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Nintendo insisted that the 3DS was not being replaced by the switch, in the same way that they told me that the game boy line would keep going after the DS bega

Nintendo insisted that the 3DS was not being replaced by the switch, in the same way that they told me that the game boy line would keep going after the DS began. Something tells me this is Nintendo hedging bets

derefr 6y ago
Nintendo has never really wanted to discontinue a platform. Their vision was always that developers could support old and new platforms together through funky cross-compact measures. • Did you know that the SNES’s CPU starts up in a “NES 6502 compatibility” mode, sort of like x86-64 processors starting up in 16-bit real mode? It’s fully possible to design and build a game entirely for the NES as a 6502-assembler codebase; and then to “port” the game to the SNES, by taking that very same 6502-assembler codebase, and just adding a few minor SNES-level “enhancements” that temporarily switch to 65c816 mode, do something, then switch back to 6502 mode. Since the market penetration of the NES was so high, many games in the early 90s were “dual-released” this way. • Did you know it was possible to create a GBC cart that would act as a fully-fledged SNES game (i.e. mapping a separate SNES game ROM) when plugged into a SNES through a Super Gameboy? Or to have “progressive enhancement” logic in the GBC ROM itself that draws full-color sprites (OBJs) when played on a Super Gameboy? AFAIK, literally nobody has ever fully exploited this, not even demoscene devs. But, well, third-party devs just seemingly have no interest in releasing for old platforms. They want to “be where the action is.” And Nintendo can’t carry the momentum of a platform all by itself. (Plus, Nintendo’s software dev-teams are too busy acting as stewards and shepherds for how to make use of the newest-gen hardware capabilities — by making games for them, and by interfacing with third-parties — to have any labor left over for making games for older consoles.) That being said, Nintendo did try to keep the gameboy line going after the DS. They released the GB Micro. It was its whole own thing, with its own product code (OXY) that signalled that they had likely built up separate factories just to build it. But basically nobody bought it. (But really, I think Nintendo was speaking to developers there, not to gamers. They meant that there’d still be a point, as a game studio, in producing GBA games, because the DS would also play them.)
- saagarjha 6y ago
  That said, it was a very cool form factor.
- Avshalom 6y ago
  >>Did you know it was possible to create a GBC cart that would act as a fully-fledged SNES game (i.e. mapping a separate SNES game ROM) when plugged into a SNES through a Super Gameboy? Or to have “progressive enhancement” logic in the GBC ROM itself that draws full-color sprites (OBJs) when played on a Super Gameboy? AFAIK, literally nobody has ever fully exploited this, not even demoscene devs. https://loveconquersallgam.es/post/2350461718/fuck-the-super-game-boy-introduction https://loveconquersallgam.es/post/2350461718/fuck-the-super... are the definitive posts on this madness
- coldpie 6y ago
  > Did you know it was possible to create a GBC cart that would act as a fully-fledged SNES game (i.e. mapping a separate SNES game ROM) when plugged into a SNES through a Super Gameboy? Or to have “progressive enhancement” logic in the GBC ROM itself that draws full-color sprites (OBJs) when played on a Super Gameboy? AFAIK, literally nobody has ever fully exploited this, not even demoscene devs. One game did! Space Invaders, of all things. Jeremy Parish did a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAyt8NI9u9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAyt8NI9u9c
  - derefr 6y ago
    Fully exploited. Space Invaders was a partial exploitation at best. It was just a tiny stateless SNES ROM-image, that got loaded from the GB cart's ROM into the SNES's tiny work RAM, and then executed from there (leaving approximately zero WRAM for actual gameplay state. Good thing it was Space Invaders!) A full exploitation, IMHO, would look more like the thing Pokemon Stadium did with Pokemon RBY — but done purely in-cart in the GBC game. A SNES game that "interacts with" a GBC game through the SRAM, such that you're playing the same game, two different ways, when you put it in your SNES vs. when you put it in your Gameboy. (Pretty much like Dragon Quest XI Definitive Edition's ability to reboot the game between 3D and 16-bit mode.) Of course, to do that, you'd need actual separate ROM chips in the GBC cart for the SNES game, so that the SNES ROM-image could be larger than WRAM yet still fast. All that ROM would be untenable to fit into a GBC-cart sized cartridge even in 2003, the last year of the GBC's lifetime. It'd be perfectly doable now, though!)
shadowgovt 6y ago
Obviously. But it should be understood that "is not being replaced by" is always a time-windowed statement. In the grand scheme of things, everything new replaces everything old eventually.
mcphage 6y ago
> Nintendo insisted that the 3DS was not being replaced by the switch, in the same way that they told me that the game boy line would keep going after the DS began. If the Switch had been a market failure (or had the DS been, back in its day), Nintendo probably would have kept the older system alive. But once it became clear that the Switch & DS were runaway successes, they could wind down the older hardware without losing their major source of revenue.
goalieca 6y ago
It's been a decade running and 3 years since the switch has been released.
ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
The 3DS was released in February 2011, that makes it one of the longer lasting consoles of recent generations.

derefr 6y ago

Nintendo has never really wanted to discontinue a platform. Their vision was always that developers could support old and new platforms together through funky cross-compact measures. • Did you know that the SNES’s CPU starts up in a “NES 6502 compatibility” mode, sort of like x86-64 processors starting up in 16-bit real mode? It’s fully possible to design and build a game entirely for the NES as a 6502-assembler codebase; and then to “port” the game to the SNES, by taking that very same 6502-assembler codebase, and just adding a few minor SNES-level “enhancements” that temporarily switch to 65c816 mode, do something, then switch back to 6502 mode. Since the market penetration of the NES was so high, many games in the early 90s were “dual-released” this way. • Did you know it was possible to create a GBC cart that would act as a fully-fledged SNES game (i.e. mapping a separate SNES game ROM) when plugged into a SNES through a Super Gameboy? Or to have “progressive enhancement” logic in the GBC ROM itself that draws full-color sprites (OBJs) when played on a Super Gameboy? AFAIK, literally nobody has ever fully exploited this, not even demoscene devs. But, well, third-party devs just seemingly have no interest in releasing for old platforms. They want to “be where the action is.” And Nintendo can’t carry the momentum of a platform all by itself. (Plus, Nintendo’s software dev-teams are too busy acting as stewards and shepherds for how to make use of the newest-gen hardware capabilities — by making games for them, and by interfacing with third-parties — to have any labor left over for making games for older consoles.) That being said, Nintendo did try to keep the gameboy line going after the DS. They released the GB Micro. It was its whole own thing, with its own product code (OXY) that signalled that they had likely built up separate factories just to build it. But basically nobody bought it. (But really, I think Nintendo was speaking to developers there, not to gamers. They meant that there’d still be a point, as a game studio, in producing GBA games, because the DS would also play them.)

saagarjha 6y ago
That said, it was a very cool form factor.
Avshalom 6y ago
>>Did you know it was possible to create a GBC cart that would act as a fully-fledged SNES game (i.e. mapping a separate SNES game ROM) when plugged into a SNES through a Super Gameboy? Or to have “progressive enhancement” logic in the GBC ROM itself that draws full-color sprites (OBJs) when played on a Super Gameboy? AFAIK, literally nobody has ever fully exploited this, not even demoscene devs. https://loveconquersallgam.es/post/2350461718/fuck-the-super-game-boy-introduction https://loveconquersallgam.es/post/2350461718/fuck-the-super... are the definitive posts on this madness
coldpie 6y ago
> Did you know it was possible to create a GBC cart that would act as a fully-fledged SNES game (i.e. mapping a separate SNES game ROM) when plugged into a SNES through a Super Gameboy? Or to have “progressive enhancement” logic in the GBC ROM itself that draws full-color sprites (OBJs) when played on a Super Gameboy? AFAIK, literally nobody has ever fully exploited this, not even demoscene devs. One game did! Space Invaders, of all things. Jeremy Parish did a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAyt8NI9u9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAyt8NI9u9c
- derefr 6y ago
  Fully exploited. Space Invaders was a partial exploitation at best. It was just a tiny stateless SNES ROM-image, that got loaded from the GB cart's ROM into the SNES's tiny work RAM, and then executed from there (leaving approximately zero WRAM for actual gameplay state. Good thing it was Space Invaders!) A full exploitation, IMHO, would look more like the thing Pokemon Stadium did with Pokemon RBY — but done purely in-cart in the GBC game. A SNES game that "interacts with" a GBC game through the SRAM, such that you're playing the same game, two different ways, when you put it in your SNES vs. when you put it in your Gameboy. (Pretty much like Dragon Quest XI Definitive Edition's ability to reboot the game between 3D and 16-bit mode.) Of course, to do that, you'd need actual separate ROM chips in the GBC cart for the SNES game, so that the SNES ROM-image could be larger than WRAM yet still fast. All that ROM would be untenable to fit into a GBC-cart sized cartridge even in 2003, the last year of the GBC's lifetime. It'd be perfectly doable now, though!)

shadowgovt 6y ago

Obviously. But it should be understood that "is not being replaced by" is always a time-windowed statement. In the grand scheme of things, everything new replaces everything old eventually.

mcphage 6y ago

> Nintendo insisted that the 3DS was not being replaced by the switch, in the same way that they told me that the game boy line would keep going after the DS began. If the Switch had been a market failure (or had the DS been, back in its day), Nintendo probably would have kept the older system alive. But once it became clear that the Switch & DS were runaway successes, they could wind down the older hardware without losing their major source of revenue.

goalieca 6y ago

It's been a decade running and 3 years since the switch has been released.

ApolloFortyNine 6y ago

The 3DS was released in February 2011, that makes it one of the longer lasting consoles of recent generations.