Nintendo - Zelda Bonus Disc Hands-On, 2004 Releases Trailed

Thanks to Game Informer for their hands-on impressions of Legend Of Zelda: Collector's Edition, as the GameCube bundle/bonus compilation approaches release. The article describes "The first two old-school games [The Legend Of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link] look just as they did when they released way back in the day", and shows comparison screenshots for the N64 titles [The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask], for which "...the graphics are now in high-res." Elsewhere, 1UP has news on Nintendo release dates for 2004, as "The four-player GameCube Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is still on track for February 9", and "will share that ... release date with Metroid: Zero Mission for Game Boy Advance... [which] expands on the original 8-bit Metroid adventure with revised levels, new story elements, and other added features."

Comments

hmm...

[hiroshi912681]

majora's mask seems to lose some drawing distance. and that sucks about the sound hiccups... I guess the gcube's n64 emulator wasn't really up for emulating games that needed the extra memory module.

I wish they showed screenshots at higher res... and screenshots of the other games. I'm curious to see how well the nes games look on the tv. Also, is Zelda II based off the US version or the Japanese one? There were some differences in music, and sprites... other misc stuff. (*the only one who probably cares*)

If they look blurry or stretched... then that would suck. I heard that metroid prime's unlocked NES metroid kind of sucked about that. It might not be able to go into a low resolution (stuck at somewhere close to 640x480?).

I personally recommend IMBNes for PS1 if you're picky like me. Since it's PS1, it uses a resolution very close to the original NES (actually shows a little more pixels... but on most tv's, you can't tell the difference). And, it was also designed to emulate the palette just as the original NES output. So, not only are the games in perfect colours, they also look amazing with s-video.

Re:hmm...

[edwdig]

Here's the deal with the N64 emulation. The N64 has 43 megs of RAM - 3 of which is video ram, so 40 megs working space. Of that, 24 megs is fast RAM and 16 is slow RAM.

Ocarina of Time is 32 megs, and the N64 has 4 megs RAM. That leaves 4 megs for the emulator, which is plenty. The only hiccups you get are when swapping data between the fast and slow RAM. The only noticable time is when going to the inventory menu.

I'm not 100% positive, but I think Majora's Mask is a 64 meg cartridge. Which means the game must be streamed off the disc. Even if it's only a 32 meg cartridge, it uses 8 megs of RAM, which means you still couldn't fit the ROM + RAM used + emulator in memory at once. So you've got to stream the ROM from the disc.

As for Metroid in Metroid Prime, I didn't notice anything odd looking. It was kinda funny when I tried it on a progressive scan TV though - you could very clearly see each pixel.

Slowdown/Flicker

[Anonymous Coward]

From the GameInformer link: The first two old-school games look just as they did when they released way back in the day. We did notice some slowdown, though, particularly when a large group of enemies are on-screen or if there are a lot of projectiles floating around.

This slowdown was there on the original NES too, and in every emulator I've used. An easy was to see it is to go to the graveyard in Zelda 1 and release as many ghosts as you can.

The flickering was due to a hardware limitation of the NES - you could only have a certain number of sprites per scanline. If too many characters were at the same vertical position on the screen, they couldn't be drawn simultaneously, so they'd flicker. This was really bad in Bubble Bobble. Many emulators don't enforce the sprite limit, preventing the flickering.

Re:Slowdown/Flicker

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Continuing in that GameInformer paragraph: "But, on the positive, a lot of flicker that was present in the games when they released on the NES and SNES is magically gone."

These people are paid to write about video games and they don't even know what system Zelda 1 and 2 were released for?

Re:No Link to the Past?

[fireduck]

They're currently selling Link to the Past for the GBA. Giving it away free as a bonus might not be in their best interest.

Why not sell it?

[Trillian_1138]

I still don't understand why they're not selling the bonus disc. I don't want another GameCube, don't want any two of the games that are required to get the bonus offer, and don't want Nintendo Power.

Why not LET me pay $25, which is more than Nintendo Power without the cost of actually sending me the magazine I don't want. Nintendo Power used to be the only good source for Nintendo info, but with dozens of websites out there it's useless. I don't want it.

Couldn't Nintendo make MORE money this way?

-Trillian

Re:Why not sell it?

[NanoGator]

Subscribe to Nintendo Power, keep the disc, and send me the mags. :P