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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'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.
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.
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.
This isn't entirely a joke.
The review of Naked Lesbian Tennis for the NES.
mogorific carpentry experiments
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).
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.
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