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The Ultimate Nintendo Console
Ngamer writes "Logan West, a member of a fanatical group of gamers known as "The Elite," recently created a Nintendo fan's ultimate dream: his Nintendo Entertainment Console is a composite of the NES, SNES, N64, GC, and Gameboy, all combined into a single system! With no shortage of electrical/carpentry ability, Logan carefully dissected his consoles, wired them to a central unit, then crafted a wooden vessel to host all five systems as one. Logan has already gotten a response from Nintendo after submitting his creation to them--they were quite impressed!"
> ...a composite of the NES, SNES, N64, GC, and Gameboy, all combined into a single system!
Yes, but can it run Doom 3??
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That thing looks positively retarded.
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My ultimate Nintendo console does all that and it's called a Power Macintosh.... [i]if you get my drift here[/i]
Seriously though the Gamecube is about the ultimate Nintendo console, stick in a GBP and between ports, GBA ports, and Animal Crossing w/Action Replay you can play a really big hunk of Nintendo. In particular a Gamecube with GBP is capable of playing every single Zelda game ever made*
* Not counting the Phillips CD-I titles. Which you shouldn't.
I made myself one of those too, and very effective it is too.
For anyone else who wants one, what you do is, you walk down to your local furniture store and buy what we in England like to call a "shelf".
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
That is quite possibly the sexiest piece of mahogany I have ever seen.
While that is quite an awesome beast, how does it deal as far as heat output. While I know the NES, SNES, and GB probably don't put out much of any heat, I'd imagine the N64 and GameCube would. Without any ventilation (being a wooden box and all), couldn't you meltdown you N64 and Cube?
Well, drawing upon the definition of class 1 lasers, we can see that:
It is neat that they replied with a non-canned response, but it was total BS. You don't have anything to worry about with this laser, and they just don't want to encourage people to modify their products like this for some reason.
I don't intend to be overly critical, but that thing looks like he put all of the systems into one box, and just combined the video outputs. (i know the voltages and power supplies et all). But I thought I was gonna see some streamlined piece of beauty and not a behomoth of a monster. Got to give him some props though for doing this.
My biggest problem with having so many game systems, is that the controller wires always end up in knots. What I would love to see is a combo system that lets use just one set controllers that is switched to what ever system is currently active (like an AB switch). That being said, the woodworking is impressive, I loved the cd player top.
Making it, eh, okay, but hardly all that impressive.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I dont remember what site i saw it on, possibly HardOCP, but it was a SNES, Genesis, N64, Gamecube, PS2, and an Xbox all inside a custom PC case it looked a 1000 times better then this and since the xbox can emulate every console before Dreamcast id wager it was way more usefull.
I mean - as a gaming enthusiast I can understand the desire to combine all of these systems - but it does not look like he saved much physical space in the process.
Given the choice of having all the listed systems working in their original cases - or having all of them in one large block of mahogany that took up the same amount of space - I would have to go with leaving them alone (I personally enjoy the 'cool' factor of having mint condintion, working, old game consoles)
a PS2, Xbox, GameCube, and GameBoy Advance SP so that you can play every game currently on the market with one box! I'd call it the XcubeStation Advance. :)
Takes a good bit of imagination.. more than I've seen in most of the posts about it.
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Hahaha. It looks like he superglued 4 consoles together and covered it in wood.
Now he has a 40lb console that would look completely awful if you actually plugged all the controllers and power supplies in.
Is it just me, or does this thing look a lot like a toilet for an outhouse?
I never understood why they didn't make nice computer cases out of wood. People have these nice solid wood desks, with leather chairs, and hardwood floors in their offices, and their computer is made out of sheet metal and plastic. I would love to get a wood, or even wood-look computer case.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Call me a spoiled kid with a big TV, but Nintendo's systems since SNES have had the capability to support s-video cables, and I love it on my TV. Great picture quality... Even on NES, I can't be bothered with using anything but A/V out, and have successfully rewired my Atari 2600 to support A/V cables.
As for the merits, I don't really like this mod. I wouldn't call it "The Ultimate Nintendo Console", that's for sure.
Lasers can be dangerous, so you warn people about them. Same thing as toxicity warnings on poison. No shit, it's poison, of COURSE it's toxic, wouldn't do much good if it wasn't.
The US is just really lawsuit happy thesedays, so you cover your ass as much as possible. I mean there might be some way to injure yourself with that laser. Maybe you pump more power through it than normal and stare right at it for 5 hours. Stupid? Yes, but better the company be able to say "we told you not to do that" than to loose a multi-million dollar lawsuit over it.
"This food is problematic."
Way to take a bunch of cool consoles and turn them into something that looks like a reject from Ikea!
mirror
1. Emulation doesn't get you the original controllers
2. Emulation doesn't get you your saves on your real cartridges
3. Emulators of many systems only gets the games playable. It doesn't get you perfect sound and picture of the original.
after submitting his creation to them--they were quite impressed!"
;)
Translation, they sent him a cease & desist letter.
Yoshi from TechTV has already done this, and it looks a hell of a lot better. See it here.
To be quite honest, I was expecting something more like an arcade cabinet. Oh, well, it was neat idea, but the case is horribly ugly. And I bet it would be horrendous if a decent percentage of the controllers were plugged in at once It would be way cooler with some sort of cable management system and a little door behind which to store the controllers.
On the aside, I have always wanted to take one of the three Atari 2600's I own and condense it to the size of a Nomad so I could play on the road.
" 1. Emulation doesn't get you the original controllers"
Not always an issue. A Dual Shock is IMHO the greatest consoel controller ever made. I have no problems playing Atari,Gensis,SMS, NES,SNES, N64 etc games all on a joystick that I'm comfortable with. Why would I want to suffer with those old Atari joysticks? Sorry but I did enough of that 20 years ago.
"2. Emulation doesn't get you your saves on your real cartridges."
And you would want this because? With an EMU you can save whenever you want if that's you thing.
"3. Emulators of many systems only gets the games playable. It doesn't get you perfect sound and picture of the original."
Actually for many older console systems you do get perfect sound and picture. Have you looked into Emulated gaming recently? There are a ton of really good emu's out there and even the oldest systems have new emulators coded for them now and then.
Plus with Emulation you don't have to keep 20 consoles around cluttering up your livingroom. The cartridges don't have to be cleaned, you won't wear the parts out, and you don't have to spend huge amount of money on games. I say this as someone who grew up with Atari, NES etc and I own a bunch of console systems and I won't be getting rid of any time soon. IMO Emulation is simply more practical and a better solution. Remember, its the games and gaming that matter, not the screws, chips, and solder that are holding the systems together. The games need to survive, the actual hardware which will become rarer and rarer and more likely to stop working doesn't.
btw my preferred setup is currently MHTPC which serves as a fantastic front end for all my console and arcade gaming needs.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
It's rare that an emulator even gets the sound and picture right for the NES! XMESS isn't close yet, for example.
Plus, you can't even accurately emulate all the games.
Too bad it'll never happen, so the technically 'illegal' abandon-ware ROMS will have to do (but it's actual work collecting them).
--
Power to the Peaceful
I went ahead and mirrored it here.
Logan has already gotten a response from Nintendo after submitting his creation to them--they were quite impressed!"
And they answered him:
Dear Logan, We are quite impressed by your resourcefulness and ingeniousity. Its always remarkable to see that individuals with limited resources can make more original and inspiring toys than the average established big corporation. Nevertheless your limited resources guarantee us that you probably wont be able to defend correctly in court against a giant monster with unlimited legal war chest like us. For that reason we simply decided to sue you ass to the bone.
Surrender immediately (and by immediately we mean in the next 15 minutes) all the Nintendo modified material, the tools you used to do your exploit, the residence were the manipulation of our proprietary design as been done and your first new born girl.
Any attempt to delay or negotiate the terms of this request will be considered as an hostile act against Nintendo Corp. and all of is partners. We are currently seeking permission from court to shoot you on sign and this formality will be accomplish in the next minutes. Our black suited agents in black SUV's are already on their way to your home
Resistance is futile
Again, congratulation for you impressive fun home made gizmo and have a nice day. Sincerely yours.
Al Suy Ouras
Nintendo legal department director and VP of the kitties and puppies crushing department
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
If you think that the dual shock is the best gamepad ever made, then you must have never used the official SNES gamepad... which has the best directional pad ever. Sure the dual shock has analog and vibrating feedback, but when it comes to digital controlled games (NES, Gameboy, SNES, Genesis, etc)... the SNES gamepad wins.
Also, on the topic of emulation accuracy. The NES is probably the most accurately emulated console to date (check out FCE Ultra). However, the SNES emulators still have a ways to go... yes even ZSNES and SNES9x have trouble correctly emulating popular SNES games such as Super Mario Kart.
So basically, don't throw away the real thing just yet. Emulation will be the future for classic console gaming, but until emulation accuracy improves and quality retro-like USB gamepads are produced... you are better off playing on a real SNES or NES.
Not to mention the fact that my SNES is completely solid state and consumes very little power compared to a PC capable of emulating the SNES at full speed.
...hook together an XBox, GameCube, PS2, PS1, SNES, NES, N64, Sega 16, Sega Saturn, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, Virtual Boy, Game Gear, and Nomad. A hard drive completes the collection.
Then you load a custom cartridge/CD in each system that is a fragment of the main game loop. Each console's firmware has been modified to execute things like glTriangle and stuff very efficiently (ask John Carmack to do it).
Then custom-machine a motherboard and bus that takes in the inputs from the consoles and at the same time manages them for parallel processing. A video output to the TV, connect a controller, and BAM Doom 3 on your TV!
*runs*
Mmm, yeah. About that certification. This is technically UK based, but I belive that it's essentially the same.
The FCC certification states that the part will comply with EMI regulations, when assembled as expected. That 'as expected' is critical, but I'll come back to that.
In the UK, it is illegal to sell a computer that is not certified to meet EMI regs. There are two ways to do this - one is to test a system (expensive!), the other is to say that each part shouldn't cause a problem, and the assembly shouldn't, so it's fine (and kinda handwave passed it). Unsurpisingly, the latter is what's done.
On the 'as expected', if you dig into it, you'll find that the parts are only specified as confroming to regs when in a metal case. Basically, they haven't given them a full test (expensive!), but stuck them in a steel or aluminium box, booted it, and waved a meter around, and noted that it was under the limits.
The important point that it's illegal to _sell_ a computer that doesn't conform - so you can buy an all plastic case, and that's all fine. But you can't sell a computer in an all plastic case, unless you either test, or certify, that you have reasonable cause to belive that it meets the EMI regs. Case on its own - that' fine, not a problem (provided the power supply is either separate, or in it's own metal box (Faraday cage).
For this reason, I doubt you'll find anywhere that will sell a computer that's not in a Faraday cage (and I suspect that selling computers in a windowed case is boarderline). It's just too expensive to test, and they don't have 'reasonable grounds' to think that it will pass.
There have been too many stories here about people cramming things in a box. I want to see something new. Something like a Nintendo with a hard disk with all the games ever made for the NES on it. And, a good interface to navigate those numerous titles.
Not that a laser pointer is particularly safe.
I was a little disappointed when I read what the guy had really done. He's just de-cased his consoles and put them in a big box.
I imagined some clever wiring/electronics to have all the consoles driven by one set of four controllers, with one SCART/Component output for all of the consoles, a cleverer switch setup that doesn't boil down to having one reset button for each console, etc. Now that would have been neat, although
I suppose hardcore Nintendo fans would balk at the idea of using the wrong kind of controller with the wrong game -- a Game Cube controller for the NES? NOOOOOO! I assume, also, that the GC controllers are a bit more complex than just some pushbuttons hooked up to some wires as the old controllers were. Still, it would have been cool!
Actually it's tending towards the opposite direction - as older consoles were less powerful, every last cycle had to be squeezed out of the CPU, along with every last little hard-to-predict nuance of the PPU itself. This makes the games much more susceptible to slight variations in the timing of emulated instructions/interrupts.
As consoles get newer, more and more work is done in high-level development environments (somewhat with the SNES, almost all with the generation of consoles that followed) so that emulators have more leeway and more forgiving games. Heck, with new consoles like the N64, Playstation and even the Gamecube, you can recompile the game's assembly code into native x86 assembly (thus throwing off the timing) and reroute the graphics calls to DirectX, yet still have most games work properly, thanks to more modern, frame-skip-tolerant written-in-C-or-C++-with-frameworks console games.
- HOORAY!
... I mean who actually plays video games that much?
I hope this is a lame attempt at humor. This is Slashdot, after all.
yeah, you're not wrong, but it comes back to how fussy you are about the "real thing" issue that some people seem to get very anal about. witness the scanlines debates, filtering, and so on, some people will purposefully turn down options to give a more authentic experience.. i'm just happy for the games to look & sound as good as possible, but there's a significant number of people who played the originals who will notice every little thing that's 'wrong'.. and these are the poeple still messing with old consoles.. but yes arguably the SNES generation are the hardest to emulate because they were (and probably always will be) the most complex systems ever to use almost exclusively low level programming, custom chips in carts, direct hardware access, exploiting bugs for effects, and so forth.. but i have a feeling even if you get The Perfect Emu, you'll have people swearing on the Real Thing instead.. it's like Audiophiles or something. whatever floats your boat.
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They couldn't call it the Nintendo Entertainment System, because that was taken (NES), and definitely wouldn't do the system justice. They thought they were safe with Nintendo Entertainment Console - but that's taken too (NEC).
Give me a Cube with a gameboy player, and an N64 with a Tristar 64