I have a love hate with analogue. They undoubtedly make really excellent products, and I absolutely adore my pocket. However they really lean into the fomo of their stuff. They make very few units, and you have to be ready to go when they drop more product most of the time. I will say though the price of this is a lot lower than I expected. And while you shouldn’t count on it, every analogue system has gotten some form of ability to play roms from other systems (whether it’s built into the OS (not happening for the 3D) or a “jailbreak” is released by basically an employee of analogue).
Analogue stuff is good if you have cartridges you want to play, but at this point, with the recent release of Taki Udon’s cheap Mister Pi (retroremake.co/pages/store), I think Mister is the way to go. It’s an open source project as opposed to analogue’s implementation. The issue with Mister was you needed a pretty expensive DE10 Nano board to utilize it. Now you can get one of these new boards for only $100 (if you can get your hands on them. Only 2 batches have been sold so far and they sell out quick). Plus Taki is planning on using this new board to make a handheld Mister which I’m super stoked for.
I can’t fault them for not making such a niche product at a large enough scale to make them readily available and cheap. I know we’ve become accustomed to that from other larger companies, but for a small company, that’s either very risky or just not an option. So they just design cool stuff, make just enough so that they know they can safely sell them all and thus make a predictable ROI, and move onto the next cool thing. No pressure for growth or satisfying every potential customer. Sounds like the dream.
That’s super fair and I agree for the most part. Though it’s hard to be super enthusiastic about it when they focus on a plethora of super limited edition color ways for the pocket instead of keeping the base one in stock and completely abandoning DAC support which they promised a while ago (and recently scrubbed all mention of on their site)
as long as analogue didnt use the devices actual hardware design and code, its completely legal. theyre not selling you games, theyre selling you a piece of hardware capable of playing said games with their own hardware design.
i dont want to say emulation in a soft sense because its not software emulation, its hardware to hardware emulatoion.
This is actually advertised as having no emulation, all FPGA. Idk if those are compatible but they also say the n64 was the first multiplayer console in the header so they’re clearly a little sketchy on the details lol
FPGAs would be considered “hardware emulation” but a lot of people don’t like that term, and think emulation should be a term limited to software.
Like, there aren’t real N64 chips in there. The hardware IS emulating an N64 - it’s just not doing so in a way that’s comparable with software emulation at all.
Analogue likely doesn’t emulate the hardware at the transistor level, as it’s far more difficult than doing what most software emulators do.
From an interesting (altough non-conclusive) HN-thread:
Without seeing the code, it’s impossible to know where Analog’s implementation falls on the spectrum of software emulation vs hardware simulation. There is nothing magical about FPGAs that automatically makes anything developed with them a 1:1 representation of real hardware. In fact, there are plenty of instances where the FPGA version of a particular console is literally just a representation of a popular emulator only in verilog/vhdl. In many instances, even the best FPGA implementations of some systems are still only simulating system level behavior. Off the top of my head, one famously difficult case is audio, where many chips have analog circuitry that cannot be fully simulated. [1]
Same reason emulators are allowed. As long as the emulator doesn’t use Nintendo’s literal software/hardware or schematics, and as long as the emulator doesn’t traffic in illegal file-sharing, it is allowed. Or at least, it exists in a legal grey area. And Analogue’s pitch is original hardware, essentially rebuilt from scratch using FPGA technology. You still need actual Nintendo 64 carts to use this device. Or at least, that is how it is marketed.
I think the recent emulator shutdowns by Nintendo were more about software piracy. The devs knew that their emulators were being used to play unreleased Nintendo games. The emulators themselves may have been safe and legal, but the devs are mostly just volunteers, or small time operations running on a patreon. As soon as Nintendo applied even the smallest amount of pressure, the devs caved, because they don’t want to spend their entire life savings and then some trying to defend software piracy on principle. Me thinks that Analogue would actually put up a fight if Nintendo tried anything, and that’s why Nintendo doesn’t try anything.
Agreed. I also want to add that this is not a mass market product, plus its not current gen either. So Nintendo does probably not care at all, in addition to what you already said.
Why shouldn’t it be allowed? The company does not violate any copyright, trademark or patent. Otherwise Nintendo would have sued them for their similar project, but for Game Boy, the Analogue Pocket.
The lesson here is to download every single working nintendo emulator as a backup and share it with your friends. Emulation is legal after all even if the Nintendo mafia try to shut it down.
Sounds like this was more of a bribe than any legal case against the emulator. In which case nothing is stopping anyone from putting a fork back up, and gdkchan gets to laugh all the way to the bank.
I’m thinking less bribe and “laughing away to the bank” and more of a “Nintendo threatened to ruin their life with legal fees if it wasn’t taken down”. The frivolity of said case is irrelevant when they just bully normal people legally like that.
I immediately sought out working backups of both Yuzu and Ryujinx. The “bright side” of this situation is that it pissed me off enough to go acquire both the new Zelda game that potentially caused this whole situation by being leaked early, and the game that was at the absolute top of my to-play list: Unicorn Overlord. So far it is looking like a fantastic game.
I like it more, but I’m a fan of the more classic Zeldas. It’s good, but it’s marred by the same technical issues that plagued the LA remake, and the lack of some basic QoL features like a Quick Select or Favorites wheel is bringing it from ‘great’ to ‘good.’
Lol it’s like Nintendo just wants to back itself into a corner and waste away with its IP. Jeez. I honestly have no desire to purchase anything from them anymore.
I still emulate a solid amount of their games I’ve had for most of my life because I don’t want to wear down my old hardware.
They haven’t gotten a cent out of me since the GameCube, though, so I understand I’m probably not going to be their target audience anymore.
Lol it's like Nintendo just wants to back itself into a corner and waste away with its IP.
This is a Switch emulator, meaning these are games that are still available for sale. It's not like taking down a SNES emulator or something Nintendo hasn't made available for 30+ years, it's involving games they're selling today. Taking down an emulator is literally Nintendo protecting its IP.
I honestly have no desire to purchase anything from them anymore.
If you were using this emulator, you weren't likely purchasing anything from them in the first place. And I'm no doctor, but... I'd have to imagine that's likely the reason Nintendo took this down to begin with.
I getcha, just have not been stoked about Nintendo’s continual deathmarch against the hydra of emulation.
I honestly think it’s more of a waste of money than it’s actually worth and the publicity of taking down emulation sites is pretty bad for them (especially when they take down ones which deal with largely abandonware or really old games, like Vimm’s lair did).
Without getting into the debate over the ethics of piracy or anti consumer practices, jumping into the fray by aggressively litigating and making a splash like Nintendo and Sony seem to focus on likely hurts their bottom line and certainly hurts their reputation with consumers.
While I don't support pirating products that are currently for sale, I do think it's essential that emulators like Ryujinx are developed now in order to preserve titles for later. Some Switch software already has been delisted, and someday eventually all of it will be.
While I don’t support pirating products that are currently for sale
I do when Nintendo refuses to make them available on other (higher quality) hardware and also treats their paying consumers and fans like scum. I can boot up Doom on any of a dozen different computers 30 years later and play to my heart’s content but that’s not an option for Nintendo. Piracy generally is completely justified by a vast array of anti-consumer bullshit. If they can’t make games without resorting to that bullshit, fuck 'em. I hope they go under.
The delisting is what gets me most (and we’re dealing with that in basically every media catalogue from film/tv to games).
Well, that and the blatant cash grabs I see with rereleases that end up being console specific and basically unsupported like with the cases of the Wii store and basically every iteration of their online stores since.
I played Wii and eventually Wii U with buddies for smash but am glad I didn’t own the systems. I know one of my friends gave a lot of money to Nintendo multiple times getting classics like Pokemon Snap and other nostalgia buys on multiple systems.
My most recent experience with Nintendo was borrowing a buddy’s switch to play Breath of the Wild back around when it came out. I’m pretty meh on their new content and by the way a lot of their recent releases were received, I’m not super interested. Might bug someone to play the Pokemon Arceus one which seems kinda cool, but that would be the extent of my interest and it’s not really nagging at me, anyway.
My main gripe is that they seem to be doing the bare minimum with their IP (with little innovation in the field/botched releases) and wasting money/resources on what I see as frivolous, shortsighted, lawsuits in the name of protecting their property as well as corporate heavy production that ends up with forgettable and formulaic games.
Maybe I am now become old, but I don’t care to see the most recent iteration of the Pokemon, Zelda, Mario, or Smash Bros sagas and am perfectly content with replaying N64 to GameCube classics in those series. Probably doesn’t help that I went to college with a bunch of friends who hung out and played Project M with some Halo 3 or Reach sprinkled in for variety lol.
If you were using this emulator, you weren’t likely purchasing anything from them in the first place. And I’m no doctor, but… I’d have to imagine that’s likely the reason Nintendo took this down to begin with.
Actually…I own a Switch and paid full price for TOTK on launch week. But playing the game in 30fps chunky resolution was very painful for me, as i’ve gotten quite used to 60fps+ over the last few years with 3D games. I almost put the game down in the first hour or so, playing the game was literally making my eyes hurt. That’s when i went poking into the Switch emulation scene and set up yuzu (RIP). Within a few hours i was playing TOTK at 60fps 1440p and it was mostly glitch free. I put another 20 hours into the game before putting that down. But it was a glorious 20 hours, as that game is absolutely beautiful when you can wipe away the greasy look of 30fps low-res Switch graphics.
So…I am a Nintendo customer that was getting a better experience out of my purchased Nintendo game by emulating it. I know that isn’t everyone in this scene - I see the reddit posts everyday for the past week about people playing leaked Echoes* of Wisdom. I get why that shit would piss Nintendo off. It just sucks that now, others can’t share the amazing experience I had with TOTK.
It’s funny, I own a switch and I would have bought the game (and I probably will still if the technical and QoL issues get resolved) but I’m emulating it better than the hardware can run it right now.
Lol it’s like Nintendo just wants to back itself into a corner and waste away with its IP. Jeez. I honestly have no desire to purchase anything from them anymore.
pretty sure the only reason nintendo cared is because ryujinx was prominently displayed in the leaked footage of echos of wisdom, pre launch
Nintendo’s been way too busy in this scene for too long a time for that to be the only reason. I can see that such a leak wouldn’t help, but they’ve been pouring money into these cases for years and have really ramped it up in the last five or so
That’s not the developer, that’s a Discord mod, and they said in that message specifically that they haven’t heard anything from the dev. It also says nothing about what “the agreement” is. It could very well be a legal settlement.
He is a developer (github) and in fact had a pull request merged in August. I suppose it’s possible it was a “legal agreement”. It seems implied that it wasn’t, and that was what I remembered when replying
It’s a fair question, but honestly I think Nintendo generally focuses on emulators that they perceive as affecting their current or near-future income. The Wii U is fully dead to Nintendo, at least for the moment.
…after knowing for damn sure it was a serious issue in two successive process generations.
There is no way this happened without a LOT of people knowing EXACTLY what was happening, and covering it up. The DoJ should really kick off an investigation into the situation, because it’s pretty obvious there was malfeasance at multiple levels. That, or their leadership and QC processes are both so categorically inept that one could argue the company should be straight up nationalized as a critical strategic asset.
Or force them to admit they are selling it for real without all the license mumbo jumbo. They have always known what “buy now” buttons were meant to lead you to believe. And — in my humble opinion — you aren’t wrong for believing that; they are.
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