Hardware Why no GBA backwards compatibility ?

[xakota]

They aren't emulating the DS. Playing DS games on a 3DS isn't emulation.

It IS possible that they'll give us GBA games eventually. Didn't the Wii not originally have n64 games?

 

[GameDragon]

You CAN but GBC games. I swear I saw a picture of a Link's Awakening on a 3DS (on the official Nintendo site)

That's a GameBoy version. It had a GBC rerelease.

The GBC version is on the eShop (Zelda DX). There's video footage of it.

 

[Ikki]

They're most likely going to release it later.

 

[DiscostewSM]

No. The DS has two different cpus or whatever... one ARM9 and one ARM7 iirc. and the ARM7 is used for the GBA, and the DSi and 3DS doesn't have the ARM7...

Sorry, that is incorrect. The DS/DSi uses the ARM7, as it is clocked at 33Mhz (double what the GBA has, but underclocks itself when in GBA mode), for which it handles processing of audio, WiFi, touch-screen input, etc. The 66Mhz ARM9 (133Mhz in DSi) is basically for everything else, such as the main game code.

EDIT:

As far as the 3DS is concerned, it supposedly has 2 ARM11, which can run both ARM9 and ARM7 code, therefore allowing DS compatibility. It most likely has the remaining GBA hardware removed, like the DSi, preventing it's ability to play those games outside of emulation.

 

[lostdwarf]

No. The DS has two different cpus or whatever... one ARM9 and one ARM7 iirc. and the ARM7 is used for the GBA, and the DSi and 3DS doesn't have the ARM7...

Sorry, that is incorrect. The DS/DSi uses the ARM7, as it is clocked at 33Mhz (double what the GBA has, but underclocks itself when in GBA mode), for which it handles processing of audio, WiFi, touch-screen input, etc. The 66Mhz ARM9 (133Mhz in DSi) is basically for everything else, such as the main game code.

EDIT:

As far as the 3DS is concerned, it supposedly has 2 ARM11, which can run both ARM9 and ARM7 code, therefore allowing DS compatibility. It most likely has the remaining GBA hardware removed, like the DSi, preventing it's ability to play those games outside of emulation.

I have seen the insides of the 3DS and it does not have 2 arm11 chips. It may be a dual Arm something chip co-built with Nintendo. It does not say Arm11.
Their is another chip which is probably the main CPU with the arm supporting it.
will be interesting to take apart.
..looks for link...
http://www.nineinchsandwich.com/wp-content...-Insides-28.jpg
Now on the other board we a similar chip.
This could be 2 x nintendo cores plus arm/nintendo cpu and the pica200?
or 1 Nintendo core and 1 Arm/Nintendo core and pica200 and a huge chunk of ram/internal flash/something else
http://tk-nation.com/uploads/1_ds2.jpg
photos were definitely leaked by Nintendo as they have not since been updated with higher quality images of the writing on these chips.

 

[Pyrmon]

Why doesn't the Wii have N64 backward compatibility?
Dumb questions, dumb questions...

 

[FranckKnight]

The 3DS probably has more than enough power to emulate GB and GBC games, but GBA might still be a tad too strong for it anyway. Emulating means using software to simulate hardware, and GBA had slightly more than SNES power overall. Of course Nintendo might be able to make an emulator that runs nearly 100% speed if they wanted, but you can look at SNES emulators on the DS to see that user-made emulators are not quite up to speed yet.

The 3Ds might not have the same ARM chips than the DS, but similar enough architecture to allow the jump. The DS essentially had a GBA inside of it from the start with the ARM7, the ARM9 taking care of higher powered needs such as the 3D rendition.

 

[xakota]

The 3DS probably has more than enough power to emulate GB and GBC games, but GBA might still be a tad too strong for it anyway. Emulating means using software to simulate hardware, and GBA had slightly more than SNES power overall. Of course Nintendo might be able to make an emulator that runs nearly 100% speed if they wanted, but you can look at SNES emulators on the DS to see that user-made emulators are not quite up to speed yet.

The DS had 4 mb of ram. The 3DS has 96. I think the PSP has 64 and it emulates the GBA fine. I'm sure we'll be just fine.

 

[pachura]

outdated? i would rather play one of the many good gb/gbc games than play a ton of the games that are currently made for the ds or even some gba games.
With all due respect, you do not represent an average person. Just ask a random kid which game would s(he) prefer to play ?

They aren't emulating the DS. Playing DS games on a 3DS isn't emulation.
Well, that depends on your definition of emulation.
For me, emulation happens when you play a game meant for platform X on a different platform Y.
You can have software emulation which translates X's code into Y's, but you can as well have hardware emulation, when you include pieces of X on Y's mainboard to achieve better accuracy. Just like Sony did with PSX on PS2.

And for DS emulation on 3DS, it seems to be half-hardware, half-software. While the CPU will probably follow the ARM architecture and will be able to execute DS' code natively, the graphics chip is vastly different (DS used proprietary, archaic graphics subsystem working on palettes, backgrounds, sprites etc. while 3DS will use OpenGL-compliant Pica200). So for graphics, some software emulation will most probably be needed.

Why doesn't the Wii have N64 backward compatibility?
Dumb questions, dumb questions...

3DS will allow playing GB, GBC, and DS games. Isn't this GBA gap bizarre ?

QUOTE(FranckKnight @ Feb 8 2011, 03:34 AM)

The 3DS probably has more than enough power to emulate GB and GBC games, but GBA might still be a tad too strong for it anyway.

??? 3DS will most probably be around 15x times faster than GBA (times two ARM cores). If it's possible to run DS games (which used both ARM9 and ARM7 processors at the same time), then the hardware is more than enough to play GBA games, too...

 

[jalaneme]

There's no way of playing GBA cartridges on the 3DS because that way you have to pay to download them again from the eStore or whatever the hell they're calling it now. Thus raking in yet more cash. It's all about money. Nothing else. Not about fan service, not about giving us everything we want. It's about draining the maximum ammount of cash from us as often as possible.

that is how sony works too, and the reason they removed the ps2 compatibly from the ps3s.

 

[TheTwoR's]

I hope that if we buy games like Pokemon Ruby off the store or Fire Red or something, we'd be able to migrate to our DS versions... Just a dream.
Probably won't happen

 

[Wintrale]

You can be fairly sure that if Ninty creates a 3DS revision a couple of years from now, it won't have DS BC anymore either, especially if DS games are no longer produced at that time.

That would make sense if the DS and 3DS games weren't identical in physical size and didn't go into the same slot. There's no reason for Nintendo to cut DS functionality unless, like the PS3, backwards compatibility ends up costing too much. As for GBA emulation, they'll have them up on the Store once they realise demand is high enough. Like they'd miss out on charging 800 points per typical GBA game and 1200 for the Pokémon games, the Super Mario Advance games and the Zelda games.

 

[FranckKnight]

The 3DS probably has more than enough power to emulate GB and GBC games, but GBA might still be a tad too strong for it anyway.

??? 3DS will most probably be around 15x times faster than GBA (times two ARM cores). If it's possible to run DS games (which used both ARM9 and ARM7 processors at the same time), then the hardware is more than enough to play GBA games, too...

I didn't mean to be technical about it, I just used logic from looking at the past consoles evolution.

None of the consoles up to now have managed to run at 100% speed games from the console 2 generations before. The previous generation usually incorporated enough hardware to allow it (Gamecube to Wii, GBA to NDS). In some cases, the previous generation was troublesome to run (Majora's Mask on GameCube for example).

Two generations before was ran through emulating, NDS doesn't run SNES at full speed, even if it's getting closer. I will admit though that it might be a trend that can be broken out of, considering that PS3 runs PS1 through emulation. PS2 games on PS3 was hardware at first, but then turned into partial emulation on later revisions, that was less compatible and has a few more bugs, but generally works well.

So if speeds and hardware power allow to do so, I say awesome. I simply based myself on past occurrences.


-Edit : Actually, scratch that, I just remembered that Wii runs N64 games, which is two generations across, and likely has little problems doing it. So It does seem that the trend is getting broken out of.

 

[Skitty22]

Cost and room probably and now i dont know the arch on the arm 7 but assuming it is 45mm or 65mm that is alot of room especially on a device as small as the DS. Remember the DSI and DSI XL have large screen it was probably a toss up between screen size and overall size and whether it was worth putting the port in for GBA Support.

The Orignal and DSlite probably had it because at that time nintendo probably knew there was a huge amount of advanced holders still and in an attempt to convert them added slot 2. now it is redunant to many especially since alot of popluar games have been ported to the ds and likely some will get ported to the 3DS , one is already rumored to be the phoenix wright series at somepoint)

 

[Nollog]

It's 2011. Get over the GBA please.
I'm sure the catalog will be on the 3DS eshop later on in its life, or on its successor.

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

-Edit : Actually, scratch that, I just remembered that Wii runs N64 games, which is two generations across, and likely has little problems doing it. So It does seem that the trend is getting broken out of.

The N64 VC games have specific emulators built in to each one of them, besides that it's not really backwards compatibility as you cannot take your N64 carts and play them on the Wii so this really has nothing to do with the issue.

the only backward compatibility the Gamecube provided was for GBA/Gameboy via the gameboy player add-on, having a game re-released via emulation doesn't count as backward compatibility.

 

[FluffyLunamoth]

In short, the answer to the topic: Because GBA doesn't use the same hardware the DS/DSi/3DS uses. ARM7 is NOT ARM9.

You can be fairly sure that if Ninty creates a 3DS revision a couple of years from now, it won't have DS BC anymore either, especially if DS games are no longer produced at that time.

Actually, you're wrong. There's only one gamecard slot on the 3DS. It can use both 3DS and original DS cards. 3DS ones just have a small notch to prevent them from being put into a DS. 3DS should, in theory, ALWAYS have DS BC. Why? The dual-touch screens are another point to that, too.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

@pachura: I can do that too!

Would the average kid rather play this?

Or this?

Really, if you're going to make a comparison, at least make a fair one.

 

[FluffyLunamoth]

@pachura: I can do that too!

Would the average kid rather play this?

Or this?

Really, if you're going to make a comparison, at least make a fair one.

They'd rather play Tetris :\ It takes no skill, no brainpower, and probably would cost them a buck on Apple's store full'a crap. Tetris is casual. Too many people play casual games.

 

[Slyakin]

Why doesn't the N64 have NES backwards compatibility? Why doesn't the Gamecube have SNES compatibility?