GCW Zero vs. PSP, Running SNES Star Fox

[Its_just_Lou]

I'm usually not hung-up on a particular game, but there a few that always seem to be glitched in some way...pisses me off...
(Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Super Metroid, etc.)

Ah well, I can't really complain, with the wealth of whats available.

 

[orion4874]

Just fyi, they have now doubled the RAM and internal storage.

 

[Hielkenator]

That's a common emulation issue yeah.

Well if there's an actual GPU involved then scaling shouldn't get a performance hit. PSP can do scaling/filtering without an FPS drop.

Vita's hacks are still in PSP-mode.

3.5 inch LCD with 320x240 pixels; 4:3 aspect ratio is ideal for retro gaming

That's different than snes'original res...:

Resolutions Progressive: 256 × 224, 512 × 224, 256 × 239, 512 × 239
Interlaced ( should not matter as a LCD display is used in this device): 512 × 448, 512 × 478

So there's some down scaling going on.

Offtopic:
Also the about page on the GCW page gives me a bad taste in my mouth.
They are realizing that without those old games and consoles they would'nt even have a console worth selling?

 

[Snailface]

3.5 inch LCD with 320x240 pixels; 4:3 aspect ratio is ideal for retro gaming

That's different than snes'original res...:

Resolutions Progressive: 256 × 224, 512 × 224, 256 × 239, 512 × 239
Interlaced ( should not matter as a LCD display is used in this device): 512 × 448, 512 × 478

So there's some down scaling going on.

Offtopic:
Also the about page on the GCW page gives me a bad taste in my mouth.
They are realizing that without those old games and consoles they would'nt even have a console worth selling?

The following features are missing:

• Pseudo 512 SNES horizontal resolution (no games are known to use this)

http://zsnes-docs.sourceforge.net/html/readme.htm

 

[Hielkenator]

http://zsnes-docs.sourceforge.net/html/readme.htm

I was'nt talking about a snes emulator. Real snes hardware.

 

[Snailface]

I was'nt talking about a snes emulator. Real snes hardware.

They were talking about real hardware too. No real games on real hardware that they know of ran in hi-res mode.
The concern you have about the GCW having to do major down-scaling to run those hi-res modes is not justified since no games used them.

 

[kristianity77]

out of all the snes games I've ever played on emulator over the years, and that is a lot, I THINK there was only one which ran in the high res mode and that was Seiken Densetsu 3 (or Secret of Mana 2 as it's better known). But this was the only one I came across I believe. I'm sure it used to switch the res between some gameplay and scenes with lots of text. My mind is a bit fuzzy as it's been a while and of course I might be getting confused.

 

[FAST6191]

Giantbomb seems to reckon so as well ( http://www.giantbomb.com/secret-of-mana/61-19507/ ) and http://nocash.emubase.de/fullsnes.htm#snesppuresolution (need to scroll down a bit) has a little list and some discussion on the games.

I really need to check out the newer versions of the emulator it comes from as well- first release was very rough but the potential was plain for all to see though that was hardly surprising given the author.

 

[Rydian]

From what I know, SoM and SE3 need to be filtered in order to actually output at the lower resolution though. Most people run emulators at a higher rendering size than native so it's not noticed, but if you change an emulator's actual output resolution to the base 256x224, it can no longer display the text properly.

Here's what we're used to seeing first (output at a higher resolution than native, because I'm sure none of us actually set our displays to 256x244 or whatever to emulate), and the second is what can only be displayed at the actual lower resolution (scaled up nearest-neighbor for comparison).

(Exactly how bad the second image looks depends on the emulator it seems.)

The text is the most obvious issue, but notice the background as well (grass and columns).

So this IS a legit concern...

(Minor note to SNES9X users, having the "blend high-res images" option on just anti-aliases it a bit, so turn that option off for your own comparison.)

 

[Dunny]

This is interesting - I've been playing Starfox and Yoshi's Island on a handheld for nearly two years now. Why is this such a big deal?

D.

 

[Kouen Hasuki]

My main thoughts are this...

A More powerful handheld on an open source os emulates something faster than something made back in late 2004 on a locked down os with no official dev kits for homebrew, which only got its ram doubled to a still tiny in comparison 64MB in 2007... Shocker

However, that aside its a promising unit and I hope it does well! maybe ill invest in one at some point if they come out

 

[Rydian]

This is interesting - I've been playing Starfox and Yoshi's Island on a handheld for nearly two years now. Why is this such a big deal?

D.

And what is that?

 

[Dunny]

And what is that?

OpenPandora, of course. They're readily available now and come in both 1GHz and 600MHz flavours - mine is the 600MHz (200 quid) version and has yet to fail running anything I throw at it - PSX, N64, MAME, Amiga, GBA, Final Burn Advance (including SFIII) etc. With the NDS emulator on the way shortly:



there's very little it won't now emulate.

It's a very, very capable handheld with frankly stunning battery life and a full linux PC bundled in to boot.

D.

 

[Rydian]

At $480 and up, I think I'm going to wait to see what the price on this thing is instead...

 

[Dunny]

At $480 and up, I think I'm going to wait to see what the price on this thing is instead...

Yeah, it's expensive - but then it's a hell of a lot more than a handheld gaming rig. I was lucky and got mine from the first round of preorders in 2008, when it was just a couple of hundred quid and therefore not much more expensive than an NDSL. (Well, about 80 quid more). The GCWzero should be a lot less. There is an outside chance I may be able to get a dev unit to test, we'll see.

 

[SnakeSlashRO]

Can't wait for this bad ass to hit. I put down 160, but am thinking about a second unit... seeing we won't know how many come out after the kickstarter and when...