As before, AI tools are enabling unqualified enthusiasts to "contribute" in damaging ways, since they are not trained or experienced individuals participating towards the progress of coding practices or products. It overall reduces our actual understanding of the things we care about.
In a similar area, I wanted to highlight a recent development in the N64 decompilation and recompilation scene. Snowboard Kids 2 (tracked on decomp.dev), recently reached 100% decompilation. I looked into the Github repository, and found that the project lead was making use of AI (primarily Claude) to assist in the decompilation effort.
They've written articles about their decompilation effort on their own blog, and it highlights things like:
Managing the AI as an automated process to try and get the matching code closer to 100%, whilst mitigating token usage (financial costs and potential money sink holes)
That the AI was primarily handling the smaller functions that present the least challenge and critical thinking
That the AI would often redefine the problem or otherwise do destructive actions that would require rolling back progress
Needing to work with real people with experience in decompilation to reverse engineer the most complex functions
In this situation, Snowboards Kid 2 was 100% decompiled in a much shorter time than would've been possible otherwise, and was still performed by people that had the expertise to do the job, but with caveats like monetary costs and fixing automated errors. That is before the ethical implications of what it took and currently takes to get such generative AI running (in terms of dubious data harvesting and outrageous resource and energy consumption).
Curiously, the Recompilation made from the fruits of that decompilation, does not appear to make use of AI vibe coding at all? The blog article even complains of such low quality ports stemming from AI output.
So on one hand, AI was used only to help provide the source data needed to produce a higher quality port of an N64 game, as it was used with greater care than most people normally would. They've also been transparent about the use of the technology.
But on the other hand, it still made use of AI that is evident in its human, ecological, and societal harms, for the sake of porting an N64 game.
If you pay extra attention to the video teaser, the radio is tuning into FM frequencies that correspond to each game's release year. Such as '93 for Star Fox, and '99 for Croc 2.
@Daric That's being wilfully dismissive of the issue here. The social media team saw fit to use a low effort gen-AI mock-up for merch promotion, misrepresenting the product and running the risk of social backlash.
There's a break-down in the production pipeline of producing, releasing, and selling a product to the market, because somewhere in that chain one part decided to use gen AI that betrayed the efforts of the other parts of the chain, sabotaging the effort and public trust.
Funnily enough, they seem to have skipped over the NES / Famicom, I wonder if they'll get around to that?
Epilogue's "Operator" line also needs an agreement to use a reputable emulator, so I wonder who they'll go with for a prospective DS emulator, and which one they picked for N64.
@Razieluigi Ah, that's good to know. Those are admittedly still nice things, as they sound like they improve touch screen usage, and generally have higher quality buttons (at least the buttons themselves).
@ojisan Very much so, the SEGA Mania effort is making use of a generative upscaler with lower quality sources, and their use of it is quite poor as they're outright transforming the images; nothing restorative about it. Transforming the works is not a desirable outcome for a comic or magazine preservation project.
There are upscaling and editing processes that can produce nice, high fidelity results, but these cannot exceed the best possible sources of scanning the original media and saving those results with minimum compression or editing.
A d-pad primary handheld and sports all the features I need out of a handheld, pretty interested in this. I usually go for the lighter weight Anbernic handhelds, but depending on the specs I might go for this.
I'm familiar with hall effect sticks and triggers, but not "2.5D glass" or "double shot buttons" and why that's a selling point, I should look it up.
Banjo Kazooie was decompiled August 2024, though the decompilation repository itself has remained active since then as they worked to improve the code and its documentation.
Calling Lighthouse a "decompilation project" isn't really accurate, since it's a port based on the existing decompilation effort.
Regardless, cool to see this happen! Ports like this compared to the recompilation are easier to build for other platforms, as the RT64 recompilation method is restricted to x64 PCs for now. Harbour Masters previous ports for titles like Super Mario 64, and Ocarina of Time are available on various retro handhelds through the PortMaster project.
I'm still waiting on the recomp port's Ray Tracing update, the initial release was back in January.
I'd played through a FastROM patch of Soul Blazer somewhat recently, and yes the original localisation is pretty clunky at times. I'm rather in the mood to replay this one actually, so I'll definitely check this out.
I'd missed the part where it actually runs on Master System. I'd dismissed it as an "NES inspired game" probably built in Unity or Game Maker or something, but making an actual Master System game is some cool stuff.
LG M-Disc huh? That's the exact Blu-ray drive I have installed in my PC, I better check this out. Yeah, WH14NS40, there's a chance my drive is supported, but also that it's not.
@breach187 Sadly, that may not be possible. There are games that exceed the 64GB capacity of a Switch 2 game card, like Final Fantasy VII Remake. And there are games that apparently require the full speed of internal storage or microSD express, like Star Wars Outlaws. Apparently, Switch 2 game cards aren't fast enough for data streaming, which Star Wars Outlaws uses.
@leogames There admittedly is some value in using it for prototyping and pre-production. I've seen a project manager use Claude Code to have it produce a functional prototype of what they have in mind, when discussing what work they want done from a proper developer who knows how it will fit into their existing work project. The prototype is far from fit for purpose, but it's suitable as a communication aide.
That again though, falls into the same trapping as letting the AI do a lot of the heavy lifting and design work, and effectively the thinking for you.
@leogames
The core of criticism is "learn to do it yourself and do it properly", not "do things this very specific way" (though standards matters when contributing to a code repository).
AI used as a predictive text processor for code in its current state is terrible at critical thought processes and decision making, and should not be used to offload work where precision and meaningful decisions are needed.
At best, it can help for rubber ducking and discovering avenues you were unaware of, as long as you actually explore them yourself to verify the AI didn't hallucinate something.
I disagree that porting work can't be creative. If it weren't, Harbour Team's various ports of N64 titles wouldn't be feature rich with enhancements and new functionality like randomizers and modding support, and a proper system for supporting user mods.
If you're porting something forward with absolutely no changes, why wouldn't you just play the original version? Even commercial releases of retro games frequently have common emulator features like save states and rewind.
I hope that this might lead to a commercial re-release of these apparent hidden gems, since there's a lot of attention on them right now. Maybe the original Hoi, the Amiga and PC versions of Moon Child, and the other games that the Hoi team worked on?
Making playable versions of the cut guest stars is a cool idea. If they're going for Punch Out deep cuts, they could take a look at Arm Wrestling, which featured Bald Bull as "Mask X", and originals like Texas Mac, Kabuki, Alice & Ape III, and Frank Jr.
@Z-GRADT The closest thing I can think of is Mesen's HD NES packs, which are resource packs designed specifically for an NES ROM being emulated with Mesen. https://youtu.be/NF132cqW25w They can do pretty elaborate things with custom code, audio, and graphics beyond the capabilities of a stock NES, but the core program is still running under the hood.
Two other similar things involve NES games being played on SNES. First Infidelity frequently works on porting NES games to SNES, through manual assembly work making use of the Mesen emulator's debugging functions. Second is Project Nested, which is an NES emulator for SNES that works with Just-In-Time (JIT) instructions and passthrough of similar instructions present in both systems. These are possible because the NES and SNES both use Ricoh processors, the Ricoh 2A03 and Ricoh 5A22 respectively, which use the 6502 instruction set.
This was something I pondered with Game Boy software being made to run on Game Boy Advance, as the system has both its ARM7TDMI main processor, and a Sharp SM83 legacy processor. GBA games ran on ARM architecture (which is still common today), whilst Game Boy games ran on something close to the Z80 instruction set. GBA games used that SM83 exclusively for sound processing (sounding much the same), so it couldn't be used for program or graphics, a lot of GBA games processed audio on the ARM processor as to avoid sound outdated.
The point there being a path to convert or force Game Boy games to run on a Game Boy Advance system isn't really there, so Iván Delgado's work on GB Bridge is likely doing its own traditional emulation work (mapping one system's instruction set to a host's instructions), running something like a resource pack to patch in program changes, but may still be leveraging the SM83 co-processor for Game Boy audio.
As an aside, part of why Switch emulators perform so well on mobile devices, is because they mostly all run on ARM processors like the Switch does (which is very similar to an Android tablet to begin with). A lot of the instructions can run with little to no change.
@h3s LRG only opened pre-orders for the console versions earlier this month, the cartridge production won't begin until after the open pre-order window closes early May 2026, and probably not ASAP.
For Switch games, LRG and other publishers have to put in an order for a number of cartridges in multiples of one thousand. That could mean if there are 6500 pre-orders, they may produce 7000 units so they can cover replacements, 8000 or 9000 units so they can have some additional back-stock for a second-chance sale, etc.
Since they need to know an exact number for that order request, they won't place manufacturing requests in advance of closing pre-orders.
@KingMike The main reason for Goomba's existence (the Game Boy Color emulator on GBA), is that it's not possible to develop a Game Boy Advance flash cart that can dual-operate as a Game Boy Color flash cart. Aside from the little mechanical switch in the GBA slot that when pressed makes it boot in Game Boy mode, I recall that the GBA circuit board and/or chip set can't really serve Game Boy ROMs.
That is some truly fascinating stuff, all of the examples shown so far are side-scrolling platformers however.
That's likely because of the horizontal screen scrolling logic being better suited to it, whilst something like a top-down adventure that uses screen boundaries (Link's Awakening or The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls come to mind) might not get away with it so easily when each screen is designed to an exact fit.
There's something unintentionally hilarious about "MR. SANDAMN" from "AAAAAAAA, AAAAA".
The prototype cartridge being produced with mask ROM is intriguing, especially if contemporarily they had already been producing prototype cartridges using EPROM. It's entirely speculative, but maybe it could be explained by them trialing cartridge or ROM chip production processes as a one-off, or maybe there was an intended long-term use case for the cartridge, such as for display in a kiosk where you may only need video display without sound (given the ROM has zero sound output).
Another point I'm curious about is the ROM's build date, TCRF's page doesn't mention one so I would guess one is not present within the ROM. It has 1987 on the title screen like the limited distribution Japanese "Gold" release, though the earliest public release was September, with Mike Tyson's Punch Out releasing in October / November / December across international territories. That might suggest that the development time for Punch Out may have been surprisingly short?
@Serpenterror I believe it'll depend on what games Epilogue have in their database, they'll likely get flagged as Homebrew releases, or show up as unrecognized otherwise. This is what happened with my cartridge of Tanuki Justice when I checked it on their Playback software back in September.
@GravyThief I think the idea is to provide a portable non-invasive way of checking cartridge authenticity, without needing to pull out a Windows laptop. Just your phone and the GB Operator when you visit a retro goods store, a gaming convention, etc. A seller might acquiesce to this method of checking, but you're right that just opening the case to check the PCB is the definitive way to check for fakes; as long as you know how to identify them.
I have a GB Operator, and part of how this works with the GB Operator's Playback software on Windows, is that it checks if the ROM chip is reflashable.
This seems to be a bit more involved if it's got a fuzzy confidence rating of authenticity, which I'm guessing might be leveraging some kind of database and/or machine learning model on their server that seemingly factors in market pricing.
The majority of aftermarket homebrew Game Boy / Color / Advance(?) physical releases use reflashable media, so they are prone as showing up as counterfeit or reproduction.
The Playback tool also relies on the ROM header information being correct. Limited Run Games' recent GBA releases of Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution, and Sigma Star Saga DX, both fail to identify proper headers so Playback was failing to identify both the ROM and the actual ROM size. It'd show up as an unreleased prototype of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for some reason.
These two carts use 128 megabit (16 megabyte) ROMs, but Playback would only dump the first 64 megabits (8 megabytes) and produce a useless partial ROM. I haven't checked in a while if they've maybe updated their Playback software to address this.
Edit: Checking out their site, I can see that they're identifying homebrew GBC releases too. I'll definitely try this out after work.
Linda did specifically mention it did more than portable gaming, I think she was referring to the multimedia capabilities of the PSP. It also functioned as a web browser, a VoIP device, a video and audio player, it was doing a number of things that we take for granted in modern smart phones and mobile devices. Earlier handheld systems generally did not do these things, at least not out of the box.
@Martin_H
Good, that's hiring a person that can develop skills and earn a living.
If someone's earned a degree, they've at least gone through a learning and training process.
@QuarterSwede
AI is enabling unskilled workers to produce unskilled works.
The code may run, and appear to give desired results in limited "happy path" use cases, but they aren't aware of problems under the hood that could cause problems later on.
@QuarterSwede
Bad analogy, AI is used as a service as alternative to a skilled worker, to produce a product.
It's more like not trusting the house is safe because the bricks were poorly made; regardless or who or what made them, or how.
AI has an inherant distrust in code reliability because AI programming models are trained on amateur answers scraped from the web, and amateur GIT repositories.
It seems like they were talking about the Wii U in comparison of relative capabilities, since it was on about the level of 360 and PS3, even though the Wii was the system that was available in that generation of gaming.
@tonyhoro I would argue that their methodology was deeply flawed. From what I understand they used an AI draft to help navigate the software and checking their changes for delivering a new script (that part deserves credit), but the AI draft translation was also forming the basis of their understanding of the source material, instead of actually knowing the language and how to translate and localise it properly. As a result, the translated text is inconsistent and gets a lot of things wrong, and does not do the source material justice in the capacity of either an objective translation OR a localisation effort.
Beyond the complicated corporate side of things, another challenge a re-release would face would be what to do regarding Apu's inclusion. Apu is a major playable character in the game and features throughout all parts of the campaign. https://simpsons-hit-and-run.fandom.com/wiki/Apu_Nahasapeemapetilon
Whilst streaming services like Disney+ do show the majority of the original seasons of The Simpsons without altering Apu's inclusions, the character has been retired from episodes produced from 2017 onwards with Hank Azaria refusing to perform the voice since.
A remake or remaster of Hit & Run could be a new product rather than a re-release or re-issue. Whilst you could have an entirely new voice performance for Apu portrayed by a South Asian performer, this only goes part way of addressing the controversy with the character.
It could become an opportunity to re-introduce the character to the show, however, if they ever figure something out.
Dithering being used as it is now works very well for high resolution games, and the best implementations I've seen make use of dynamic densities, where the concentration of dots can increase or decrease as needed to show or hide more of the obstructed object or actor. Particularly, one of the best uses is a dithered silhouette of the player character in front of the objects that obstructs the character itself, such as in Super Mario Odyssey.
People have become conditioned to recognise a very common aesthetic from AI generated artwork; at least the common slop that comes from people using very basic prompts on free online services. This artwork unfortunately somewhat has that aesthetic, but it's coupled with being so professionally done that people looking for human flaws or errors aren't going to find those! It's in the same way that people are getting accused of leaving AI generated comments in discussions, because of their writing style or just trying to give a well written response.
I spend a lot of time looking at rendered images in pretty close detail, both human made and AI generated, and there really aren't any hallmarks of AI in here. Conker's render does look very, very close to a 3D software render, but that could just be superb drawing skill, or maybe a reference was used.
Putting out dissapointing, mediocre, or bad products would be one thing, but nobody is calling Nintendo the worst company for putting out massive letdowns like Metroid Prime 4, or Capcom for putting out the likes of DmC Devil May Cry.
Surely any of the contemporary articles covering EA being voted Worst USA Company, will tell you the actual reasons; and it's not "entitled gamers".
@H_Hog I have the Neo Geo edition of the Super Pocket, and the shoulder buttons are possibly the worst ones ever designed for games that need them. Which as it turns out, is quite a lot when you're playing Evercade cartridges like Good Boy Galaxy. That game runs at 240x160 (given that it's a GBA ROM), so it doesn't look great on the 320x240 display.
I'm surprised that they're still making new models of the Super Pocket, granted that they're pretty cheap. Some games have been exclusive to the built-in storage of the Super Pocket, and are technically not Evercade as a result of that. I'm hopeful that should there be a Rare Collection 2, that Banjo Kazooie is in there as to not make it exclusive to a Super Pocket.
@wizzgamer Evercade introduced 64-bit console emulation in 2024 with Glover, which apparently involved rebuilding the ROM and optimising it for their emulator implementation. https://evercade.co.uk/introducing-64-bit-console-gaming-on-evercade/ There's a good chance that this Banjo Kazooie release also uses an optimized ROM, but it's more likely to be based on the Xbox release as to remove the Nintendo brandings.
@H_Hog They're showing a screenshot of Banjo Kazooie as it appeared on the N64, and list it as "64-bit console". If this were the GBA game it would've been "32-bit handheld console" instead.
@RextheSheep Conker's Pocket Tales was previously released on Evercade cartridge as part of Rare Collection 1, and as I understand that one only plays in GBC mode, so you don't have the option to play the monochrome version which is technically a different game.
@carlos82 SEGA considers Panzer Dragoon to be a legacy IP, and putting any new product on the market is just a way of saying they're maintaining an IP. Even if it's a D-list studio doing a shoddy port or remaster.
@Peteykins It's a slight nuisance if you want to get the Android data to use with the superior decomp-based ports. But let's be real, those APKs are not difficult to find, and all you're doing is extracting the relevant data from them without ever installing them.
@PowerPandaMods
The only way to play it before was the DoJa SDK emulator, which wasn't very good as it had all kinds of performance and sound issues. That, or have a 2000s Japanese flip phone.
This native PC port fixes those performance issues with a stable 15 FPS (what the game is designed to run at), and fixes the audio issues so that sound effects don't cancel out music playback.
Keitai app audio was heavily limited as it was MIDI based and they couldn't do simultaneous music and sound effects, unless you did very specific timing of MIDI sound effects between notes in the music sequence.
This is what the Rockman EXE Keitai games tried to do, and it might be better on real hardware, but in the DoJa SDK emulator had the unfortunate effect of Rockman.EXE's attacks sounding like striking a piano and interrupting the battle music.
The PC port is also far, far easier to play than the DoJa SDK emulator, having straight-forward window scaling options without needing to rely on any secondary applications like ShaderGlass.
Keitai apps at Java applications for said flip phones, and whilst there is an effort to build a dedicated emulator for them, progress has been pretty slow. SquirrelJME is a Java ME 8 Virtual Machine, that already has a Libretro core available for Retroarch, but if things go well and it becomes a mature application could mean being able to play these Keitai apps on various Linux retro handhelds.
I gave this a quick spin, and that's some incredible work.
A quick tip, press F1 to bring up basic settings for remapping controls and changing your window scaling.
If you have save game progress from an earlier DoJa SDK emulator playthrough, that'll carry over when you copy across the .jar and .sp files.
Ultimately, I'm hopeful that this can get a Linux port too, because that could be the basis for playing this on a wide range of retro handhelds like Anbernic stuff. This would be absolutely perfect on an RG34XXSP as the game runs at 240x240, and should cleanly upscale to any 480p display.
@Broosh There's also something to be said about the touch screen experience on DS and 3DS, the software is really designed around the resistive touch screens and how they only respond to a single but precise touch point. You lose a lot of that on modern touch devices that expect you to use your finger.
@Broosh My time spent with the RG35XXSP and the RG34XXSP has really renewed my interest in them too. The former was slightly larger than the GBA SP, whilst the latter is much closer to it in scale and display. The latter model has much better build quality too, though it's slightly small for my hands and makes me want to see a "GBA SP XL" from Anbernic. I've not personally tried any of Miyoo's offerings yet.
Comments 256
Re: "Extremely Disappointing" - Are AI-Generated FPGA Cores The Future, Or The Death Of Accuracy?
As before, AI tools are enabling unqualified enthusiasts to "contribute" in damaging ways, since they are not trained or experienced individuals participating towards the progress of coding practices or products. It overall reduces our actual understanding of the things we care about.
In a similar area, I wanted to highlight a recent development in the N64 decompilation and recompilation scene.
Snowboard Kids 2 (tracked on decomp.dev), recently reached 100% decompilation. I looked into the Github repository, and found that the project lead was making use of AI (primarily Claude) to assist in the decompilation effort.
They've written articles about their decompilation effort on their own blog, and it highlights things like:
In this situation, Snowboards Kid 2 was 100% decompiled in a much shorter time than would've been possible otherwise, and was still performed by people that had the expertise to do the job, but with caveats like monetary costs and fixing automated errors. That is before the ethical implications of what it took and currently takes to get such generative AI running (in terms of dubious data harvesting and outrageous resource and energy consumption).
Curiously, the Recompilation made from the fruits of that decompilation, does not appear to make use of AI vibe coding at all? The blog article even complains of such low quality ports stemming from AI output.
So on one hand, AI was used only to help provide the source data needed to produce a higher quality port of an N64 game, as it was used with greater care than most people normally would. They've also been transparent about the use of the technology.
But on the other hand, it still made use of AI that is evident in its human, ecological, and societal harms, for the sake of porting an N64 game.
Meanwhile, there's the Space Station Silicon Valley recompilation project (which Time Extension previously reported on), which does not appear to disclose its use of AI in the porting process, which has drawn criticism from people that were following the project.
https://www.reddit.com/r/n64/comments/1rwhf5e/working_on_a_space_station_silicon_valley/
Re: "Please Be Teasing What I Think You're Teasing" - Argonaut Has Fans Thinking A Croc 2 Remaster Is Close
If you pay extra attention to the video teaser, the radio is tuning into FM frequencies that correspond to each game's release year.
Such as '93 for Star Fox, and '99 for Croc 2.
Re: Sega's Crazy Taxi Spins Its Wheels Thanks To Another GenAI Kerfuffle
@Daric
That's being wilfully dismissive of the issue here.
The social media team saw fit to use a low effort gen-AI mock-up for merch promotion, misrepresenting the product and running the risk of social backlash.
There's a break-down in the production pipeline of producing, releasing, and selling a product to the market, because somewhere in that chain one part decided to use gen AI that betrayed the efforts of the other parts of the chain, sabotaging the effort and public trust.
Re: Following On From The Game Boy And SNES, Epilogue Is Working On An 'N64 Operator' Next
Funnily enough, they seem to have skipped over the NES / Famicom, I wonder if they'll get around to that?
Epilogue's "Operator" line also needs an agreement to use a reputable emulator, so I wonder who they'll go with for a prospective DS emulator, and which one they picked for N64.
Re: "No Generative AI Used In This Project" - Wallop The Wallaby Is Coming To The Genesis / Mega Drive Soon
@Honkshot
It's there in the source.
https://x.com/iheartpizzallc/status/2068837215363371448#m
That aside, the game looks adorable and I want to check it out.
Re: Anbernic's Next Handheld Does A Great Impression Of Nintendo's Switch Lite
@Razieluigi
Ah, that's good to know.
Those are admittedly still nice things, as they sound like they improve touch screen usage, and generally have higher quality buttons (at least the buttons themselves).
Re: "I No Longer Wish To Spend My Limited Free Time Dealing With Negativity" - Sega Mania Kills Sonic The Comic AI Fan Remaster
@ojisan
Very much so, the SEGA Mania effort is making use of a generative upscaler with lower quality sources, and their use of it is quite poor as they're outright transforming the images; nothing restorative about it.
Transforming the works is not a desirable outcome for a comic or magazine preservation project.
There are upscaling and editing processes that can produce nice, high fidelity results, but these cannot exceed the best possible sources of scanning the original media and saving those results with minimum compression or editing.
Re: Anbernic's Next Handheld Does A Great Impression Of Nintendo's Switch Lite
A d-pad primary handheld and sports all the features I need out of a handheld, pretty interested in this.
I usually go for the lighter weight Anbernic handhelds, but depending on the specs I might go for this.
I'm familiar with hall effect sticks and triggers, but not "2.5D glass" or "double shot buttons" and why that's a selling point, I should look it up.
Re: Banjo-Kazooie Is Getting Another Native PC Next Month, With A Standalone Randomiser & Online Co-Op
Banjo Kazooie was decompiled August 2024, though the decompilation repository itself has remained active since then as they worked to improve the code and its documentation.
Calling Lighthouse a "decompilation project" isn't really accurate, since it's a port based on the existing decompilation effort.
Regardless, cool to see this happen! Ports like this compared to the recompilation are easier to build for other platforms, as the RT64 recompilation method is restricted to x64 PCs for now.
Harbour Masters previous ports for titles like Super Mario 64, and Ocarina of Time are available on various retro handhelds through the PortMaster project.
I'm still waiting on the recomp port's Ray Tracing update, the initial release was back in January.
Re: Enix's SNES Action RPG 'Soul Blazer' Just Got A Fanmade Relocalisation
I'd played through a FastROM patch of Soul Blazer somewhat recently, and yes the original localisation is pretty clunky at times.
I'm rather in the mood to replay this one actually, so I'll definitely check this out.
Re: Surprise! The Developers Behind Cuphead Just Announced A New 8-Bit Spin-Off For The Sega Master System
I'd missed the part where it actually runs on Master System. I'd dismissed it as an "NES inspired game" probably built in Unity or Game Maker or something, but making an actual Master System game is some cool stuff.
Re: "Spin the Maze, Roll the Ball!" - Taito's Quirky Puzzler 'Cameltry' Is Heading To Switch, PlayStation, & Xbox
Cameltry is also available as part of Taito Milestones 4, but it's nice to see it get a standalone Arcade Archives release.
Re: You Can Now Legally Rip Your Wii, GameCube, Wii And Xbox Discs Using A Blu-Ray Drive
LG M-Disc huh? That's the exact Blu-ray drive I have installed in my PC, I better check this out.
Yeah, WH14NS40, there's a chance my drive is supported, but also that it's not.
Re: "I Want This Title Packaged!" - Superdeluxe Wants To Know What Games You'd Like To See Get Physical Releases
@breach187
Sadly, that may not be possible.
There are games that exceed the 64GB capacity of a Switch 2 game card, like Final Fantasy VII Remake.
And there are games that apparently require the full speed of internal storage or microSD express, like Star Wars Outlaws.
Apparently, Switch 2 game cards aren't fast enough for data streaming, which Star Wars Outlaws uses.
Re: "Learn How To Code" - Team Behind PS3 Emulator RPCS3 Has Had Enough Of People "Peddling AI Slop"
@leogames
There admittedly is some value in using it for prototyping and pre-production. I've seen a project manager use Claude Code to have it produce a functional prototype of what they have in mind, when discussing what work they want done from a proper developer who knows how it will fit into their existing work project.
The prototype is far from fit for purpose, but it's suitable as a communication aide.
That again though, falls into the same trapping as letting the AI do a lot of the heavy lifting and design work, and effectively the thinking for you.
Re: "Learn How To Code" - Team Behind PS3 Emulator RPCS3 Has Had Enough Of People "Peddling AI Slop"
@leogames
The core of criticism is "learn to do it yourself and do it properly", not "do things this very specific way" (though standards matters when contributing to a code repository).
AI used as a predictive text processor for code in its current state is terrible at critical thought processes and decision making, and should not be used to offload work where precision and meaningful decisions are needed.
At best, it can help for rubber ducking and discovering avenues you were unaware of, as long as you actually explore them yourself to verify the AI didn't hallucinate something.
Re: "A Hollow Victory" - '100% AI-Generated' Smash Bros. PC Port Comes Under Fire
I disagree that porting work can't be creative.
If it weren't, Harbour Team's various ports of N64 titles wouldn't be feature rich with enhancements and new functionality like randomizers and modding support, and a proper system for supporting user mods.
If you're porting something forward with absolutely no changes, why wouldn't you just play the original version? Even commercial releases of retro games frequently have common emulator features like save states and rewind.
Re: "The First-Ever Stoker Family-Authorised Dracula Video Game" - 'Dracula: Dark Reign' Is A Castlevania-Style Title For Your Game Boy
Color me interested, I'll give the demo a go.
I'm a bit wary of GB Studio developed games, but let's see how this one pans out.
Re: Ever Wondered What Happened To Star Fox's Puppets? The Answer Isn't Good
Huh, the puppets used actual animal fur and feathers?
That almost sounds like some kind of, taxidermy puppetry.
@N00BiSH
The Star Fox Zero and Nintendo executive puppets made for E3 2015 were made by Jim Henson studio, so I'd imagine they either exist in that studio's archives, kept at one of Nintendo's headquarters, or were gifted to Miyamoto, Iwata, and Fils-Aimé respectively.
Re: "I Almost Can't Express How Joyful It Is" - '90s Euro Platformer 'Moon Child' Goes Viral
I hope that this might lead to a commercial re-release of these apparent hidden gems, since there's a lot of attention on them right now.
Maybe the original Hoi, the Amiga and PC versions of Moon Child, and the other games that the Hoi team worked on?
Re: Punch Out!! NES's Cut "Guest Stars" To Appear In New Fanmade Game Boy Color Remix
Making playable versions of the cut guest stars is a cool idea.
If they're going for Punch Out deep cuts, they could take a look at Arm Wrestling, which featured Bald Bull as "Mask X", and originals like Texas Mac, Kabuki, Alice & Ape III, and Frank Jr.
Re: "No Point In Keeping It Under Wraps Any Longer" -This New Emulator "Ports" Game Boy Titles To The GBA
@Z-GRADT
The closest thing I can think of is Mesen's HD NES packs, which are resource packs designed specifically for an NES ROM being emulated with Mesen.
https://youtu.be/NF132cqW25w
They can do pretty elaborate things with custom code, audio, and graphics beyond the capabilities of a stock NES, but the core program is still running under the hood.
Two other similar things involve NES games being played on SNES.
First Infidelity frequently works on porting NES games to SNES, through manual assembly work making use of the Mesen emulator's debugging functions.
Second is Project Nested, which is an NES emulator for SNES that works with Just-In-Time (JIT) instructions and passthrough of similar instructions present in both systems.
These are possible because the NES and SNES both use Ricoh processors, the Ricoh 2A03 and Ricoh 5A22 respectively, which use the 6502 instruction set.
This was something I pondered with Game Boy software being made to run on Game Boy Advance, as the system has both its ARM7TDMI main processor, and a Sharp SM83 legacy processor.
GBA games ran on ARM architecture (which is still common today), whilst Game Boy games ran on something close to the Z80 instruction set. GBA games used that SM83 exclusively for sound processing (sounding much the same), so it couldn't be used for program or graphics, a lot of GBA games processed audio on the ARM processor as to avoid sound outdated.
The point there being a path to convert or force Game Boy games to run on a Game Boy Advance system isn't really there, so Iván Delgado's work on GB Bridge is likely doing its own traditional emulation work (mapping one system's instruction set to a host's instructions), running something like a resource pack to patch in program changes, but may still be leveraging the SM83 co-processor for Game Boy audio.
As an aside, part of why Switch emulators perform so well on mobile devices, is because they mostly all run on ARM processors like the Switch does (which is very similar to an Android tablet to begin with). A lot of the instructions can run with little to no change.
Re: "I Don't Know Who Failed Due Diligence Here" - Sigma Star Saga DX Updated After Violating GBA Emulator's License
@h3s
LRG only opened pre-orders for the console versions earlier this month, the cartridge production won't begin until after the open pre-order window closes early May 2026, and probably not ASAP.
For Switch games, LRG and other publishers have to put in an order for a number of cartridges in multiples of one thousand.
That could mean if there are 6500 pre-orders, they may produce 7000 units so they can cover replacements, 8000 or 9000 units so they can have some additional back-stock for a second-chance sale, etc.
Since they need to know an exact number for that order request, they won't place manufacturing requests in advance of closing pre-orders.
Re: "No Point In Keeping It Under Wraps Any Longer" -This New Emulator "Ports" Game Boy Titles To The GBA
@KingMike
The main reason for Goomba's existence (the Game Boy Color emulator on GBA), is that it's not possible to develop a Game Boy Advance flash cart that can dual-operate as a Game Boy Color flash cart.
Aside from the little mechanical switch in the GBA slot that when pressed makes it boot in Game Boy mode, I recall that the GBA circuit board and/or chip set can't really serve Game Boy ROMs.
Re: "No Point In Keeping It Under Wraps Any Longer" -This New Emulator "Ports" Game Boy Titles To The GBA
That is some truly fascinating stuff, all of the examples shown so far are side-scrolling platformers however.
That's likely because of the horizontal screen scrolling logic being better suited to it, whilst something like a top-down adventure that uses screen boundaries (Link's Awakening or The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls come to mind) might not get away with it so easily when each screen is designed to an exact fit.
Re: "I've Never Seen Anything Like This" - This Freshly Released Punch-Out!! NES Prototype Has Historians Stumped
There's something unintentionally hilarious about "MR. SANDAMN" from "AAAAAAAA, AAAAA".
The prototype cartridge being produced with mask ROM is intriguing, especially if contemporarily they had already been producing prototype cartridges using EPROM.
It's entirely speculative, but maybe it could be explained by them trialing cartridge or ROM chip production processes as a one-off, or maybe there was an intended long-term use case for the cartridge, such as for display in a kiosk where you may only need video display without sound (given the ROM has zero sound output).
Another point I'm curious about is the ROM's build date, TCRF's page doesn't mention one so I would guess one is not present within the ROM. It has 1987 on the title screen like the limited distribution Japanese "Gold" release, though the earliest public release was September, with Mike Tyson's Punch Out releasing in October / November / December across international territories.
That might suggest that the development time for Punch Out may have been surprisingly short?
Re: You Can Now Check If A Game Boy Cart Is Fake Using Your Smartphone And This Awesome Device
@Serpenterror
I believe it'll depend on what games Epilogue have in their database, they'll likely get flagged as Homebrew releases, or show up as unrecognized otherwise.
This is what happened with my cartridge of Tanuki Justice when I checked it on their Playback software back in September.
Re: You Can Now Check If A Game Boy Cart Is Fake Using Your Smartphone And This Awesome Device
@GravyThief
I think the idea is to provide a portable non-invasive way of checking cartridge authenticity, without needing to pull out a Windows laptop.
Just your phone and the GB Operator when you visit a retro goods store, a gaming convention, etc.
A seller might acquiesce to this method of checking, but you're right that just opening the case to check the PCB is the definitive way to check for fakes; as long as you know how to identify them.
Re: You Can Now Check If A Game Boy Cart Is Fake Using Your Smartphone And This Awesome Device
I have a GB Operator, and part of how this works with the GB Operator's Playback software on Windows, is that it checks if the ROM chip is reflashable.
This seems to be a bit more involved if it's got a fuzzy confidence rating of authenticity, which I'm guessing might be leveraging some kind of database and/or machine learning model on their server that seemingly factors in market pricing.
The majority of aftermarket homebrew Game Boy / Color / Advance(?) physical releases use reflashable media, so they are prone as showing up as counterfeit or reproduction.
The Playback tool also relies on the ROM header information being correct. Limited Run Games' recent GBA releases of Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution, and Sigma Star Saga DX, both fail to identify proper headers so Playback was failing to identify both the ROM and the actual ROM size. It'd show up as an unreleased prototype of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for some reason.
These two carts use 128 megabit (16 megabyte) ROMs, but Playback would only dump the first 64 megabits (8 megabytes) and produce a useless partial ROM. I haven't checked in a while if they've maybe updated their Playback software to address this.
Edit: Checking out their site, I can see that they're identifying homebrew GBC releases too. I'll definitely try this out after work.
Re: Random: "Blink Twice If You Need Help" - The Internet Dunks On Ex-WWE CEO For Claiming PSP Was "The Beginning Of Life On The Go"
Linda did specifically mention it did more than portable gaming, I think she was referring to the multimedia capabilities of the PSP.
It also functioned as a web browser, a VoIP device, a video and audio player, it was doing a number of things that we take for granted in modern smart phones and mobile devices.
Earlier handheld systems generally did not do these things, at least not out of the box.
Re: "Let's See How This Goes" - Mega Man 2 Could Soon Be Getting The Proper SNES Upgrade We've All Been Waiting For
Redrawn with assets taken from Mega Man 7, you say?
Re: "AI-Coded Slop, No Thanks" - Animal Crossing's Native PC Port Was Made Using Claude Code
@Martin_H
Good, that's hiring a person that can develop skills and earn a living.
If someone's earned a degree, they've at least gone through a learning and training process.
Re: "AI-Coded Slop, No Thanks" - Animal Crossing's Native PC Port Was Made Using Claude Code
@QuarterSwede
AI is enabling unskilled workers to produce unskilled works.
The code may run, and appear to give desired results in limited "happy path" use cases, but they aren't aware of problems under the hood that could cause problems later on.
Re: "AI-Coded Slop, No Thanks" - Animal Crossing's Native PC Port Was Made Using Claude Code
@OldManLav
The decompilation process did not use AI, this port is based on the decompilation effort and used AI to build it.
Re: "AI-Coded Slop, No Thanks" - Animal Crossing's Native PC Port Was Made Using Claude Code
@QuarterSwede
Bad analogy, AI is used as a service as alternative to a skilled worker, to produce a product.
It's more like not trusting the house is safe because the bricks were poorly made; regardless or who or what made them, or how.
AI has an inherant distrust in code reliability because AI programming models are trained on amateur answers scraped from the web, and amateur GIT repositories.
Re: "AI-Coded Slop, No Thanks" - Animal Crossing's Native PC Port Was Made Using Claude Code
@BulkSlash
Open source doesn't necessarily mean free to grab and modify, most GIT repositories declare licenses that control how the code is allowed for usage, modification, or distribution.
https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/licensing-a-repository
Further, licensing is adapting to explicitly deny AI training.
https://github.com/non-ai-licenses/non-ai-licenses
Re: Xbox 360, PS3 And Nintendo Wii U Are "Officially Retro", Says GameStop
It seems like they were talking about the Wii U in comparison of relative capabilities, since it was on about the level of 360 and PS3, even though the Wii was the system that was available in that generation of gaming.
Re: "It Does Not Save Time Or Offer Anything Of Value" - Translator Hilltop Isn't A Fan Of AI
@tonyhoro
I would argue that their methodology was deeply flawed.
From what I understand they used an AI draft to help navigate the software and checking their changes for delivering a new script (that part deserves credit), but the AI draft translation was also forming the basis of their understanding of the source material, instead of actually knowing the language and how to translate and localise it properly.
As a result, the translated text is inconsistent and gets a lot of things wrong, and does not do the source material justice in the capacity of either an objective translation OR a localisation effort.
Re: "We Know People Love It. We Know They Want It" - The Simpsons Showrunner Doesn't Rule Out 'Hit & Run' Remake
Beyond the complicated corporate side of things, another challenge a re-release would face would be what to do regarding Apu's inclusion. Apu is a major playable character in the game and features throughout all parts of the campaign.
https://simpsons-hit-and-run.fandom.com/wiki/Apu_Nahasapeemapetilon
Whilst streaming services like Disney+ do show the majority of the original seasons of The Simpsons without altering Apu's inclusions, the character has been retired from episodes produced from 2017 onwards with Hank Azaria refusing to perform the voice since.
A remake or remaster of Hit & Run could be a new product rather than a re-release or re-issue. Whilst you could have an entirely new voice performance for Apu portrayed by a South Asian performer, this only goes part way of addressing the controversy with the character.
It could become an opportunity to re-introduce the character to the show, however, if they ever figure something out.
Re: "The Sega Saturn Was Truly Ahead Of Its Time" - Here's Why Modern Games Use 'Dithering' Instead Of Transparency
Dithering being used as it is now works very well for high resolution games, and the best implementations I've seen make use of dynamic densities, where the concentration of dots can increase or decrease as needed to show or hide more of the obstructed object or actor.
Particularly, one of the best uses is a dithered silhouette of the player character in front of the objects that obstructs the character itself, such as in Super Mario Odyssey.
Re: "Definitely Not Created By AI" - How An Innocent Conker Celebration Drew Rare Into A GenAI Debate
People have become conditioned to recognise a very common aesthetic from AI generated artwork; at least the common slop that comes from people using very basic prompts on free online services.
This artwork unfortunately somewhat has that aesthetic, but it's coupled with being so professionally done that people looking for human flaws or errors aren't going to find those!
It's in the same way that people are getting accused of leaving AI generated comments in discussions, because of their writing style or just trying to give a well written response.
I spend a lot of time looking at rendered images in pretty close detail, both human made and AI generated, and there really aren't any hallmarks of AI in here.
Conker's render does look very, very close to a 3D software render, but that could just be superb drawing skill, or maybe a reference was used.
Re: "At EA, We Were Voted The Worst Company In America Because Of The End Of Mass Effect"
Putting out dissapointing, mediocre, or bad products would be one thing, but nobody is calling Nintendo the worst company for putting out massive letdowns like Metroid Prime 4, or Capcom for putting out the likes of DmC Devil May Cry.
Surely any of the contemporary articles covering EA being voted Worst USA Company, will tell you the actual reasons; and it's not "entitled gamers".
Re: Evercade Range Expands With Two New Carts And A Banjo-Kazooie-Packing Super Pocket
@H_Hog
I have the Neo Geo edition of the Super Pocket, and the shoulder buttons are possibly the worst ones ever designed for games that need them.
Which as it turns out, is quite a lot when you're playing Evercade cartridges like Good Boy Galaxy. That game runs at 240x160 (given that it's a GBA ROM), so it doesn't look great on the 320x240 display.
I'm surprised that they're still making new models of the Super Pocket, granted that they're pretty cheap.
Some games have been exclusive to the built-in storage of the Super Pocket, and are technically not Evercade as a result of that.
I'm hopeful that should there be a Rare Collection 2, that Banjo Kazooie is in there as to not make it exclusive to a Super Pocket.
Re: Evercade Range Expands With Two New Carts And A Banjo-Kazooie-Packing Super Pocket
@wizzgamer
Evercade introduced 64-bit console emulation in 2024 with Glover, which apparently involved rebuilding the ROM and optimising it for their emulator implementation.
https://evercade.co.uk/introducing-64-bit-console-gaming-on-evercade/
There's a good chance that this Banjo Kazooie release also uses an optimized ROM, but it's more likely to be based on the Xbox release as to remove the Nintendo brandings.
@H_Hog
They're showing a screenshot of Banjo Kazooie as it appeared on the N64, and list it as "64-bit console".
If this were the GBA game it would've been "32-bit handheld console" instead.
@RextheSheep
Conker's Pocket Tales was previously released on Evercade cartridge as part of Rare Collection 1, and as I understand that one only plays in GBC mode, so you don't have the option to play the monochrome version which is technically a different game.
Re: "What In The F*ck Have They Done" - Panzer Dragoon Zwei Remake's Steam Demo Has Upset Some Fans
@carlos82
SEGA considers Panzer Dragoon to be a legacy IP, and putting any new product on the market is just a way of saying they're maintaining an IP.
Even if it's a D-list studio doing a shoddy port or remaster.
Re: Another Set Of Sega Classics Are Being Discontinued On Mobile
@Peteykins
It's a slight nuisance if you want to get the Android data to use with the superior decomp-based ports.
But let's be real, those APKs are not difficult to find, and all you're doing is extracting the relevant data from them without ever installing them.
Re: Rockman.EXE Phantom Of Network Has Just Got An Unofficial PC Port, Finally Making It Playable Without An Emulator
@PowerPandaMods
The only way to play it before was the DoJa SDK emulator, which wasn't very good as it had all kinds of performance and sound issues. That, or have a 2000s Japanese flip phone.
This native PC port fixes those performance issues with a stable 15 FPS (what the game is designed to run at), and fixes the audio issues so that sound effects don't cancel out music playback.
Keitai app audio was heavily limited as it was MIDI based and they couldn't do simultaneous music and sound effects, unless you did very specific timing of MIDI sound effects between notes in the music sequence.
This is what the Rockman EXE Keitai games tried to do, and it might be better on real hardware, but in the DoJa SDK emulator had the unfortunate effect of Rockman.EXE's attacks sounding like striking a piano and interrupting the battle music.
The PC port is also far, far easier to play than the DoJa SDK emulator, having straight-forward window scaling options without needing to rely on any secondary applications like ShaderGlass.
Keitai apps at Java applications for said flip phones, and whilst there is an effort to build a dedicated emulator for them, progress has been pretty slow. SquirrelJME is a Java ME 8 Virtual Machine, that already has a Libretro core available for Retroarch, but if things go well and it becomes a mature application could mean being able to play these Keitai apps on various Linux retro handhelds.
Re: Rockman.EXE Phantom Of Network Has Just Got An Unofficial PC Port, Finally Making It Playable Without An Emulator
I gave this a quick spin, and that's some incredible work.
A quick tip, press F1 to bring up basic settings for remapping controls and changing your window scaling.
If you have save game progress from an earlier DoJa SDK emulator playthrough, that'll carry over when you copy across the .jar and .sp files.
Ultimately, I'm hopeful that this can get a Linux port too, because that could be the basis for playing this on a wide range of retro handhelds like Anbernic stuff. This would be absolutely perfect on an RG34XXSP as the game runs at 240x240, and should cleanly upscale to any 480p display.
Re: Review: Miyoo Mini Flip - Seriously Pocket-Friendly
@Broosh
There's also something to be said about the touch screen experience on DS and 3DS, the software is really designed around the resistive touch screens and how they only respond to a single but precise touch point. You lose a lot of that on modern touch devices that expect you to use your finger.
Re: Review: Miyoo Mini Flip - Seriously Pocket-Friendly
@Broosh
My time spent with the RG35XXSP and the RG34XXSP has really renewed my interest in them too.
The former was slightly larger than the GBA SP, whilst the latter is much closer to it in scale and display. The latter model has much better build quality too, though it's slightly small for my hands and makes me want to see a "GBA SP XL" from Anbernic.
I've not personally tried any of Miyoo's offerings yet.