Since I already had a GBA when the Oracle games launched, yes I knew about it since that's how I first played it.
Also about playing it on Analogue Pocket. All you have to do is launch the Game Boy Color cart in GBA mode, and you'll get the secret shop; as well as the alternative (arguably worse) colour palette.
Shantae also had a GBA-mode check which granted access to an exclusive Tinkerbat transformation in the late game.
@Martin_H I wouldn't underestimate the Sonic fandom here, particularly the Sonic Retro community.
So many Sonic games have been reverse engineered and improved upon by said community, that their work has provided and improved upon technology for preserving games. Sonic Unleashed quite famously had its Xbox 360 version recompiled for PC just last year, and the tools that made it possible have enabled many more 360 games to get enhanced PC ports.
Fans have also taken it upon themselves to remake past main entry games like Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic and the Secret Rings (as "Project Reignition"), and Sonic Rush (as "Sonic Rush Rerun"), to provide definitive PC versions that improve shortcomings and modernises control schemes (such as removing motion controls, or adapting a dual-screen game to a single-screen experience). There's even Sonic Triple Trouble 16-Bit, a Genesis style remake built in Game Maker, based on the Game Gear original.
Beyond that, Sonic Mania was made possible because fans from the Sonic Retro community had developed their own engines and painstakingly researched the original Mega Drive / Genesis games, which first lead to Android ports of Sonic 1 / 2 / CD, and eventually to Sonic Origins too.
Further beyond that, there is an active decompilation project for the Sonic Advance trilogy which aims to produce a faithful PC port with improved widescreen (display area increases from 240x160 to 426x240), as to address the "screen crunch" these fast-paced games are known to suffer from. That's without mentioning how rarely SEGA have re-released the Sonic Advance games in any form, I believe the last time was on Wii U Virtual Console.
Shadow the Hedgehog has also received an extensive "Unloaded" overhaul mod for the GameCube version.
The point being is that across the Sonic series, fans have been adapting and re-working the games to make the strong points shine, since every game has its merits somewhere despite some obvious flaws (particularly Sonic 06).
I'd stumbled upon Generation Amiga just a few days ago, when I was trying to identify the feasibility of running the Super FX3 patch of Star Fox on real hardware. When I checked out the article, it was too quickly apparent what absolute junk it was topped by the AI generated headline image, and made a point to ignore this site.
Good on hobbyist developers pushing back against this "news site" that feels fit to fabricate its own headline images for its slop articles, further misrepresenting any actual developments in the retro gaming space.
I didn't know that there was an off-white Game Boy Pocket styled after the original DMG Game Boy! From some cursory web searches, it looks like it was a Japan exclusive model, I wanted to make sure it wasn't a custom shell.
@DestructoDisk Much of the development that has propelled AI itself forward, is done on Linux machines after all.
"AI" broadly speaking is merely a statistical analysis of ingested data, and you infer probability from that model. This process by itself is nothing bad, but the issues stem from the misuse of the existing internet and computing infrastructure and how big companies are suddenly pumping massive amounts of money and energy into hoarding compute resources, to process vast amounts of dubiously sourced data to provide public chatbots and image generation services. These tools being freely accessible to a public that doesn't really know how this technology works nor the best use cases for them, introduces a problem where the layman generates and then shares low quality content. AI slop issues are paired with social media platforms profiting themselves and their content creators through engagement numbers, so farming engagement makes money even if it's complete trash, and is frequently automated as to game the system. This creates a situation where impoverished people with internet access make use of free or cheap AI systems (powered by billions of invested dollars), can set up automated social media platform feeds that bring them a few hundred dollars.
Access to the technology and publication education about it is more of the issue here, as is how the big companies are desperate to turn it into a profitable venture for the insane funds they're pumping into it. In a controlled academic environment where people know what they're doing? The findings are truly useful, it's a new frontier of data science. For hobbyists (like this article's software development project), the results are concerning, as too often it's about achieving an end result and not the process.
@1040STF There are perils in using it in research and development, too. The more that we rely on the machine to discover and engineer for us, the less we actually develop our own understanding and expertise on a subject matter.
A quick chat with an AI chatbot about an unfamiliar subject matter, is like being able to "talk to an expert" at your convenience, but it's no true expert like an experienced human would be. However, that's often enough to just get the ball rolling with something you're maybe working on, if you just need a quick assist and you can't reach someone who really knows. You should still value the human interaction though, you develop bonds with people and work together towards a common goal, like a passion for a shared interest. When you're talking to the chatbot, you're telling a big corporation what your interests are, and giving it more data it can use for its own profit making purposes. That is unless, you're running an effective LLM model locally on your own hardware.
For the dedicated Star Fox SNES player, I can imagine they'd prefer playing on Super FX2 or 3 for the boosted speed and consistent performance, and the added challenge that comes from that (assuming a lack of recalibration on the vanilla ROM).
Otherwise, there's also overhaul ROM hacks like the Exploration Showcase, isn't there?
If this is just Super FX3 support in a given emulator for the time being, it seems unlikely that you could play Star Fox with Super FX3 on real hardware any time soon? I had considered the Super UFO Pro8, a flash cart that lets you use original cartridges as chip-donors for compatible ROMs, but given that the Super FX3 is actually a Raspberry Pi RP2350 rather than a conventional enhancement chip, that probably wouldn't work. I have no idea if the FXPAK PRO would even be able to achieve Super FX3 support, due to that.
To clarify, the linked Github repository is Drahsid's Decompilation project, not a recompilation.
Decompilations are useful in producing a recompilation, but recompilations or ports are not the end result (and often not the goal) of the decompilation itself.
The VMU didn't have a colour display, and Chao Adventure didn't have detailed sprites like that. So AI promo image aside, it feels like they don't understand their own history very well.
@RextheSheep When you mentioned that, I then considered DS games, and now the problem is vertical resolution instead. The effective resolution of the DS without a screen gap is 256x384, and 3x scale that's 768x1152. The 768x1024 display is wide enough, but not tall enough. It'll scale 2.666x leaving vertical black bars, but it might be decent for a 2.5x scale that allows for that screen gap (where many DS games account for it).
Right away the 768 width display is a concern Since the 3DS top screen is 400 by 240, you'll get an awkward 1.92x scale that'll smudge any 2D graphics or might introduce 3D rendering issues. If you want to make this an ideal solution for 3DS games, the display needs to be a better fit than that.
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.
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.
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.
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Re: Poll: Did You Know About The Secret Shop In Zelda: Oracle Of Seasons / Ages?
Since I already had a GBA when the Oracle games launched, yes I knew about it since that's how I first played it.
Also about playing it on Analogue Pocket.
All you have to do is launch the Game Boy Color cart in GBA mode, and you'll get the secret shop; as well as the alternative (arguably worse) colour palette.
Shantae also had a GBA-mode check which granted access to an exclusive Tinkerbat transformation in the late game.
Re: "Thanks For Sharing, But I Do Not Support GenAI" - Dev Behind Sonic And The Black Knight Recomp Corrects "AI Slop" Website
@Martin_H
I wouldn't underestimate the Sonic fandom here, particularly the Sonic Retro community.
So many Sonic games have been reverse engineered and improved upon by said community, that their work has provided and improved upon technology for preserving games.
Sonic Unleashed quite famously had its Xbox 360 version recompiled for PC just last year, and the tools that made it possible have enabled many more 360 games to get enhanced PC ports.
Fans have also taken it upon themselves to remake past main entry games like Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic and the Secret Rings (as "Project Reignition"), and Sonic Rush (as "Sonic Rush Rerun"), to provide definitive PC versions that improve shortcomings and modernises control schemes (such as removing motion controls, or adapting a dual-screen game to a single-screen experience).
There's even Sonic Triple Trouble 16-Bit, a Genesis style remake built in Game Maker, based on the Game Gear original.
Beyond that, Sonic Mania was made possible because fans from the Sonic Retro community had developed their own engines and painstakingly researched the original Mega Drive / Genesis games, which first lead to Android ports of Sonic 1 / 2 / CD, and eventually to Sonic Origins too.
Further beyond that, there is an active decompilation project for the Sonic Advance trilogy which aims to produce a faithful PC port with improved widescreen (display area increases from 240x160 to 426x240), as to address the "screen crunch" these fast-paced games are known to suffer from.
That's without mentioning how rarely SEGA have re-released the Sonic Advance games in any form, I believe the last time was on Wii U Virtual Console.
Shadow the Hedgehog has also received an extensive "Unloaded" overhaul mod for the GameCube version.
The point being is that across the Sonic series, fans have been adapting and re-working the games to make the strong points shine, since every game has its merits somewhere despite some obvious flaws (particularly Sonic 06).
Re: "Thanks For Sharing, But I Do Not Support GenAI" - Dev Behind Sonic And The Black Knight Recomp Corrects "AI Slop" Website
I'd stumbled upon Generation Amiga just a few days ago, when I was trying to identify the feasibility of running the Super FX3 patch of Star Fox on real hardware.
When I checked out the article, it was too quickly apparent what absolute junk it was topped by the AI generated headline image, and made a point to ignore this site.
Good on hobbyist developers pushing back against this "news site" that feels fit to fabricate its own headline images for its slop articles, further misrepresenting any actual developments in the retro gaming space.
Re: Anniversary: The Game Boy Pocket Turns 30 Today
I didn't know that there was an off-white Game Boy Pocket styled after the original DMG Game Boy!
From some cursory web searches, it looks like it was a Japan exclusive model, I wanted to make sure it wasn't a custom shell.
Re: "Truly An Injustice" - Looks Like This Mischief Makers Recomp Is Another Vibe-Coded Disappointment
@DestructoDisk
Much of the development that has propelled AI itself forward, is done on Linux machines after all.
"AI" broadly speaking is merely a statistical analysis of ingested data, and you infer probability from that model. This process by itself is nothing bad, but the issues stem from the misuse of the existing internet and computing infrastructure and how big companies are suddenly pumping massive amounts of money and energy into hoarding compute resources, to process vast amounts of dubiously sourced data to provide public chatbots and image generation services.
These tools being freely accessible to a public that doesn't really know how this technology works nor the best use cases for them, introduces a problem where the layman generates and then shares low quality content.
AI slop issues are paired with social media platforms profiting themselves and their content creators through engagement numbers, so farming engagement makes money even if it's complete trash, and is frequently automated as to game the system. This creates a situation where impoverished people with internet access make use of free or cheap AI systems (powered by billions of invested dollars), can set up automated social media platform feeds that bring them a few hundred dollars.
Access to the technology and publication education about it is more of the issue here, as is how the big companies are desperate to turn it into a profitable venture for the insane funds they're pumping into it.
In a controlled academic environment where people know what they're doing? The findings are truly useful, it's a new frontier of data science.
For hobbyists (like this article's software development project), the results are concerning, as too often it's about achieving an end result and not the process.
Re: "What Passion Is There In Watching Everything Get Done Automatically?" - Final Fight MD Dev Opens Up On AI
@1040STF
There are perils in using it in research and development, too.
The more that we rely on the machine to discover and engineer for us, the less we actually develop our own understanding and expertise on a subject matter.
A quick chat with an AI chatbot about an unfamiliar subject matter, is like being able to "talk to an expert" at your convenience, but it's no true expert like an experienced human would be.
However, that's often enough to just get the ball rolling with something you're maybe working on, if you just need a quick assist and you can't reach someone who really knows.
You should still value the human interaction though, you develop bonds with people and work together towards a common goal, like a passion for a shared interest.
When you're talking to the chatbot, you're telling a big corporation what your interests are, and giving it more data it can use for its own profit making purposes. That is unless, you're running an effective LLM model locally on your own hardware.
Re: "Randy Is A Madman!" - SNES Star Fox Gets A Speed Boost Thanks To Super FX 3
For the dedicated Star Fox SNES player, I can imagine they'd prefer playing on Super FX2 or 3 for the boosted speed and consistent performance, and the added challenge that comes from that (assuming a lack of recalibration on the vanilla ROM).
Otherwise, there's also overhaul ROM hacks like the Exploration Showcase, isn't there?
If this is just Super FX3 support in a given emulator for the time being, it seems unlikely that you could play Star Fox with Super FX3 on real hardware any time soon?
I had considered the Super UFO Pro8, a flash cart that lets you use original cartridges as chip-donors for compatible ROMs, but given that the Super FX3 is actually a Raspberry Pi RP2350 rather than a conventional enhancement chip, that probably wouldn't work.
I have no idea if the FXPAK PRO would even be able to achieve Super FX3 support, due to that.
Re: "Truly An Injustice" - Looks Like This Mischief Makers Recomp Is Another Vibe-Coded Disappointment
To clarify, the linked Github repository is Drahsid's Decompilation project, not a recompilation.
Decompilations are useful in producing a recompilation, but recompilations or ports are not the end result (and often not the goal) of the decompilation itself.
Recently, Snowboard Kids 2 received a recompilation port, but the notable part about this port is that it was based upon the same author's own AI assisted decompilation effort.
In contrast to the decompilation, the recomp does not appear to have used AI, and the author even bemoans derivative low-quality N64 ports rushed out using AI.
@AndyVGR
You should care if the end result is broken and not worth playing.
Re: Konami's Castlevania: Belmont's Curse Steelbook Reminds Me Why I Love Physical Gaming
As it happens, Amazon UK has pre-orders open for a Switch version.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Castlevania-Belmonts-Curse-Midnight-Steelbook-Bundle/dp/B0H5C3SCHL
I'd forgotten to place my order earlier, so now's a good time.
Re: Sega Appears To Have Been Caught Using GenAI Again, This Time With Dreamcast Keychains
The VMU didn't have a colour display, and Chao Adventure didn't have detailed sprites like that.
So AI promo image aside, it feels like they don't understand their own history very well.
Re: We've Had GBA, DS And PS Vita Clones, Now It's The Turn Of The Nintendo 2DS
@RextheSheep
When you mentioned that, I then considered DS games, and now the problem is vertical resolution instead.
The effective resolution of the DS without a screen gap is 256x384, and 3x scale that's 768x1152.
The 768x1024 display is wide enough, but not tall enough.
It'll scale 2.666x leaving vertical black bars, but it might be decent for a 2.5x scale that allows for that screen gap (where many DS games account for it).
Re: We've Had GBA, DS And PS Vita Clones, Now It's The Turn Of The Nintendo 2DS
Right away the 768 width display is a concern
Since the 3DS top screen is 400 by 240, you'll get an awkward 1.92x scale that'll smudge any 2D graphics or might introduce 3D rendering issues.
If you want to make this an ideal solution for 3DS games, the display needs to be a better fit than that.
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.