When it was first announced, many other people were skeptical of the Nintendo DS. Rather than harnessing raw power, this unique dual-screen handheld has been designed to explore new styles of play. Compared to more classic handheld consoles like Sony’s Game Boy Advance (GBA) or even PlayStation Portable (PSP), the DS seemed like a big bet for the Japanese gaming giant.
But it was worth it. The Nintendo DS ended up being one of the most successful gaming platforms of all time, and as [Modern Vintage Gamer] explains in a recent video, this is at least partly due to its unexpected graphical prowess. While technically inferior to the PSP to the max in any and all ways, Nintendo’s decades of delight in overcoming the barriers of 2D graphics have allowed them to exploit more hardware than many would have imagined possible.
On some level, the Nintendo DS can simply be thought of as an improved GBA. Developers who were already accustomed to the 2D features of this formula would feel right at home when they upgraded to the DS. As with previous 2D consoles, the DS had multiple screens. Hardware-accelerated modes for moving, scaling, rotating, and mirroring up to 4 background layers. This made it simple and computationally effective at achieving pseudo-3D effects, such as scrolling through multiple background photographs at other speeds to convey a sensation. depth.
In addition to its legacy 2D sprite and tile engine from GBA, the DS also included a rudimentary GPU to take care of geometry and 3D rendering. This meant that most games would keep the close-up view of the action on a single screen and use the panel for the moment to display 2D photographs, such as an aerial map. But the developers had the option to switch between slideshows at each frame to render 3-d in any of the panels at a reduced frame rate. The hardware can also take care of shadows and includes built-in mobile shading, a very popular graphical effect at the time.
By combining the Nintendo DS’s 2D and 3D hardware functions on a single screen, developers can produce complex graphical effects. [Modern Vintage Gamer] uses the example of New Super Mario Bros. , which puts a detailed 3D style of Mario on multiple layers of moving 2D bitmaps. In the end, the DS’s 3D features were hampered by the limited resolution of its 256 x 192 LCD panel; However, since most people still had mobile phones when the DS came out, it was impressive for the time.
Compared to the Game Boy Advance, or even the original Game Boy “locked,” it doesn’t seem like pirates have had much luck coming up with tactics to exploit the Nintendo DS’s capabilities. But perhaps, with more detailed retrospectives like this one, the network can take a look at this exclusive access to video game history.
Very clever formula to allow GPUs to percentage screen buffers for drawing.
It simply uses a large screen buffer and displays other parts of it on other screens. Nothing clever, just a popular memory-mapping behavior.
Someone didn’t watch the video.
Its always great to see what went behind the making of the videogames millions of people enjoyed, they truly are a new art form which emerged in the 20th century. It takes writers, music composers, 3D artists, programmers, voiceover artists etc to create a videogame single videogame!
Its just sad that now handheld consoles have been mostly replaced by smartphones which are for the most part, black rectangles. I miss hardware buttons.
Also I don’t play videogames now (did in the past, but oh well time happened). Does anyone remember those accelerometer based games from back when android smartphones were new? Those games where you had to guide a ball though a maze by tilting your phone. What happened to those? Are they still making games with motion based controls these days?
One caveat is those motion-based control games aren’t playable on busses/trains/cars/planes … anything that moves.
Honestly these days I get my handheld console fix with the Nintendo Switch, for me it’s close to the perfect handheld machine, they’re still the king of handheld for sure
Well, the only thing that for me prevents the Switch from being able to be held with my right hand is that my old device runs much longer and plays the most intense games available at the time. Where the Switch’s battery life is pretty smart for what it does, it’s not that. Clever and not as convenient as, say, older Gameboys, where you simply put a new battery in the back when it runs out.
Definitely, in my opinion, the most productive mobile gaming platform out there right now. And of course, a smart home console enjoys it too; Of course, even plugged in for maximum performance, it doesn’t look as smart as most recent games. The console or PC may make this game look smart, but it’s strangely close. The optimizations that are made for this, simplified with the resolution-type dynamic elements that it makes, provide a smart experience.
Honestly, battery life is rarely that bad, it depends on what you play, small indie games and you get decent lifespan, of course, if you play Doom, the battery seems. . . 2 hours, But come on, being able to play Doom pretty much anywhere, that’s already awesome!
In this day and age where a store is never too far away, I think it’s a small value to pay, although your mileage will possibly vary if you’re more of a country person.
I don’t have any argument, my definition of a handheld device has had this comparison in mind with portable devices of the past, and these had easy-to-swap alkaline/rechargeable batteries (and pretty impressive battery life), or much more than 2 hours of life playing the most productive titles on the platform.
You can indeed get some reasonable life out of the platform on some games, but its never seemed as long as I remember the old systems lasting. Which puts me off thinking of it as a ‘real’ handheld. Entirely psychological really, nothing against the system, I quite enjoy it (though better ergonomics for bigger hands would be nice) its just to me because of the batter life its a ‘Home Console’ with bonus travelling mode – a bit like a gaming laptop vs gaming PC/real laptop its that middle ground of being almost a real gaming PC in performance or almost a real mobile laptop in battery life and portability but never really both.
And in my corner there’s a tilt.
One thing that was lost in the video is the DS’s ability to have 16 palettes of 16 colors AND some other set of 16 palettes of 256 colors, consistent with 2D/PPU engine, all at the same time in a VRAM configuration.
I don’t know if the 16×256 were separate sets for sprites and backgrounds or shared.
As for the tile-based graphics hardware, it was incredibly flexible, unless you used an all-software 15-bit color 2D engine, which can also be achieved – the device had the RAM and CPU to take care of it if you wanted it to.
Last time anyone was wowed by 256 colors was 1993 though and 15 bit would have been called inadequate in 1999.
You can have a bench for extended palettes and a bench for extended palettes of sprites. And you can use other sets of extended palettes on other backgrounds.
This PPU is an anonymous gem.
It’s an amazing formula for creating 2D pixel sets that outperforms even the Neo Geo hardware when you load up the 3D engine’s triangular and quad sprite ability to load effects and make “Mode7” towers pop out of the water (which you can have two consistent). with screen). ).
The 3D is made of 3D sprites, no frame buffer, but a scan-line buffer instead.
The fools used the principles of 2D sprites to create 3D.
So you’re guaranteed a slick 60fps (the trade-off is the removal of sprites/poly on scan lines with lots of objects) as long as the CPU look helps keep up.
Which, with a 33MHz ARM processor, can be achieved with a little bit of assembly.
It’s a shame that the marketers I worked for at the time only wanted to make games entirely in 3D.
Interesting. I didn’t know about the ‘3D sprite / line buffer’ thing. That was 66MHz for the main CPU, though. Afaik, the 33MHz ARM7 core had access to sound and wifi, but wouldn’t be recommended for graphics.
To say that “it doesn’t look like pirates have had much luck finding tactics to exploit the capabilities of the Nintendo DS” is, in my humble opinion, a bit short-sighted. There’s a jumbotron, a wifi tool for ds, homebrew launchers, editors, midi controllers and much more!
These are just software, the other similar projects are hardware hacks. Because, you know, it’s a hardware site.
Veo. De fact, the NDS already contained so much that the few hardware tricks I know of alongside the Jumbotron (https://sylvainhb. blogspot. com/2007/09/supersized-ds. html) would be placed on GBA tanks or via a serial. line added to a traditional SLOT-1 board. The hull itself remained largely intact.
The DS has enjoyed the home scene for a while, with less resistance from Nintendo than the PSP scene saw at first, with Sony providing firmware updates for any and all small exploits. Nintendo didn’t make any OTA updates for the original DS and wasted the ROM area in carts wouldn’t be well received by game publishers.
The first two DS models even had GBA slots that we took advantage of to connect traditional hardware, and Natrium42’s DSerial interface was also very successful.
What held the DS back was also what allowed it to sell for half the price of the PSP. By going with simpler less powerful hardware and backwards compatibility, Nintendo was able to put more systems (and games) in people’s hands.
IIRC, the DS BIOS wasn’t updated by the user, so it’s not like Nintendo is simply offering a firmware update via cart or online. That’s why you still need flashcarts like R4 to this day to run unsigned code on a DS. The DSi, however, has flashable firmware, so it can be flashed frequently with Twilight CFW.
Confirmed (https://sylvainhb. blogspot. com/2016/05/les-debuts-du-homebrew-sur-ds. html)
And you can accept that as true with GrizzlyAdams’ experience here: he was one of the first to write launchers for other homebrews like DSchannel, code I still use today to update my homebrew tracks live.
I had a lot of fun porting or rather re-creating some old favourites on the DS platform. Thanks to the R4 and similar products it was never so easy to write for a Nintendo.
Except that Wii U was the first dual-screen formula that failed to sell 1 million hardware components. For those who say it’s not dual-screen, check out the Splatoon game without a TV!
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