11/14/2022 0 Comments Stereoscopic 3d nes emulator![]() Megaman running on 3DNes – Image from the 3DNes website Developers had to be really clever to achieve visual effects back then, especially for parallax. It could only have one foreground and one background layer. NES games couldn’t benefit from modern features like multi-layered sprites. I understand the limitations of the hardware at its time. Yet, it feels like Nintendo just threw an emulator + rom there. They are fun to play, the virtual console has a save state which is handy, and Mario 3 can even be downloaded to a friend’s console to be played together. The 3dNes emulator even has an on-the-fly editor to tell how sprites should behave! So, if they can do, why cannot Nintendo do? Big N holds the specifications of hardware and developers the specifications of games. Surely there is not a silver bullet for ‘3d-fying’ games flawlessly and many will flick out here and there, but just stop for a moment and consider this: independent programmers have achieved such marvellous results without official support from Nintendo. Watch the following video and you will see my discontentment. Nevertheless, I am still not convinced of that impossible dream, for one simple reason. Iwata and Nakano also talk about the difficulties found during development of the games in 3D. Arika attempted a 3D Classics version of the NES/Famicom game Tennis because the background had perspective, but found it looked unimpressive in 3D while requiring re-coding collision detection almost from scratch. They underestimated the amount of work required to add stereoscopic 3D to a 2D game, requiring much more work than a simple port. ![]() So, what have gone wrong with all the others? Why not more NES games with 3D capabilities? I am not requiring anything fancy, only that some of the sprites would pop up when I slide the depth slider up. Unfortunately, only seven games have been released like so, and it seems that no others are to come out. Make the NES games in 3D! Well, actually they exist and they are known as 3D classics. Would you pay $5 for a single rom packaged onto an emulator? So, dear reader, you could be thinking how Nintendo could attract players to buy such games besides the nostalgia factor? I always thought about releasing them with snazzy 3D graphics. However, may I be frank with you: one could just download all roms and hook up a PC provided with a decent emulator to a television and the experience would probably be better than on a handheld system. Now, how about the price for such games on the Nintendo eShop? Each NES game is sold by $5. But I am not here to talk about it today. What a deal, right? And the NES classic even includes the games’ manuals, four save slots, a neat menu to navigate throughout the games, three different modes for the TV screen, one even simulating the old CRT TVs, and much more. That’s $2 per game if we ignore the cost of the hardware, but of course, most of the price regards the hardware. And let’s not forget about how they have re-reinvented the concept pushing once more NES titles to consumers with their new scarcely released NES Classic Edition, packed with 30 games, by the suggested price of $60. Looking at what Nintendo did is quite remarkable: get old games which were lucrative many years ago and keep them to generate new profits, without even making any substantial improvement upon! Well played big N. And for those who own a new 3DS they have the capability of playing SNES games as well. Since the release of the virtual console, which is a platform both for 3DS and Wii systems where a player can buy old games and play them on their respective consoles via emulation, it has brought players with their classical and beloved games from the 80s such as Super Mario Bros. ![]() Today I write to talk (rather complain) about the virtual console and give my 2 cents on how Nintendo could have improved upon the player’s experience with NES games on the 3DS system. ![]() Nonetheless, I also have some criticisms to make about some of the company’s decisions regarding their games. Disclaimer: I love Nintendo! I grew up playing many NES, SNES and Nintendo 64 games and I have always appraised them. ![]()
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