NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Discuss hardware-related topics, such as development cartridges, CopyNES, PowerPak, EPROMs, or whatever.

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jmr
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NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by jmr »

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/14/12187 ... rice-games
http://nintendonews.com/news/general/mi ... mber-2016/
Nintendo is bringing back the NES — only a little smaller.

Today the company announced what it's calling the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition. It looks just like a NES, only a lot tinier, and it comes with 30 games built in. You can connect it to your TV via a HDMI cable, and it also includes a controller designed to work just like the iconic rectangular NES gamepad. (The new controller will also connect to a Wii Remote, so that you can use it to play Virtual Console games on a Wii or Wii U.)

In addition to HDMI support and a lack of cartridges, the new mini-console also features one useful modern convenience: multiple suspend points, so that you won't have to fumble around with passwords when you start playing a game again. The NES Classic Edition will be available on November 11th for $59.99.

Here's the complete list of games:

Balloon Fight
Bubble Bobble
Castlevania
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Jr.
Double Dragon II: The Revenge
Dr. Mario
Excitebike
Final Fantasy
Galaga
Ghosts'N Goblins
Gradius
Ice Climber
Kid Icarus
Kirby's Adventure
Mario Bros.
Mega Man 2
Metroid
Ninja Gaiden
Pac-Man
Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream
StarTropics
Super C
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros. 3
Tecmo Bowl
The Legend of Zelda
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Personally I'm not too excited by what is going to be just an emulation console with a fixed set of games. I'm personally more interested in the HDMI NES kit & RetroAVS. That said, the price point seems good and Wii(U) compatible controller is neat.
tepples
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by tepples »

This isn't a prelude to a crackdown on PowerPak, is it? Because after Super Mario Maker was released, Nintendo sent a bunch of notices of claimed infringement to YouTube about videos of ROM hacks and TASes.
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koitsu
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by koitsu »

Actual product is up on at least one Nintendo official website: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Misc-/Ninten ... 24287.html

It's pretty obvious what the intention is here. I told people about this a long time ago (talking 5-10 years ago), so I'll just harp on it once again: Nintendo continually "gets involved with emulation or homebrew" in a weird way, trying to do something about their expiring patents + holding on to intellectual property with the goal of providing themselves legal recourse in cases of ROM piracy or devices that can "infringe upon whatever they feel like at the moment". "See, your honour, that Metroid.nes file hosted on that website being distributed is hurting our profit and cash flow margins, because as you can see we still actively have such games in the market... yes the game came out in 1986, but..."

I can't wait for someone actually EE-savvy (ex. kevtris) get one of these and do an actual RE teardown (but whoever does it will probably need to remain anonymous, because Nintendo will almost certainly come after them for it). I couldn't care less for "box openings" or "let's open it up with a screwdriver and see pretty little chips, ooh ahh, I can recite what's on the silkscreening, amazing!" type stuff.

It's certainly a SoC of some kind doing emulation. Be sure to note that all the games they list off are either NROM, MMC1, or MMC3. (I'm also chuckling that they've included Pac-Man -- that's the one game that Namco-Bandai is *super* aggressive about when it comes to IP of any sort, including in homebrew)

What they've done about people putting up YouTube videos of recent games is different, but the same "weird thought process" as above applies. Enjoy these (warning, language in 2nd video). The bottom line is that Nintendo has no idea what they're doing presently. They really don't seem to have a game plan. And they certainly do not understand the Internet (as a "thing", or TCP/IP networking in general) -- they never have.
calima
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by calima »

What could they do about a detailed description of the innards? Besides a stern lawyerly letter?
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koitsu
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by koitsu »

calima wrote:What could they do about a detailed description of the innards? Besides a stern lawyerly letter?
"Stern lawerly letter" means effectively cease-and-desist which means ending up in court if you don't comply. Have you ever been through legal proceedings with either a large corporation or an equally sized behemoth (ex. state or federal government) in the United States? If not, let me educate you: it doesn't matter if you win the court case -- you'll be so financially damaged (not to mention destroyed from all the stress) that you'll wish you hadn't done it. And don't forget about what it does it does to your name/career as well. By the time you're 20% through it, you'll be going to bed every night wishing the entire thing was over and that you had taken the blue pill.

Nintendo does send these types of letters out, including ones that are a little more "soft". I don't know if they do the latter any more though. I know because I received one from them back in the 90s for my SNES documentation. It was wasn't harsh/threatening like what I've seen today, but it was very clear that if I didn't stop, there would be legal repercussions that were quite major. It was more along the lines of "so, our client doesn't like this, and you probably know that. They'd like you not to do this if you could stop, because otherwise we'll have to proceed with the next phase, followed by litigation, and that's time-consuming and expensive for everyone involved..." In a way, it almost felt more Japanese than it did American -- a kind of walking-on-eggshells feel vs. "stop or face litigation" style.

Companies will do whatever is within the realm of the law (that specifically includes bending whatever rules or using whatever loopholes possible) to ensure "details" of their stuff don't leak. This isn't new.

The tricky thing about reverse-engineering is that while US federal court deemed it legal (good reference there BTW, especially since it's the Atari/Tengen vs. Nintendo case), there are lots of counterexamples to it in smaller courts. The DMCA a commonly-cited thing that brings counterclaims to a lot of this. The bottom line is that anyone (company or person) can go to court or sue for any reason -- and if they have the time and money (for attorneys), they can make whatever they want stick. It's sad but true.
calima
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by calima »

Well yeah, legal intimidation for US persons is a thing. I was rather asking what case could they make, I can't think of any legal basis against a description of the board layout, etc.
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rainwarrior
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by rainwarrior »

Cute package, cool controller, not a bad selection of games.

The critical question in my mind is just: how to get more games on it?

Really hoping the answer to that isn't "you don't" (e.g. remember the Atari Flashback?)
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ultrageranium
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by ultrageranium »

Anyone knows if this is targeted only to non Eastern Asian markets, or do they also have a Famicom classic Edition? (Or will this be a global product?)
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mikejmoffitt
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by mikejmoffitt »

I like that this exists, because if a non-technical friend wants to play some cool old Nintendo games and doesn't want to screw around with {homebrew on a console, a raspberry pi, configuration files} I can just tell them to buy this and it probably has most of the games they wanted to play. I trust Nintendo's defaults to be reasonable - the correct aspect ratio, vertical synchronization (no tearing), low to reasonable input latency, respectable scaling (no nasty hq*x stuff, or ultra-bilinear filtering going on), no free-running cheap scanlines. I don't trust any of the freebie emulation setups to come with reasonable defaults, and I wouldn't wish a Raspberry Pi on the average person.

What's more, I bet the controller ports will be able to detect who's player one and two by the port. Just about every USB controller is given a number on a whim, and modern controllers like the Xbox 360 indicate which player number via lights on the controller since the console really doesn't know otherwise.
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rainwarrior
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by rainwarrior »

http://kotaku.com/the-mini-nes-wont-ope ... 1783693116

So, basically this lowers my interest to zero.
lidnariq
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by lidnariq »

I'll be excited for a tear-down. And I might buy a controller or two just because they're inexpensive and it looks like they use the same I²C port that's on the Wiimote.
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rainwarrior
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by rainwarrior »

lidnariq wrote:...it looks like they use the same I²C port that's on the Wiimote.
They do. The controllers are to be usable with a Wii or Wii U by attaching to a Wiimote.
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Myask
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by Myask »

koitsu wrote: It's certainly a SoC of some kind doing emulation. Be sure to note that all the games they list off are either NROM, MMC1, or MMC3. (I'm also chuckling that they've included Pac-Man -- that's the one game that Namco-Bandai is *super* aggressive about when it comes to IP of any sort, including in homebrew)
I was surprised at StarTropics…which is MMC6, and US-only. Punch Out!! is MMC2. 4/5 are not present, though.
It is a fairly large selection of licensed games from a lot of people. (CV/Gradius/SuperC: Konami. MM2/GnG: Capcom. DD2: Technos (who owns that now?) FF: Squaresoft, NG/TB: Tecmo BB: Taito).

edit: oops, Final Fantasy would be pretty dumb to not allow saving for.
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Banshaku
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by Banshaku »

It's on the American site too:

http://www.nintendo.com/nes-classic
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koitsu
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Re: NES Classic Edition - Nintendo's own repro console

Post by koitsu »

Myask wrote:I was surprised at StarTropics…which is MMC6, and US-only.
Does StarTropics use MMC6-specific features (talking about the 1KB of PRG-RAM internal to the chip)? If not, then MMC3 is sufficient. They're basically the same mapper except for that.
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