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Taking old sprite games widescreen

- Posted in Video Games by with comments

Recently Takashi Tokita teased working on some Switch project. As he is known for among other things working on various versions of Final Fantasy IV, it caused some guesspeculation that maybe some version of FF IV could be coming to Switch. That's a bit of a specific extrapolation, but just thinking about the possibility reminded me of of some issues with portable versions of the game in the past, and in general upgrading sprite-based games for the modern age.

Original SNES FF IV was designed around a screen resolution of 256x224. The first portable ports used essentially the same graphics files, but on screens with lower resolution. End result: while walking around you see less of the world as it's been cut off.

SNES: 256x224. 100% width, 100% height, 100% overall area. Duh.
WonderSwan Color: 224x144. 88% width, 64% height, 56% overall area.
Game Boy Advance: 240x160. 94% width, 71% height, 67% overall area.

Later a 2D remake was made for the PSP. That system has a significantly higher resolution, 480x272. So it could've shown all the area from the original and then some. However, instead of rerereusing the old SNES sprites, they created new high quality ones at double the width and height of the original. The result is that when considering how much of the world is able to be viewed, you'd need to compare it to a double size version of the SNES view (512x448).

PSP (compare to 512x448): 480x272. 94% width, 61% height, 57% overall area.

So in the end the PSP version actually showed less of of the world than the GBA version, though slightly more than the WSC version.

This image tries to sum up things with black being the original SNES view, green being GBA, red being WSC, and blue being PSP. Near-white in the midle is the area they all share.

So what would be the realistic options for something on Switch's 1280x720 screen, assuming integer multiples?

x1 (compare to 256x224): 500% width, 321% height, 1607% overall area.
x2 (compare to 512x448): 250% width, 161% height, 402% overal area.
x3 (compare to 768x672): 167% width, 107% height, 179% overall area.
x4 (compare to 1024x896): 125% width, 80% height, 100% overall area. (To be more precise 100.45%)

Either x3 or x4 would be pretty valid options viewed this way. x3 would essentially maintain the height and add more width, which is traditionally what people think of when things "go widescreen". However x4 would still show the same amount of world as the original, just trading off some height for width--and even the lost height isn't as much as any of the previous portable versions.

This image sums it up. This is just a comparison between how much of the world (compared to SNES original in green) is shown; in the real world the blue (x3) and red (x4) options are the same physical size.

Of coooooourse the other way out of all this sort of mess is to go full on polygonal like the remakes of FF III and IV on DS (later ported to mobile devices and PC). Then scale really has no meaning, and can be changed on the fly.

Switch as successor to both 3DS and Wii U

- Posted in Video Games by with comments

So I originally wrote the following shortly after the Switch reveal. I guess I never quite finished it, as it's sat in a tab in my text editor since then. I've made some slight changes to that version, updating with some things that seem less hazy now than they did then, though the real real reveal tomorrow night may change things yet again.

Though Nintendo is being coy about it replacing the 3DS, if all goes well Switch is intended to be the next step for Nintendo both at home and portably. That being the case, I thought it would be interesting to see how it looks as a successor individually to 3DS and Wii U. By the time they really decide to push the 3DS to the backburner they might have something like a more portable model of Switch available, but for now I'm working with the unit to be released in March 2017. And unfortunately since a lot of it is still uncertain, there is some rumor and guesswork in here.

From 3DS

PRO Resolution. Comparing from one eye's view of the main screen, 400x240 to 1280x720 is 9.6x as many pixels. Considering all the screen portions 400x240x2 + 320x240 to 1280x720 is 3.4x as many pixels.

Screen size. The original 3DS top screen is about 5.6 square inches. The 3DS XL top screen is about 10.5 square inches. The Switch scren dwarfs both at about 16.5 square inches. HOWEVER, the 3DS XL's top screen plus bottom screen added together do beat it, with a combined 19 square inches.

Tech specs. A lot is unknown about Switch's actual processors, but from what is known it seems ridiculously more powerful. Switch will have about 32x as much RAM as 3DS, and it seems like the rest of the improvements will be even bigger. Though it does somewhat depend on whether Switch is in docked or undocked mode, which apparently changes the GPU speed significantly.

Controls. Largely like those of the New 3DS, with the extra shoulder buttons and second analog control. However, both analogs will be full sticks, and sounds like one set of shoulders are analog as well. The controller portions that split off should allow for dual motion controls and possibly pointer as an alternate to touch. Touch will now be multi-touch, as opposed to the single touch of 3DS and DS.

Multiplayer. Local wireless and Internet play still possible, but now local multiplayer through shared or split screen is pretty standard too. Easy to get many two-player games going thanks to using the joy-cons individually.

CON Battery life. Rumors have varied on this quite a bit, but sounds like it might be worse than original model 3DS's was.

Size. Screen size is nice, but most people will find it impossible to fit Switch in a standard pocket.

Dual screen / clamshell. If you've come to appreciate the dual screen / clamshell design over the last dozen years as I have, unfortunately it's gone too.

Camera/mic. It seems there is no camera or microphone standard on Switch? There is some doubt on this.

From Wii U

PRO Resolution. Wii U Gamepad was 480p screen, Switch is a 720p screen. So 1.5x the pixels in either axis, or 2.25x overall. TV output for games probably maxes out at 1080p in either case, though Switch being more powerful it should hit it much more often. In fact with the GPU speed difference between docked and undocked, it seems designed to make 720p on the go and 1080p on TV an obvious choice.

Tech specs. Again there's a lot we don't know about Switch, but depending on how things pan out and whether it's in undocked or docked mode, it can probably do 2-5x as much as Wii U. RAM seems to only be doubled from Wii U, but rumor says the non-OS portion of RAM will be about triple what was available to developers on Wii U. Overall, still a fair gap below Xbone or PS4.

Architecture. Less exciting than pure spec numbers, but much of the Wii U was built with Wii compatibility in mind, and thus in some ways hampered back to GameCube tech designed at the turn of the century. With modern tech in, even though of the kind designed for mobile devices, Switch is a much easier target for current multiplatform games and middleware than Wii U was.

Controls. Largely the same as what's found on the GamePad, except one set of shoulders should be analog. Dual motion and possibly pointer should allow for somewhat more advanced version of wiimote / nunchuk controls. Single touch on the screen now multitouch.

Off TV Play. If you imagine undocked Switch as an evolved form of Off TV Play, then this is one where 100% of games work with it and the range is infinite, versus a couple dozen feet for the GamePad. Also since it's not an image being transmitted wirelessly there's no image quality loss from compression.

Multiplayer. Local shared/split-screen play and Internet play still possible, but now local wireless connecting to nearby Switches should be a pretty normal thing, too.

Sleep mode. Being a staple of portables it's necessary here, which will add some convenience for quick long-term pausing.

CON Dual screen. When docked the image outputs to TV and the tablet screen is mostly physically blocked, so games built around different things happening on the TV screen versus a held screen do not seem possible.

Camera/mic. It seems there is no camera or microphone standard on Switch? There is some doubt on this.

NX is Switch

- Posted in Video Games by with comments

So today the NX was unveiled as the Nintendo Switch, and... it's pretty much exactly what the solid rumors of the last few months have said, so my previous post about why I was positive on NX still applies. There are a few things technically still up in the air. Like after the video, people started wondering why it never showed the screen used with touch? And relatedly, the split controllers were never explicitly shown to use motion controls, either. So was it an indication Switch has a regressive control scheme in order to make identical controls for home/go modes easy? I don't think so. The same solid set of rumors that were right about 90+% of everything so far also say it's got a multi-touch screen and motion controls similar to Wii Remote Plus, so why start doubting them now? It seems like Nintendo just wanted to push a simpler message today about playing the same games at home or on the go with a few standard control options, and didn't want to deviate into more specifics in a 3-4 minute video.

As is always the case, there is some doubt about whether the name is good. I'm a bit split on it. I don't think it's particularly awful, and don't think Switch is worse than Box, Cube, Station, or other things game systems have been named... except they haven't been ONLY named those things. Without some other word attached, Switch feels kind of like some regular dictionary word accidentally got promoted. Just Switch, not GameSwitch or XSwitch, or PlaySwitch or any other such thing. I could go for the DipSwitch myself, controlled by the Dip-Cons and the analog Dipstick.

One of the more interesting rumored/speculated things that turned out to be accurate is that the two controller halves (Joy-Cons) can each be used individually for simpler multiplayer control. A big question was how do you design something that works well both in tandem vertically and solo horizontally? The answer seems to be... well, you have to let one suck a bit more. The sideways mode definitely doesn't seem the way many would choose to play. The analog stick and buttons are cramped pretty close together, and depending on whether you're using Joy-Con L or R they're off-center to one side or the other. What are the shoulder/trigger buttons when played normally are still present, but will be located awkwardly to either the left or right side. Still, I see this as more of the emergency setup. If you're really planning on some multiplayer you'll get extra sets of Joy-Cons or Pro Controllers, but this is the way that you can be sure to NEVER be without a multiplayer option, and any two Switch owners who meet up are equipped to get four-player going.

There's been some concern about Nintendo saying it's first and foremost a home console. Buuuut this seems totally a PR thing, like back in 2004 when they were claiming the DS was a third pillar separate from GBA. In this case, the Wii U is much deader than the 3DS, so it needs replaced first. There's also that while neither price nor battery life has been announced yet it seems both will be notably worse than 3DS for now, so it's better to talk up its console side while 3DS is more slowly phased out over the next couple years. By that point Switch can be cheaper and have better battery life, either by way of larger battery or system revisions. Maybe even a smaller variant meant more for portable play, the opposite of the XL machines the DS and 3DS got. But it still seems clear Switch is the basket Nintendo intends to put all of its development eggs into if the public will let them.

One game I was very happy to see in the video was Skyrim! With the remaster coming it was one I hoped for as there was no technical reason not to, but feared that either due to western third parties' dismissive nature towards Nintendo machines and the hardware not being out for months after the remaster's October release it would be considered too late. But here it is. Some question why it's such a big deal for a port of an old game shown in a new console announcement video. I'd say the biggest thing is it shows Nintendo getting support from companies who traditionally haven't bothered with their hardware, and showing off a type of game that's never had a proper portable version is no little deal either.

There were snippets of some other Nintendo games in the trailers, but not a whole lot to tell about them from a few seconds of footage each. The 3D Mario platformer did interest me, though--with the camera angle used it didn't seem like a "3D World" style game, and nor did it seem to be based on planetoids like the Galaxy games. So it seemed most similar to the oldest 3D Marios, Super Mario 64 and even moreso Super Mario Sunshine--and by the time this one releases it might be 15 years since SMS's release.

River City: Tokyo Rumble initial impressions

- Posted in Video Games by with comments

Just wrote an email to a friend about this game, and decided to share it here too:

Played some River City. Pretty cool.

Controls much like on NES, except Jump gets its own button.

Stat progression is different--you straight up gain levels by experience. Restaurant food just seems to heal or revive your CPU ally. I did once earn a special item that gave me permanent Agility +1 boost. Characters can also wear three pieces of equipment to boost various stats.

Special moves are still bought from books. If late in the game for some reason you want them off, they can each be toggled once learned.

You can attack people in the non-fighting areas. Some just have a funny response, but one girl's yakuza brother and his friends arrived and kicked my ass.

The world is interconnected, but differently. There are many neighborhoods which will loop through 3-4 screens each, and you take a train to travel between them.

Graphics kind of mixed. They use retro sprites, and during story scenes they look exactly right. Once fighting starts they zoom in slightly for some reason, and the sprites get blurry.

Clearly meant to have elements that play on nostalgia, not just from RCR but also Super Dodgeball and other games in the series, including ones never released internationally.

When you buy a free smile, it says you get one but doesn't graphically show it. Cut corners!

Story mode doesn't seem to have multiplayer, but other modes do. One is dodgeball, the other a versus fighting mode. Haven't really touched either.

The leads never talked in RCR, but here their characterization as sort of do-gooding delinquents comes across pretty strongly.

NX Rumor Reaction

- Posted in Video Games by with comments

So we've started to get fairly consistent rumors about what the Nintendo NX is. And if they're still on track for a March release, we should see the official version any time. So before that I wanted to get my take on these rumors down for posterity.

Prior to the Wii U's reveal when we started hearing about it using a controller with a screen, I was pretty skeptical. Not skeptical that it was possible, but skeptical that it was the right move. It seemed to be trying to take the DS's two screen feature and replicate it at home, just not as well--with the newly introduced Remote and Nunchuk methods of play left unimproved. I think history has born out that the Game Pad was not something that many people gave a shit about. The one thing I thought it would be really good for was everyone having a personal view and touchscreen in multiplayer, but they went and made it impossible to use more than one on a system, so not even that was doable.

So the big rumor about NX is that it is not a normal home console, but a portable hybrid that can plug into the TV. At first hearing this, I wasn't very happy about it. It used to be the case that portable game machines were essentially like home machines of the past in tech and control. Game Boy like a cruder NES. Game Boy Advance like an SNES. PSP like... well, Dreamcast more closely than either PS1 or PS2. But that changed with DS and Wii. DS's dual screens and touch screens was something that couldn't be done at home, and the Wii Remote + Nunchuk was something that couldn't be done on the go. Finally they'd diverged to something unique. So when Wii U tried to be a Home DS, I felt this was a move in the wrong direction, making them again less unique. So why don't I feel NX, which would flat out combine them into one machine, is a similarly bad move?

The other big thing being bandied about is that though the NX will have a wide design more or less like a GBA or PSP style system, the controller segments at either side can be disconnected and used separately. If they actually pulled this off well, this means that though a hybrid, they managed to retain almost all of the uniqueness of the home and portable lines. The DS's touch screen is represented, and so is the dual motion control. The biggest loss from either line seems to be the actual dual screen clamshell design of the DS machines, which I will miss. But a new and improved type of wiimote/nunchuk already make this seem like a more interesting home machine than Wii U from a control standpoint to me.

Another thing we've heard is that the d-pad may use a split design, more reminiscent of traditional PlayStation d-pads than Nintendo's. If this is true, there must be a good reason for them to go against 30+ years of their standard design, and the best guess of the crowd is that it's meant that they could double as face buttons. Some DS games that had you play with just one hand on controls and the other on stylus allowed for this more or less, but a regular d-pad just isn't quite the same thing as buttons. And why would they do this, beyond an extreme attempt to be left-hand friendly? Again the crowd speculation is that perhaps each controller half can be used separately, similar to how the Wii Remote was used sideways. Perhaps what is usually one main control configuration for NX can be used for multiplayer for games with simpler controls. If each half had an analog stick, four face buttons, and one or two shoulder/trigger/something buttons, that would be plenty for games like Smash Bros. or Mario Kart. I think this is a pretty interesting concept. When playing games sidways remote style on Wii, the nunchuk just became useless. But if the wiimote and nunchuk weren't so different, that wouldn't need to be the case. And though it would be a more limited form of control, it would make it a lot easier to get multiplayer going. You'd only need two full sets of "proper" controls to get a four-player match going, or maybe even when in portable mode if you could find a place to prop up the screen you could play a little two-player with a friend.

I haven't touched yet that this machine is supposed to use game cards like DS/3DS, rather than discs. If it's portable, this is really no shock. Sony tried discs with PSP and even they backed off from that with Vita. And though theoretically discs could hold a lot more now, since we so rarely get a new disc standard it's no stretch of the card technology to reach current Blu-ray sizes or beyond. Rumors specifically say launch games will use cards up to 32 GB, which I find totally believable. I can buy rewriteable 32 GB microSD cards for less than 10 bucks; I'm sure Nintendo mass-producing a more read-only card is able to do much better than that. And if need be who knows how big a game card could be in 2020 or beyond.

Now, speaking personally... I think this is a machine I'd be pretty excited for. Nintendo's long abandoned the major graphics race, and as a guy with an expensive PC I've already got something that beats the current higher tech consoles. So exchanging "behind" graphics for "slightly more behind" graphics but with the ability to take them on the go, that is a trade I'm willing to make. With a Windows tablet I've tried to do a bit of sharing some games at home and on the go, but between bothersome Bluetooth and exchanging save files back and forth it's not very seamless. With effort I can get Fallout New Vegas with low graphics settings running decently. But a new open world Zelda that I can play portably, then just sit in a dock at home to play on a 42" screen instead, with graphics at or above that of the Wii U? I can live with that very much.

A combining of the lines means that games that traditionally stuck to one side will suddenly get a spot at the other. A major example is Pokémon, which has been around for 20 years with all of its most major games on Nintendo portables, while the home consoles get various types of spinoffs or pure battle games that just connect to the portable game. But now a new Pokémon going to the NX also means for the first time a major Pokémon game on a "home" system, unless you want to count things like playing Game Boy games on a Super Game Boy as a legit home console experience.

One thing I am curious about is how game series will be handled that had a sort of split. In many cases the home and portable games were much the same and wouldn't be much affected. NSMB2 and U. SM3D Land and World. Rhythm Heaven Gold and Fever. But for something like Zelda, over the last 15-20 years we've seen the home games try to give an epic scope, while the portable games are somewhat smaller affairs, more retro (or straight up remakes of old games), and of course a lower price as is the norm with portable games. In a combined world, what happens? Do they release both Giant $60 Zeldas and $40 Boutique Zeldas?