulate pretty much every 2D system ever created."
It will be interesting to see how large DS games eventually get, and when they get over 5 times larger than planned to the size of PS1/Saturn games. I wonder who will make a game that large for DS, perhaps SquareEnix or maybe Nintendo themselves.
Post by: KDR_11k on May 22, 2004, 10:55:02 PM
Post by: Terranigma Freak on May 23, 2004, 05:00:35 AM
joeamis, we're both wrong. It turns out, some Neo Geo games are 90MB. I checked my Metal Slug 3 and 4 rom. Both of them are 90MB. I wouldn't be surprised if some Neo Geo games went over 90MB. Well, the DS can at least hold 128MB so it should be too big of a problem.
Post by: KDR_11k on May 23, 2004, 09:37:45 AM
Post by: jasonditz on May 23, 2004, 10:15:23 AM
Post by: Bill Aurion on May 23, 2004, 10:23:01 AM
Post by: joeamis on May 23, 2004, 03:07:35 PM
Quote
Originally posted by: Terranigma Freak
joeamis, we're both wrong. It turns out, some Neo Geo games are 90MB. I checked my Metal Slug 3 and 4 rom. Both of them are 90MB. I wouldn't be surprised if some Neo Geo games went over 90MB. Well, the DS can at least hold 128MB so it should be too big of a problem.
Huh me confused now. I said the largest Neo Geo cart I've seen is 900 megabits, equivalent to 112.5 megabytes. Anyways yes it shouldn't be a problem with DS. On a side note the last Neo Geo game is coming out within a month or so.
Post by: jasonditz on May 23, 2004, 08:04:35 PM
Quote
Originally posted by: Bill
Errr...You could just keep your SP...
I'm still using a classic GBA, but that's beside the point.
"Just keep your old GBA" kind of defeats the purpose of backwards compatibility. I mean, if backwards compatibility is supposed to be a selling point, you don't want your customer to think "just keep the old one". I could buy a PSP and "just keep my old GBA".
Since a good number of my "must play" titles on the GBA are actually GBC games, backwards compatibility to the GBC is a major selling point to me. I don't want to have to lug two handhelds around everywhere I go.
I'm not saying its a total deal breaker that would keep me from ever getting a DS (and as far as I'm concerned the PSP is a non-issue, I'm not even considering that), but it would definately keep me from buying it at launch.
Post by: Terranigma Freak on May 24, 2004, 10:31:55 AM
Quote
Originally posted by: joeamisQuote
Originally posted by: Terranigma Freak
joeamis, we're both wrong. It turns out, some Neo Geo games are 90MB. I checked my Metal Slug 3 and 4 rom. Both of them are 90MB. I wouldn't be surprised if some Neo Geo games went over 90MB. Well, the DS can at least hold 128MB so it should be too big of a problem.
Huh me confused now. I said the largest Neo Geo cart I've seen is 900 megabits, equivalent to 112.5 megabytes. Anyways yes it shouldn't be a problem with DS. On a side note the last Neo Geo game is coming out within a month or so.
Sorry, my mistake. I was thinking of something else. But whatever the size, 128MB will be enough to hold pretty much any Neo Geo game. Now whether the DS is powerful enough to emulate Neo Geo is a different question.
Post by: jasonditz on May 24, 2004, 11:07:33 AM
Post by: Bloodworth on May 24, 2004, 06:09:53 PM
Post by: Ian Sane on May 24, 2004, 06:33:26 PM
Well I care since getting an emulator on the DS and finding ROMs for it, even for titles I own, is going to be a pain in the ass. Plus I want to play the saved games I already have not start over with ROMs.
The lack of GB/GBC support is going to affect my purchase decision. I haven't really seen anything on the DS yet that makes me want to buy it but I was considering getting one since I can't see sh!t with my original design GBA and I figured that instead of getting an SP I might as well get a DS and have access to more games. However without GB/GBC support I'll probably just wait for the supposed "true" followup to the GBA and see what's up with it. I can wait until the DS releases a game I can't turn down. Afterall knowing Nintendo they'll release the DS SP that includes GB/GBC support. They've kind of conditioned me to not buy their portables right away. The GB Pocket was around for like a year before the GBC came out only to be followed by the GBA a few years later only the be followed by the SP a year later. It's like if I don't wait until after the first Christmas I'm going to get screwed for certain.
"I'm amazed they kept the same line going for so long anyways since they never pulled it off with cartridges on home consoles."
Well they only started using backwards compatibility with the GBC which came out a little over five years ago so it's a relatively new concept. Considering they were still trying to sell NES games in 1994(!) they probably would have made their cartridge consoles backwards compatible had they thought of it at the time.
Post by: jasonditz on May 24, 2004, 07:21:35 PM
Quote
Originally posted by: Bloodworth
Well, considering that the DS is not supposed to replace the Game Boy line, I think it's great that they included GBA compatibility -- especially since it means adding a second cartridge bay. I can understand it not playing GB and GBC games though. It had to happen eventually. They can only put in so many extra parts. I'm amazed they kept the same line going for so long anyways since they never pulled it off with cartridges on home consoles.
I disagree. Each new iteration of hardware is several times more powerful than the previous line. The Nintendo DS is more than capable of emulating the GBC and GB in software so long as there is a cartridge port capable of fitting the games, and beyond that you could fit the entire architecture of the GBC on a very tiny chip, so not having the option built in is flat out laziness on their part.
Even calling it GBA compatibility is misleading, because it is lacking a key feature that the GBA has, the ability to play GB/GBC cartridges.
If they're going to leave GB/GBC out of the mix, I'd almost feel better if they hadn't put the GBA port on there to begin with. Quite frankly, like Ian said, it leaves you feeling like there's a fundamental missing element that might be corrected in some later revision of the hardware...
Post by: joeamis on May 24, 2004, 07:40:44 PM
Post by: jasonditz on May 24, 2004, 10:41:13 PM
Post by: joeamis on May 25, 2004, 11:36:01 AM
Post by: jasonditz on May 25, 2004, 12:09:28 PM
Post by: Blackknight131 on May 25, 2004, 12:55:30 PM
The ARM Processor that serves as the GBA's brain is afterall already part of the hardware, regardless of backwards compatibility or not (I think its the ARM 7, the weaker of the two DS processors?). Adding the backwards compatiblity then may simply have come down to designing an expansion port (which likely would have been included in some shape or form anyway) that accepted GBA carts....I do remember Reggie mentioning that it was also the DS's peripheral expansion port.
~~~~~~
The DS is meant to be a standalone, at least from what I heard of it orignally. Which makes me think that the inclusion of any kinds of backward compatibility is really going to confuse consumers down the line who are going to look at this as the next gameBoy....I know myself and apparently others on this board are confused, and were the ones who stay informed!
At any rate, assuming Nintendo is deadly serious about this "third pillar" concept (Im a sucker for whatever Miyamoto says...if he says its the third pillar Im generally like "Yes, Sir!") I agree with the previously stated opinion that inclusion of the GBC backwards compatibility ( a key GBA-specific feature) only serves to further blur the lines between the two handhelds. As such, it makes sense if they really will practice differentiation of the two units.
I dont know if someone voiced this eariler, but I wonder if Nintendo refuses to call it the next gameboy only because they realize the hardware may be hit or miss....and they do not want to risk tarnishing their most powerful console brand name, the ubiquitous "GameBoy".
-Blackknight131
Post by: Bloodworth on May 25, 2004, 04:27:07 PM
Post by: Terranigma Freak on May 26, 2004, 04:08:58 AM
