Say what you will about Nintendo's approach to preserving the past, but the Japanese company was arguably one of the first to see the value of retro gaming in the modern era.
Back when the Wii Virtual Console launched, it was a groundbreaking service; it offered gamers the chance to download hundreds of classic games for popular systems directly to their modern-day games console, and got new releases on a weekly basis.
With Switch, Nintendo opted to change its strategy somewhat, abandoning the Virtual Console in favour of a subscription-based service called Nintendo Switch Online. Not only does this service offer cloud saves and online play, it also comes with a curated selection of emulated games for consoles like the NES, SNES, Game Boy, GBA, Mega Drive / Genesis and N64.
For millions of people all over the world, Nintendo Switch Online is now their main connection with the world of old-school gaming – but it has been branded "god awful" by one leading figure in the retro community.
"The latency of NES and SNES emulation on Switch is, IMHO, God awful," says Voultar, a modder and engineer who has been working closely with vintage gaming hardware for years and is responsible for mods such as the Wii U 'NAND-Aid' and SNES Edge-Enhancer. Given his background, it's fair to say he knows what he's talking about.
"While recuperating from my health issues, I gave it a considerable try, and it was absolutely horrid. How can you play a game like R-Type or Gradius with such horrid responsiveness using Nintendo's emulation?"
Almost all of the replies back up Voultar's stance on the topic. "Impossible to use," says The Handlebar Gamer. "It’s horrid. Even on my main TV, which has less than one frame of lag. Impossible to use with Switch Online. It’s some of the worst I’ve ever used." Another person argues that the lag is even worse than it is on the NES and SNES Classic micro-consoles.
The lag is like a "permanent hard mode that costs money and can't be turned off," says Dude Pat, while Josiah adds that "it's funny that a $40 Linux handheld can do a better job than a paid service from Nintendo," alluding to the standard of emulation on handheld devices such as those produced by Anbernic and PowKiddy.
It's important to remember that latency impacts every piece of gaming. There is always some degree of lag between a button press and a reaction from the system you're playing on – this is often increased if you're using a wireless controller.
However, the amount of latency is the key point in this conversation; we're talking milliseconds of delay here, and when you consider that the display you're playing on will introduce its own latency as the image signal is sent to it from the console, it's easy to see how it can stack up and result in noticeable input delay. Even a very small amount of latency can make games feel slow or sluggish.
As a rule, playing on original hardware offers the lowest latency, and FPGA emulation – which operates at a hardware rather than software level – is also famed for having very low levels of latency. Software emulation, where emulators are developed to behave in the same way as vintage hardware, traditionally has the highest level of latency, but emulators like RetroArch now come with features (like run-ahead) which mitigate this; in fact, some seasoned RetroArch fans argue that latency is so low that it's compatible to actual hardware.
Nintendo has worked with companies like M2 in the past to ensure its emulation is as good as possible, and has an internal team – Nintendo European Research & Development, or NERD for short – for handling this kind of thing. However, the level of latency on Switch Online emulation is clearly bad enough that multiple people are noticing it.
Do you think Nintendo's emulation has a lot of latency? Vote in the poll below and leave a comment to tell us your thoughts.