Nintendo releasing mini NES HDMI pre-loaded w/ games!

[Sid]

The mini carts make this pretty damn cute...... https://3dprint.com/145887/raspberry-pi-mini-nintendo/

[Obiwanshinobi]

Any hands-on impressions, anyone?

[gray117]

afaik they've only really been parading around the boxes + controllers... not sure anyone's been allowed to really play with it?

[bobrocks95]

https://topics.nintendo.co.jp/c/article ... 45a6d.html

A Famicom Mini has now been announced as well for Japan. Interestingly, it shows off the games and the system a lot more than the NES Mini announcement did, so we get a glimpse of how games look and the snazzy menu system.

Of particular interest is that the palette looks good and isn't artificially darkened, and there's a pixel-perfect integer scaling mode as well as a 4:3 correction mode that looks pretty sharp from what is shown- maybe somebody with a better eye than me can point out any problems with it. I'm sure the NES Mini uses the same software and will offer the same options, so it looks like I'll be getting one!



Also, 8 games differ between the two systems. It's good for those who wanted to import one to get a bit of variety, but I don't think many of the Japanese exclusives were that interesting (maybe Solomon's Key or the River City Ransom games).

[Guspaz]

They're also showing off a Composite-on-CRT simulation mode:



Also of note, it looks like the controllers are fixed (attached as they were originally) and are also miniature. That is, the controllers are tiny little scaled down things, and there's no way to plug in other controllers...

[bobrocks95]

I discredited it right off the bat, but looking at it more, it does actually look pretty accurate to composite on a low-end consumer CRT. The dot crawl and the thin scanlines are pretty close to what you'd get.

[Guspaz]

It looks accurate in still, but when they showed a brief clip of it running in the video, it didn't appear to be animated. NTSC dot crawl is called dot *crawl* for a reason....

[BONKERS]

I'll be glad if they don't emulated dot crawl lol.

Now if only you could put real carts into this. Though that'd require more accurate emulation. I'll bet they just tune it for each game rather than accurate of the whole system like The NT Mini or AVS.


Those controllers though. I could get being authentic to the original FC, but tiny controllers hardwired with short length?

[Guspaz]

The dot crawl is a nice option to have, because it's optional... but it just looks weird being static. If you're going to simulate dot crawl, make it animated like it should be, not strange looking static dot crawl.

Ideally, I'd want at least three options (keeping in mind this isn't meant for ultra-enthusiasts): nearest-neighbour scale, soft mode (interpolation and scanlines), and classic mode (soft mode with the NTSC composite simulation they've shown).

I'm still betting it's a 3DS SoC (or some derivative thereof), since they already buy those things by the millions, and already have NES emulators on them. Maybe with the GPU stripped down, since it wouldn't need the 3D hardware. But then, maybe it'd be more expensive to respin the chip than just take advantage of the existing economies of scale on the 3DS hardware.

[LDigital]

All I want is a 480p output mode via HDMI and someone to figure out injection

[yxkalle]

Are the videos even captured at 60 Hz? 30 Hz would hide the dot crawl if there were any.

[Spacemonkey]

Watching it on Youtube, there does seem to be some "animated noise" on screen in the analog mode, not sure if it's supposed to be dot crawl or the noise you get when using RF.

Very interested in this, not a big fan of the tiny controllers, although I am not sure what they could have done about them.

[FBX]

I made a comparison pic based on the video sneak peeks of some of the games on the Famicom Mini versus my Unsat-V6 palette. My general impression is they are pretty close, except the Famicom Mini has the darker colors shifted more towards the "right" of the spectrum (i.e. earth tones have more green weight, cyan has more blue weight, etc.). Of particular note to me is that the sky in SMB has even more purple influence than my palette does, or even the YUV palette for that matter. This is a good slap in the face to those that think the SMB sky should be straight blue.

Spoiler

.

[lev11]

Looks like the PAL issue/ concern wont be, 60Hz mode in the UK confirmed.

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Misc-/Ninten ... 24287.html

[spmbx]

CRT mode looks like a great way for opticians to simulate poor eyesight. It would probably be ok in normal mode with a SLG tucked in between.

[ApolloBoy]

CRT mode looks like a great way for opticians to simulate poor eyesight. It would probably be ok in normal mode with a SLG tucked in between.

The NES mini can do scanlines so an SLG isn't even necessary.

[Guspaz]

CRT mode looks like a great way for opticians to simulate poor eyesight. It would probably be ok in normal mode with a SLG tucked in between.

The NES mini can do scanlines so an SLG isn't even necessary.

The NES Mini can't do scanlines outside of the CRT/NTSC simulation mode... and they chose to go for rather severe NTSC artifacting in that mode.

[spmbx]

Yeah, according to the (gamespot) preview these are the display options. Ideally i'd want scanlines in the other modes.

[Ikaruga11]

So can you have the CRT filter in 8:7 at the same time?

[Guspaz]

No, you just have the three modes.

[yxkalle]

Judging by the images the pixel aspect ratio seems to be 5:4 and not 8:7.

[Guspaz]

It uses square pixels for the pixel-perfect mode. The screenshots in those pictures are roughly:

181x135
181x135
145x135

It's an exactly 9/16 downscale from the native resolution (240p), so scaling back up you get 322x240 and 258x240. Some of that is error from my measurements (I'm counting not fully lit pixels) so it's intended to be 320x240 and 256x240, which are 4:3 (NES aspect ratio with 5:4 pixels) and 16:15 (NES aspect ratio with square pixels) respectively.

[Josh128]

Thats odd, so it just leaves black side borders on all display modes? No "full stretch" option?

[Ikaruga11]

The resolution better be 1080p.

[orange808]

The resolution better be 1080p.

I doubt it. 720p is more compatible and it is a nice even triple.

[bobrocks95]

The resolution better be 1080p.

It was already announced to be 720p.

[Ikaruga11]

The resolution better be 1080p.

It was already announced to be 720p.

Well that's stupid. Most people have 1080p displays including myself and I don't want lag and video artifacts from upscaling.

[bobrocks95]

I don't think any modern set has significant lag upscaling from 720p to 1080p. Shouldn't have any video artifacts either, though the result will be a touch softer.

They chose 720p because it will significantly reduce the cost of the FPGA (or whatever they're using for it). The retroUSB AVS is 720p as well.

[FBX]

Shouldn't have any video artifacts either, though the result will be a touch softer.

The "touch softer" gets pretty blatant when you are used to 1080p on say the Framemeister for example.

[spmbx]

The resolution better be 1080p.

It was already announced to be 720p.

Well that's stupid. Most people have 1080p displays including myself and I don't want lag and video artifacts from upscaling.

Not saying you're wrong, but i don't think Nintendo's target audience for this system really cares.