Nintendo Announces Dual-Screen Portable
- Thread starter casper
- Start date
This machine obviously isn't going to be as powerful as PSP, but why the assumption this machine will only do 2D? Both the arm9 and arm7 are 32 bit cpus over 100mHz and the wording of that announcment says each screen will have it's own CPUs. That is 2 arm9's, 2 arm7's. Even without gpu(s) that is more than plenty to do 3D on this machine, for both screens even.
Or am I missing something? Hell, some games are in 3D on the gba!
Or am I missing something? Hell, some games are in 3D on the gba!
Come on now, you're exaggerating. I was playing all three of those fine on my 486 SX 33, so there's no reason why this GB shouldn't be able to do at least some 3D. The specs you've listed could probably run Q1 or Q2 in software mode at a decent clip, if nothing else. Heck, the original GBA has a version of Wing Commander Prophecy on it, (although the graphics look as though they're about on par with the 3DO version of WCIII).
I was referring to this. Where did you read that the screens will be ontop of one another? I haven't seen any reference to this, except when people were talking about 20 year old handheld versions of donkey kong.
By the way, I think I still have that one laying somewhere around my old house. Are those things worth anything today? Maybe I can ebay it.
Clashman said:
When I checked News.Yahoo.com for articles I read a Reuters story that said "one above the other". Here it is...
Nintendo Unveils Dual-Screen Portable Game Unit
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040121/tc_nm/tech_nintendo_dc_3
It's probably been reported in other articles as well.
Tommy McClain
Teasy said:
Right on the money with those observations. Taking games to the next level is what this is all about. The DS is a system that increases the creativity potential for game designers. It isn't about just giving more power to game engine programmers to throw more pixels around on a screen.
Nintendo has bored me in recent years, but this is a nifty direction to take gameplay. All this talk about gameplay and how to take advantage of a second screen shows Nintendo is on the right track with this system.
Saying that this is not the GBA successor seems to me that it's just a way out for nintendo if it turns out to be another Virtual Boy. It can die without tarnishing the Gameboy name.
Anyhow, if nintendo thinks this is such a great idea, I want to see their next console be able to support dual screens with seperate images.(gamecube can if both are interlaced since it has two video out ports, but it's the same image on both and only one would get sound)
I except the 3d on this thing to be somewhere in between n64 and dreamcast if it includes a 3d chip, if not I'd say at least PSX quality.
BTW, if nintendo wanted to do this, couldn't they have just had a widescreen, and for games that need dual images just split it down the center? Well, I suppose it might be confusing for two different viewpoints(btw, the fact that they even mentioned viewpoints seems to me that it will support 3d primarily) but no more so than split screen gaming on consoles.
This is less exciting to me than the virtual boy though, at least the virtual boy seemed cool and unique to me. This is just giving me an extra screen to worry about smudging fingerprints on or extra weight to the handheld. At least on a pc I could have a flight sim with 3 monitors, but this, when the screens are so close, it would ruin any illusion.(and it only has 2 screens, not 3, what are you going to do, split the image down the center?) But this seems like either every game is going to be a gimmick, or the extra screen is mostly a waste.
BTW, nintendo said gba to gamecube connection would offer new gameplay possibilities, but I've seen nothing that couldn't be done full screen(you can't look at the tv and the gameboy at the same time) or with a small screen in the corner of the screen, ala metal gear solid. The pacman vs was interesting, but I like splinter cell pandora tomorrow's way of doing it better.(the internet achieves a similar concept there and will probably do it much better) Anyhow, what was nintendo's big idea that made it worth pushing GBA connectivity? Since they started it the only thing's they've done are the tingle tuner, animal crossing, and pacman vs. It was probably thought of like this "Hey, we're just using the Gameboy for data transfer. Maybe we can do it for something else as well? The screen!" Maybe this thing was thought of as "Ok, the gba->gc link has problems, the gba screen, memory, and display hardware is too limited and too hard to see, plus it requires two systems. This will fix that! We'll come up with games later." Or maybe they'll finally put out whatever it was they designed the gc->gba link for.
Maybe this new handheld will be old fashioned gameboy oriented, only with two screens on it and be really long? It could still fold up.
If this turns out to be two handhelds that can join together but are sold in one box, I'll like it though. The ability to have two players with 1 system and 1 game would be nice.
Anyhow, if nintendo thinks this is such a great idea, I want to see their next console be able to support dual screens with seperate images.(gamecube can if both are interlaced since it has two video out ports, but it's the same image on both and only one would get sound)
I except the 3d on this thing to be somewhere in between n64 and dreamcast if it includes a 3d chip, if not I'd say at least PSX quality.
BTW, if nintendo wanted to do this, couldn't they have just had a widescreen, and for games that need dual images just split it down the center? Well, I suppose it might be confusing for two different viewpoints(btw, the fact that they even mentioned viewpoints seems to me that it will support 3d primarily) but no more so than split screen gaming on consoles.
This is less exciting to me than the virtual boy though, at least the virtual boy seemed cool and unique to me. This is just giving me an extra screen to worry about smudging fingerprints on or extra weight to the handheld. At least on a pc I could have a flight sim with 3 monitors, but this, when the screens are so close, it would ruin any illusion.(and it only has 2 screens, not 3, what are you going to do, split the image down the center?) But this seems like either every game is going to be a gimmick, or the extra screen is mostly a waste.
BTW, nintendo said gba to gamecube connection would offer new gameplay possibilities, but I've seen nothing that couldn't be done full screen(you can't look at the tv and the gameboy at the same time) or with a small screen in the corner of the screen, ala metal gear solid. The pacman vs was interesting, but I like splinter cell pandora tomorrow's way of doing it better.(the internet achieves a similar concept there and will probably do it much better) Anyhow, what was nintendo's big idea that made it worth pushing GBA connectivity? Since they started it the only thing's they've done are the tingle tuner, animal crossing, and pacman vs. It was probably thought of like this "Hey, we're just using the Gameboy for data transfer. Maybe we can do it for something else as well? The screen!" Maybe this thing was thought of as "Ok, the gba->gc link has problems, the gba screen, memory, and display hardware is too limited and too hard to see, plus it requires two systems. This will fix that! We'll come up with games later." Or maybe they'll finally put out whatever it was they designed the gc->gba link for.
Maybe this new handheld will be old fashioned gameboy oriented, only with two screens on it and be really long? It could still fold up.
If this turns out to be two handhelds that can join together but are sold in one box, I'll like it though. The ability to have two players with 1 system and 1 game would be nice.
Fox5 said:
It had the Reality Coprocessor...
It did include various things, one of them being a unit roughly equivalent to the PS2's vector units.
It also had a rudimentary pixel shader in its rasteriser, but it was weak, slow, and complicated.
AFAIR T&L was done entirely on the host r4300i, though.
