phart010

1 hour ago, darkchylde28 said:

Well, I mean, in all seriousness, this fits Nintendo's M.O. of "let's sell them the same software as many times as we can" to an absolute T.  If they accidentally stepped into using industry standard technology that automatically kills off consumers' ability to re-play their old games, a big chunk of their job is already done without needing to lift a finger. 

Realistically, I don't think they would have to have known, as virtually every reputable electronics company will do stress/age testing on all of their hardware, and how do you test for what happens with non-powered RAM chips over times beyond letting them sit unpowered?  They might have discovered this issue before consumers started running across it and stayed mum about it (which would make sense from the perspective of them trying to avoid a recall/lawsuit/etc.), but I don't think this is something they really could have anticipated beforehand, otherwise there would have been all sorts of articles from various technology experts, industry experts, Nintendo's competitors, etc. at launch, not more than a deacde later.

I agree they knew that electronic chips holding a charge will eventually lose charge rendering them useless. This has been known like forever. 

The part that I disagreed is that they were “scheming” to make Wii U’s that fail after a certain amount of time so that they can resell the titles on Switch.

As far as Nintendo is concerned, the Wii U sales numbers were so insignificant that they had to re-release all of the titles. The fact that chips and hardware dies off was most likely not even a consideration in the decision to re-release Wii U titles.

The fact that chips are losing charge already is pretty concerning though. Industry standards for the lifespans of these type of products have never really been officially defined, but up until now it has always been 20+ years. That’s really important because if your gonna spend the money to build up a software library for a system, the consumer should have some assurance that their libraries won’t become obsolete for a reasonable amount of time.  

If Wii U’s are already going dead after only around 8-11 years, this is a big shift away from previous lifespan expectations for game consoles. I wonder if any similar system dependent chips were used in the Switch.

I wonder what is going to happen to sealed collecting on Switch with people knowing that the game inside of the sealed plastic will eventually go obsolete if it doesn’t get energized every now and then

There were a bunch of these on eBay a few years ago when I bought mine. It’s funny because they were actually selling for less than the retail version. I got it for $20 while at the same time the retail game was maybe in the $50 range.

I agree that it should be valued higher than the retail version though. The market just hasn’t come to that realization yet. It will. in time..

5 hours ago, DarkTone said:

Nintendo knew they fucked up. Then ported a majority to switch because they knew. 

I don’t agree. Because if it’s true what they are saying and Switch cartridges suffer from the same fate, then having porting the games to switch only extends the lifespan of the games by another 5-10 years 

Maybe someone will come up with a new chip that can go into Wii U to give them second life

1 hour ago, fcgamer said:

I owned a GBC, though my brother didn't. I find it astonishing that some here never even saw one before.

Edit: that purple color as a launch was ugh though.

I think they had to roll with purple because it was like the only color they hadn’t already done with the play it loud series or the gameboy pockets. It would not stand out if they re-used a color.

According to TechCrunch in 2021:

To date, Tile has sold more than 40 million devices and has over 425,000 paying customers — a metric it’s revealing for the first time. It doesn’t disclose its total number of users, both free and paid combined, however.
 

Likely  even more users today. 

3 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

I may be about to get schooled here but here's my understanding of how an Airtag works from my limited knowledge of Apple products.

The Airtag is battery powered and will connect to any passing iPhone, there's no additional authentication required and the iPhone doesn't require a special application downloaded. The passing iPhone will upload the device's location so long as the Airtag is near any iPhone (or iPod Touch).

The other devices posted require an application to be downloaded and can only really report back to the owner's phone. So once the Tile leaves the area near my specific phone, it will never report its location until I get within communication distance again.

I'm going to be shipping something across the country and want to track its movement.

The Tile will ping its location to anyone who has the Tile app installed on their phone. Since Tile has a large user base (it’s sold in retail stores like Target and Walmart), chances are if you are within city limits, it will ping off of plenty of phones. I would guess several times a day as long as it is within range of any moderately trafficked street

You could get a tile. They’re kind of similar 

3 hours ago, RH said:

Instead, I want an all new system intended to be its own thing.  It can have a Switch card slot and be back-compat, but I don’t want the new games to have to be compatible with the old system.  It will hold the new system back.

I doubt new games would work on the old Switch. Basically like how the *NEW* 3DS games didn’t work on the old 3DS

I think GBC  is like the DSi versus DS

or the *NEW* 3DS versus the regular 3DS

1 hour ago, Gloves said:

GBC is stinky poo-poo.

You must not be familiar with the library.
That or you think is a good thing

12 minutes ago, RH said:

Well, the Switch came out shortly after the Wii U.  Assuming this theory is correct, any chance this could happen to the Switch?

I would think this is the case for any device that has NAND system chips. 

Basically it’s bit rot. Bit rot is mostly a problem on programmable chips. It’s not so much a thing on MASK roms. 

Any system that has NAND system chips will be in danger of this. You might be able to reflash the chip directly onto the pins. But if the chip is encrypted that might be an issue.

I read that if you reenergize the circuit, it has a way of refreshing the stored energy charges (representing bits of data). Maybe can even self repair some completely lost bits of the data as long as the data isn’t totally corrupted.

42 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

They'd be flat out wrong, then, as those were absolutely GBC games, and came in GBC branded boxes.  The fact that they were backwards compatible with the original system (or GBP / Game Boy Pocket, since that's what Nintendo was shilling at the time) should be considered an additional asset, not a penalty that knocks them back a generation.

I agree but try telling that to a person who never held a gameboy color in their hands but has a few black carts that they play  in their collection 

GBC does have two handfuls of good games. I don’t do full set collecting since it’s absurd, but I do pick up games that I like and probably have a few dozen of GBC games.

I suspect a lot of people don’t count the black carts as part of GBC since they still work on the regular GB. But they play way better in color.

6 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

The GBC released about a year before the NGPC did, so it's hard to call it a follow up to kill that system when it didn't exist when the GBC came out.  It really came down to Nintendo having brand recognition, backwards compatibility, and a year-long head start that killed the NGPC.  Maybe you're thinking about the original NGP that launched at nearly the same time that the GBC did?

Yea I maybe could have got that backwards. Maybe it was the GBC released to kill the NGP. Then NGPC had to be made quickly to keep up.

I thought GBC was in response to NGP but it seem GBC came out a few days earlier. Maybe Nintendo had knowledge that NGP was being worked on? Or maybe I am just not remembering the story

It seems low effort because it was. Nintendo would have went straight to GBA from GB. They specifically made the GBC to kill the Neo Geo Pocket which had recently made a colorized system. It wasnt made for our enjoyment, it was made to keep Neo Geo out of the handheld market

I didn’t see anyone discussing this trailer, though it appears it is 8 days old…

I noticed all the text in this trailer is in another language, though it appears to have been posted by Nintendo of America.. maybe some other region leaked out a new trailer too early?

12 hours ago, CMR said:

How are the controls on this remaster?  Are they still like the GameCube's, or can you undock the remotes and use them like the will nunchuck combo?

I heard you can play both ways. Also the gyros built into the controller give another degree of control when aiming with the sticks

@Vaosuthanks for your input. This game looks incredibly complicated.

Do they make mahjong as a deck of cards? Seems like it would be more convenient to transport around that way. 

7 hours ago, Webhead123 said:

I just don't trust Nintendo's supply chain not to become hijacked by fuggin' scalpers (which, as far as I've heard, isn't that already happening and it isn't even out yet?)

I suspect there may be shenanigans at play.. Nintendo has been know to play games with supply and demand in order to tease customers, ultimately influencing people to buy games at least partially with the element of FOMO. 

The leadtime on manufacturing video games has got to be at least a couple of weeks. Add ocean freight from Japan on top of that and maybe it takes at least a month to bring new shipments of games to the stores. If the stock of this game is already depleted in retail stores and we get more restocks later this week or next week, that tells me that they probably have a ton of stock sitting in a Nintendo warehouse and they are just slow-dripping it out to build hype and to get people to talk about the game.

I am anticipating that this game sells at minimum 5 million copies and maybe up to 10 million and I’m sure Nintendo knows this too

I am a 2D Metroid fanboy so naturally did not get overly excited for Metroid Prime Remastered. But I respect the series and am quite surprised that there is still no discussion about this new remaster which has been out for like two weeks now.

Who’s been playing? I wanted to pick up a physical copy, but they are sold out, so I will delay playing it until a restock happens. No biggie, it’s just a Metroid Prime game, I can wait

16 minutes ago, DK said:

I wouldn't be surprised if they are out there. 

About 10 years ago I got these RBI Baseball labels from someone who worked at Tengen. Never seen a roll of licensed labels for sale though.

So you could do a label swap and technically people can’t say that it is a repro label

On 5/16/2020 at 10:33 AM, ThePhleo said:

That's the complete list except for 5-Screw Stadium Events, and 5-Screw R.C. Pro-Am.

Both of which are so rare, that everyone's set even with Mike Tyson & Mega Man should be considered complete since there's only 3 known copies of Stadium Events, and 1 known copy of R.C. Pro-Am to have 5 screws.

Also on the WTF rarity list is 3-Screw Stinger which is confirmed to exist and even have a matching REV-A / No HT box!

I wonder if there are any one of a kind 5 screws out there that nobody has on their radar due to being cart refurbs from either Nintendo or the publisher. 

Look at this: Limited Run Josh Fairhurst, the developer/publisher of Breach and Clear, has a spool of extra Vita cart labels sent to him from Sony. He could presumably do a label replacement and the replaced label would still be considered original. I wonder if publishers back then also had extra OEM game labels and a stock of 5 screw shells that could be used to refurbish games with

It seems strange to me that 5 screw Megaman could be more desirable than purple Megaman 6.

4 hours ago, Tyree_Cooper said:

All those XX in 1 you still see being sold in western countries at big retailers, usually come from HK/TW/CH companies, they usually have assets from wayyy back, still making money out of that, crazy. Lots of ehr illegal stuff in there (stolen assets), but somehow it's tolerated by the owners (Nintendo, Sega, Sony etc).

 

Is it that they tolerate it.. or do they not have the resources to track down who to contact to let them know they are in violation especially since another business can easily pop up with same/similar product. Killing illegal games is like slaying a Hydra.

Something interesting I found while reading up on the World Intellectual Property Organization. Taiwan is not listed as a member nation. It could be that China is pulling its political shenanigans trying to disallow them from being recognized. If this is they case, then Taiwan can be a free haven for IP theft and nobody can do anything about.

Taiwan can always say we’ll crack down on IP as soon as you ask us to become a member to the agreement. WIPO can’t ask them to stop it because as far as they’re concerned, they are already included under China.