Dcubed

Woah! Castlevania 3 and Gargoyle's Quest 2 on Wii U VC!? HOLY SHIT! Now THAT's a good week! Keep it up NOE!!!

Yeah same here. Everybody's Golf 7 will no doubt be nice, but god only knows when it'll get released (could very easily be 2016, considering that there is no in-game footage) and it might end up being cross gen or cross platform with Vita. And everything else I'm interested in (namely the new Ys game, Resident Evil Revelations 2 and DQHeroes) will also be available on platforms that I already own Still waiting for a reason to get a PS4...

HEROPON! VERY COOL! Awaits the inevitable Rein Assist Trophy

Yeah, it's not looking good so far... Mind you though, supposedly Bluepoint are working on a remaster of a portable game for PS4, so we should be seeing something new here... (unless it's actually Type 0 HD they're working on of course...) Oh! Senren Kagura Estival, Ys and Persona 5 getting PS4 ports is a surprise! Mind you though, I'm only really interested in Ys, but I imagine that many folks here will be happy to hear about P5! Oh shit! Dragon Quest Musou!? now THAT is a legitimate surprise! Ahh, DQH is cross gen...

Yeah, I am. Hoping for some actually interesting Japanese games, but I'm not holding my breath...

True, but times have changed. The DS was the most successful console of all time after all... Besides, a 2016/early 2017 release would still be 5/6 years before seeing a successor. That sounds about right to me (the life cycle would only be about 0.5-1 year shorter than the DS was - don't forget that it came out in November 2004 and the 3DS came out in February 2011, so the DS actually lasted 6 years and 3 months before seeing a successor) What you're suggesting would mean that the 3DS would actually have a longer lifespan than the DS did, which just sounds like madness to me!

It most certainly would be purchased by the same audience. The first people who are gonna dive into the New3DS will be the same early adopters who would buy into the 4DS early and an announcement made so ridiculously shortly after the release of the New3DS would cause riots! I'd be fucking livid, as would a large chunk of their core audience! It's like basically saying, "oh, that new handheld you just bought a couple of months ago? It's broken and shit now! Should've waited for the real hotness!" There's no faster way to piss off your audience than by selling them a console that is to be supplanted by a true successor less than a year later. It makes zero sense on every level. The concept is simply absurd! The whole point of the New3DS is to buy them time while they prepare the true handheld successor. Supplanting it within a year completely defeats the purpose of releasing it in the first place! 2-3 years and you'll see a true 3DS successor.

If they do that, they instantly kill all consumer confidence in their handheld line. It's the same attitude that ended up dooming SEGA in the mid 90s. Who the hell would buy a 4DS after seeing the New3DS killed within a year? The idea is absurd! No. If they're releasing this, they need to support it for at least 2 years - like with the DSi (which is the equivilent example here, not the GBMicro or the DSiXL - speaking of which, the DSiXL is the equvilent of the GBMicro - not something that got its own games like the GBC/DSi/New3DS).

Yes that would be achieveable, guaranteed, because 3D comes at a fixed cost (though it would be stupid, because the aspect ratio would be completely wrong for running 3DS games on a 2D 800x240 or 400x480 screen). The kind of resolution bump you would want would be a clean x4 (I.e 800x480), because it would mean that existing 3DS games could be evenly scaled with no loss in quality - that's the reason why Sony chose that specific resolution that the Vita uses, because it's exactly 4x the resolution of the PSP's screen. That has nothing to do with the idea of them increasing the resolution of games via just increasing the clock speed of the same CPU/GPU like you suggested though. Because there's no way to guarantee the viability of a blanket resolution improvement with just a simple clock bump, a resolution bump is not a sensible option to attempt with a revision of the same hardware.

Dropping 3D would mean that the console could output double the polygons, or double the framerate in GPU limited games, or running in 800 x 240. Doubling the CPU or GPU clock speed does not guarantee any of these though. That's the point I'm making. It's stupid to suggest that they could just double the CPU or GPU clock speed and then suddenly start running everything at double the resolution. It doesn't work like that! You don't necessarily get that kind of blanket improvement like you do when you turn off 3D... And there's only so far you can take the same piece of hardware... You can't just keep upping the clocks forever. A higher resolution screen doesn't make sense for a revision of a handheld using boosted versions of the same hardware. It's when you are releasing a new piece of hardware that is many times more capable in all respects that a resolution bump makes sense.

I give up. It's like talking to a brick wall... You clearly have no idea what you're on about. You can't even display 800 x 240 on the 3DS' screen because there are only 400 pixels visible on the screen (the screen resolution is split in half by the parallax barrier) And for the record games on 3DS DO get a boost when running in 2D. Many games use the left over grunt to do 2x vertical or horizontal SSAA (downscaling from 800x240 or 400x480), while some other games run at double the framerate in 2D (Street Fighter 4 3D and DOA Dimensions spring to mind). 3D is something with a fixed cost. You effectively cut your GPU performance in half when you enable it as your game now has to render the same scene twice. That's why there's an obvious blanket performance improvement from running in 2D that any game can take advantage of with little developer work required (though this only applies to the GPU of course. If your game is CPU limited instead, then running in 2D instead of 3D won't have any effect.) Just blindly doubling clock speeds doesn't necessarily mean double resolution. If the hardware is still fillrate limited, then you're stuffed! If it still lacks the pixel throughout and memory bandwidth needed, then it's gonna perform badly at higher resolutions, even if it's running at twice the speed on paper. If you can't understand that, then there's no point continuing to talk about it

Just doubling the CPU clock speed isn't going to suddenly allow the console to render at double the resolution. Even if they gave the GPU the same x2 bump, it's not going to guarantee that they can bump up the resolution like that (especially if the game is running in 3D, where the requirements are twice as high as in 2D). There's so many variables involved that there's no way to guarantee that (to put things in perspective, many games on iPhone such as Infinity Blade ran better on the iPhone 3GS than they did on the iPhone 4 - despite the latter iPhone having supposedly twice the graphics performance on paper). It doesn't make sense to spend much more money on a screen that's twice the resolution, where only a small subset of games might be able to take advantage of it. It's just a huge waste of money and hardware resources. So this New3DS is going to last only a year? Really? You think that's remotely likely? This thing will be launching in March/April next year outside of Japan. Do you really think that they would release it then and then just 2-3 months later suddenly announce a successor at E3? Come on! People would revolt, and rightly so! Oh and Iwata has already said that the next hardware is not going to be a hybrid console/handheld. They're just going to be based on the same hardware architecture (like how an iPad and iPhone use the same hardware architecture, but different chipset specs).

Nah, 4 years is way too long. That's 2018!! 2-3 years is all but assured and that's fine by me. Plenty of life still left in the 3DS and late 2016/early 2017 for the next handheld sounds about right. That would give the 3DS a total lifespan of about 6-7 years, as software support will probably last until around late 2017/early 2018 (that 3DS userbase isn't going to switch overnight after all ) The big ? for me at the moment though is how they're planning on doing backwards compatibility in the next handheld (if at all). If they're really going to base their next handheld and console on the Wii U's hardware architecture, then than means a switch over to a Power PC CPU... (as crazy as it sounds for a handheld to not use ARM... but then again, the Wii U does only use a pitifully low 33 watts and that includes everything like the disc drive, the USB slots and the wireless...) Will they take the same approach and include an ARM11/ARM9 in the next handheld? That seems like a very expensive approach to take the next time around... (on the other hand, if they do the same thing with their console - that would mean that it would be capable of playing 3DS games too!) I suppose that it might be possible to emulate the ARM9, considering that Nintendo already have a fully functioning DS emulator up and running on Wii U. That would save some money on the BOM, but who knows how fully featured that emulator is, or to what extent it might be possible...

The game was designed around the Wiimote & Nunchuck controls and that's the way I would recommend playing. The touch controls were something they added fairly recently as a weird experimental option and they're ok, but not as good as the original Wiimote/Chuck combo - which is simply sublime for this game (they're a damn sight better than the Pro Controller option though - which is just horrific )

It's still going to be using a dual core ARM 11 chip, it has to in order to be able to run 3DS games (and no, a Cortex processor does not feature the full instruction set of ARM 11), probably just with a boosted clock speed on a smaller process node and a few minor tweaks to the instruction pipeline. Both the DSi and the GBC saw the same kind of upgrade - same general chip with boosted clocks and minor efficiency upgrades. You can't just plonk a different ARM chip in there and expect everything to work. It's the reason why the 3DS still has the DSi's ARM 9 chip inside it, rather than just trying to run everything off the ARM 11 (It also has the DSi's ARM 7 chip inside it too, which is what allows it to run the GBA ambassador games ) It's a boosted version of the same hardware, that downclocks itself when running original 3DS games, that's why it still works. It's the same way that the DS runs GBA games (The DS/DSi's ARM 7 chip is the same as the GBA's, just running at twice the clock speed and with some minor tweaks - it just downclocks itself when running in GBA mode and switches off DS related hardware functions), the same way that the GBC plays GB games and the same way that the Wii runs GCN games. Smartphone/PC games are built on an abstracted layer that sits on top of the hardware itself. When you're building a game for PC/smart devices, you're actually writing it for the operating system and the drivers that power it (Direct X/Open GL). This allows you to support a multitude of hardware configurations, but reduces performance. Console games however are built for one specific piece of hardware and are completely designed to take advantage of every little quirk and feature to gleam maximum performance from the hardware that it runs on. Changing the way the hardware works after the game has already been made for it will result in the games being broken - that's why you can't just swap out chipsets like you can with a PC or a smartphone. As an aside, Nintendo also like to use the old hardware chips in their new games too. 2D graphics in DS games almost always ran off the ARM 7 processor (which is why the 3DS has to include it for purposes of DS backwards compatibility), while the ARM 9 chip inside the 3DS is often used for background processing tasks like WiFi communication, SD card access and stuff like that. Sony did the same thing with the PS2, which used the PS1 hardware to handle audio related tasks.

You can't really do that without changing the hardware all together. This is an upgrade that is using boosted versions of the same hardware architecture that is inside the current 3DS. Doing what you're suggesting would require them to completely overhaul the entire system chipset - something that you do for a successor console, not a revision. Don't forget that 3DS/console games aren't built like iOS games (which work pretty much just like PC games). If you change the hardware, you break all existing games, whereas iOS/PC games are designed to run on sets of variable hardware (performance is somewhat unpredictable, but scales up or down depending on the resources available). What you're suggesting would not work. Yeah, I agree with this. November 2016 sounds about right. The DSi granted the DS another 2.5 years of life, so it's not hard to imagine that the New3DS will give the 3DS another 2 years-ish. The following year we'll probably see the Wii U's successor too. And since both handheld and console will be based on the Wii U's hardware architecture, development for both should go smoothly as both machines will be able to share assets, code and operating systems

They've already stated that Miiverse will load faster (and have demoed it as one of the key new features of the New3DS), so I see no reason to doubt it. Also you know full well that they can't improve the DPI without upping the resolution; and they wouldn't up it by anything less than a clean x2 in order to not damage the image quality of existing 3DS games (which they can't do because the hardware isn't orders of magnitude better, because it is a revision and not a successor - but we've gone over this before several times so eh :p )

Am I the only one who actually kinda likes Sonic R? Sure the controls are janky as hell, but it's a pretty ambitious game for the time and it's pretty fun breaking the courses and taking shortcuts that you're not supposed to. (plus the sound track is 100% pure glorious cheese :awesome:) Yeah, that one's been on my to-buy list for a long time Same goes for a lot of the other ones he's reviewed (Just need Bayou Billy to hit the VC...). I'm also a regular reader of Hardcore Gaming 101's Your-Weekly-Kusoge series... one day I'll buy and play through Takeshi's Challenge... (actually, come to think of it; that's on the Wii VC in Japan! I could go get it today... )

No no no! I'm saying that as a kid, I didn't think it was "good enough" to be in my collection. I'm berating myself for being such an idiot back then! :p Of course I have it now and it's a great game (older and wiser etc), but I do also wish that I owned more bad games in general :p Lately I've been finding myself itching to play some garbage games and I look in my collection and just get a bit sad thinking that there there's nothing but raw goodness on my shelf. I'm actually thinking about picking up some licensed pap or pure trash; Sonic 06 is one that I'm eying for a low price, as well as a CDI and some rubbish to go along with it (and of course I still need to actually experience the Zelda CDI games firsthand too ) FF8 is still irredeemable garbage though (great soundtrack mind you! It's far too good for the game it's lumped in with - and that's why Theatrhythm exists! )

Worst game I own is probably 2 Fast 4 Gnomz on 3DS. I bought it because I lost a bet with a friend of mine There's also Shadow the Hedgehog, which I bought for a laugh... (it's not even a laugh... it's just pure misery lol!) and Muscle March on Wii Ware (which IS at least a good laugh ). Otherwise, my other worst games are Ecco the Dolphin (the MD original), Final Fantasy 8 (which I hate with the passion of a thousand suns, but I played through that garbage in its entirety because I was ploughing through the entire series) and Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 (which I'm not ashamed to admit are guilty pleasures of mine - it's just fun to break these games through exploiting glitches ) and Super Star Soldier (TG16 VC), which is not bad but just plain mediocre, Tomb Raider PS1 (which IMO was never a good game because the controls are simply horrific), Urban Trials on 3DS (I was hungry for a Trials like game on 3DS and it's soulless, but functional) and Pyramids on 3DS (don't judge me! It was early days on 3DS and I was desperate to try out a Download Exclusive 3DS game! It's a really crappy Solomon's Key clone...) In retrospect, I actually kinda wish that I owned more bad games... There was a time that I was actually too picky with my choices, to the point where I was skipping over stuff like Crazy Taxi and Beach Spikers because I didn't consider them to be "worthy" of joining my collection! (If I could go back in time I would so smack myself on the head for being such a numpty!) I've played worse stuff than those of course (borrowed games, playing friend's games etc - Pokemon Dash springs to mind immediately!), but I've never actually owned them... Kinda wish I did own some more terrible ones, because my collection doesn't really have nearly as much character as many others :p

You know what, I'm actually really looking forward to those basic quality-of-life improvements that the New3DS will bring, moreso than any graphics upgrade. (obviously ignoring the fact that it's now powerful enough to handle 3D Xenoblade of course! I rarely post on Miiverse on 3DS because it's just so sluggish, while on Wii U I post like all the time (it's actually a bit of a curse when I'm playing through a classic VC game again, because I can't help myself from stopping every 5 mins to post yet another funny caption about something stupid I noticed ) I can very easily see myself doing that much more often on the New3DS now that they've fixed that whole issue

Go ahead and shame the hell out of me though to be fair, I was referring to the first remodel when I said they wouldn't do it, rather than the DSi/GBC style revision - which is a different matter since it always splits the userbase anyway... so I get a free pass :p

Alas there are no improvements to the WiFi chip. Still the same B/G chip that's in the current 3DS.

Supposedly it's still 2.4ghz B/G. The faster download speeds supposedly come courtesy of the faster CPU... Either way, DQX is just a normal 3DS game (and isn't even really a game, since it's just a cloud streaming app anyway), so it wouldn't actually be able to benefit from any New3DS functions regardless. Ironically, the New3DS probably has enough grunt to run the game natively now anyway :p

To do a x2 resolution bump would require hardware that is several orders of magnitude better; the kind of hardware that you would get in a successor, not a DSi style revision... That's why I'm saying that you'd have to wait until the next generation 3DS before they do that. It's not something that you'd get from a revision.