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Nintendo Ressurecting Classic NES Games to the GBA
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!
They (like any company concerned with profits) are not anti-emulator, they are against people distributing their games without paying them for it.
GBA = Game Boy Advance
SMB3 = Super Mario Bros 3
They aren't against emulation. They are against people other than Nintendo providing the emulation.
I have been pwned because my
Original NES games are at 256*224 (or 240) resolution, which will not fit on a GBA screen. Since, according to Nintendo, emulation is illegal, I would assume that these must be rewrites?
http://www.themeparks.ie
There are many excellent NES emulators already available for the GBA - most noteably PocketNES. I wonder if Nintendo will take an aggressive stance against these kinds of developers, and NES ROM trading in general?
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
2002-06-15 04:12:58 Nintendo to use GameCube to transfer NES games to GBA (articles,games) (accepted)
Thanks Taco!! I forgot to add the spelling error into my article.
Bring back RC Pro Am, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I'll buy a GBA.
Nintendo has confirmed that SMB3 is coming to GBA and since Super Mario Advance 3 is going to be Yoshi's Island perhaps it will be Super Mario Advance 4? I've also read that in Animal Crossing they are going to include Excitebike and some other game which escapes me right now.
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.
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
There is already a NES emulator available for the Gameboy Advance called PocketNES. This emulator is great - it runs at full speed and has great sound support. You can even link up another GBA and play 2 players with just one cartridge. You have to have a Flash Advance linker in order to play on your GBA hardware though.
what the crap are you talking about. SMB3 was the last mario for the NES. The third generation gaming platform from Nintendo (barring GB, GBC, pGB, and GBA) is the n64.
They already have one - it's not official, but it is there. Everyone's favorite HK reseller, Lik-Sang will be selling pre-modded GBAs with the afterburner kit built-in.
Have fun!
--pi
They're anti-theft.
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.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
it makes sense. the justification of most people using roms/abandonware is that software companies are no longer making money from those titles, and it is hard or impossible to buy them, so they pirate the rom instead. nintendo on the other hand IS still making money off of those games (just not those particularly old builds) by re-releasing them for GBA.
That is so true! After getting a GBA 6 months or so ago, I tried SO many ways to get my display "viewable". I bought the magnified lense and the light, which sucked tremendously. Really the only thing you can do to get decent gameplay is to sit directly under a lamp and kind of tilt the screen til you see it. They totally dropped the ball on the display.
Don't Panic.
They already released Animal Crossing in Japan(as Animal Forest Plus), the game that lets you download NES games to your GBA. As I understand it, they've modified the games for GBA. They aren't straight ROMS, but reformated games that are placed on the game disc and then unlockable in the game for download. I think you can even play them in Animal Crossing on you character's NES.
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.
In a perfect world there would be a GBA game that had about every NES game there ever was. It could use a microdrive to store all of them. I have a rom collection with allmost all of the nintendo games and its about 500megs. :(
But I know this is impossible due to licensing reasons
Hacker Media
Classic NES games (as in games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System), not classic NES games (as in games that are defined as "classic".
When it comes to old game ROMs, and related things like this I have to wonder...
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
Soccer Goal Plans
At least one gaming company supports classic gaming.
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.
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.
Nintend has been building and selling emulators ever-since the super mario collection came out for the SNES.. and don't forget the gameboy cartdridge for same, which allowed people who didn't want to buy a gameboy to use their SNES instead.
::shrug::
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
up up
down down
left right
left right
B A
start (select start for two-player)
A B A B is right out.
A lot of old games were entertaining. They had to be. They couldn't just rest on having the best graphics. It actually needed to be a good game. The only decent games I've played in a while are Max Payne and Alice.
If I can seriously play a lot of older NES games on a GBA, then I'm definitely going to get one! I've been waiting for some legit way to play most of those games again without having to scavenge through local garage sales for old cartridges. Some of my favorite games of all time were good old 8 bit NES games (original Dragon Warrior anyone?).
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?
Who said Freedom was Fair?
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!
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
So unless taco is planning on playing through the GC version of Animal Crossing, he will
have to go blind the old fashioned way....
Probably not so much Duck Hunt, but it sure would be sweet to get SMB3 on my GBA. Then I could go blind!
I think it's too much time spent in your room alone that's causing that one.
Now I finally have a reason to go buy a GBA.
I am so glad to see this story. For years I have been telling people that the old games were better. They may not have been as graphically beautiful as today's games or have the audio fidelity, but they were more fun. Think of how many countless hours you spent playing the original Legend of Zelda. Back then most of us didn't have the Internet (or even knew what it was) so solving parts of the game was even more challenging. No web sites to go to for a hint, no people on AIM/IRC to ask. It was a big deal when you learned you could blow a whistle to open the lake to expose stairs to the seventh dungeon.
:)
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
That would come from too much masturbation, something that is free of charge. You won't need Nintendos help with that.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
Well, I just managed to spend 6 straight hours playing The Legend of Zelda yesterday (and an hour trying to beat Mike Tyson the day before). I think gameplay mechanics, creativity and replay value were all *much* better/higher in the days of the Nintendo. Same holds true for the arcade games of the "old days". Going to an arcade you could find really fun games that you *wanted* to play instead of a bunch of expensive eye candy that has to lure you into playing.
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.
... Mike Tyson punchout on NES. By todays standards, that game was a joke...
By today's standards, Mike Tyson is a joke!
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
This was my favorite game when I was a kid. Even my mother and her father became adicted to Paper Boy. If this gets ported, then I'll buy a GBA.
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.
This isn't entirely a joke.
The review of Naked Lesbian Tennis for the NES.
mogorific carpentry experiments
what? go blind? please elaborate before my brain explodes from caring too much about your sillyness.
The GBA has become nothing more than a rehash system where Nintendo can re-release old games and make a quick buck on them again. If you take a look at the current GBA games available, a vast ammount of them are ports of Super Nintendo games, or updates of old Gameboy games. The ones that aren't are usually ports of Playstation games. So now what? Apparently they ran out of good SNES and GB games to port and are going to start digging up NES games for their "new" system? I've played these games before, Nintendo. How about some original games now?
Yeah, these games were not that good. So what. Baby Boomers indulge in pointless nostalgia all the time. Witness the success of various sixties-themed diners and fast-food restaurants. If playing these games for thair nostalgia value provides enjoyment -fun!- then who cares if the games are good or not? Besides, you gotta admit Marble Madness on a handheld system would be cool.
I'm the stranger...posting to
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!
Sound waves should be free!
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
They should sell a cartridge that you can hook up to your pc and download regular nes roms to, and charge like $100 bucks for it. I would EASILY hand over my hundred bucks for something like that.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
This is a feature in Animal Forest + in Japan. You can play various old NES games that you find throughout the game. For the port to America (called Animal Crossing) they are instead allowing you to link up to the GBA and play the NES games on there (I believe there will be more NES games available to play in the American version). In the Japanese version you just played the NES games on the TV, not the GBA.
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).
Before they start busting the classics out of cryogenic stasis again, I'd just like to see a few more good games to accompany the handful present. Not just kicking the dead horse, but harvesting it's corpse for organs and saying, "Giddyup!"
You need a FREE iPod Nano
.... I don't think we should be slamming Nintendo. I'd gladly pay a one time cost of a few dollars to play SMB3 or the original Metroid on my GBA.
Don't you just love that funny dog laughing at you every time you failed?
And what about the huge number of options to choose from? (ducks or plates)
This is not my opinion but my brain's
One "S". Two "R"s. Good editing, folks.
You're assuming they actually review the submissions in the first place. I'm thinking it's a script, personally... Nah, a script can spell.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
How fortuitous that I came across a comic about this very topic not 5 minutes later.
g
http://www.i-mockery.com/pixelpals/comics/22.pn
On GameFAQs, that someone compiled of the actual games you will be able to earn in Animal Crossing. Keep in mind the game is only out in Japan, and Nintendo is messing with which games to offer Americans
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.
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?
I'd kill to play Populous on the GBA. Now if someone could get me the name of the person I have to kill to make this happen, that'd be fantastic.
My Journal
Ha Ha Ha!
I've got the afterburner backlight so I can actually see my screen!
I've got the 256Mbit flash cartridge so I can load roms onto it!
I've got PocketNES v7a NES emulator with over 100 of my favorite NES games installed!
It all cost $69 (GBA) + $35 (afterburner) + $159 (256mbit flash) + $45 (linker for copying roms to flash) = about $300! Hey, that's kinda expensive. BUT WORTH IT.
HA HA HA!
I spent about three hours playing Yoshi's Island on the SNES this morning, and I had just popped it in to make sure my SNES was still working and to see what my save games were like.
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.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
It went NES->Super NES->N64.. I swear I remember playing SMB2 or 3 on the Super NES box..
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
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.
Why not try out a game that you've never played before and test it for yourself? Personally, I was only recently introduced to some NES, SNES, and Neo Geo games that I missed via emulation, and I think a lot of them have been really ingenius and a lot of fun.
It's entirely possible. The games were rereleased as "Super Mario All-Stars" on the SNES, but they originally came out for the NES.
You're forgetting one, Super Mario Brothers, The lost levels. While in the US this was on released for the SNES on a multi-game pack cart (with the other three SMB games, and Mario Bros, another NES game), it was released for the Famicom in japan.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Nintendo ROCKS! The original Nintendo, the one that went bad after a few years and kids had to blow into the game cartridges in hopes of getting the damn thing to boot properly. Ah, those were the good ol' days. Not like now, with PS2s where you put a DVD in and play a game with life-like graphics. Back in the day, the graphics were blocky and crappy, so they were made up for in the quality of the games. Nowadays, games SUCK, but nobody cares because the graphics look so cool. It's like Microsoft's stupid excuse for an alleged operating system. They put all sorts of fancy graphics on that piece of crap, trying to persuade people that it works properly, but I know the truth: Windows SUCKS! But Negra Modelo rocks! I can't wait until Negra Modelo ships an operating system; it'll be just as good as the ale. And that's why the original Nintendo rocks!!! I can't wait until NetBSD comes on a Nintendo game cartridge that you have to blow into to make it boot. Oh well.
uhh, Ms. Pacman, nuff said.
Hmmm.. bastards! Oh well :)
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Nintendo want to keep the best back for a while. Release SMB3 first, and the punters won't be all that impressed with SMB2. Now that they have Super Mario World, though, it's safe to release the big one. Yes, I think SMB 3 is better than SMW. I thought so first time round too... I'd like to see a Zelda collection cart on GBA... Legend of Zelda and Adventure of Link (NES), the SNES Zelda, and Zelda DX from GBC. That would be a real monster. And all within a single megabyte.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
I briefly looked how to program for the GBA's video controller. Essentially it is just a plane-based method(similar to the plane-modes in VGA). Of course they have other fancy shit with this such as "mode 7"-like graphics and sprite-handling.
I believe(though I am not certain) that programming graphics for the SNES and NES would be similar, and hence the huge porting of games from those platforms. But I don't think they use the same CPU(GBA uses Arm, dunno about SNES or NES). Maybe someone can enlighten me here.
Johnny? Are you okay, you've been in there for a while. You aren't playing with your GBA are you?
NO MOM!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This is precisely why they have been anti-emulation for so long. Now they stand to gain a profit by reselling these games to old fans desperate to play them.
However, I believe that the fact that these games have been carried over so long by emulators will make the GBA releases even more popular.
So, how does one port ones saved games over to the GBA? And will save states be available?
Why don't they just alleviate the confusion by calling it by its real name, "Doku Doku Panic"?
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
An emulator wrapper exists that 'wraps' nes roms into gba roms, which can then be stored on a flash cartridge for the GBA. This is lame news. For those of you interested: www.gbxemu.com
SMB2 (US) was a launch title for the GBA, it was called Super Mario Advance
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
When I flew to the states a few months back, there were a selction of Gameboy colour games that passenegrs could play to relieve the boredom. The machines that these run on are actually PCs, and the words 'Copyright Nintendo' were clearly visible on a text mode screen for a fraction of a second as the emulator loaded.
Yes, exactly. They couldn't release SMB 3 or SMW first, otherwise SMB 2 would be a bit disappointing.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
If they can demonstrate that something in the emulator is, in fact, violating some bloody copy–protection scheme (whether it works or no) OR if they can demonstrate that the emulator itself is primarily used for violation, then, the software itself can be considered a violation of the copyrights, according to the DMCA (section 1201 applies, as I recall) DMCA at http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
(yes, this is ridiculous, but it is the current law.)
Similarly, those who do not defend their copyrights religiously, lose them to public domain. Both of these factors combine to make the emulation world a headache. Why else do you think these products are being so furiously persued? They know full-well that they aren't going to make a killing on the "lost sales" from the ROMs.
Piracy, I do not condone, but I think that Fair-Use should, and frankly does include using that which you already own in any applicable media, including emulation.
-THE One True Nate
You forgot to mention Virtual Boy. God, I love reminding Nintendo-lovers about THAT mistake. It was as bad as Sega CD, 32X and Saturn combined!
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
If you're a big fan of Sensible Soccer, why not sign the petition to get it ported to the GBA?
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
ok, to the moderator who gave me a -1 troll, WTF? I was merely stating my opinion and fact.
Morons.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin