Hacking Gamecube roms on 3ds

[Subtle Demise]

Nintendo could probably port some of their games to the 3DS if they so desired, but obviously an emulator would never work.

 

[tbgtbg]

Even if 3DS could be made to run GC games, you'd still have the problem of controlling them. Lack of a 2nd analog would be a huge problem, as would the loss of analog on the shoulder buttons (as well as the z button). While there could be some sort of kludge using the touchscreen or CPP, I just don't see it being a pleasant experience for most games.

 

[heartgold]

Flash carts run things in DS-mode, meaning only with the power of the original DS, which is far too weak to emulate GC games.

Even when the 3DS's full power is unlocked though, I highly doubt there will ever be a GC emulator for it. Even a lower-end Core 2 Duo on the PC with a comparable GPU to the 3DS will struggle with many GC games.

Agreed, anyhow what potential does the 3DS duo core Arm11 have, like what is the limit for it. I've read it can be clocked quite high up to 800MHZ. 3Dbrew says 268MHZ, i'm hoping Nintendo has just downclocked to save battery life and overclocking is still possible.

 

[Skelletonike]

People are saying that the 3DS is weaker than a Game Cube, from what I've read in several websites along these months, the idea I got was that the 3DS was more powerful than the gamecube, being slightly less powerful in comparison to a wii, although it has better shaders it has a worse GPU. But despite that, still more powerful than the Gamecube.

 

[Deleted_171835]

People are saying that the 3DS is weaker than a Game Cube, from what I've read in several websites along these months, the idea I got was that the 3DS was more powerful than the gamecube, being slightly less powerful in comparison to a wii, although it has better shaders it has a worse GPU. But despite that, still more powerful than the Gamecube.

No one knows exactly how the 3DS fares in comparison to the Gamecube in terms of its polygon pushing power but judging from the visuals on games that we've seen and the little that we do know, it can be said to be roughly as powerful as a Gamecube (doesn't seem to be able to push as many polys, though) but with modern shaders and effects.

 

[Skelletonike]

No one knows exactly how the 3DS fares in comparison to the Gamecube in terms of its polygon pushing power but judging from the visuals on games that we've seen and the little that we do know, it can be said to be roughly as powerful as a Gamecube (doesn't seem to be able to push as many polys, though) but with modern shaders and effects.

I read that it had less poligons in comparison to a Wii and not a Gamecube. =S

 

[heartgold]

People are saying that the 3DS is weaker than a Game Cube, from what I've read in several websites along these months, the idea I got was that the 3DS was more powerful than the gamecube, being slightly less powerful in comparison to a wii, although it has better shaders it has a worse GPU. But despite that, still more powerful than the Gamecube.

Noooo, 3DS has a pretty powerful GPU from 2008, it can pump out more polygons than GC on paper but not seen in games yet maybe due to hardware limit somewhere and more advanced stuff than Wii and GC can't do at all. Weaker CPU lets it down.

 

[Foxi4]

But Nintendo ain't winning no console war with respect. If that would be the case, Nintendo would've shat over the competition by now

Oh, but they have technically won this generation with the best sales of both the Wii and the DS, even thought the Wii was barely a step up from the XBox and the DS was barely a step up from the N-Gage (Yes, the N-Gage. No joke, some early DS games are N-Gage ports).

Noooo, 3DS has a pretty powerful GPU from 2008, it can pump out more polygons than GC on paper but not seen in games yet maybe due to hardware limit somewhere and more advanced stuff than Wii and GC can't do at all. Weaker CPU lets it down.

You don't really need a strong CPU to produce quality graphics these days - most of the calculations are performed by the GPU, the CPU is concerned with A.I and the code proper.

The 3DS may have a more contemporary set of instructions than the Wii's or the Gamecube's GPU's do, but performance alone is very close to the Gamecube. It can push up to 15,3 million polygons per second wheras the Wii's Hollywood manages to push a theoretical maximum of 100 million polygons per second.

The Gamecube pushes about 12 million polygons, but to achieve emulation of it on the 3DS, the emulator would have to be capable of taking advantage of practically 95% of PICA's power and that alone would be difficult since the GPU has to bother with not one but two screen engines - one for the top and one for the bottom screen. And yes, I know the resolution is smaller, but that's not the problem here - the problem is that the power is divided between the two regardless of whether you want it or not. The code would have to be perfect.

 

[chocoboner]

1. The GameCube doesn't use ROMs. It uses disc backups, i.e. ISOs.

this has been pointed out before, and it's a minor note, but disc backups are for all intents and purposes the same thing as ROMs. the only difference is ISOs contain a CDFS filesystem.

 

[ComeTurismO]

When I read this in the latest post sides on the homepage, I couldn't stop laughing. But I respect you, you don't have that much knowledge, but crabs.
Anyway, one thing to remember OP, is that you need to understand, is that, GameCube emulates by .ISO's and the 3DS is a system of where cartridges are. Cartridges mean ROMS. There is a huge difference between ROMS and ISOS. Can the 3DS emulate a .ISO file? No right? And the power gives a huge felicity of the emulation of a GameCube game and a Nintendo 3DS. Although, your plan is good, we wish that happens, but it's all science, sister.

 

[Deleted_171835]

When I read this in the latest post sides on the homepage, I couldn't stop laughing. But I respect you, you don't have that much knowledge, but crabs.
Anyway, one thing to remember OP, is that you need to understand, is that, GameCube emulates by .ISO's and the 3DS is a system of where cartridges are. Cartridges mean ROMS. There is a huge difference between ROMS and ISOS. Can the 3DS emulate a .ISO file? No right? And the power gives a huge felicity of the emulation of a GameCube game and a Nintendo 3DS. Although, your plan is good, we wish that happens, but it's all science, sister.

Before you start criticizing others, make sure that what you're saying makes sense.

 

[ComeTurismO]

Before you start criticizing others, make sure that what you're saying makes sense.

First of all, to you it didn't make sense, but I didn't criticize him.

 

[Walker D]

Would be cool if Nintendo ported some of the GC games to the 3DS (Resident Evil Remake, Luigi's Mansion, etc)...would certainly be possible.
But as was stated by others, a emulation of GC in the 3DS, is probably impossible, since they are kinda similar in power (A machine must have a good advantage in power compared with the other that is being emulated..)

Maybe if the 3DS hack scene goes totally wild in the future, and someone (after getting some programing know-how from aliens) tries modifying GC games to work in the 3DS... ...who knows?
But it's kinda unlikely

 

[heartgold]

The 3DS may have a more contemporary set of instructions than the Wii's or the Gamecube's GPU's do, but performance alone is very close to the Gamecube. It can push up to 15,3 million polygons per second wheras the Wii's Hollywood manages to push a theoretical maximum of 100 million polygons per second.

The Gamecube pushes about 12 million polygons, but to achieve emulation of it on the 3DS, the emulator would have to be capable to take advantage of practically 95% of PICA's power and that alone would be difficult since the GPU has to bother with not one but two screen engines - one for the top and one for the bottom screen. And yes, I know the resolution is smaller, but that's not the problem here - the problem is that the power is divided between the two regardless of whether you want it or not. The code would have to be perfect.

Ha' yeah I remember when rumors were coming through, they were saying portable gamecube like specs, not actual HW specs but look alike, for instance how Vita can produce PS3 visuals.

We don't have any clue on the real 3DS GPU specs as we don't know what model it could be using. However 15.3M is the bare minimum we are looking at.

The lower end of the scale:
Based on a 2006 model, 15.3M at 200MHz ( remember the GPU is clocked at 268MHz according to 3Dbrew.org, so Mpixels count may be slightly higher)

Higher end of the scale
Based on the 2008 model, 40M at 100MHz.

Why the Pica 200?

Someone would need to benchmark the 3DS accurately whenever it becomes possible.

 

[Foxi4]

Someone would need to benchmark the 3DS accurately whenever it becomes possible.

Well, yeah, of course those are all estimates and of course the actual hardware never reaches them in software other than special tech demos in almost lab-like environments - what I was saying was that it's closer to the Gamecube than it is to the Wii and that much was pretty obvious already.

Once the system is hacked, we'll know exactly how many polies it can push on each screen. If it's anything like the DS then there will be two screen engines - here's for hoping that there is no "maximum-per-screen" style limitation and the system simply auto-adjusts.

 

[granville]

You won't be seeing any sort of GC emulator on the 3DS. 3DS is a bit more powerful, but not nearly enough to make emulation possible (at the very least not in any sort of remotely playable state). A system has to be a ton more powerful than another for it to be capable of emulating it in any sort of proper state.

It's entirely possible to port GC or Wii games however, even higher tier ones as has been seen several times. Monster Hunter Tri received quite a great translation to the 3DS, with a higher framerate and superior shadow effects to boot. And that was an early 3DS game that Capcom used to chip their teeth on, it's not really using the full potential of the 3DS and Capcom I believe said it was relatively easy to port it (and Tri was a game that made the team developing Twilight Princess jealous of its visuals).

They're also bringing Donkey Kong Country Returns to the 3DS as well, and it looks almost exactly the same as the Wii version within the smaller resolution limitation. Game Xplain did a side by side comparison of Wii vs 3DS version and it appears to be almost completely intact visually, there aren't even any downgrades in geometry (the framerate is yet to be seen, Wii version ran at 60fps but videos are capped at 30 so we can't tell whether the 3DS version is higher than 30fps yet). In an old interview on IGN about the Wii version, Retro stated that on average each level in DKC Returns uses about 3x the amount of polygon and texture detail as an average single room in Metroid Prime 3. The Prime series were some of the best looking games on the GC or Wii already. It has become pretty clear that with the right people and budget in charge, it's entirely possible to bring GC and Wii games over to the 3DS (sometimes with visual enhancements).

EDIT- I'd also like to mention that besides being from an earlier model of the Pica200, the 15.3 million number also happens to not mention that the Pica200 was designed for hardware with much higher resolutions in mind (graphics chips have substantial power boosts from running in lower resolution). And of course the one in the 3DS is overclocked substantially as well (268mhz vs 200mhz of the stock), which would further improve the polygon performance.

 

[Deleted member 318366]

Depiction of gamecube (wii) games on the 3ds








lol

 

[the_randomizer]

Are you high?? The Nintendoo DS could not play PlayStation 1 games nor even Nintendoo 64 games or Gameboy Advance games (the latter without help)! The 3DS is not THAT drastic a step-up.

O RLY?

Being more powerful than the PSP isn't a step up when it's on par with the Gamecube?

 

[the_randomizer]

actually rom would be much more correct

the GC disks are actually read only memory

but there is no iso(9660) in GC disks
iso9660 is the filesystem commonly used in PC CD-ROMs
other systems like the gc/wii/xbox ... don't use it

Explain why dumped images have the .iso file extension.

 

[PsyBlade]

Explain why dumped images have the .iso file extension.

stupidity