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No native ports in Super Mario 3D All Stars

Posting this in case anyone finds any confirmation of input lag or poor performance in any way. I want to preorder, but "no significant input lag" is a pretty strict rule here.
 

Grinchy

Banned
We can all agree this is lazy, but it clearly doesn't matter. There is a very low expectation level for Nintendo consumers, which becomes especially true when Nintendo has a hit on their hands. The Wii was plagued with cheap shovelware, and now that the Switch is a huge success, they can keep shitting out lazy crap like this and still sell 15M+ copies.

Moms, grandmas, gamer girls, 10 year olds, and numale gapers do not care that they're paying full price for emulated old games instead of actual remakes.
 

VN1X

Banned
I mean I pre-ordered this shit as I have no other way of playing these games, let alone all in one package from the comfort of my couch (or bed!). I know it's probably a shitty deal when you look at the price compared to the effort the makers put in, especially compared to other recent remasters and remakes but... It's Mario, guys.

Y'all are just jealous he's the most successful plumber of all time that also lives in a castle and has a princess who bake cakes for him. SAD!
 
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TriSuit666

Banned
From what I understand the reverse enginee
How do they compensate for the lack of analog triggers(such a bone head move Nintendo) in Mario Sunshine?

From what I understand (and I've not done this myself) is that they've already modded this out AND replaced the rom supplied with a different GameCube rom that improves things, they've also fixed a bunch of bugs in the emulator itself.
 
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H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Let's try to address a few issues here. First up, when releasing old games on new platforms there are a couple of routes you can go. You can go super-faithful, or you can remake. Remakes are good when the base game hasn't aged as gracefully as you'd like but it's still a beloved title among its fans. This allows new people to come and check it out. Sometimes it's unnecessary (looking at you Mafia remake - Mafia 1 is perfectly fine as is) but they do it anyway to make money because the original is available but not making much money (eg it's on GOG and just shifting a few copies in its long tail). In general it's less work than an original game as you have a template to follow and you know you have a higher than average chance of a hit, it's a safe bet for risk-averse AAA publishers.

The other approach is the super-faithful approach. This is useful where the original holds up just fine but isn't available on some modern platforms, and where you're looking for historical preservation. This is where the Nintendo games come in. These games are incredibly well-loved classics, popular beyond Spyro, Crash or Tony, and to rework them runs the risk of ruining them. Messing with the visuals risks losing the charm of the old-school low-poly art (bear in mind that art was designed for that environment). It also risks a weird uncanny valley of older gameplay style and modern visuals.

Having established that Nintendo have chosen the faithful preservation route (with a few fixes to make it playable on modern systems) we consider methodology. Emulate or port. Well, a port is a pretty wasteful choice - it will only work on one system plus anything that's backward compatible with it. It might not preserve what are actually bugs but have come to be well-loved features for speedrunners and hardcore fans. In many ways a port comes with the same risks as translating a great work of art from long ago in a foreign language in that everything requires interpretation, not to mention the inherent difficulty in finding developers familiar with how the old code works in relation to the old hardware who can translate that behaviour to a modern system with a very different architecture.

In the world of IT we're all basically moving to emulation, virtualisation and containerisation. We write one piece of code, it gets a guaranteed environment in which to run. I deploy code to docker containers and they'll work anywhere because the host system is irrelevant - docker provides a setup I've defined. I run my linux development environment in a virtual machine so that if I fuck something up I have a backup, and because I can copy that environment between machines and minimise my setup time. Emulation, done well, preserves all the original behaviours (intended and unintended) and lets you be super-efficient. With the emulators in place you can bring more games over, but ports have to be done one-at-a-time. With the emulated version you only need to be familiar with the code for a single platform to make whatever edits you want to make. When a new system comes out then you simply port the emulator instead of each individual game. It's a less wasteful strategy that still, in the end, gets a good playable game into the user's hands.

Finally, I'll finish with this video.



Now this is relevant to us on a few levels. First I'll summarise the video if anyone doesn't want to watch it. Guy in the audience is a techie and complains that a piece of tech (openDoc) is being dropped. Steve Jobs points out that while engineers love their tech, Apple chooses to focus on the user experience first, then build tech to satisfy that need, rather than building tech and then trying to figure out how to sell that.

It's relevant here in that many of those complaining are making a technical complaint which ultimately only matters to that small group of people who gives a crap about those things, the techies, they are that guy in the audience. In reality the public just wants to play a good game. This extends to the debate around the Switch's lack of power - again the public doesn't generally give a fuck about teraflops, it cares about fun games, and the Switch enables Nintendo to deliver their vision of that. The sales figures would suggest this strategy succeeded.

In short, suck it nerds.
 
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Zoro7

Banned
Nintendo fanboys are the worst. Spent millions on bloody amibos. Nintendo can churn out any old shit and it’ll still sell.
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
What the fuck is wrong with you people? If you don't want to play emulated games then don't. Would you rather have Nintendo commit a lot of resources to remastering these games instead of creating something new? Because that is what you are bitching about. Did they price it a bit out of wack? No because the thing sold out so the market supports it.
 

alexross

Neo Member
Let's try to address a few issues here. First up, when releasing old games on new platforms there are a couple of routes you can go. You can go super-faithful, or you can remake. Remakes are good when the base game hasn't aged as gracefully as you'd like but it's still a beloved title among its fans. This allows new people to come and check it out. Sometimes it's unnecessary (looking at you Mafia remake - Mafia 1 is perfectly fine as is) but they do it anyway to make money because the original is available but not making much money (eg it's on GOG and just shifting a few copies in its long tail). In general it's less work than an original game as you have a template to follow and you know you have a higher than average chance of a hit, it's a safe bet for risk-averse AAA publishers.

The other approach is the super-faithful approach. This is useful where the original holds up just fine but isn't available on some modern platforms, and where you're looking for historical preservation. This is where the Nintendo games come in. These games are incredibly well-loved classics, popular beyond Spyro, Crash or Tony, and to rework them runs the risk of ruining them. Messing with the visuals risks losing the charm of the old-school low-poly art (bear in mind that art was designed for that environment). It also risks a weird uncanny valley of older gameplay style and modern visuals.

Having established that Nintendo have chosen the faithful preservation route (with a few fixes to make it playable on modern systems) we consider methodology. Emulate or port. Well, a port is a pretty wasteful choice - it will only work on one system plus anything that's backward compatible with it. It might not preserve what are actually bugs but have come to be well-loved features for speedrunners and hardcore fans. In many ways a port comes with the same risks as translating a great work of art from long ago in a foreign language in that everything requires interpretation, not to mention the inherent difficulty in finding developers familiar with how the old code works in relation to the old hardware who can translate that behaviour to a modern system with a very different architecture.

In the world of IT we're all basically moving to emulation, virtualisation and containerisation. We write one piece of code, it gets a guaranteed environment in which to run. I deploy code to docker containers and they'll work anywhere because the host system is irrelevant - docker provides a setup I've defined. I run my linux development environment in a virtual machine so that if I fuck something up I have a backup, and because I can copy that environment between machines and minimise my setup time. Emulation, done well, preserves all the original behaviours (intended and unintended) and lets you be super-efficient. With the emulators in place you can bring more games over, but ports have to be done one-at-a-time. With the emulated version you only need to be familiar with the code for a single platform to make whatever edits you want to make. When a new system comes out then you simply port the emulator instead of each individual game. It's a less wasteful strategy that still, in the end, gets a good playable game into the user's hands.

Finally, I'll finish with this video.



Now this is relevant to us on a few levels. First I'll summarise the video if anyone doesn't want to watch it. Guy in the audience is a techie and complains that a piece of tech (openDoc) is being dropped. Steve Jobs points out that while engineers love their tech, Apple chooses to focus on the user experience first, then build tech to satisfy that need, rather than building tech and then trying to figure out how to sell that.

It's relevant here in that many of those complaining are making a technical complaint which ultimately only matters to that small group of people who gives a crap about those things, the techies, they are that guy in the audience. In reality the public just wants to play a good game. This extends to the debate around the Switch's lack of power - again the public doesn't generally give a fuck about teraflops, it cares about fun games, and the Switch enables Nintendo to deliver their vision of that. The sales figures would suggest this strategy succeeded.

In short, suck it nerds.


this is interesting and correct but we can guess if 60€ is a correct pricing for three emulated roms
 

SumJester

Member
Same trick they pulled on the Wii with All-Stars. Glad that I skipped this one.

...They will pull the same trick with Prime won't they? Goddamit they got me anyway...
 
only Nintendo fanboys will praise their "god" for releasing a low effort product of emulated roms at full price LOL. Imagine defending this shit XD
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
this is interesting and correct but we can guess if 60€ is a correct pricing for three emulated roms

Here's the thing - emulation has value. Now people have come to consider it as valueless because of open source which tends to be released free of charge by hobbyists, but it requires that a person works on it. When a new system is built someone must port it. It's not a small thing to build. Consider then that a commercial entity will have issues if they then try to use an open source emulator or even borrow code from it, given it's likely infected with the GPL license which would require them to open-source everything. So this means they can't just grab one off the shelf, they must build it themselves in a clean environment with provably no access to the open source variant.
 

Exede

Member
It will sell a shit ton amyways. Maybe that's nintendos mind about the "remaster". And well it will sell, it will sell fast and it will raise in price. Can't blame them.
 

-Arcadia-

Banned
7dybF4E.jpg


This thread is not a proportional response to the news, lol.

Okay. They’re emulated, and largely true to the originals. No above and beyond here.

If that isn’t for you, it makes sense to express yourself rationally, and move on. Likewise, if you don’t mind a very similar experience, but with a few modern display standard touch-ups, you’re probably pretty excited to play this on your Switch.

Both are entirely valid.

What isn’t, seems to be this repetitive, ongoing tantrum thrown in every Nintendo thread. I’m not going to report you, or request that you stop. It’s just... the lot of you look legitimately retarded. It genuinely appears as if an esoteric, fun Japanese company that sells games to children, fans, and families, has quite a few of you on the verge of tears at any given point.

Is that rational? Does that make sense? Why be that way?
 

Neil Young

Member
7dybF4E.jpg


This thread is not a proportional response to the news, lol.

Okay. They’re emulated, and largely true to the originals. No above and beyond here.

If that isn’t for you, it makes sense to express yourself rationally, and move on. Likewise, if you don’t mind a very similar experience, but with a few modern display standard touch-ups, you’re probably pretty excited to play this on your Switch.

Both are entirely valid.

What isn’t, seems to be this repetitive, ongoing tantrum thrown in every Nintendo thread. I’m not going to report you, or request that you stop. It’s just... the lot of you look legitimately retarded. It genuinely appears as if an esoteric, fun Japanese company that sells games to children, fans, and families, has quite a few of you on the verge of tears at any given point.

Is that rational? Does that make sense? Why be that way?
And calling people retarded is rational? And thanks for not reporting people, you're a stunning and brave individual.

Some people have a problem with this cheap ass company and choose to vent about it on a videogame forum in a thread that details how cheap and lazy they are. So what? This is the ONLY place I even share my opinion on Nintendo, and video games in general. No one in my real life plays videogames so I don't have much of chance to vent about this sacred cow.
 

-Arcadia-

Banned
And calling people retarded is rational? And thanks for not reporting people, you're a stunning and brave individual.

Some people have a problem with this cheap ass company and choose to vent about it on a videogame forum in a thread that details how cheap and lazy they are. So what? This is the ONLY place I even share my opinion on Nintendo, and video games in general. No one in my real life plays videogames so I don't have much of chance to vent about this sacred cow.

You seem like a rational person that isn’t set off by the slightest thing.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
And calling people retarded is rational? And thanks for not reporting people, you're a stunning and brave individual.

Some people have a problem with this cheap ass company and choose to vent about it on a videogame forum in a thread that details how cheap and lazy they are. So what? This is the ONLY place I even share my opinion on Nintendo, and video games in general. No one in my real life plays videogames so I don't have much of chance to vent about this sacred cow.

If someone IS retarded then they should be called retarded. I see no problem there. The thing is that there is this constant pile-on in EVERY Nintendo thread from the usual suspects, absolutely foaming at the mouth about how awful it is that Nintendo keep on making stuff that people seem to want at a price they're willing to pay judging from sales figures. It seems to threaten them in some way, as if their PS or Xbox is suddenly made less valuable by the success of a company that really isn't competing in the same sector - Nintendo is a whole different market because it offers something different to the other consoles. I mean if it upsets you maybe you can get some therapy I guess, but really people need to quit the console warrior bullshit.
 

theclaw135

Banned
Have we forgotten Mega Man Legacy Collection already? It contained rom files, but runs them in a manner somewhat different from what is conventionally termed emulation.

Games other than Mega Man won't play.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Yes.

The asking price and what it could have been.

What it could have been is a subjective matter - many people will value the opportunity to play the games in as close to their original form as possible on a portable device. The price is what the market decides. The sales figures would indicate that the price is correct.
 

Dr Kaneda

Member
You're the one getting this worked up over entertainment products here.
If my literal one line post is evidence of me being "worked up" what do your multiple posts in this thread desperately trying to defend this game against any form of critique show?
 

azz0r

Banned
They could easily remake Mario 64 quickly, they pretty much had the whole castle done in Odyssey. Most of the assets in Odyssey would work on the themed levels also.
 
What it could have been is a subjective matter - many people will value the opportunity to play the games in as close to their original form as possible on a portable device. The price is what the market decides. The sales figures would indicate that the price is correct.
I tend to think the sales figures are tied to the scarcity of it, we don't even know how much stock they're putting out there.

Plus, the whole concept of limiting availability of a release like this is bad news IMO.

You're right, to some people it's worth it and more than a novelty, it's also nothing new, I remember Nintendo giving away emulated Ocarina of Time discs with Wind Waker and it was fine because it was a freebie, also with Super Mario All Stars 10 years ago, it was given away with the console I think. At least in Europe.

I remember in both cases, Nintendo not making money out of it, but scammers did. This time both Nintendo and stock scalpers get to do money I guess. I also think this whole scenario makes it harder for the people who actually want to play the games (and haven't) from getting it.

Anyway, it's simply not their best effort, and for the asking price people are reacting to that instead of turning a blind eye.
 
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theclaw135

Banned
What it could have been is a subjective matter - many people will value the opportunity to play the games in as close to their original form as possible on a portable device. The price is what the market decides. The sales figures would indicate that the price is correct.

Exactly. The main Mario games are industry shaping, cultural landmarks. We should be glad Nintendo isn't toying with them. Super Mario Advance failed to treat the games with reverence and we got what, annoying voice acting?
 

-Arcadia-

Banned
If my literal one line post is evidence of me being "worked up" what do your multiple posts in this thread desperately trying to defend this game against any form of critique show?

Looks like a desire to participate in the thread, discuss, and enjoy himself on Gaf to me.

You, on the other hand.

If I was Nintendo I would do exactly the same. Why waste time, money and effort into make a quality product when you know your socially retarded and emotional stunted fan base will pay $60 for below-par shit.

Seem to be very upset. Did you not hear Saint Craig’s words of wisdom?
 

iconmaster

Banned
If my literal one line post is evidence of me being "worked up" what do your multiple posts in this thread desperately trying to defend this game against any form of critique show?

Depends on what's in them, right? I don't think I've attacked anyone, at least.

By the way, I don't personally feel the game is worth $60. It doesn't have anything to do with whether the code is native or emulated, though.
 

Dr Kaneda

Member
Looks like a desire to participate in the thread, discuss, and enjoy himself on Gaf to me.

You, on the other hand.



Seem to be very upset. Did you not hear Saint Craig’s words of wisdom?

So your post here, which is made in exactly the same sprite but on a larger degree, must also be evidence of you being "very upset" as well?

7dybF4E.jpg


This thread is not a proportional response to the news, lol.

Okay. They’re emulated, and largely true to the originals. No above and beyond here.

If that isn’t for you, it makes sense to express yourself rationally, and move on. Likewise, if you don’t mind a very similar experience, but with a few modern display standard touch-ups, you’re probably pretty excited to play this on your Switch.

Both are entirely valid.

What isn’t, seems to be this repetitive, ongoing tantrum thrown in every Nintendo thread. I’m not going to report you, or request that you stop. It’s just... the lot of you look legitimately retarded. It genuinely appears as if an esoteric, fun Japanese company that sells games to children, fans, and families, has quite a few of you on the verge of tears at any given point.

Is that rational? Does that make sense? Why be that way?

Good job on boxing yourself into a corner champ. Truly big brain logic.

Depends on what's in them, right? I don't think I've attacked anyone, at least.

By the way, I don't personally feel the game is worth $60. It doesn't have anything to do with whether the code is native or emulated, though.
And who did I attack exactly? If you or anyone else is insecure enough to interpret a general remark as a personal one then that's on you/them. If the shoe fits as the saying goes.

I also don't think the package would have been worth $60 if it was native, but it being emulated without question does lower the value of the games since as we've seen now they play worse than the originals and even a fan run port.
 
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Another thing to stress is that as seen with recent leaks, Nintendo evidently has a pretty good repository. Unlike Sega, Square-Enix, Konami, Capcom and others they don't seem to have the habit of losing source code, ever.

This brings about the opportunity to rework their games inner workings, update them and make them platform agnostic (read: free them from the N64, or whatever) this is a good thing and in recent years some companies have been working on preserving their history by updating and maintaining old games. Blizzard now has a whole team dedicated to that. Ports to newer platforms if done right also keep a company game portfolio updated and ready to go (ie, further native ports become easier as architectures nowadays are more and more similar, and these games will never be optimized on a low-level scale again), an emulator does keep it ready to go, but when you go that route updating capacity is finite, new implementations/changes become hacks and it's just not the best way to go about it, it's not future proof, the advantage is requiring less resources and enabling more games from a library to run the same way.

See it this way, if Shadow of the Colossus on the PS3 wasn't a port already, then, the PS3 release would be worse (more slowdowns) and the PS4 update wouldn't be possible. In fact, it would never happen as it took two iterations to get there.

Mario 64 was updated on the DS, and this was a good update with some quality of life changes as well as extra content so one could argue that should have became the baseline version, but now Nintendo is falling back on the original code. Not only that, it's not even doing full HD and 16:9 for some reason.

It's the same as if, Nintendo were to re-release Ocarina of Time and Majora Mask on the Switch, but opted to emulate it in 4:3 or fallback on the N64 versions instead of the newer ports. It's such a step back.

Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy are HUGE, in regards to their place in history and while no such step back, one can argue there is no step forward either.
That doesn't answer the question.
It does, you just disagree :)
 
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-Arcadia-

Banned
So your post here, which is made in exactly the same sprite but on a larger degree, must also be evidence of you being "very upset" as well?



Good job on boxing yourself into a corner champ. Truly big brain logic.


And who did I attack exactly? If you or anyone else is insecure enough to interpret a general remark as a personal one then that's on you/them. If the shoe fits as the saying goes.

I also don't think the package would have been worth $60 if it was native, but it being emulated without question does lower the value of the games since as we've seen now they play worse than the originals and even a fan run port.

So, you can’t read or understand context either. Impressive.

Socially retarded and emotionally stunted, indeed.
 

iconmaster

Banned
And who did I attack exactly? If you or anyone else is insecure enough to interpret a general remark as a personal one

All fans are socially retarded and emotionally stunted
Socrates is a fan
Therefore, Socrates is socially retarded and emotionally stunted
 

bender

What time is it?
It does, you just disagree :)

What exactly do I disagree with? I asked if there is a problem with the emulation. You expressed concern about the pricing and not being an enhanced port. That's more than fine but doesn't address the question. Are there technical issues with the emulation?
 

Dr Kaneda

Member
So, you can’t read or understand context either. Impressive.

Socially retarded and emotionally stunted, indeed.
Context is pretty clear. Fact you can't articulate what I supposedly "contextually" misunderstood and how your post "contextually" differed from mine is as close to concession as you're likely to see.

All fans are socially retarded and emotionally stunted
Socrates is a fan
Therefore, Socrates is socially retarded and emotionally stunted
Socrates was a self-professed fan of Nintendo? TIL...
 
Ah yes. You deployed a meme. That’ll show everyone the error of their ways, for daring to be excited about videogames on a videogame enthusiast board, and sway them to your big brain thinking.
Be excited friendo that's you business, I'm here to call out Nintendo's utterly shit work that you and others defend because it's Nintendo, if this was done by Ubisoft or Activision you would be on the hate bandwagon.

rCoIWz8.jpg
 
Are there technical issues with the emulation?
Yes, there are technical issues, the question is how noticeable they are.

With Mario 64, the technical issue is lack of 16:9 support and same resolution docked and undocked, being 960x720 all the time. Also, no 60 FPS support.

With Mario Sunshine, it's also lack of 60 fps support, if it was a port that should be easy, seeing the original game targeted 60 FPS up to a month before release.

With Mario Galaxy there's no huge drawbacks.


Other issues introduced by emulation can be bugs, latency, performance or lack of stability. I'm assuming these won't happen.
 

-Arcadia-

Banned
Context is pretty clear. Fact you can't articulate what I supposedly "contextually" misunderstood and how your post "contextually" differed from mine is as close to concession as you're likely to see.

You do know that belching out a bunch of big words (tho, congrats) doesn’t cover up the lack of intellect behind them?

Be excited friendo that's you business, I'm here to call out Nintendo's utterly shit work that you and others defend because it's Nintendo, if this was done by Ubisoft or Activision you would be on the hate bandwagon.

rCoIWz8.jpg

Really? Because just a single post ago, you seemed to have a problem with people even liking it.

But let’s address your goalpost move.

“Utterly shit work” Nope.
“Defend because it’s Nintendo.” Nope.

Is it so hard to understand that people love the three games contained within, that this is a perfectly good version, if not terribly ambitious, and that they would love to play them on the system they carry around every day?

Or are you a pathetic, ass-aggrieved warrior with an axe to grind, particularly with people who dare make the mistake of simply looking forward to something? Same for the other guy. A laughingstock, essentially?

I know which one I suspect. :messenger_winking: Nintendo ought to be looked into for rape, with the amount of butthurt I’m seeing here.
 
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