RupeeClock

@themightyant
I mean, yeah it's specifically based on the NES version of Super Mario Bros 3, not the SNES version.

Taking a closer look at the Goomba and Mario sprites, they're not 1:1 to the actual sprites from the games but are weirdly re-drawn to closely resemble but not exactly match. This is possible for copyright reasons as to not outright copy Nintendo's works.

Let the demand be known, and maybe it'll happen for real!

I love that the team are continuing to maintain the game with hotfixes and revisions, now up to a v1.5 release from what I can see.

Although the main mode is indeed on the short side, it's a genuinely enjoyable little game, though I'd say the time limit feels a bit strict for how open the second skateboarding level is, at least if you want to find all of the Grimace birthday shakes.

I really enjoy my RG353P, recent custom firmware updates have resolved some issues like sleep mode freezing the system.

What I'd really enjoy is a Linux based successor system that's beefier, because this handheld has the best ergonomics of anything they've put out so far.

It bugs me that the print has NES sprites rather than SNES sprites.

@romanista
Unless I'm mistaken, the McDonalds DS training game "eCrew Development Program" was fully preserved and accessible.
https://archive.org/details/mcdonalds-japan-ecdp-rom-training-nintendo-ds-cartridge-dump

@Agent_P
Huh, yeah that's my Twitter. I don't really use it much other than browsing.

@Agent_P
I can't wait to read the article on The Cutting Room Floor.

Edit: One actually exists.
https://tcrf.net/Grimace%27s_Birthday

I downloaded the ROM directly from the website via DevTools, loaded it up on my Everdrive, and gave it a spin on my GBA.
And it works! Pretty cool stuff, looks well made too.

When you visit the website, the browser downloads this file:
https://grimacesbirthday.com/bX4TvUeiUEfKRw8bkPGaB
When downloaded, it saves a 1024 KB .msi file, but when renamed to .gbc will work on GBC emulators and flashcarts.

Edit: The original link was removed and changed to https://grimacesbirthday.com/bX4TvUeiUEfKRw8bkPGaB.gb, which also has a new hash meaning it's likely an updated ROM.

@smoreon
From a business perspective, a business will look to optimise sales of their current products however they can.

The Tears of the Kingdom blockbuster sales of a tentpole product isn't a fair comparison in this instance. I was referring to the grey market, which is an ongoing issue for big games publishers.
There are also different kinds of consumers; parents looking to get something to keep their child busy aren't necessarily going to look to be spending big, and would probably be happy setting them up with their own small 3DS to keep to themselves and be loaded with a bunch of games.

It's important to keep perspective in mind, it's not just us enthusiasts that anticipate the biggest releases of the year and have to have the hottest new thing.

@KingMike
The point I'm making is that buying old products on a secondary market, including getting free software for old hardware, will be eating out of sales for new products and software.

If Nintendo can exercise any amount of control over that by making it harder to get free games for a 3DS, they will.

@LunarFlame17
It feels like a Disney vault situation; they dictate when you can buy their goods and services, as a way to build demand for a distant re-release of a game from a retired platform.

It also makes it harder to sell Mario Golf or Mario Tennis for the Switch, when people can get a 3DS for cheaper and then find ways to get Mario Golf or Mario Tennis for free.
The point being entries in a series of games can simply be an instance of the activity someone wants to do.

NES RAM initialization is very interesting to learn about, particularly that games will have behaviour that assumes the console boots with RAM in an uninitialized state.

Super Mario Bros makes use to this so that the A+Start trick to continue a world from game over does not persist when you turn the console on after being powered down.
Pressing the reset button for a warm start (aka soft reset) versus pressing the power button for a cold start (aka hard reset).

It turns out that the NES game Tennis writes to the same address in memory for SMB's A+Start trick, and that if you play SMB, then Tennis, then SMB, by physically swapping the cartridges whilst the console remains powered on, that you can tamper with RAM initalisation and get access to invalid world IDs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrFHNgJlJSg

So yeah, for Huang Di here, it sounds like an error in uninitialised RAM handling. It's entirely possible, likely even that the Taiwanese developers were using unofficial "Famiclone" hardware that did not handle uninitialized RAM in the same way as official NES or Famicom hardware.
Something like a Dendy, a Micro Genius, etc.
I would suspect that's the root of the issue, trying to play unofficial software developed on unofficial hardware, on official hardware or emulators targeting cycle accuracy of official hardware.

@DanijoEX
It's not, they've lost their Twitter and YouTube accounts as well.

It's admittedly something I hadn't known, and I'd learnt of trivia like "blue fire can break down bombable walls" before this.
It makes sense though, if the spike tracks are technically an enemy like any other, they can be frozen. They're encountered in later parts of the game too like in Spirit Temple or Ganondorf's Tower.

This goes to demonstrate that some features often go unused in games, since the player has plenty of means to tackle problems, especially if they don't consume resources like arrows or magic.
For example, in Link to the Past, were you aware that enemies frozen by using either the Ice Rod or the Ether Medalion can be picked up and thrown?

I'm loving this trend of colorization of Game Boy games that otherwise never got an official "DX" release, especially when they refactor the game to perform better on the GBC hardware too.
There's been quite the few as of late!

It's honestly fascinating how the early circulation of lower quality images with excessive contrast and over-saturation actually shaped perception of that era of artwork.
Ken Sugimori's late 90s watercolor artwork is famous for its exposed whites as lighting, but that detail was greatly exaggerated and it has been reflected both in official media and fan works inspired by the poor quality scans and prints.

To this day, the Smash Bros Dojo site and the development blog is still accessible!
https://www.smashbros.com/wii/en_uk/index.html

Checking this site daily for updates was a ritual and got me the most excited for a game launch that I'd ever been.

I even have a small mark on the site, back then I was playing the Japanese version of the game on an imported Wii system, and submit one of my own screenshots that was featured on the Japanese side of the site.
https://www.smashbros.com/wii/jp/gamemode/etc/etc03.html

"Ｔｏｐ　Ｓｃｏｒｅ！（ＲＵＰＥＥ）".

It's not uncommon for European gamers of a certain generation to refer to game cartridges as "tapes", it's a holdover from when games actually were distributed on cassette tapes such as the ZX Spectrum.

Much in the way that the official term for NES and SNES consoles was "Control Deck".

It's pretty remarkable that despite downscaling to GBC, the graphics bare a very strong resemblance to the GBA game.
I think that speaks to the graphic design of the original game a bit more, as a launch GBA game.

Interestingly enough, Two Tribes appear to acknowledge and approve of this development, as they re-tweeted Forest of Illusion's announcement!
https://twitter.com/TwoTribesGames

Price not mentioned in the review, but goes for £53.99 each.
That seems competitive against some other retro-console solutions.

@GamerDad66 @NinChocolate
To be fair, this is a retro cartridge release by Retro-Bit, they don't release games for modern systems.
Although they do have retro-style controllers that are compatible with both original and modern systems.

Limited Run Games are only acting as a distributor here.

@SalvorHardin
That's a useful tip, I'll give this a go because in the case of PAL region games they run at 50Hz, something not ideal for 60Hz displays.

As long as you temper your performance expectations, you'll probably really enjoy these devices.
They have the best buttons and build quality of any such emulation-centric handhelds I've used and the RG351V in particular has been a joy for playing SNES and Megadrive games.

@SenseiDje
Acquire homebrew SNES roms developed and shared by indie developers is one way.

Or, you use some sort of SNES cartridge ROM dumping device to produce legal backups of your own physical media.
You can use a RetroN 5 for example.

What you're looking at here is mostly an old model in new clothes.

The RG350M is an Ingenic JZ4770 powered device, which is an old chip being used in handhelds like these since the GCW Zero in 2013!
It's highly likely that they are looking to use up remaining chips to help fund the development of their future systems, which will likely feature Rockchip RK3326 like the RG351P and RG351M.

Personally, I would find a device like this too small to enjoy playing on, that form factor was never intended for a device with so many buttons after all. The Game Boy Micro only had two face buttons and two shoulder buttons!

This looks really nice, but I think $180 for the base unit and 24 mini-games prices it too high for people with a passing curiosity.

There are things like PICO-8 as a platform for small indie homebrew games, similar restrictions and novelty albeit digital, with a small admission fee.

@Oval_Griffin
Comparing to pictures of an RG351P.
https://retrododo.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/RG351P-6.jpg

The L/R shoulder buttons look uncomfortably narrow and would probably hurt your fingers after pressing them for too long.
The Retroid in general also looks a lot chunkier, thicker, and less comfortable to hold.

@Oval_Griffin
Yes, the RG351V suffers from lacking a right analogue, though not by much. There aren't too many systems that it's capable of playing that actually make use of a second analogue, outside of the couple dozen PS1 games that supported them.

With the shoulder buttons, I can understand why they're laid out that way though as a two-row design might make the system thicker than it already is.

The 640x480 screen was the main reason I got the RG351V to compliment my RG351P.
That said, if they were to make a RG351P with a 720x480 screen, that would remain perfect for GBA games and keep all the benefits of a 480p screen.

@HamatoYoshi @BloodNinja
I'm not sure anyway, both units I received were ordered from the same site, Retromimi.
They're a reliable seller in my experience. They might've started deleting the pre-bundled ROMs at some point which is best practice, but probably a hassle if they receive them like that.

@BloodNinja @HamatoYoshi
On the subject of being pre-loaded with ROMs, this seems to depend on who you buy it from.

The stock microSD for firmware is only supposed to have the firmware, and it might have a few public domain things on there.
When I received my RG351P back in December it was loaded with ROMs, and of particularly poor quality.
They were pre-patched with cheat codes for example which could ruin the experience.
But the RG351V I received a few months ago was not pre-loaded with ROMs, which I preferred.

I have an RG351P and it's one of my favourite devices, it's perfect for playing GBA games, but the screen makes it less desirable for the other types of systems it's capable of emulating.
That unusual 480x320 resolution means home console and arcade games will have some scaling filters applied, which I find unpleasant to look at.

There's a sister device called the RG351V which has a classic DMG Game Boy design, and sports a 640x480 screen. It's absolutely perfect for home console games, Game Boy games, and more. GBA games take a small hit as you need to scale them, but they scale better than you'd expect.

It's nice to see Nintendo Life covering Anbernic's more recent devices though! They really are excellent little devices.

@sanderev
That's what I saw after looking it up, yeah.
Though one has a 1.2Ghz processor and the other has a 1.5Ghz processor, that by itself is no indication of performance capabilities.

This device looks like it is very, very similar to the RG351P.
There's a chance that it is using the same processor and general firmware, especially since they seem to share a 480x320 IPS screen.

With that in mind, you guys should check if you can flash a custom firmware to the microSD card.
The stock firmware for the RG351P is terrible, if you flash a custom one such as 351Elec the experience is greatly improved: Default shaders and scaling on a per-system basis are better, and can still be fixed up.

The main draw of the 480x320 resolution screen is that Game Boy / Color / Advance games will look perfect on it! That's why I got an RG351P.
The drawback however, is that most other systems you'll need RGA scaling to get them to look decent.

Edit: Looked up the processors for these devices and they aren't the same, I'm not sure which one has superior specs.

I think I might've known that by proxy, because I recall knowing that about Perfect Dark, but not Goldeneye.

This is very much geared at the total enthusiasts that really wanna deck out their homes and already spend hundreds on individual NEO GEO games.

Whilst the selection of games is nice, no doubt people will look into modding this thing to load in even more games.
But hopefully this thing actually has good software emulation.

I'm not sure who this is for. Enthusiasts with SNES or Mega Drive cartridges (or flash carts) are going to want a nicer system than this.

Question about the 8Bitdo M30's latency.
Do these tests run the M30 2.4G using the latest Firmware v2.0? This purportedly resolves connectivity and latency issues.

These photos with their low level neon lighting are difficult to view.

My brother recently got one of these and it's quite a treat.
The fact that it functions as an optical-drive emulator is quite remarkable.

I know that everyone's been thinking about AVGN on this subject matter, but has anyone stopped to think about Steven Spielberg?