Topic: Radio Free Nintendo: Episode 139

[Jonnyboy117]

You could say that Iwata's GDC keynote was almost a religious experience for some of the RFN crew.
 http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/podcastArt.cfm?artid=18064

 And the fanboys saw that it was good.  



 Episode 139: On the 859th Day, He Rested    

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From the North American launch of Wii to last Wednesday's GDC keynote, it took Satoru Iwata just 858 days to get a functional storage solution for the console.  Despite our latent anger over the incredibly long wait, we couldn't be happier with the new SD Card Menu and all the other crazy announcements from Iwata.  We cover it all, from Virtual Console Arcade to the coming flood of downloadable Final Fantasy titles.  There's also a bit of talk about the new Zelda for DS and a localized Professor Layton sequel.    

Don't worry, the show isn't all news.  It actually starts with a meaty New Business -- both James and Jonny are getting into GTA: Chinatown Wars, and Jonny has some dirt on Henry Hatsworth and Shaun White Road Trip.  Also, learn why Greg pre-ordered Mad World, played it for a few minutes, and then traded it in the same day!    

In your Listener Mail, the topics turn to network throttling (and a tangential discussion of OnLive), various forms of Virtual Console for DSi, and our gaming disappointments.  Please keep those letters coming!  And don't forget that our Secret of Mana discussion begins next week.  Start playing the game now and leave your thoughts in the RetroActive forum thread!    

Credits:    

This podcast was edited by Greg Leahy.    

Music for this episode of Radio Free Nintendo is used with permission from Jason Ricci & New Blood. You can purchase their new album, Rocket Number 9, directly from the record label, or download it from iTunes, or call your local record store and ask for it!  

[Sarail]

Listening to it right now, but man... I just can't push myself to go pick up GTA for the DS.  I've just been so against it my entire gaming life, but there seems to be something different about this one... I dunno!  >_<

[Jonnyboy117]

Is that due to moral reasons?  Chinatown Wars is no less depraved than its predecessors.

[mac<censored>]

depraved perhaps, but it's ... cute little (kinda) top-down sprite depraved!

[Plugabugz]

I mentioned the bandwidth throttling because all of the consoles make the assumption that you have a connection, and thats it. What i meant was a statement upon going online (like in the wii shop channel) to be aware of any bandwidth limits.

Virgin Media have a 20mb connection here, and if you download more than 3gb a DAY they will throttle your connection (by 75%!!!!) to 5mb for a defined period. Others are "unlimited" but blanket throttle everything all the time - my last ISP did this and it made every online wii game unplayable.

I mentioned it because everyone here is dependent on their internet connection working... and it don't then things like iPlayer, OnLive, Netflix etc will just won't work.
Then games like Brawl will become an even bigger slideshow

[NWR_DrewMG]

I've only listened to the first 10 mins so far, but it was funny to hear Jonny's latent southern accent popping out there for a few mins.

[Sarail]

Maybe a little bit based on moral reasons, Jonny...but primarily because of my intense hatred for Rockstar Games.  The only game I've ever liked that they developed was Body Harvest on the N64 -- back when they were known as DMA Designs.

I guess I'm just not that big of a fan of the "sandbox" genre of video games.

[GoldenPhoenix]

BTW Jonny according to VGchartz (should be accurate since these are older numbers) FFIV managed to sell around 350k in the US, that is far from niche. Chrono has sold around 300k. Not bad numbers for a DS game. Though it does sell better in Japan.

[ShyGuy]

What podcast is this? This is positive talk about Nintendo. (They did completely own GDC though)

[Stratos]

Except the SD Channel is evil and a poorly tested piece of junk. It broke games that use the SD card like Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Animal Crossing.

People are having a lot of problems with this update. Wiis crashing and not reading disks.

I hope it gets hacked soon because I want to use the homebrew solely to bring the Wii back to V3.4

Poorly played move Nintendo.

[TJ Spyke]

People are having a lot of problems with this update. Wiis crashing and not reading disks.

I haven't had my Wii crash. I have twice had to reset the system since the Wii wouldn't read the disc (it would just keep the Wii and GameCube disc icons spinning).

[GoldenPhoenix]

Except the SD Channel is evil and a poorly tested piece of junk. It broke games that use the SD card like Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Animal Crossing.

People are having a lot of problems with this update. Wiis crashing and not reading disks.

I hope it gets hacked soon because I want to use the homebrew solely to bring the Wii back to V3.4

Poorly played move Nintendo.

Works fine for me in AC. I had a disk reading problem but unplugging the system and plugging it back in fixed it permanently so far. From what I understand games that weren't built with larger SD cards in mind (Or SDHC) CANNOT work with it unless the physical disks are replaced, that has more to do with the Wii hardware then Nintendo not fixing it with this update. Guitar Hero should support 2GB SD cards like it always has.

[BeautifulShy]

Is Aaron and Chuck back from GDC?

I want to know what they think of Punch Out and Excitebots.

[kraken613]

So James, what parts did you get for your PC upgrade?

[yoshi1001]

Related to your discussion about Wii <-> DS VC interoperability, one thing Nintendo might do is if the same game were available on both the Wii VC and DSi VC is offer some sort of bundle where for a slightly reduced total price (say 100 points less than buying them seperately), you could get a package that would give you a version on each, similar to the DVD/Digital Copy distributions you see with movies. It would depend on what the cost/benefit differential would be, but it's more likely than them simply giving it away in my opinion.

[TJ Spyke]

I don't think there were a lot of games released on both the NES and Game Boy. Some of the few I can think of are Yoshi and Dr. Mario.

[Stratos]

I don't think there were a lot of games released on both the NES and Game Boy. Some of the few I can think of are Yoshi and Dr. Mario.

Yoshi Cookie, Tetris and Tetris 2 were as well. There were a lot that were on both for a while if I remember correctly. I'll do a search and come back with the results.

[Jonnyboy117]

I think yoshi1001 was referring to the idea of buying any VC game (on any platform) and getting the rights to play it on both Wii and DSi.  It would only apply if DSi could emulate most or all the same platforms as Wii's Virtual Console.

I still think a Virtual Handheld (GB, GBC, GBA, Game Gear, NGPC, Lynx, Wonderswan) is more likely.  DSi probably doesn't have enough RAM to properly emulate the 16-bit consoles and up.

[NWR_DrewMG]

Aren't the GBA and the Super NES pretty similar from a technical prowess standpoint?  Why would you need a beefier machine to emulate the Super NES than the GBA?

[Stratos]

Aren't the GBA and the Super NES pretty similar from a technical prowess standpoint?  Why would you need a beefier machine to emulate the Super NES than the GBA?

The SNES was a bit better than the GBA. Play Yoshi's Island on it and watch it lag on the Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy level.

Also, I checked the lists in Wikipedia and there were a lot of games that came out on both the GB and NES.

I don't think either way we are going to see a cross platform deal like that any time soon.

@Jonny

If the DS is close to the N64's capabilities then shouldn't it not have that much of an issue emulating 16-bit console games? The DS is stronger than a GBA and we saw ports of Donkey Kong Country, Mario World and others on the final Gameboy system. We also have seen games like Chrono Trigger, Mario Kart and others on the DS with equal or superior graphics from their predecessors. Shouldn't that mean it is more possible to emulate SNES on the DS?

[Mop it up]

Based on technical specs alone I would think the DSi could handle Nintendo 64 emulation. The DSi CPU is about as fast as an overclocked Nintendo 64 so it should have no trouble there (and actually might be able to fix framerate problems). It has twice the RAM of a Nintendo 64 with the Expansion Pak, so even if the system needed a little extra resource for the emulation, I'd think it could still run them just fine.

Though I'm sure there are other factors here so I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

[Stratos]

Based on technical specs alone I would think the DSi could handle Nintendo 64 emulation. The DSi CPU is about as fast as an overclocked Nintendo 64 so it should have no trouble there (and actually might be able to fix framerate problems). It has twice the RAM of a Nintendo 64 with the Expansion Pak, so even if the system needed a little extra resource for the emulation, I'd think it could still run them just fine.

Though I'm sure there are other factors here so I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

You convinced me!

It's crazy to think that the DS has more powerful hardware than the N64 which is much larger than the DS. Heck, the Ram Expansion alone is almost as big as a DS, isn't it?

[Mop it up]

Actually it is the DSi that's more powerful than the N64, not the original DS.

Original DS specs:
CPU: 67 MHz ARM9
Second CPU: 33 MHz ARM7
RAM: 4MB

DSi specs:
CPU: 133 MHz ARM
RAM: 16MB

Nintendo 64 specs:
CPU: 93.75 MHz (overclocked is around 140MHz)
RAM: 4MB regular, 8MB with upgrade.

The N64 RAM Expansion cartridge contains a lot of empty space to leave room to ventilate (that thing gets HOT!); the actual RAM chip itself is quite small. Given the DS came out eight years later, that's plenty of time to make it smaller and require less cooling space.

[Stratos]

I didn't realize that the DSi was that much more powerful than the regular DS. Makes you wonder what the DSi exclusive games will look like.

[Mop it up]

I just thought of a big factor as to why console emulation might not be feasible on the DS: resolution difference. Each DS screen has a resolution of 256 x 192, whilst most Nintendo 64 games have a resolution of 320 x 240, and some even have 640 x 480. This is actually one factor as to why the original DS can seem more powerful than the N64, as displaying games at a lower resolution is less taxing on the CPU. Put a DS game on a television screen and it isn't going to look very good.

Without modifying the games, they could not display properly on the DS. Even NES games have a resolution of 256 x 240, which would cause a part of the top and bottom of the image to be cut off. Therefore, games would likely need a reprogramming, which would probably be more effort than it is worth.