GBA emulator leaked for NSO

[Perkilator]

Here is a list of the games leaked for this as well:

Edited April 19, 2022 by Perkilator

[Jotari]

Oh hell yeah. I heard about this leak earlier today, but I didn't actually check the list of games. We're getting Astro Boy Omega Factor, that was exactly the GBA game I wanted to see, but didn't expect to get.

[vanguard333]

Why GBA? Are they just going to skip Gameboy/Gameboy Colour?

The games list seems interesting, though I can't help but remember how the Wii U had every version of every Mega Man Battle Network game; rather than just 2 and one version of 5.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, vanguard333 said:

Why GBA? Are they just going to skip Gameboy/Gameboy Colour?

The games list seems interesting, though I can't help but remember how the Wii U had every version of every Mega Man Battle Network game; rather than just 2 and one version of 5.

Well the GBA one is the one that's been leaked. Conventional wisdom is that GB/GBC will be available for the standard version of Nintendo Online while the GBA will be there with the more expensive premium version that nets you the N64 games. Course who the hell can figure out the decisions they make when it comes to their online libraries. I still consider the 15 year old Wii Shop Channel to be the best download service Nintendo has provided.

[vanguard333]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well the GBA one is the one that's been leaked. Conventional wisdom is that GB/GBC will be available for the standard version of Nintendo Online while the GBA will be there with the more expensive premium version that nets you the N64 games. Course who the hell can figure out the decisions they make when it comes to their online libraries. I still consider the 15 year old Wii Shop Channel to be the best download service Nintendo has provided.

The Wii shop channel was definitely the best one. I'm pretty sure it still had the most games out of any of these download services and the games worked with relatively few issues, unlike the Wii U's service that put every game through a Snyder filter (as in that it made all the games weirdly poorly lit for some reason) and the Switch's service really doing a poor job emulating the N64 games (seriously; how did it completely fail to render the fog in N64 games when the GameCube, Wii and Wii U services were all able to render the fog).

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

The Wii shop channel was definitely the best one. I'm pretty sure it still had the most games out of any of these download services and the games worked with relatively few issues, unlike the Wii U's service that put every game through a Snyder filter (as in that it made all the games weirdly poorly lit for some reason) and the Switch's service really doing a poor job emulating the N64 games (seriously; how did it completely fail to render the fog in N64 games when the GameCube, Wii and Wii U services were all able to render the fog).

The lack of button remapping in N64 is also horrendous. Given how esoteric the N64's controller shape is, remapping what each button does is pretty crucial for trying to play these games with a different lay out. Add to that the weird Z+Face button=C Button (because you'll never need to press Z and a face button simultaneously I guess) coupled with the omni present joycon drift and you have a recipe for frustration.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Eugh. Something smells about this story. When four other emulators beyond the NES were datamined in 2017, that was at least information one could get from any person's switch at the time. This GBA emulator was found somewhere in the world, but nobody will say from where. And nobody can get this data to run in Switch emulators? Sounds pretty sketch to me. But let's say that GBA games are indeed coming to the NSO Expansion nonsense, I'm reminded of this very similar leak from last year after the N64 games were released:

At the time of writing, they have added five to the initial eight. And 100% of those five are titles explicitly announced by Nintendo to be coming in future updates. The remaining two are Pokemon Snap and Kirby 64. We still have no assurance they plan to work past that. Nor assurance that future consoles will get added to the service. So hold your horses on the "30 GBA games planned" narrative. About the only thing with this game list that makes me think it sounds reasonable is that it's all games that were available previously on Wii U's Virtual Console, and most (not all) of the Switch's emulators are copy pasted work from the Wii U. Just with even less QA. 

[vanguard333]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

The lack of button remapping in N64 is also horrendous. Given how esoteric the N64's controller shape is, remapping what each button does is pretty crucial for trying to play these games with a different lay out. Add to that the weird Z+Face button=C Button (because you'll never need to press Z and a face button simultaneously I guess) coupled with the omni present joycon drift and you have a recipe for frustration.

Yeah; the button mapping is atrocious. And let's not forget the inability to switch (pun not intended) which pak the emulator has set (so, if you're playing a game that required the memory pak to save, the game can't save without using save states), as well as the sheer amount of input lag. How is it that Mario 64 as part of 3D All Stars doesn't have input lag issues, while Mario 64 on NSO does? How come one Nintendo-made emulator for a limited-release game works better than the one they chose to use for their online service?

Why is it that Nintendo's emulators have only gotten worse since the Wii era?

[Jotari]

11 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Eugh. Something smells about this story. When four other emulators beyond the NES were datamined in 2017, that was at least information one could get from any person's switch at the time. This GBA emulator was found somewhere in the world, but nobody will say from where. And nobody can get this data to run in Switch emulators? Sounds pretty sketch to me. But let's say that GBA games are indeed coming to the NSO Expansion nonsense, I'm reminded of this very similar leak from last year after the N64 games were released:

At the time of writing, they have added five to the initial eight. And 100% of those five are titles explicitly announced by Nintendo to be coming in future updates. The remaining two are Pokemon Snap and Kirby 64. We still have no assurance they plan to work past that. Nor assurance that future consoles will get added to the service. So hold your horses on the "30 GBA games planned" narrative. About the only thing with this game list that makes me think it sounds reasonable is that it's all games that were available previously on Wii U's Virtual Console, and most (not all) of the Switch's emulators are copy pasted work from the Wii U. Just with even less QA. 

Astro Boy Omega Factor is on Wii U? Damn, why didn't anyone ever tell me that. Well, I guess I didn't spend any time browsing as the only Wii U title I remember downloading was Zero Mission.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 4/19/2022 at 12:39 PM, Jotari said:

Well the GBA one is the one that's been leaked. Conventional wisdom is that GB/GBC will be available for the standard version of Nintendo Online while the GBA will be there with the more expensive premium version that nets you the N64 games. Course who the hell can figure out the decisions they make when it comes to their online libraries. I still consider the 15 year old Wii Shop Channel to be the best download service Nintendo has provided.

Is there anything wrong with the 3DS eShop? It has background music, it's relatively easy to search and navigate, you can find deals, easily view stills or demos, etc. I find it really satisfying to navigate, especially relative to the Switch shop.

Anyway a "GBA Emulator" makes sense to me. The GBA could already play GB(C) games, so I wouldn't imagine them needing a separate emulator for those ones. Still, if we get GBA games before classic Game Boy titles, that's gonna be weird.

On 4/19/2022 at 3:16 PM, vanguard333 said:

How come one Nintendo-made emulator for a limited-release game works better than the one they chose to use for their online service?

In theory, it'd make perfect sense for an emulator intended purely for Super Mario 64 to work better than one that has to function for all N64 games. The latter just has a lot more aspects (i.e. textures, button combos, physics engines) it has to accommodate. The former can be narrowly tailored.

In practice, I'm not going to pretend like Nintendo put any more than the bare minimum into 3D All-Stars.

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

In theory, it'd make perfect sense for an emulator intended purely for Super Mario 64 to work better than one that has to function for all N64 games. The latter just has a lot more aspects (i.e. textures, button combos, physics engines) it has to accommodate. The former can be narrowly tailored.

In practice, I'm not going to pretend like Nintendo put any more than the bare minimum into 3D All-Stars.

I guess that makes sense, but I don't know a lot about emulators.

Believe me; I don't think that Nintendo put any more than the bare minimum into 3D All-Stars. The biggest example of that for me personally is Mario Galaxy: mapping the pointer controls to the gyro makes a lot of sense, but they only mapped those controls to the right joy-con's gyro with no option to instead use the left joy-con's gyro, meaning that navigating the menu, collecting and using star bits, etc., can only be done with the right gyro. I'm left-handed, and I always played Wii games with the Wii remote in my left hand and the nunchuck in my right hand, so the pointer controls in Mario Galaxy on Switch were a massive annoyance.

That said, that problem is hardly exclusive to Mario Galaxy; as far as I can determine, absolutely no motion control-reliant games on Switch have any left-handed options to speak of; Pikmin 3 Deluxe, Skyward Sword HD, etc., are all right-handed only. Nintendo Switch Sports, when it launches, will be the first to offer left-handed options.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Is there anything wrong with the 3DS eShop? It has background music, it's relatively easy to search and navigate, you can find deals, easily view stills or demos, etc. I find it really satisfying to navigate, especially relative to the Switch shop.

Anyway a "GBA Emulator" makes sense to me. The GBA could already play GB(C) games, so I wouldn't imagine them needing a separate emulator for those ones. Still, if we get GBA games before classic Game Boy titles, that's gonna be weird.

In theory, it'd make perfect sense for an emulator intended purely for Super Mario 64 to work better than one that has to function for all N64 games. The latter just has a lot more aspects (i.e. textures, button combos, physics engines) it has to accommodate. The former can be narrowly tailored.

In practice, I'm not going to pretend like Nintendo put any more than the bare minimum into 3D All-Stars.

Well it's the library mostly. That said the 3DS did eventually have a pretty decent library of original game boy games. Though there was a sour taste to it with the knowledge that the 3DS was perfectly capable of running GBA games but just didnt make any available to the general public.

Edited April 21, 2022 by Jotari

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

8 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

That said, that problem is hardly exclusive to Mario Galaxy; as far as I can determine, absolutely no motion control-reliant games on Switch have any left-handed options to speak of; Pikmin 3 Deluxe, Skyward Sword HD, etc., are all right-handed only. Nintendo Switch Sports, when it launches, will be the first to offer left-handed options.

Huh, I didn't know that "Wii Sports but not for Wii" was going to have a left-handed option. That's mildly encouraging, if only relative to Nintendo's poor record thus far.

It's a shame the Mario Sports games haven't, to my knowledge, done it. Maybe the next one could "canonize" a few characters (i.e. Luigi, Wario, Birdo) as left-handed, so they'd be options for such a playstyle?

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

Well it's the library mostly. That said the 3DS did eventually have a pretty decent library of original game boy games. Though there was a sour taste to it with the knowledge that the 3DS was perfectly capable of running GBA games but just didnt make any available to the general public.

Yeah that's a shame. If they'd done GBA games beyond the Ambassador Program, then we'd have a system that you could purchase and play games from every Nintendo handheld system. It'd be the perfect handheld experience. 

As it stands, I will maintain that if nothing else, the 3DS (particularly New 3DS XL) is the best possible way to play GB(C) games. And I'm not sure I see my mind changing, even if the Switch adds GB(C) to their Online services.

[vanguard333]

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Huh, I didn't know that "Wii Sports but not for Wii" was going to have a left-handed option. That's mildly encouraging, if only relative to Nintendo's poor record thus far.

It's a shame the Mario Sports games haven't, to my knowledge, done it. Maybe the next one could "canonize" a few characters (i.e. Luigi, Wario, Birdo) as left-handed, so they'd be options for such a playstyle?

I didn't know about it either until someone pointed it out to me. Yeah; it is encouraging.

Canonically, Bowser Jr. is left-handed. Although, rather like with Link from The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo seems to have forgotten these characters' canonical handedness the moment Miyamoto stopped having much input in these games, as Bowser's Fury depicts Bowser Jr. as right-handed despite him being left-handed in pretty much everything else that he's in.

[thehiddendev]

On 4/19/2022 at 10:09 PM, Jotari said:

Well the GBA one is the one that's been leaked. Conventional wisdom is that GB/GBC will be available for the standard version of Nintendo Online while the GBA will be there with the more expensive premium version that nets you the N64 games. Course who the hell can figure out the decisions they make when it comes to their online libraries. I still consider the 15 year old Wii Shop Channel to be the best download service Nintendo has provided.

Can we play these leaks in Skyline emulator?