Tag Archive

The Joys of Import Gaming: How easy we have it these days


Posted on January 8, 2016 by Erika

As a kid having grown up during the 90s, I got to experience the height of the console wars in full swing: Nintendo vs Sega. Both of those companies duked it out for the dominance of the console market, with several other competitors such as Atari with their Jaguar and NEC’s TurboGrafix-16 lagging severely behind. Unfortunately, with growing up in the US, gamers such as myself missed numerous releases. Some of those were either not localized from Japan, or the translations of various games that did make it over were severely butchered by such things as Nintendo’s no-religious imagery/text policy, or had copious amounts of Engrish. Possibly one of the more famous examples of Engrish was the localization of the Sega MegaDrive game Zero Wing, which spawned one of the earlier memes of 2000/2001.

Read More


0

Dolphin Emulator Progress Report Released


Posted on January 2, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Dolphin Emulator

The developers behind the popular open source GameCube/Wii emulator Dolphin have released a progress report as they head towards the release of version 5.0. They have instituted what is known as a “feature freeze” – meaning that no new features will be added to the emulator until the next major revision and only bug fixes will be released to the public until version 5.0 is ready to roll.

In an exhaustive blog post written by MaJor and JMC47 technical details surrounding the changes in the latest version of Dolphin. If you want a more technical breakdown of what has changed make sure to check it out.

Here are some of the more major changes:

Added Support For “TR” Model Wiimotes

Basically because of limitations with the Windows implementation of the Windows Bluetooth stack developers were unable to add support for the Wii Motion+ and newer Wii remotes. Players were forced to use the original model of Wiimote that was discontinued back in 2012 until now.  Thanks to one single contributor Dolphin now supports the latest generation of Wii remotes.

Changes To Mario Kart Lensflare

Lensflare in both Mario: Kart Double Dash and Mario Kart Wii resulted in odd bugs like a blinding level of lens flare or the absence of a HUD.

A Whole Bunch of Audio Fixes

 


0

Collect All 120 Stars On The Go By Playing Super Mario 64 On Android Wear


Posted on November 1, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

Have you ever wanted to play Super Mario 64 on the go but found carrying around an Nintendo 3DS or other emulation device too bulky? A crafty user on Reddit’s emulation sub-reddit might have the solution for you – Emulating the Nintendo 64 using an Android Wear Smart Watch.

In the six minute video YouTuber Hacking Jules takes us through not only the courtyard in Princess Peach’s castle but also the first level – Bombomb Battlefield. Later on in the video he can be seen playing the opening cut-scene from the N64 classic The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.

This is more of a proof of concept than anything else. For one the screen is so small it would certainly be a challenge to get accurate input. Also the way the button layout works the watch needs to be placed on a flat surface, like a table, to anywhere close to playable.

Here’s what some folks on Reddit had to say about Hacking Jules achievement:

Not much power is needed for N64oid/Mupen64Plus — any >2012 ARM CPU over 1.2 GHz with a single-core can run mostly everything fullspeed with no enhancements (and any garbage GPU will do too).

Hell, the mobile ARM CPUs/GPUs now can do massive upscaling/enhancements on any game and not suffer the slightest bit of slowdowns really — and plenty of games can even run fullspeed with the interpreter cores! It’s the same for PSP and PSX and several other systems as well (upscaling part).

It’s just another SoC, except it’s in a tinier device with a tiny screen.

In essence, it’s just a small, weak smartphone/tablet — the hardware and platform is, for the most part, pretty much the same thing (i.e., pipelines of execution).

It’s not like this is a brand new computer architecture or such — just a different form factor.

Would you play Super Mario 64 on your wrist? Let us know in the comments below.

[youtube id=”VhQMfqVviEs”]

[Source]


0

Get the latest articles and news from BrokenJoysticks and a selection of excellent articles from other sources.

Simply fill out the form below and you’ll be on your way to getting our upcoming newsletter.