phoenixdownita Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 No, ROMs are not the game.... Emulation, by definition, is not the real thing. The term "classic" doesn't apply to emulations/simulations/imitations/reproductions/etc., though some marketing departments may misapply the term. It properly applies to the real thing. ....but but but then movies ported to other medias are all non-classics? Sure the DVD version of a film from the 20s is not the original thing, it undergoes some down-sampling and other digital processing .... but is it the same movie or not (differences accounted)? BTW I agree that it does matter where you play it, I like to play on orig hardware but it comes with too many warts. Regarding "emu is not the real thing" we can digress and start talking about the possibility that we are all living in a computer simulation ..... hence we are not real as well so it does not really matter, but that's too metaphysics to me anyway. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 (edited) This is how I see the NES-mini Classic Edition. Emulation is at odds with the term "classic games". Because it isn't running the real hardware, it is a reproduction of a classic game, and not a 100% faithful one either. It is like a reproduction of a classic car; it may look like a classic car, but it isn't. Emulation today is at the core of classic gaming. Emulation has delivered the classic games we know and love to thousands upon thousands of people. Look at the proliferation of mobile devices and their "retro" compilation apps. Look at the Xbox and Playstation compilation packs. And then all the material on PC emulators and R-Pi rigs. If not for accuracy and exactness, emulation (software, Soc, FPGA simulation), is at the forefront and is the #1 choice when it comes to playing the classics today. Because of availability. Numbers and sales figures are indisputable. I'd rather see a nice Dusenberg replica which has been painstakingly assembled and detailed for 2 years as opposed to an original one that's rusted and falling apart. And bonus points because the heir of the marque put their stamp of approval on it! A more familiar example is the DeLorean restoration/replication company. Look it up. This is what the NES-mini is! It's emulation. It's replication. A big portion of its audience isn't going to mind the under-the-hood differences. They'll appreciate the ability to play the games and go for a ride in the countryside. Nintendo knows this. Most of us here know this. In our classic car analogy: The subtle differences that show up are like the tires sounding different because they are constructed with modern rubber compounds. The sound of the starter motor using high-efficiency magnets is going to be different too compared to the original. The smell of the interior different because it has been treated with modern surface protection chemistry. Individually we see these aspects as being fakery and replication. All combined they do add up to create the aura of the original. And that is THE point. While not exactly 100% perfect and original, it's sufficient enough to uncover the goodness of the way things were. And doing new things (new tech, SoC, etc) in old-style bodywork and plastic housings does have a certain appeal. The future: Going forward, Emulation/Replication are the only methods for the masses to enjoy classic gaming. And because of convenience of modern hardware used in emu/rep it can (already is) the preferred method of classic gaming. Millions can't be wrong. Edited November 6, 2016 by Keatah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaximRecoil Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 ....but but but then movies ported to other medias are all non-classics? No. Movies are a recording; ROMs are not. The hardware interprets instructions from the ROM, and changes in hardware leads to changes in interpretation. As an analogy, if you watch a recording of someone playing e.g., SMB on an original NES, you are watching a classic game being played regardless of whether you are watching it in a VCR or on YouTube. As an illustration of how emulators introduce fundamental differences, even among themselves, try to play back someone's MAME INP file in a different version of MAME than they used to record it. In most cases, it will lose sync and you won't be able to see the game as it was originally played. You'll soon see the player's avatar start doing nonsensical things and then die. Sure the DVD version of a film from the 20s is not the original thing, it undergoes some down-sampling and other digital processing .... but is it the same movie or not (differences accounted)? Re-edited movies constitute different versions, and only the original/official release will ever be the classic version. Picture and/or sound quality loss isn't a content/structural change, and it's not strictly a recent thing either. Most of the movies shot on 35mm film, in addition to the normal 35mm film prints, were also printed to e.g., 16mm film for certain venues, such as military bases and in-flight movies on commercial airplanes. 16mm film prints made from 35mm negatives obviously have substantial picture quality loss compared to 35mm film prints made from 35mm negatives. With ROMs running on emulated hardware, the changes to the game are structural/content changes. These changes are effectively no different than making a ROM hack and running it on original hardware; not the classic game either way. BTW I agree that it does matter where you play it, I like to play on orig hardware but it comes with too many warts..Regarding "emu is not the real thing" we can digress and start talking about the possibility that we are all living in a computer simulation ..... hence we are not real as well so it does not really matter, but that's too metaphysics to me anyway. It's theoretically possible, though I don't know how anyone would go about proving it to be the case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 You know what's humbling, the few thousands who have bought framemeisters and the tens upon tens of thousands who buy this NES mini will be enjoying their video games on HD displays without having an OCD meltdown over the absence of CRT quirks. I don't want CRT "effects" on my games. If I could have bought a razor sharp display that modern flat panels afford for my genesis back in 93 I would have. That's quite funny. But accurate. I like to play the classics the way I remember them. Back in the 1st days of videogaming we were all positively impressed with seeing and controlling things on the TV set. Huge difference compared to board games or otherwise static forms of entertainment. Here we had things moving and doing things. We didn't know about or even care about image quality. We hooked up the RF switchbox and got down to it. We didn't know of geometrical distortion in the 70's and 80's. Whatever the CRT provided us we accepted. After years of CRT use, and all of a sudden switching to a flat panel, for several days the images on my new monitors looked downright concave. It was downright disconcerting. Well.. A lot of the fun was changing cartridges, moving from game to game, running hi-score competitions, exploring what ever game world was presented us. All that. And through the rose-tinted spectacles of time RF + CRT looked awesome in the day. Bright, brilliant, a certain ineffable quality of dithering and mixing and glow. All that. Most modern emulators today have a plethora of sliders and values that can be tweaked to provide an image the way I remember it. Not necessarily an exact replica. And that is the goal. Besides I've been gaming with emulators and modern displays for such a long time I couldn't go back to real hardware and deal with all the annoying nuances. The care & feeding would drive me nuts! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punisher5.0 Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 No. Movies are a recording; ROMs are not. The hardware interprets instructions from the ROM, and changes in hardware leads to changes in interpretation. As an analogy, if you watch a recording of someone playing e.g., SMB on an original NES, you are watching a classic game being played regardless of whether you are watching it in a VCR or on YouTube. As an illustration of how emulators introduce fundamental differences, even among themselves, try to play back someone's MAME INP file in a different version of MAME than they used to record it. In most cases, it will lose sync and you won't be able to see the game as it was originally played. You'll soon see the player's avatar start doing nonsensical things and then die. Re-edited movies constitute different versions, and only the original/official release will ever be the classic version. Picture and/or sound quality loss isn't a content/structural change, and it's not strictly a recent thing either. Most of the movies shot on 35mm film, in addition to the normal 35mm film prints, were also printed to e.g., 16mm film for certain venues, such as military bases and in-flight movies on commercial airplanes. 16mm film prints made from 35mm negatives obviously have substantial picture quality loss compared to 35mm film prints made from 35mm negatives. With ROMs running on emulated hardware, the changes to the game are structural/content changes. These changes are effectively no different than making a ROM hack and running it on original hardware; not the classic game either way. It's theoretically possible, though I don't know how anyone would go about proving it to be the case. The horse died a long time ago so just let it go. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 Balderdash. If this were true, then what exactly is running on the NES Classic Mini? The ROM is the soul of the game, the rest is just packaging. Since semantics has taken center stage.. The interplay of rom instructions and console hardware is the soul of the game. The classic case of the whole is more than the sum. I'll consult with our theologist and get a 2nd opinion. But I'm pretty sure I'm right on this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 ROMs are a media, their content is what matters, exactly as books are media, their content (the story/tech/poetry etc..) is what matters. aye, and if one wants to get anal about it, ROM's are a recording of a computer's memory (disk or ram) content 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 Thanks Captain Obvious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 Thanks Captain Obvious. well, commander snooty didnt get it 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrBlackCat Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 Oh thank heavens! The thread has been placed back on the rails... excellent. Due to the brutality of reading (I mean wading through) recent posts in this thread, I was setting up a series of converters JUST to post the picture to this thread when I get my NES Mini... it will be converted from HDMI to VGA to Composite to RF, to Component, and back to HDMI... and played on a 30" WEGA... then I will argue that game display is identical to my original hardware. Anyway... Well, myself and co-workers are all doing the count-down to release. None of us managed to get a pre-order. Does anyone have any idea if there what exact time any of the on-line outlets might actually fire up the availability? For example, does Toys R Us, Best Buy, Amazon etc auto-update their releases at midnight in some specific time-zone? Anyone have any insight? I just never pre-order enough to have tracked this sort of thing. I will have one of these units and enjoy all of its flaws, I just want to have an idea of how much it is going to cost me. Counting down... MrBlackCat 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 dunno I rarely preorder anything cause I usually get burned and walmart usually has a mountian of whatever im ordering once it comes out heh 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 I fully expect to be able to walk into GameStop or Best Buy and get one of these on launch day. I'll post my experience here in any event. Same for the Atari Flashback Portable, though no one expects that to sell out. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 Yeah, these are now being advertised nearly everywhere you'd expect them to be. 2 weeks ago in a Walmart ad as well as on their site. Saw it in a Toys R Us ad in todays paper too. Plan on getting one on launch myself and will be surprised if none are available locally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 I fully expect to be able to walk into GameStop or Best Buy and get one of these on launch day. I'll post my experience here in any event. Same for the Atari Flashback Portable, though no one expects that to sell out. dunno gamestop is one of the one's that hack me off, "did you preorder" no but I have cash in hand "we only have enough for preorders" (except when I preorder then you magically never have it) goes to walmart or best buy to see the 6 foot tall pyramid made out of them 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 You're probably right, I've had the same experience and it doesn't reflect well on GameStop. They don't have huge physical space for warehousing, which is probably part of why they push the preorders, but that's their problem, not ours, right? I just visited the NES promo page to confirm the date (Friday November 11) and saw that they're listing Amazon, Best Buy, and Target as their retail partners. I'll try Target or BB first, because it'll be fun to pick this up in a store ...and I might play a little in the office too. The coordination for this launch makes me think no one will break Nintendo's street date. Atari Flashback portable on Tuesday November 8th, Election Day, if not before! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Osgeld Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 yea I might do target there's one tween home and work, vs best buy where I have to drive (gasp) 10 min out of the way heh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 Oh thank heavens! The thread has been placed back on the rails... excellent. Due to the brutality of reading (I mean wading through) recent posts in this thread, I was setting up a series of converters JUST to post the picture to this thread when I get my NES Mini... it will be converted from HDMI to VGA to Composite to RF, to Component, and back to HDMI... and played on a 30" WEGA... then I will argue that game display is identical to my original hardware. The long definition of lag. I will have one of these units and enjoy all of its flaws, I just want to have an idea of how much it is going to cost me. Wasn't this supposed to be at $60, give or take a buck? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 aye, and if one wants to get anal about it, ROM's are a recording of a computer's memory (disk or ram) content I wanna get more anal about it. ROMS *are* the computer's protected & fixed store. A recording of the computer's memory would be a backup, or snapshot or hibernation file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 They have arrived at retail. https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/5bhnma/five_more_days/?st=IV7HMAAP&sh=0cfb9e72 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 I'm sure I won't be the only one to do this but I'm gonna friggin get this thing and shove it on a small HDTV next to a real NES with a CRT and try to time the game demos (e.g. megaman 2) to play at the same time and just take a shitty iphone video of them side by side.... just because. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrBlackCat Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 Wasn't this supposed to be at $60, give or take a buck? Yes... I was just making an unclear reference to all the eBay scalping of dozens of pre-orders for the last month or so for amounts in excess of $150.00 MrBlackCat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 (edited) Heh. Of course. Anyone that pays that much through ebay scalping deserves to get taken for a ride. On fleabay, preorders are going for $249. I guess that means for 249 you win the right, through the seller, to get in on a pre-order ?? Glad to have been part of the old days. It was real fun piling into the old Chevy and rickety-racketing down the road to TurnStyle or Venture to see what new games might be out. It was an adventure discovering this stuff by running around the store and actually exploring and looking! And today we should be doing the same thing, with the added option of buying on-line from a place that actually has it in stock ready to go on the truck when they process your card number. None of this hokey pre-order, limited edition shit. Look, if Nintendo wants to make a sale and wants you to have this in your home, they *WILL* make it available for purchase. Edited November 7, 2016 by Keatah 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 yea I just put him on my ignore list, tween the never ending holy war, and the stench of wanna be intellectual douche... its just easier to not see his existence I also have Keatah there cause 9 out 10 of his post are just grouchy old bitch whining about how them kids do it that list is the best feature of this forum software I am totally in-line with Maxim whatever, but this line is so true.. This made me laugh out loud. Keatah is simply Keatah. An old geezer set in his ways, just best to let it be. Funny thing about Maxim however, I was vohemently arguing with his long winded posts in this thread, yet I totally agreed with him in the Gamepad vs Joystick thread. Funny how your buddies in one thread become your friends in others, depending on what side of the fence you're on. So much for forums as social media. Woot! And just don't assign mission critical work to them kids.. Being sorry will take on a whole new meaning. This thread being an example. Them kids at Nintendo can't seem to get the balance of features in the NES-mini just right to everyone's liking. And there's more than enough posts here to exemplify that. Kids are simply not instructed properly these days. Nintendo are hardly "kids". If Nintendo is a kid, then Sony and MS are babies, and Apple and Google are literally still in the womb. = = = = = = = = And speaking of forum drama, I've got three pages of catching up to do over the last 24 hours. Who needs soap operas when you've got AtariAge... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 This is the first I've heard of QLED, but being an emissive display (i.e., generating its own light) is the right way to go. The backlit nature of LCDs is what causes their weird/unnatural image characteristics that I hate. It's too bad that SED was abandoned; that would have been an excellent HD display technology, at least in terms of image characteristics and longevity of the emissive material (it used red, green, and blue phosphors, the same as CRTs). These displays actually make sense. I just read about these displays on Wikipedia. Oh it seems perfect! If only they had penetrated the consumer market, that would be awesome! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-conduction_electron-emitter_display By using a word according to your own made-up definition rather than a generally accepted definition, you are tacitly submitting a request to redefine the word. Your tacit request remains denied. Also, a cursory glance at the history of traditional drawings/paintings (i.e., non-CGI) will show that people generally prefer the aesthetics of ~realistic shading and curves to a collection of large squares aligned to a grid, to represent people and objects. Do you think you could find many people who think this is an aesthetic improvement? Sorry to poke a hole in your logic here, but arcade and bit era console graphics were designed on graph paper as a series of squares and rectangles. So square pixels on a grid with a limited color pallet, barring any distortion created by scaling or display limitations, is the original medium. The original medium of the Mona Lisa is paint (I forget if it was oil or tempra) not "pixels". So no, palletizing or pixellating the original Mona Lisa painting does it no favors. Large pixels on a grid does however, preserve the fidelity of original sprite art, and there is a huge culture for commercial and fan made sprite art based on classic arcade and video game characters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 Palletizing and digitizing and pixellating the Mona Lisa does wonders for it! I never liked that painting no matter how renowned it is. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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