Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ve never gone longer than 7 days without internet in like the past 2 decades so hard for me to be too bothered by it. Fortunately there is only more and more ways to play these games coming, which has not always been the case, so anyone this excludes should still have multiple options to join in.
The communal aspect of an upsurge of interest in a specific game because they are released in small batches is what interests me. There would be literally no reason for the internet to come together in October 2018 to discuss: Solomon’s Key, NES Open, and Super Dodge Ball. But now there is, even if it won’t set the world on fire, I think focal points like that are pretty fucking rad.
This isn’t me. Very easy for me to be bothered by it. I love Nintendo and am not some hater that doesn’t want them to do well. I want them to do well, and they can do better then this.
Similarly with the backup saves. Much like with these games it’s not a feature I would really use, but I still would rather then offering to be “better”. People will say that it isn’t normal for most services to just keep your backups around and they are right, but I back my own saves up as well on other systems/pc. Is there a way to easily do this that isn’t paying for their service that doesn’t just disappear if/when they choice to move to the next thing?
Now I’m not getting mad or raging about any of this. I’m perfectly fine with my solution to playing their older games. Doesn’t mean that I don’t want them to do better.
Can’t say I’m really on board with that. I mean I agree with you about how they operate, but I don’t really agree with the well that’s how it is outlook. They should be challenged and criticized when appropriate. Same for MS and Sony.
Ness and Sness belong in hell (although Nesflix is pretty clever).
Nice start for the service but I look forward to other platforms. I think naysayers will be singing its praises when it’s like a hundred games and includes SNES/GBA.
The weekly login thing is pretty ridiculous. Make it a month or if subscription sales are final, then, yes, the game access should expire when the sub ends. I’m hoping they figure out something better asap.
I’m not impressed, really. The NES controller thing is irrelevant, since I’m already using 8bitdo controllers, and them being behind a paywall is pretty absurd to me. Not blown away by the software offering, either. I see no need for cloud saves, either, so this service doesn’t seem like it will work for me (I also haven’t turned my Switch on in well over a week, so I’d be screwed, anyways).
As a major NES fan, I’m definitely intrigued and it’s almost certainly worth tossing a 20 spot at it just to have those on my Switch for a year. Still, I’ll wait to see what the hard core retro fans say about the emulation before making a decision. I don’t care about online at all, really.
The app was the biggest surprise, it’s a better way to present a growing library of titles across a single format than sticking them across the eShop.
It should make it easier for Nintendo to ‘update’ the user experience across all the games, presumably.
As others have mentioned the visual options and execution of the emulation are still unknown quantities. Based on the footage shown Nintendo appears to be employing the same ‘dimming’ effect to the image presumably to tone down the potential effect of flashing images. I seem to remember M2, who did GBA VC on Wii U, stating the dimming is to correct for oversaturation/brightening when viewing those games on a TV, which is probably different to the NES stuff.
Still, I hope this can be disabled, and actual good visual filters are available, with more added to the selection over time…
The worst thing really, is the slow pace of new releases. Through the next three months Nintendo has only confirmed nine new games to be added to the selection, or three a month. That’s a really weak offering especially compared with the pace of new releases across multiple formats on Wii virtual console over a decade ago.
They did a pretty good job with the emulation on the classic consoles so I’m not all that worried about that. Although I recognize that maybe I should be since it doesn’t mean they will use the same emulation/the same people are doing it.
I still prefer the classic systems setup to this since it is more flexible/can modify it easier, but I also know that what may be the biggest selling point to this way is something that has zero appeal to me. The online multiplayer.
I’m ok with the slow trickle of games so long as they rarely, if ever, take anything off. Weird license stuff happens so I can understand the occasional removal, but if it is nothing but add from here then the library could grow to something really impressive, and as I previously mentioned I really enjoy the heightened awareness a smaller set of games gets.
OTOH if they swap stuff in and out to keep it somewhere around 50 games or whatever then boo.
A cool idea would have been to release the games on their original schedule from '85 onward. They obviously wouldn’t be able to put out everything, but having a replay would be cool like those real time twitter accounts that playback news from WWII.
If licenses never expire that would be good. I think the main issue with the trickle of games is Nintendo tends to license the most popular stuff first, which means we’re less likely to see something like Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom for a few years.
The benefit of a subscription service is in letting people try the games they wouldn’t have paid a fixed price for - including curios and tat like Urban Champion. We need more of these games, but it makes sense to put the stuff people are most fond of on first.
Should be going live in the next few hours. Looking over the launch list the main game catching my eye is River City Ransom. It is one I have always wanted to really dig into but never spent more than 10 mins messing around with.
Think I’ll kick things off with a nice Balloon Fight run in honor of the fallen man.
Had a quick go on this playing Gradius and ExciteBike. The app itself is impressively quick to launch and swap games, with minimal input lag and tastefully presented. You can rearrange the lineup as you see fit, too.
But the CRT filter is way too gaudy to approach anything tasteful - we need more of them, or an optional scanlines option to supplement the pixel perfect and 4:3 offerings.
Yeah, the filters were always a good sign that the whole operation had been handed to N.E.R.D in Europe rather than by Nintendo themselves. Nintendo seemed to favour authenticity (240p output on Wii, forced 4:3 or motion blur with GBA games on 3DS) whereas the CRT filter in the NES classic (didn’t even bother trying it on the SNES one) is just tasteless.
Unfortunately, it feels like there’s too much input lag for me. I don’t think it’s my display. It seems to be there in tabletop mode too.
I may just be super sensitive to it. Or maybe I just have totally unrealistic standards that it shouldn’t feel much different from a CRT when on the Switch’s native screen.