News: Iwata: Virtual Console Requires Manual Work Page 1

Anema86 02.07.2015#1

Hobbyists programmed N64, SNES, NES, and even PSX emulators that ran on the Wii, so I'm not sure I can accept this explanation. A single guy coded a Spectrum emulator into Goldeneye, and the older sprite-based games had a lot of standards (mappers and the like) that are bound to make this easier than Nintendo is implying. I'd be really curious to know why hobbyist programmers can accomplish this, but for Nintendo it's a sizable investment.

Not that I condone (or condemn) emulation, but they do exist.

( Edited 02.07.2015 22:27 by Anema86 )

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RudyC3 02.07.2015#2

Anema86 said:
Hobbyists programmed N64, SNES, NES, and even PSX emulators that ran on the Wii, so I'm not sure I can accept this explanation. A single guy coded a Spectrum emulator into Goldeneye, and the older sprite-based games had a lot of standards (mappers and the like) that are bound to make this easier than Nintendo is implying. I'd be really curious to know why hobbyist programmers can accomplish this, but for Nintendo it's a sizable investment.
Not that I condone (or condemn) emulation, but they do exist.

I'd like to say yes and no to this. For earlier games, yes, it's pretty simple, up to SNES level, though even today there are SNES games which are still not accurately emulated, as in emulated with far too many approximations, especially in the sound department, it's still not perfect yet, at least when you've played the original games, you can tell the difference. NES games are emulated with inaccuracies in the sound department too.

For N64 and PSX, N64 in particular, there is absolutely NO emulator out there capable of emulating even remotely fine all the games that exists for the system. There's always some kind of drawbacks on each emulator. I can tell you about it, I spent much of last month setting up the Hyperspin frontend on a PC inside a custom homemade arcade cabinet to run N64 games and had to use no less than 50+ different combinations of emulators and video/sound plugins to run about 100 N64 games close to perfectly without ever having to mess with the settings again. And even then, there are still games which simply can't be emulated without sound stuttering, some hiccups here and there or some special graphic effects simply missing or not emulated altogether, when the games don't simply crash the emulator a few minutes in, or some games that no emulators can even boot, like Rogue Squadron, Battle for Naboo or Indiana Jones (pretty much all of Factor 5 games for the N64)

I think that, given the fact that their official emulation has been, for the most part, extremely accurate (I could still cite Wii VC examples that were not perfect, like Super Mario RPG which has lots of sound effects completely wrong, though still better than what you'd get using non-official emulation), there is some truth behind what Iwata is saying, though in my opinion, with their acquired knowledge of the original hardwares being emulated and their money and resource power, they definitely could speed up the process. It's normal for it to be complicated for hobbyists, but not for fully employed people who do that for a living and who are professionals with access to technical knowledge that hobbyists don't have access to. But the bottom line is, accurately emulating some of these older systems still hasn't been exactly fully realised, contrary to what you may think. It's mostly done for systems up to the SNES, but not so much for later systems, at least if you want quality emulation, which I believe is what everyone wants when they pay for it. And given how DK64 on the Wii U VC still has its issues, I understand that N64 games are still slow to come out. I haven't noticed any problems in Paper Mario 64 though, that one is, as far as I can tell, pretty flawless, and emulated BETTER on the Wii U than with ANY non-official emulators out there, you've got to give them credit for that.

Edit this post:

[quote][b]Anema86 said:[/b]<br/>Hobbyists programmed N64, SNES, NES, and even PSX emulators that ran on the Wii, so I'm not sure I can accept this explanation. A single guy coded a Spectrum emulator into Goldeneye, and the older sprite-based games had a lot of standards (mappers and the like) that are bound to make this easier than Nintendo is implying. I'd be really curious to know why hobbyist programmers can accomplish this, but for Nintendo it's a sizable investment.

Not that I condone (or condemn) emulation, but they do exist.[/quote]
I'd like to say yes and no to this. For earlier games, yes, it's pretty simple, up to SNES level, though even today there are SNES games which are still not accurately emulated, as in emulated with far too many approximations, especially in the sound department, it's still not perfect yet, at least when you've played the original games, you can tell the difference. NES games are emulated with inaccuracies in the sound department too.

For N64 and PSX, N64 in particular, there is absolutely NO emulator out there capable of emulating even remotely fine all the games that exists for the system. There's always some kind of drawbacks on each emulator. I can tell you about it, I spent much of last month setting up the Hyperspin frontend on a PC inside a custom homemade arcade cabinet to run N64 games and had to use no less than 50+ different combinations of emulators and video/sound plugins to run about 100 N64 games close to perfectly without ever having to mess with the settings again. And even then, there are still games which simply can't be emulated without sound stuttering, some hiccups here and there or some special graphic effects simply missing or not emulated altogether, when the games don't simply crash the emulator a few minutes in, or some games that no emulators can even boot, like Rogue Squadron, Battle for Naboo or Indiana Jones (pretty much all of Factor 5 games for the N64)

I think that, given the fact that their official emulation has been, for the most part, extremely accurate (I could still cite Wii VC examples that were not perfect, like Super Mario RPG which has lots of sound effects completely wrong, though still better than what you'd get using non-official emulation), there is some truth behind what Iwata is saying, though in my opinion, with their acquired knowledge of the original hardwares being emulated and their money and resource power, they definitely could speed up the process. It's normal for it to be complicated for hobbyists, but not for fully employed people who do that for a living and who are professionals with access to technical knowledge that hobbyists don't have access to. But the bottom line is, accurately emulating some of these older systems still hasn't been exactly fully realised, contrary to what you may think. It's mostly done for systems up to the SNES, but not so much for later systems, at least if you want quality emulation, which I believe is what everyone wants when they pay for it. And given how DK64 on the Wii U VC still has its issues, I understand that N64 games are still slow to come out. I haven't noticed any problems in Paper Mario 64 though, that one is, as far as I can tell, pretty flawless, and emulated BETTER on the Wii U than with ANY non-official emulators out there, you've got to give them credit for that.

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Anema86 03.07.2015#3

That was why I specifically mentioned the sprite-based games; polygonal rendering emulation is going to be far more intensive, since the "tools" aren't so much part of the console as they were in the days of sprites (when all the raw materials existed for everyone, and developers pulled from a set of resources to make their game), like the NES and, for the most part, SNES. I know of at least one emulator, though I can't remember the details I believe it was an NES emulator, that couldn't achieve 100% accuracy because of patents--which is a serious issue for emulator programmers that Nintendo doesn't have to contend with. That holds up a huge chunk of the emulation world, especially now that a BIOS isn't part of the hardware and has to obtained by the end user, resulting in third party plugins that interface with the BIOS instead--and, as you point out, more contemporary emulators are heavily plugin reliant. That might not be the case if US reverse engineering laws would keep up with the fast pace of technology instead of being writer m written for 1930s rates of technological progress, and if console emulators could actually attempt to emulate the hardware instead of a facsimile of the hardware. DOSBox does it flawlessly because it doesn't have those lawsuits to contend with, while console emulators are more like WINE on Linux: their hands tied by draconian legislation specifically to keep them from getting "too close" to the real thing. Those are more challenges hobbyists and non-official emulators have to fight through (I think SNES9x has moved beyond "hobbyist" but I actually always preferred ZSNESW, so I don't know). Then there are various Rogue Squadrons and Space Station Silicon Valleys that no one has figured out.

As for minor issues like graphical anomalies and sound issues, my expectations have been consistently lowered over the past twenty years by things like Civilization 5, Dragon Age: Inquisition, the PS3 Orange Box, and others that I'm amazed to find a game that doesn't have some kind of issue. I can say that Nintendo has largely avoided the "release now, patch/fix later, after we've been paid" mentality, but the high amount of DLC for Mario Kart 8 and a few recent releases make me worry that they, too, are jumping the shark. My point with this remark is that it *would* be below Nintendo's standards if their VC DK64 played as it does on PC'S Project 64 (or even like PS3's Skyrim... Lol), so i definitely agree with you there, too. I wasn't attempting to minimize the challenges involved, but to highlight that hobbyists can come really close in their spare time while avoiding legal action and copyright infringement. I would definitely expect the company with the patents to be able to do it more effectively. For those who don't emulate at all, it would definitely be unacceptable to buy a VC game and have it filled with anomalies.

Edit: "20 years" is a bit extreme. More like the past ten years.

( Edited 03.07.2015 08:52 by Anema86 )

Edit this post:

That was why I specifically mentioned the sprite-based games; polygonal rendering emulation is going to be far more intensive, since the "tools" aren't so much part of the console as they were in the days of sprites (when all the raw materials existed for everyone, and developers pulled from a set of resources to make their game), like the NES and, for the most part, SNES. I know of at least one emulator, though I can't remember the details I believe it was an NES emulator, that couldn't achieve 100% accuracy because of patents--which is a serious issue for emulator programmers that Nintendo doesn't have to contend with. That holds up a huge chunk of the emulation world, especially now that a BIOS isn't part of the hardware and has to obtained by the end user, resulting in third party plugins that interface with the BIOS instead--and, as you point out, more contemporary emulators are heavily plugin reliant. That might not be the case if US reverse engineering laws would keep up with the fast pace of technology instead of being writer m written for 1930s rates of technological progress, and if console emulators could actually attempt to emulate the hardware instead of a facsimile of the hardware. DOSBox does it flawlessly because it doesn't have those lawsuits to contend with, while console emulators are more like WINE on Linux: their hands tied by draconian legislation specifically to keep them from getting "too close" to the real thing. Those are more challenges hobbyists and non-official emulators have to fight through (I think SNES9x has moved beyond "hobbyist" but I actually always preferred ZSNESW, so I don't know). Then there are various Rogue Squadrons and Space Station Silicon Valleys that no one has figured out.

As for minor issues like graphical anomalies and sound issues, my expectations have been consistently lowered over the past twenty years by things like Civilization 5, Dragon Age: Inquisition, the PS3 Orange Box, and others that I'm amazed to find a game that doesn't have some kind of issue. I can say that Nintendo has largely avoided the "release now, patch/fix later, after we've been paid" mentality, but the high amount of DLC for Mario Kart 8 and a few recent releases make me worry that they, too, are jumping the shark. My point with this remark is that it *would* be below Nintendo's standards if their VC DK64 played as it does on PC'S Project 64 (or even like PS3's Skyrim... Lol), so i definitely agree with you there, too. I wasn't attempting to minimize the challenges involved, but to highlight that hobbyists can come really close in their spare time while avoiding legal action and copyright infringement. I would definitely expect the company with the patents to be able to do it more effectively. For those who don't emulate at all, it would definitely be unacceptable to buy a VC game and have it filled with anomalies.

Edit: "20 years" is a bit extreme. More like the past ten years.

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Darkflame 03.07.2015#4

Anema86 said:
Hobbyists programmed N64, SNES, NES, and even PSX emulators that ran on the Wii, so I'm not sure I can accept this explanation.

And those people don't need to ensure each game plays over its run 100% perfectly. Even a 99% emulated thing is pretty poor quality when someone actually pays for it - even slight glitches or bugs become hugely bigger deal.

My understanding of how VC games typically work is they are a bundle of a Rom+Emulator.
The emulator being based of a standard one Nintendo has, but is tuned for each game - making specific changes to get around any quirks in that game.
They then have to playtest over the whole thing (which itself is a decent amount of work, its not just completing the game once - its trying every game possibility carefully).

THEN they have to almost certainly go though licensing/ratings/bruocratic issues.

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WP-Final 03.07.2015#5

Not gonna happen but Nintendo need a 100 man team dedicated to VC games haha.

Agul 06.07.2015#6

Virtual Console was one of Nintendo's most brilliant ideas, but their lack of decent support for it irks the hell out of me. Even with all the awesome new bells and whistles both Wii U & 3DS VC services brought to the table, Nintendo's support has actually gotten worse over the years.

My biggest gripes:
*1-2 games released per week on average.
*Wii U's VC service is still missing many of the classic consoles Wii's VC service supported.
*No cross-buy/shared save states (this is more due to Nintendo's lack of a proper unified account system that isn't tied to any one console)
*No-brainer consoles haven't been added:
Wii U's VC - GB, GBC, GCN, Game Gear, Saturn, Dreamcast, Mega-CD/32x, TurboDuo, etc.
3DS's VC - GBA, DS, SNES, N64, VB, Master System, Mega Drive, TurboGrafx, Neo Geo, Wonder Swan series, Neo Geo Pocket series, Lynx, etc.

( Edited 06.07.2015 19:53 by Agul )

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Anema86 07.07.2015#7

I acknowledged this to a degree, but you're also totally wrong. There hasn't been a game released in 30 years that didn't have glitches and issues; why are you requiring 100% perfection from VC releases? Pokemon Gen 1 had the most famous glitch in gaming history, but no one minded paying for it, and no one said, "We paid for this, so it should be perfect!" While I agree this "some glitches are okay" attitude is hurting gaming, the fact is that the attitude is widely dominant. Half the time, I'm surprised when a game can even be beaten without being patched first. I don't see why VC releases would have a different standard. I'm not saying they should be filled with bugs, but demanding 100% stability isn't realistic. 99% stability is more than we've yet gotten from any emulator--and I defy you to find a game FCEU won't run perfectly. My entire point was that of hobbyists can achieve "99%" in their spare time, Nintendo, as they hold the patents and don't have to worry about reverse engineering and patent lawsuits, surely can emulate their hardware with total accuracy. The end result is still the same: they need to develop a better emulator. FCEU can emulate any NES game; some settings changes may be necessary, but those settings changes are exactly what Nintendo should be packing into the VC release. It's simply not as hard as Nintendo is making it out to be. And this is from a guy who TAS's and loves breaking things to figure out how they work. Though it's beyond me to code a functioning emulator, I'm not even a programmer and can figure out, in reasonable amounts of time, what settings need to be active for stability, speed, or accuracy, depending on my goal at the time. It's NOT that hard, once a emulator has been made.

Edit: The reason I brought up TASs is unclear. They exist solely from diving into the game's memory, hex addresses, RNG, etc. to find new ways to break the game; the actual playing of the game is a small, small part of it. But the community has not only produced an emulator that can emulate any NES game, but also has a huge array of other features that capitalize on the coding of the NES to provide *better*, not necessarily more accurate, emulation. In the end, the point of the VC releases is entertainment, not accuracy to the original game on its respective system. With the focus on entertainment, stability is much easier to maximize--because the NES itself wasn't perfect, emulating it accurately will produce imperfect gameplay. It's ridiculously easy to get a stable and entertaining experience from a standard emulator; the default settings are sufficient for 99% of games, particularly on the older systems, though this leaves a number of glitches in the game code itself. Nintendo isn't striving for accuracy, though, and removes the worst bugs and glitches, which would take substantially less time if they weren't so hostile to the ROM Hack community (any bug you can think of in practically any NES/SNSES game has been fixed by someone, somewhere).

Nintendo continually wastes time reinventing the wheel, I believe, is my point with this incoherent babbling.

( Edited 07.07.2015 17:27 by Anema86 )

Edit this post:

I acknowledged this to a degree, but you're also totally wrong. There hasn't been a game released in 30 years that didn't have glitches and issues; why are you requiring 100% perfection from VC releases? Pokemon Gen 1 had the most famous glitch in gaming history, but no one minded paying for it, and no one said, "We paid for this, so it should be perfect!" While I agree this "some glitches are okay" attitude is hurting gaming, the fact is that the attitude is widely dominant. Half the time, I'm surprised when a game can even be beaten without being patched first. I don't see why VC releases would have a different standard. I'm not saying they should be filled with bugs, but demanding 100% stability isn't realistic. 99% stability is more than we've yet gotten from any emulator--and I defy you to find a game FCEU won't run perfectly. My entire point was that of hobbyists can achieve "99%" in their spare time, Nintendo, as they hold the patents and don't have to worry about reverse engineering and patent lawsuits, surely can emulate their hardware with total accuracy. The end result is still the same: they need to develop a better emulator. FCEU can emulate any NES game; some settings changes may be necessary, but those settings changes are exactly what Nintendo should be packing into the VC release. It's simply not as hard as Nintendo is making it out to be. And this is from a guy who TAS's and loves breaking things to figure out how they work. Though it's beyond me to code a functioning emulator, I'm not even a programmer and can figure out, in reasonable amounts of time, what settings need to be active for stability, speed, or accuracy, depending on my goal at the time. It's NOT that hard, once a emulator has been made.

Edit: The reason I brought up TASs is unclear. They exist solely from diving into the game's memory, hex addresses, RNG, etc. to find new ways to break the game; the actual playing of the game is a small, small part of it. But the community has not only produced an emulator that can emulate any NES game, but also has a huge array of other features that capitalize on the coding of the NES to provide *better*, not necessarily more accurate, emulation. In the end, the point of the VC releases is entertainment, not accuracy to the original game on its respective system. With the focus on entertainment, stability is much easier to maximize--because the NES itself wasn't perfect, emulating it accurately will produce imperfect gameplay. It's ridiculously easy to get a stable and entertaining experience from a standard emulator; the default settings are sufficient for 99% of games, particularly on the older systems, though this leaves a number of glitches in the game code itself. Nintendo isn't striving for accuracy, though, and removes the worst bugs and glitches, which would take substantially less time if they weren't so hostile to the ROM Hack community (any bug you can think of in practically any NES/SNSES game has been fixed by someone, somewhere).

Nintendo continually wastes time reinventing the wheel, I believe, is my point with this incoherent babbling.

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