Sometimes, this overlap was quite profound but not 100%. NeoGeo home consoles famously use the same hardware and software as their arcade counterparts, but the game cartridges were not pin-compatible. The Nintendo VS line were technically the same as a Famicom/NES, but not the same build; the software has subtle differences. Perhaps the Nintendo PlayChoice would count but again, it's not like they used NES mainboards to build those.
So, the idea of taking a Nintendo console mainboard and grafting it to SEGA-designed components so it can run in a dedicated arcade cabinet, is just wild to me.
From there, Nintendo relied on gimmicks and corporate mascots/IP.
I guess sega was a few years ahead of them on their own timeline.
I’m not sure how successful it was, it was outsold by Xbox and PS2. Although the Xbox was a massive money pit for Microsoft. At least in Europe the Gamecube began to disappear from retail a fair bit before the Wii was out as well. Still, got things like a Wavebird for cheap on clearance though…
Can't play DVDs (PS2, or XBox with the remote accessory,) can't even play audio CDs. Let's remember that this was also an era where half or less of the on campus freshmen had a desktop computer for their dorm, let alone something like a laptop.
That said one could also argue that Nintendo was more focused on mobile at the time, between the GBA and DS, both of which certainly carried them through that era.
I think one could argue that the DS's success alongside the challenges Gamecube had for adoption, led to the philosophy involved in the Wii's design.
I think you're underselling the role of their game design expertise. They figured out that there's more to games than high fidelity graphics, a concept which has somehow alluded most AAA game studios.
Must have taken a heckin' amount of work!
I think maybe you were trying to cater to the "christians" or snowflake conservatives
Etymology
From heck as a euphemism for hell.
It was a pretty great console, in its own way.
But thanks to the community, after reflashing it with Gekkoboot it can load Swiss from a SP2SD2, and from there load ROMs from the SD card! Reflashing the modchip was a pain in the ass though, the programmer required a parallel port and the software only runs on Windows XP, but in the end it worked and I am pretty happy with the results.
Not that I particularly care if it's legal; I seriously doubt anyone is going to break into my house to seize my MiSTer as contraband, but I think it's entirely possible that emulation progress stalls because it's forced to move into the shadows.
Are Dolphin and emulation in general going to be legal in the future? Easy, if Nintendo chooses to go with Morrison & Foerster or Fish & Richardson for a lawsuit I'm going with "no".
Hint: The blog post says they made a way to dump the games.
[1]: https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/cons... [2]: https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/copyright-and-the-digita... [3]: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117
But there is not a carve out for breaking DRM to do so. It's not the backup part that is the problem with dumping them. It's that these games are encrypted and decrypting them requires breaking the DRM scheme which is illegal.
I also disagree more broadly with the initial moral indignation over a perceived violation of copyright law -- legality and morality are two different things, copyright law is meant to be a balanced trade-off between the public and creators but modern copyright laws are a travesty. What ever happened to the hacker ethos behind DeCSS and the anti-"illegal numbers" movement?
[1]: https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/cons...
It's for solely achieving interoperability. It only covers the development of the emulator. Using it to get a picture for explaining what a game is in the blog post is not DRM being broken for solely achieving interoperability.
>What ever happened to the hacker ethos behind DeCSS and the anti-"illegal numbers" movement?
In practice the idea that you can't break laws if you are doing things via a computer is fundamentally flawed.
Perhaps as a result, we might see LLM and video model-powered games become mainstream in arcades before any home consumer platforms.
Even for really old stuff like Space Harrier the feeling of moving along with the screen gives you a more visceral experience than almost any VR setup. Hard to fake the effects of gravity!
[0] has a list (in japanese) of moving arcade machines. Mikado in Takadanobaba has some of these. These things are getting older and older of course so the window of opportunity is unfortunately shrinking as time goes on.
(EDIT: just realised that list itself is over 10 years old at this point so YMMV)
[0]: https://www.space-harrier.com/arcade.html
The best arcade games sell did this - it doesn’t take much - like the pedal for time crisis. Sure you _can_ buy one at home but most people don’t and even then it’s a crap placid pedal.
I’ve seen a couple of bars open up that try to have an arcade as well but they never take care of the machines/drunk people break them, so after a few months half the games don’t even work. There’s only so many times I can lose a quarter or a dollar before I decide it’s not worth it anymore and I just go drink somewhere else with friends.
The only real arcade left in my city is attached to a laser tag, it would be super weird for a bunch of grown men in their 30s and 40s to roll up during kids’ birthday parties they weren’t invited to lol
I think part of the barrier to expanding the attached-to-other-things arcade concept is the whole aesthetic: an arcade is loud, with flashing lights, giant and sometimes lurid artwork on the machines. I think if you were able to make some machines that gave a high quality experience without all that side of it, you might be able to install them in other semi-public spaces: airports, train stations, shopping malls, basically anywhere you currently see things like massage chairs.
That said, maintenance is for sure a concern. The state of most public pianos does not inspire confidence.
https://f1arcade.com/uk
They have 50-odd full-motion Formula One simulators in each location and they seem to be aiming for a much higher quality experience than an arcade.
WHAAAAAAAAAT
Seriously insane levels of money-no-object zero-fucks-given design.
Anyway, Mikado in Ikebukuro has the standard F-Zero AX cabinet, and it is great. I have never visited their game center in Takadanobaba though, it is still in my TODO list...
Zenius: https://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v5.2/arcade.php?id=2701#games has a list of the games, please bare in mind that this is a community driven database.