Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

@FishyS
If you don't have an actual reference(Original Console, carts etc) for comparison than you're going in blind. A RetroUSB AVS(NES HD Clone System) which doesn't add any lag, hooked up to the same TV as your Switch using actual NES carts would be the perfect reference for comparison against NES NSO. Joy-con's have very minimal latency compared to the Switch Pro controller, so you'd want to use the former, while using something like a 2.4g N30 8bitdo controller with the AVS to get a more fair proper comparison between the two.

@NeonPizza I'm sure that lag exists, but as I said there isn't enough lag to bother me personally. If I already enjoy it, that's good enough. I have played some of those games on original hardware long ago.

It's a similar issue to frame rate; lower frame rate never really bothers me just like a smidge of lag doesn't bother me, but I totally acknowledge it drives some people crazy.

That said, if Nintendo decides to improve some of the lag with the next gen of hardware, all the better.

I think we've lost the forrest for the trees a little bit in that last tangent. Yes, aesthetics are a thing. Yes, nostalgia is a thing. And occasionally a tech advance in one area will have downsides elsewhere. People are going all in on CRTs vs (early) LCDs here a bit, but the same sort of thing was true for the transition from cartridge to CD

But broadly, newer hardware beings improvements. Improvements that we get so used to we forget about how it was like before. Improvements that often don't have any downsides at all. Again, do we really think that 20 years from now people are going to drag out a Wii U to play DK:TF off-TV? Will we really say "oh yes, 480p, video compression artifacts, cheap early 2010s LCD tech, long load times, this is the authentic experience"...... maybe..... but it'll be something I'm sure as hell going to mock

@NeonPizza
Yea, the N64 games especially I can feel the lag on NSO.

Retro gaming does get expensive, so for now I'm just a DS/Gameboy collector because I already owned those consoles back from when I was a kid and then a teenager. Tons of amazing games you can get for 20-30 bucks as long as you aren't going CIB.

I have a really awesome retro game store (like the kind you can see on Youtube) about 40 minutes from my house. They have everything, it's such a fun place, and I do plan on getting into SNES collecting within the next year or so, depending on what Nintendo is doing with the Switch 2.

@rallydefault
Curious what your thoughts are on those GB(C) screen mods that have become a bit more accessible. Was something I looked at for a bit but ultimately decided that GB emulation is good enough. If I was going to spend ~$100AU or so on a bit of GB nostalgia I was better off just getting a portable emulation box that worked well with GB. And if I'm going to play on my original GB or GBC I'll do it on the original screen

.......... those OLED GBC mods are tempting though

@rallydefault
The DSLite was pretty fantastic in it's day. Contra 4, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, WarioWare: Touched!, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hour Glass(I'm probably one of the few that actually loved it, and it was a big breath of fresh hair compared to the tried and true traditionally controlled top down Zelda's before it.), Dementium: The Ward, Kirby Canvas Curse and so much more. Everything from the Dual Screens, Touch based/stylus controls(etc) made hand held gaming feel fresh, exciting again and super innovative for it's time, rather than being just another predictable graphical upgrade.

I was a huge fan of the Wii+Virtual Console, DSLite and first year or so of the launch 3DS-era days that spanned from 2007-2012. Took a big break from modern gaming once the Wii U & PS4 dropped, but Kind of got back in with PS4 Pro + PSVR2, Switch especially, and with a splash of PS5 & Quest 3.

Anyways, just like you, I've always been hesitant from amassing even a decent sized collection of retro video games, even in the mid to late 2000's when the big retro gaming boom happened. I gradually started to recollect NES, SNES & GameBoy games, pretty much everything spanning from the late 80's & early to mid 90's. But it winded up being just a tiny collection, of games mostly just sitting on a shelf. The reality is, you cannot recapture that feeling or recreate those amazing memories you have for said game for numerous reasons, no matter how hard you try.

I think the trick is just to play something older that you've never experienced before, or something you might of played but never completed. That's exactly what i did with on the Wii's Virtual console with StarTropics, the entire Mainline linear traditional Castlevania Series spanning from I, II, III, IV and my personal favourite, Rondo of Blood and so much more. And it worked like a charm, and i had an absolute blast with the following above because for me, they were new-first time experiences that were part of a new consoles(Ala' Wii) ecosystem.

If you play older games, be it stand alone retro releases, compilations or NSO on lets say the Switch, you still feel like you're part of this one big universal collective experience, since the Switch is current and in the now. Try popping in something like Boogerman on Sega Genesis. You'll feel like one of the two people on the planet doing that exact very thing. Heck, playing the Wii in 2024 is nowhere near the same as it was 16 years ago. Not even remotely close. It's over. That generation is gonzo, as is the Wii U. The only console-players in town are Switch, PS5 and to a lesser extent, XSX.

@skywake
Funny you ask, because I did buy a GBC last year and was considering going with an updated screen.

So, in America at least, if you go through Ebay you're generally looking at about twice the price if you wanna get a modded screen. So, like 180 bucks instead of 90ish. If you get a screen kit and do it yourself, you can save maybe 20 bucks. That's for the backlit LCD stuff and some of the OLED. They even have touch-capable OLED screens that will run a little more.

For me, and again I know I seem absolutely bonkers, I decided to go with entirely original hardware. And it really wasn't about the money at all. (I think anybody who gets into retro stuff but wants to pinch pennies is just asking for trouble, but that's another discussion.) I really do value playing games the way they were originally envisioned and made to be played. So, I bought a totally original lime-green GBC for like 60 bucks. I even opened it up and replaced the capacitors myself after it was having some power-down issues in the middle of playing a game.

My Gameboy is the very same one I had as a kid, and I haven't modded it at all. It's still going strong 30 years later, pretty crazy.

I just think some of this modding stuff is losing the point of retro gaming... like, at what point does the GB(C) become something else entirely when you've completely modded the screen, changed the shell (many times to a non-OEM shell that changes the feel of the entire machine), and sometimes even added/modified the buttons? At that point, I would argue you're no longer looking for the retro experience itself, you're looking for a portable way to play the old portable games. And there's nothing wrong with that, but like you said you were considering, I would just recommend going with one of the newer 3rd-party emulation boxes as those things are going to do what you want without the annoyances of the original hardware.

Sorry for the long response, but from my experience, what you REALLY need to consider is: the cost of games. I don't know how those emulation boxes work exactly (and I don't truly want to know in terms of legality lol), but if you do go with an original GB or even one with just the screen modded, you need to factor in having to pony up the cash to buy every single game that you want to play.

@NeonPizza
I agree with most of that, and you have an interesting tip of trying something new (which I do want to do with some of the SNES stuff).

Now, I'm not saying I've unlocked the secret to life or anything, but I will say this for my own experience thus far: I don't buy anything for my collection that I don't plan on playing to completion at least once. I absolutely refuse to buy anything just to display it on a shelf or something. I don't buy anything sealed, and when I buy CIB it's only because the price is reasonable. I don't mind paying 60 dollars for a Gamebody game from the 90s because, honestly, I'm going to get as much time and fun out of it as most of the 60-dollar games I buy today. Case-in-point, I just finished my second playthrough of Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins yesterday, and I've been going back for a few minutes here and there to get the secret levels. I play through my copy of Super Mario Land probably once a month (gosh I love that game, I've probably beaten it dozens and dozens of times), and I have a copy of Metal Gear for GBC that I come back to almost every year.

I think it is strictly impossible to recapture lost memories because you can never fully replicate your life from that moment in time, but these old games still give me tons of joy, and they bring me back to a time when a game could be fun and rewarding to play for 15 minutes.

So, for now, my collection is manageable and relatively small. I'm not in a race to fill shelves, and I don't show it off to people outside of really close friends and family. I'm just gonna continue taking it at my own pace and only making purchases when I want to play something. (I'm on a leisurely hunt at the moment for a copy of Darkwing Duck for Gameboy - prices are a little high at the moment.)

@skywake
Oh man, those first wave mid to late 2000's LCD's were awful strictly in terms of Motion Smearing(Absolute deal breaker for me personally), terrible VA panel viewing Angles, high input lag(Another deal breaker) black levels were greyish, colours were artificially gross. Sure they offered 720 HD, progressive Scan, HDMI(a few years later), amazing brightness, were slim and light weight, but there were too many trade offs at least for me anyways.

I held on to my brand new 32" 4:3 Sony WEGA Trinitron CRT for about 6 years after 2005, and paired everything i threw at it with component cables, be it GameCube, Wii, and my PS3(which i barely touched, and typically just used a DVD/blu-ray player). and that TV was a beauty at the time. Sure, it weighed as much as a T-Rex's foot and was limited to 480i, but the incredibly blur-free motion clarity(Which stomps the OLED's of today), fantastic black levels/contrast, wonderful colour and zero latency completely made up for that.

Mind you, we all have our preferences, there's no right or wrong way to go about it. There's trade offs with all TV technologies at the end of the day, and you just have to shoot for what works for you.

QD-'OLED', like the current Samsung S90D, is easily the best current TV technology to currently game on. Colours get close to plasma & CRT(Where as LG WOLED colours are pretty awful unless you get creative and ignore what the recommended colour settings are.), the 'out of box' black crushing can easily be corrected without a professional calibration. Then you have perfect black levels, great SDR Brightness, whiter whites, 144fps, GameMotion Plus which artificially forces a fake 120fps into your 60fps games etc etc.

OLED motion can look good once you've enabled black frame insertion or run games at 120fps, since both will cut down 50% of the motion blur and give you cleaner plasma-tier motion clarity. 144fps takes it a step further and reduces, I'm guessing, about 60%. 120fps = 8.3ms persistence, where as 144fps is 6.94ms based on what I've been told. CRT by comparison is blur-free at 1ms, just like the quest 3.

Unfortunately, QD-OLED BFI can jack up the latency to about 30ms(with the S90C) which breaks the experience. The LG C4 or G4's BFI supposedly bumps the lag up to 16ms which is totally doable, but you're also cutting down 50% of SDR game mode brightness, and then you have to deal with BFI flicker on whites.

Although, there may be one solution and it's expensive. The RetroTINK4K, which has a feature that boosts brightness by reinforcing HDR into SDR with G4 game mode's BFI and should get you back to the G4's original peak SDR brightness. That scaler only adds 2.5ms of latency btw, but it will run you $1100 CAD.

That scaler also boasts dual strobe BFI for 24fps(and maybe 30fps) content, with movies & TV which will cut down 50-60% of OLED motion blur that no internal OLED TV BFI can do. It does it at 1080p however, and the BFI flicks may be bothersome. I'll have to try it out for myself once i pick one up in the following months!

https://www.retrotink.com/product-page/retrotink-4k

The one I got shipped with a microSD card full of ROMs so there's that. For what it's worth I removed it and added my own set of ROMs. And I use a rule of only adding ROMs for games I have on cartridge, bought on VC, have on the SNES mini or are on NSO which I'm subscribed to. Although I did make an exception for Mother 3, X and the Neo Geo Pocket Colour.....

Also Cave Story because Cave Story

Is that technically within what Nintendo would consider reasonable use? Probably not. But the way I see it I'm giving them significantly more money through NSO+ than I would be through a secondhand game store (i.e. nothing). Plus the main benefit is the form factor and, well, the existence of Pokemon

If Nintendo made a Switch Micro that had NSO I'd probably use that instead

@skywake
Oh man, I think Nintendo is leaving sooooooooooo much money on the table by not making a GBC "mini" loaded with dozens of games, all fully on the up and up. They could even let you hook it up to the internet to download more stuff for 10 bucks a pop or something. They would sell millions of the things. Millions.

The more reputable handheld makers don't include pirated games. Retroid handhelds come with a bunch of emulators installed, but you've got to supply the games, BIOS files, encryption keys, and so on. Aya Neo, AYN Odin, and GPD devices don't even come with emulators, just a bare Android or Windows install.

So far as an official handheld from Nintendo goes, there's not much of a gap in the market between the Game & Watch, at the collectable novelty end, and the Switch Lite which, after all, already gives you access to a good chunk of the GBC library if you've got an NSO subscription.

I can see them making further Game & Watches, which may include some GBC games, but probably not a dedicated device.

I'd been thinking of some kind of NSO only retro device as well, but I'd imagined it as a GBA SP clamshell design. I can imagine Nintendo would be interested if they thought it would either grow, or support renewal of NSO subs. I can't imagine they'd bother with a device that just had a few dozen games like that NES or SNES minis. That concept seems a bit 'last decade' now. I do think there is a gap in the market for it between Game and Watch (~£50 GBP) and Switch Lite (still £199 GBP). Or maybe that's just because the Lite is overpriced in the UK?

I can see the Lite dropping to 100 bucks by the Holidays.

Since Nintendo never did this with the Switch, I would love a Switch 2 micro, clamshell-style. Squish all the bells and whistles into two foldable plates, even using 3DS slide pads if they must. Folded up it could resemble the size of an extra large smart phone, and I would be a smitten kitten.

Still have my red GBA SP stored in a Japanese-import MH4 3DS leather case 😆 No buttons and D-Pad have felt as snappy and long-lasting as those on my old GBA SP.

@Matt_Barber This is the problem though with drip feeding only the most recognizable first-party GBA games. So many GBA games are being left out, and for all we know they'll just move on to NintendoDS NSO for the Switch 2. And once again, even more so with DS, so many DS games will end up being left out in the NSO app. DS had hundreds of great games, many of them small, experimental and third-party.

Even with GBA NSO, a few "big" games like from Square Enix are just begging to be added, to no avail. Games like FFTAdvance, KHChain of Memories. Even for DS, Nintendo might leave out games like FFXII: Radiant Wings, games that were more obscure but would be fun to relive on NSO.

I mean, it’s not confirmation of widespread 4k support but I mean…

@NarwhalKing
Beat me to it. Not enough here to assume it's actually catering for Switch 2 but there's a fair bit of smoke there. I mean if you were to code a game on Switch to cater for the capabilities of Switch 2 the resolution the display is running at would be a decent way to do it. And it'd also mean handheld mode on Switch 2 runs at "docked settings"

This could also lend credence to the idea of Nintendo altering already released games to run better via a simple patch/upgrade like we've been spitballing.

TTYD 4k no way

I love how TTYD looks on Switch, so making it look even better would be exciting! I’m content with TTYD how it is, but I won’t say no to more if this actually hinted at something!