Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii | Hacker News Reader

Kawaii – A Keychain-Sized Nintendo Wii

bitbuilt.net

749 pointsrealslimjd215 comments

The "Thundervolt" reference in that post is a project where they cut up a Wii PCB to leave just the DRAM and the processors on the PCB, and then they slap an external DCDC board on top of that cut up PCB to provide power to it, while also undervolting it since you reduce the IR losses.

https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/thundervolt.62...

That is pretty insane.

IR losses? Never heard that one

I believe he means I²R losses in resistive elements

Which would reduce heat and therefore make it easier to cool in a small form factor.

The heat dissipated on traces is significant, but not that significant.

No I think he literally means IR losses. ie voltage droop V=IR

Modern VRMs also reduce output voltage when the CPU draws more current. That way when the CPU later draws less current, the voltage doesn't inductively spike up and damage the CPU. Overclockers call this LLC (load line calibration), but don't google that because electrical engineers don't use that term and most articles and reddit threads explain this ass-backwards. Google "Active Voltage Positioning" instead to find correct documentation.

If your VRM is close to the chip, voltage droop will be ~0 and LLC can be ~0. This allows you to undervolt more and save power without instability. This is probably why most server CPUs have voltage conversion inside the chip (FIVR, Fully integrated voltage regulators)

Yup, all of what you said is correct.

Here's some more info on the motherboard and what can be trimmed off and/or replaced: https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/wii-motherboar...

is there a goal in undervolting? Is it about minimizing the energy consumption of a Wii system? If so, how much did they save?

The kawaii forum post says the undervolting allows them to passively cool the wii

At this point I'm a bit surprised that nobody has created a netlist of the board and simply reinstalled the relevant chips on it. There has to be more density that can be eked out for easier that way than carefully taking a Dremel to an existing board.

There are a few reasons for it: - the cut board is compact enough for most/all hobby projects

- you can get Wiis for very cheap nowadays, perhaps cheaper than the parts themselves

- the original board makes heavy use of serpentine tracks. If they are not just to equalize track length, it’d be very hard to account for all delays in a redesign.

ofc I’m not a part of the community so their reasons might be complete different

In case the scale renderings weren't illustrative, this is just how small the GC Nano is https://www.reddit.com/r/Gamecube/comments/13u8km5/worlds_sm...

Thank you. I was confused by the renders on the page.

Seems... large? I was expecting something substantially smaller than a flip foldable phone.

That's not the Kawaii though, a little under halfway down the linked article, there's a size comparison between the GC Nano and the Kawaii - https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/kawaii.6474/

The base is the same size, still quite large for being called "keychain-sized".

Wallet-sized, I guess.

60x60x16mm, so it is 20% smaller than a credit card (in surface area)

It's about the size of just the screen of a GBA. It's shorter than your smartphone. You could absolutely hang that from a keychain at that size, even if it wouldn't really make sense to.

It's crazy that we could now build a Wii that's self-contained within the sensor bar...

Don't give Nintendo any more ideas. :P

Why not? That's a fantastic idea, and I'd love to see Nintendo do that.

It's a running joke the internet has about Nintendo. They will run with ideas and sue you later.

Instead of a sensor bar you can use two burning candles.

You can what now?

the "sensor" is actually in the remote. The bar is just two infrared leds seperated by a known distance, that the infrared camera in the remote uses to figure out it's position.

I play a bit of flightsim and our head tracking works the same way. Camera receives IR LED position for head movement axis, program does the interpretation of movement.

There's a homebrew head tracking demo [0] for the wii that has you put a sensor bar on your head, and a wiimote on top of your TV. I messed around with it over a decade ago and found it very convincing.

0: https://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Headtracking

Very convincing indeed. IMO it's almost as good as (if not better than) head mounted VR goggles. At least it doesn't cause motion sickness.

The person who came up with that idea, Johnny Lee¹, went on to work on the xbox and I believe was also involved in development of the Kinect.

1. https://www.youtube.com/@jcl5m

The sensor bar isn't actually a sensor, just two IR blasters that the cameras on the wiimotes use for positioning.

You can use any two sources of infrared light instead!

Before I knew this I had someone pull out their lighter and point the remote at it when our sensor bar died. Took me a little bit to figure it out.

I blame Nintendo for calling their "2 lights bar" that doesn't have any sensor a "sensor bar".

If I were to place you on a team in my company, I'd more likely place you in engineering than marketing :)

It's a bar that the sensors need to find. It's not optimal but it's a fine use.

The sensor bar is ACTUALLY not two IR blasters, but two sets of 5 commodity IR LEDs!

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-making-a-diy-wiibar

The sensor bar is passive - it's just two infrared diodes so the Wiimote can get an idea of its own position.

So you can replace it with candles as they emite infrared light as well!

I always thought it was hilariously similar to how to old NES zapper worked - the sensor was in the gun, it decided what you ‘hit’ based on what the sensor saw when the tv flashed. I think it was an early instance of me recognizing an engineering ‘hack’ - instead of the target reporting whether it had been hit, it was the gun reporting whether it thought it had hit the target.

Yeah I was amazed when I first bought a wireless sensor bar, and there was nothing to plug into the console!

Turns out all the smarts are in the controllers, the bar is just there to show a couple of fixed points for positioning.

For fun, go look up Johnny Lee Wiimote candles. It showcases it fairly well.

Also man do I feel old - coming up on 15-20 years since that and I actually remember HN discussion about it from the earlier days.

The Wii isn't that huge to start with. You also have to figure the Wii unit houses full optical drive as well.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nintendo+Wii+Teardown/812

https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/ewv3yZPOujCRpKEj.hug...

That's it. And they didn't include the controller ports and other bits. For instance, I don't think it has Bluetooth or WiFi antennas, so it can't connect to Wiimotes or a network.

So if you wanted all of that back, it would be a little bigger. But not by much. Probably the size of the Game Boy Advance in the picture. If that.

But if all you wanted was Smash Bros on a keychain, here you go.

Does it count if you need to plug it into an external dock to play?

I'm thinking similarly. But you don't need GameCube controllers to use a wii. I think that's all the dock adds.

You can't use the base unit by itself - according to the specs from the link, the dock has the actual power input and A/V output connectors.

Basically they cheated.

The discussion in the forum points out that the Kawaii doesn't come with any wireless capabilities (they're all trimmed off the board), so unless the console is docked, you seemingly can't control it at all. Perhaps you could come up with a separate controller connector that mates with the plugs on the console without the rest of the dock.

That's fair. So then yeah I guess the dock is needed. Considering it didn't look that big, if I bought one of these I'd probably want it integrated instead.

The point of this project is more about squeezing the Wii into the smallest possible footprint rather than making it convenient to use. If you wanted something similar with ports integrated though, check out the GC Nano (which despite looking like a Gamecube has Wii internals), or Short Stack.

GC Nano: https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/gc-nano-the-wo...

Short Stack: https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/short-stack-th...

I think if you could give the unit power, get a video signal out, and control it somehow, it would feel more complete. It's an amazing little device but if it really can't be used at all without the dock... does it count as the smallest?

As someone who is absolutely not part of that scene, I obviously don't get a say in that.

Because it works on its own, I consider the Short Stack the more impressive project.

Both are super exciting though. Maybe a few years down the line, we get some 2" LCDs integrated or something for truly portable play.

The "dock" could just be a 7" display, controllers, and a power input. Not fully wireless but certainly handheld. Could even give it a catchy name, like "Wii You".

Dock with USB-C power input, x4 GCC controller ports, composite/component video output, & stereo audio output

This is absolutely lovely work, and the whole trim concept is mindblowing.

Buuuut yeah I thought similarly - there's no video output, power input or any way to connect controllers without that dock.

Compare it to one of the other tiny builds - https://github.com/loopj/short-stack - which seems to support wireless remotes, has HDMI and takes USB-C for power.

So is this project (a) taking the real Wii parts and putting them on a smaller PCB, (b) a different design with a more efficient same-architecture CPU, or (c) an entirely new design that is emulating the Wii hardware? Can the device run the real Wii OS or is it running a replacement OS capable of launching Wii games?

It is based on the Wii Omega trim, which is a cut down original Wii motherboard removing all the non essentials.

Some components in this build are reconnected to the board using a flexible PCB connector, but the core is just a cut down OEM Wii board.

There's a long history of people taking an original Wii motherboard and physically trimming the PCB with rotary tools (or a hacksaw) to put them in smaller enclosures, usually to make them portable.

Check out the short stack GitHub for an overview of how a previous mod was done. Literally chopping up the motherboard to the bare minimum then adding back things with daughterboards https://github.com/loopj/short-stack

This is just fantastic. I wonder how small older consoles can be these days while still maintaining full hardware compatibility.

very, could make an adapter dongle for anything requiring pins

The PS2 Ultra Slim is a fun one: https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/ps2-ultra-slim...

And it still has the original controller/memory card ports!

with FPGA's you can have 100 consoles in one. https://misteraddons.com/

Though I might say that’s cheating, it is a welcome solution

You would likely get into “full compatibility” lawyering very quickly. Many of the consoles have weirdo hardware components in some module or another that is still poorly understood.

See the R36S clones from China

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006152991376.html

If we're counting emulation they can get even smaller than that, practicality be damned.

https://www.funkey-project.com

I already own a miyoo with the emus though I meant something that replicates the original hardware and can run the actual game cartridges/ISOs

A NES SoC would fit easily within the area of a microSD card containing all ROMs ever published for it, and the embedded controller in the latter would still have a few orders of magnitude more transistors and be faster than it.

This is very impressive but I think Short-Stack [1] is a more impressive project because it is a fully fonctionnal Wii (as in, it works on its own as you would expect from a regular Wii) compared to this one where it needs other accessories to be able to play.

[1]: https://github.com/loopj/short-stack previously discussed 3 months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40071826

> fully fonctionnal Wii (as in, it works on its own as you would expect from a regular Wii) compared to this one where it needs other accessories to be able to play.

I don’t believe the Wii you linked includes an IR bar, which is what your statement led me to expect.

Feels like the logical next step would be to ditch the stock motherboard altogether and make a custom one that you transfer the chips onto.

That's https://bitbuilt.net/forums/index.php?threads/nintendo-vegas...

I don't think it's worth the huge amount of effort extra compared to a simple trim.

For reference, 60mm is less than the width of even a compact smartphone, and 16mm is 1.5 to 2 times as thick. This thing is tiny.

Hell, it has about the same footprint as a gamecube disc.

It’s a hair smaller than a stack of 4 UMDs, the media the PSP used.

Or for some more common comparables: a bit less than the area of a credit card with a depth slightly less than the width of a dime.

There should be an ongoing contest to see who can produce the smallest functional miniaturisations of Nintendo Wii and other consoles. For science!

Is this something you'd need to download and install ROMs to use?

You could rip Wii games that you own the physical disk for.

No need to download if you've got physical copies. A hacked Wii (which is simple to set up nowadays) can easily dump your games to a usable legal ROM.

The Wii has got be the most hacked (literally!) console ever.

Not even close. That would be the Play Station or the Play Station 2.

Don't forget the Dreamcast. It got hacked on more than it got played.

It was def the dreamcast - the first model didn't require any hardware, just a burned CD-ROM. It's demise and Segas departure from consoles is blamed on the amount of piracy. A real shame, because it had some great games

The Dreamcast GPU was also really neat. It was tile based and could do order independent transparency!

One thing I was found interesting about Dreamcast piracy was that everyone was burning them onto 700 MB CD-Rs. But the retail games were actually pressed onto 1GB GD-ROMs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD-ROM

For a lot of games, it totally didn't matter (shoutout Ikaruga, 38 MBs! https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2023/03/the-worlds-sm...)

But for games that took advantage of the extra 300 MBs, pirates had to use all these tricks to get the game down to a CD-R size. They'd compress assets, compress or sometimes rip out the FMVs...I think they might have even split some games across multiple CDs.

That's why DRM cracks me up, the pirates will always figure a way around it one way or the other. (Especially in today's day and age where the live service model is so effective. I'd weep for the AAA single-player game, but I can't remember the last one I played and enjoyed. They've been dead for a long time. Long live the indie single-player game.)

Are there a lot of mods that literally hack up the mobo? I haven't seen many portable ps2s.

For pirating games: PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, for sure

For straight up modding: definitely the Xbox. The 007 and Mechwarrior bugs blew everything wide open, and the fact that it was just a PC with real (upgradeable!) storage spawned projects like XBMC, now known as Kodi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software)

And also piracy was rampant, but not the Swapmagic or Modchip kind. You could just upgrade the drive, _backup_ your games on there, and play 'em all of the drive.

The Wii and 3DS are also suuuuper open and hackable though. The homebrew scenes on both are incredibly impressive, not to mention the whole ecosystem of full blown launchers and shells and stuff. (Which, now that I think about it, was also a big deal on Xbox.)

On the XBOX, I wish PostmarketOS supported it. I know, x86, not x86_64, but it's still a nice platform to have. With the 128MB addon, Alpine/Linux/PmOS can do tons of things with the forked dillo (light HTTP/S | Gopher | Gemini client, a musis/video player with MPV, light office with Abiword/Gnumeric, a rescue system in case of something bad happens on the main PC, retrogaming with emulators, ScummVM (it will work with tinyGL)...

Is there anyone out there that will make a GC Nano for a fee? Don't have time / skillz to do this myself but I want one

I would say that it is just a bad idea for a start unless you plan to use wireless controllers.

With cable connected one you are just looking for a console that would be dragged left and right every time you pull a bit with the controller.

This is an insane response. This does not concern me at all and has nothing to do with what I said.

Kind of mad it's not called Kawa-wii

The name is so close to being truly perfect, but I guess being just a little bit off is a perk here?

It's cute, but personally I'd have gone for WiiChain or Nintendo Wee.

Not WeeWii?

Solid option!

It's not called the Kawii?

Why Kawii? Kawaii is japanese for cute

Because then it would be a better pun on "Wii". I also thought that "kawaii" was kind of a missed opportunity, personally. I would've gone for "kawaii" or something.

I would have gone with Kawawii, which would sound like Fujimori Shinjo's かわうぃーねー

Why am I downvoted for asking a question ffs, reddit mentality

I would’ve chosen “Key-wii”.

How can they make a Nintendo-labeled product like this without being sued?

I’m a complete sucker for retrogaming stuff and I. Want. That.

Using Nintendo’s branding in the box seems ill-advised. That’s giving Nintendo more fodder for the eventual lawsuit.

Isn't this using Nintendo hardware as well? I thought that was the point of these minification projects.

Doesn't matter. Reselling a modified brand product can count as counterfeiting. Legal conditional checks don't always coincide with human instinctive one, law is code too after all.

This is why juries must be instructed on nullification. It's The People's protection against money's use of criminal lawfare.

Historically, it's also been very useful when you want to murder a black person and get away with it in front of an all-white Southern jury.

Nullification is no more inherently righteous than a butcher knife.

[flagged]

What you are referencing is an edge case (and an old one at that).

A more recent one is the OJ trial.

But those are perfect examples of bad jurors.

It's up to you and your peers to be good jurors.

What system do you suggest?

It's all an edge case. Nullification isn't an intended right, it's an unavoidable loophole. It's the necessary consequence of a system where no one is allowed to tell a juror how to vote or demand that they justify their decision: there's no way to maintain those requirements and also punish jurors for ignoring the law completely, so we just ask them to pretty please not do that.

And that's fine. It's certainly better than letting anyone legally pressure jurors. Democracy and freedom are all about compromise. I'm just saying, it's not corruption for judges to prefer jurors who don't ignore the law.

IMO the biggest role of the jury is to blackball the state's conveyer belt to imprisonment on a case-by-case basis. It really needs to become harder than it is for the state to put someone in a concrete and iron box.

Ultimately it just means that we have a way to make sure that We the People aren't being punished by laws that we don't consent to being held to.

It puts power directly into the hands of the typical American citizen, which is why our legal system is terrified of it. You don't have to be rich or well-connected to sit on a jury. It also effectively limits what can be done using that power to what a "random" (and presumably representative) selection of the community agrees to. That's what a "jury of your peers" was supposed to be all about.

I'd say that nullification makes it possible for people to truly govern themselves and that makes it an inherently righteous system.

It's the righteousness of the people who make up a community that is questionable, but even imperfect people deserve democracy and the right to self-govern.

Lawsuit to what? Their CAD files, the build instructions? The board shipped with the Nintendo Wii?

Reusing branding always opens you up to liability. There are a lot of angles that you wouldn't expect, that trademark can be used to attack you with. And Nintendo are very hostile to any and all uses.

While Nintendo might not lose the trademark entirely if they don't sue, they could risk weakening its strength, therefore they have to sue in this case.

Consistent inaction against infringers can lead to the public perceiving the trademark as less distinctive. This can make it harder to protect the trademark in the future, and can encouraging further infringement.

Use of Nintendo's trademarked branding.

Using the word "nintendo" on something intended to play any kind of games is trademark infringement. The Kawaii devs likely don't intend to confuse people, but if a consumer saw this product for sale they'd rightly assume it's a Nintendo product.

Using a brand name like this just makes things easier when Nintendo attorneys barely have to roll out of bed when sending a cease and desist order.

Just call it Kawaii and stay slightly under the radar. Sadly, Nintendo will probably come for you anyways.

Some of these console mods only really get sold as kits or products on places like Aliexpress.

Needless to say, they are pretty safe from Nintendo. If these guys aren't selling the schematics, and posting them for free, Nintendo has a lot less of a leg to stand on.

Nintendo is notoriously litigious. It is naive to think you’re “pretty safe” from them. If they want to sue you, they will, and could bankrupt you with the legal fees alone.

And they will use the logo as a way in.

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/11736/why...

Many years ago I bought an Intel processor. It came with a sticker inside a book that was several pages of terms and conditions on what the sticker can be stuck on. Mentioned as something not to do was applying the sticker to a computing device that did not contain an Intel processor, so I immediately stuck it on my Switch.

Still not in prison.

Well it is a modded Wii. Its not like they're taking some other SoC and putting an emulator on it.

It appears that they're gathering orders for to do a group-buy of a custom-machined aluminum shell for the keychain widget, and that this newly-minted custom-machined hunk of aluminum includes the a replication of the Nintendo logo.

That's commerce.

Now, obviously: Their target market knows exactly what they're buying, and they aren't going to be confused by any of this at all.

But trademark law (and the surrounding case law) may not see it that way.

It's easier (and a lot less fear-inducing) to cease-and-desist before Nintendo's IP lawyers send a nastygram than it is to do so afterward. (And in order to keep their trademark intact, they pretty much have to send that nastygram. Trademarks are very much a defend-it-or-lose-it thing.)

---

"Sorry guys, the first order had to be scrapped along with all of the money we collected and spent on it. If anyone is still interested, the price is still $55 for a shell without the logo if we can get another 30 orders in again."

It might not work without the Nintendo logo.

very funny :)

in case you don't know, some Gameboy games required to have Nintendo logo in the game data as part of copy protection. allegedly that was legal protection against bootlegs.

https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/game-boy/#anti-pir...

Playstation2 used something similar. ( https://github.com/mlafeldt/ps2logo )

I suppose it gave companies in question additional legal leverage - they could not distribute copies of games without violating the trademark laws.

I wonder if there’s a reusable Nintendo logo they could extract from the Wii enclosure? It’s incredible how upcyclable the Wii is.

That makes zero difference. You aren’t suddenly allowed to use someone else’s branding just because you’re reusing a piece of branding from a product.

Making video games fun does not require anywhere near as much hardware as we typically use in modern systems. I look forward to an eventual return to fun video games.

Nintendo has been doing this ... forever? The switch is ancient tech, and was outdated the moment it was released.

Switch could definitely have used more oomph. Many frame rate drops in the Zelda games. Many emulators claim to have the superior experience with those games.

Which is correct. Plus a Wii game with 4k texture packs will look better than any HD remake

I am deeply unimpressed with most of the 4K texture packs out there. I see a lot of this:

https://twitter.com/letofski/status/982947652072488962

Same. Just rendering at 1080p / 4k is good enough to give most titles a nicer shine though :)

Actually Nintendo consoles used to be powerhouses until recently. The NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube were all considered state-of-the-art in terms of performance. It wasn't until the Wii when they began cutting down on performance in favor of fun features like they had been doing in the handheld space.

Especially N64 - SGI indy in a small box. They did change the narrative after they couldn't or wouldn't compete on those numbers (rightfully so it turned out), however, they were always experimenting with controls and were highly influential in doing so.

appropriate username, btw, but that console is for another topic!

Pretty sure the NES was designed to a price point first and foremost. Especially after the video game crash. Hence the dirt-cheap 6502 derivative in it.

The NES -- as far as its basic hardware architecture -- was not designed for a market where the video game crash had even occurred. It was designed for release in Japan in 1983 as the Famicom, undoubtedly the most powerful console in the market at the time -- a time where by the way I'm not sure what else you would even put in a console other than a 6502 or Z80.

If you wanted cheap above all, you could have gone for a plain 6502 or a cut-down variant (like the 6507 in the Atari VCS), but they also didn't do that -- the Ricoh 2A03 is a custom part that includes custom sound hardware.

> If you wanted cheap above all, you could have gone for a plain 6502 or a cut-down variant (like the 6507 in the Atari VCS), but they also didn't do that -- the Ricoh 2A03 is a custom part that includes custom sound hardware.

The higher integration on a single chip for the 2A03 was absolutely a cost saving move.

That doesn't match my recollection. The Gameboy is a early counter example: it was black and white during a time where the game gear had color, yet the Gameboy was far more popular. Also I believe the Xbox was more powerful than the GameCube.

I remember kids with the game gear. Hardly ever saw them playing because of the batteries. For a portable console I think it was a choice on battery life.

The game gear was extremely lousy to use. Too small of a screen, ate through batteries incredibly quickly, the original, external battery pack (not included) was poorly made and didn't help that much either.

And the game selection early on was pretty lousy too. Sonic was only fun for a while.

People are doing amazing things with game gear hardware as of late, though. All of that addressed spectacularly.

And it only took thirty-five years!

Also huge in size compared to the screen dimensions. Could barely get my hands around it as a little kid.

Then the Nomad was even bigger!

A "wall wart" power source was a necessity.

The Game Gear didn't come out until one and a half year later. It's easy to see how it wasn't even remotely practical to release a color handheld system in 1989, and it's easy to argue that it wasn't practical in 1990 either, but Sega did it anyway.

So when the Game Boy came out it was easily the most powerful handheld system on the market (admittedly by virtue of being essentially the only one worth mentioning)

The Atari Lynx came out a few months after the Game Boy with a backlit color screen

And we're all still talking about that one regularly...

I remember thinking the commercials made it look cool when I was 4 or 5 (I vividly remember some sort of surfing game), but then I never encountered a single person who owned one. Same with the TurboGrafx-16.

"Some sort of surfing game" immediately screams California Games¹ to me. There was surfing² plus a few other sports, and it is still good fun if you find yourself at a museum/nerd house that has one.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Games

² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql2S-wXa-H8

Also, the color screen on the Game Gear wasn't that great and the battery life was terrible. I think Sega had realized this, because later on they were selling an external battery pack as an official accessory.

I found my Gameboy recently, but I did not find my games... Sad times...

The game boy got almost 30hours out of 4xAA whereas the game gear got about an hour or two of life out of 6xAA. I hated that about the game gear and it meant I hardly ever got to play it.

"recently" as in nearly 25 years ago

Yes, in terms of their video game history, Nintendo has been blue ocean (2004-2024+) longer than they were red (1983-2003).

NES? Yes.

SNES... Somewhat? I think there were tradeoffs here between that and the genesis; You got more colors and could get better sound out of the SNES... On the flip side people did -amazing- things with the YM2612 and for all the SNES RPG Soundtracks I love, they don't slap like the Streets of Rage series or Sanic.

N64 had pretty good perf but the Cartridge format made it -very- expensive to do anything very fancy; this is one of the reasons that lots of folks feel PS1 had better looking games despite N64's superior specs.

GameCube... Sits in a very weird spot IMO, but that whole generation was a bit Zany due to how everyone was experimenting with different 'paths to faster/better 3d'. Dreamcast had lots of 'special' stuff, GC was unique in it's own right, PS2's biggest stumble IIRC was too little ram for the GS...

To me, the bigger 'paradigm shift' that Nintendo made with the Wii was preferring more COTS-y stuff versus more special custom things...

NES had the Special Ricoh 6502 variant. SNES had the SPC. N64... TBH was mostly SGI based so possibly the exception. Gamecube had a custom GPU (Flipper)...

Wii is for the most part an 'incremental' upgrade from GC Hardware, and the Switch uses a not-that-special Tegra AFAIK.

the Gamecube certainly not. it was on par with other consoles of the time but released later so nothing that you could call SOTA

Nintendo's first example of this is probably the most famous: the Gameboy was very underpowered compared to its competitor and absolutely trounced them on its way to become a household name and one of the most popular consoles of all time.

Recently?

My dude, the GameCube was released nearly 23 years ago.

There is a wider time delta betwixt the GameCube's release and today than there is between the NES and the GameCube.

switch was ancient tech, but still predates usb-c enough that they're rolling their own power protocols.. hence deluge of broken switch on ebay with fried usb-c ports...

Switch in no way predated USB-C, even talking widespread support... Nintendo rolled their own protocol because they could and USB allows for it.

"Yokoi said 'The Nintendo way of adapting technology is not to look for the state of the art but to utilize mature technology that can be mass-produced cheaply.' He articulated his philosophy of 'Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology' (枯れた技術の水平思考, Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shikō) (also translated as 'Lateral Thinking with Seasoned Technology'), in the book Yokoi Gunpei Game House."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi#Design_philosophy

Well said. Some ingredients that were in old games has vanished due to the post 2000 culture, but we can go back.

> Some ingredients that were in old games has vanished due to the post 2000 culture

Hmm, like what?

One factor (surprisingly I've seen this mentioned by a video game guy on youtube few years ago) is the disbelief made by non game visual art. Game boxes, booklets, they bootstraped the imagination. Handmade art was 100x more detailed than 8bit games yet we didn't care having a low res 8bit characters because we were already mentally in the world displayed on paper.

I do sincerly miss the limited rendering aspect of old titles. The limitations gave ways to a distinct style, and kept the game a game, in a strange world. It also provided you with some surprises.. how did they manage to pull off some effect on a tiny 8 or 16bit machine. Hardware of today removes that wonder. There's less contrast.

The limitations of old game platforms didn't vanish, they are still used (and being re-discovered by new generations). One of my favorite games on this side of the new millennium is Celeste, for example.

Some indie studios are even producing new games for GBA, GB, NES and other platforms from the 90s, sometimes including booklet and packaging!

Ah fine, I lost track of the indie space. I shall resume.

There's been a bit of a "PS1 aesthetic" enthusiasm recently too.

You may find TIC-80 interesting.

> the disbelief made

I assume you mean the suspension of disbelief? I.e. immersion. Suspension is a key word there, as in, your disbelief is halted, allowing you to be immersed.

It wasn't clear from your post, but have you kept up with the PC indie scene of the last decade or so? There's a lot of great small gems on Steam these days that can run on old hardware (or the Deck).

But apparently the golden age is ending, as big publishers this year and last canceled a lot of projects and closed a bunch of studios. Sad, but there's still a huge backlog of great titles to go through.

Inscryption

Subnautica

Satisfactory

Factorio

Hollow Knight

RE7

Baba is You

Baldur's Gate 3

Elden Ring

Dead Cells

Hades

Ori and the Will of the Wisp

Disco Elysium

Dishonored 1 & 2

Orcs Must Die

Planet Coaster

Portal 1 & 2

Read Dead Redemption 2

Valheim

I dont' know what you mean by "modern," but these were all games I enjoyed recently-ish, and I'm sure I forgot some.

Off the top of my head I'd say to throw in Outer Wilds (wilds, not worlds), Tunic, The Riven remake, and The Talos Principle 1 & 2 as well.

The Talos Principle is phenomenal, fantastic effort by Croteam

Yeah. And tbh while I enjoyed the first game quite a bit I was absolutely blown away by the second game. Visuals, OST, all the vibrant characters were absolutely breathtaking.

Fun video games never went away. Look for games by indie developers instead of AAA titles.

There are many fun AAA titles, more than one can play

The conversation’s context is fun games without needing the latest hardware.

The majority of my indie titles run on a potato.

Many indie games use Unity and have terrible performance. Source: I have a potato (by which i mean i use the integrated graphics of an i7-56xx)

It can run many games well, so it depends how much developers value performance.

As a player, I do not really value performance unless we're talking sub 25fps.

Same. But some titles have like 3fps (Train Valley World for example)

Performance is not just a simple number. 25 FPS with good frame pacing is much more enjoyable than something that averages 60 FPS but with individual frame times all over the place. That said, for first-person action games especially on a non-tiny monitor, anything below ~40 FPS will be noticeably non-smooth. Other game types have more tolerance, e.g. a top down strategy game could still be playable at ~15 FPS.

A lot of fun old AAA games run on potatoes. And there's so many of them that you won't have issues finding something new to you.

> I look forward to an eventual return to fun video games

They weren't saying they wanted games that run on old hardware. It's just the trope of "back then hardware was bad and games were good. Now hardware is good and games are bad."

Look at anything from publisher New Blood Interactive on Steam for a starting point. Mostly retro style FPS from differing eras, but there are a few other game types. Plus you'll struggle to find any that don't have thousands of user ratings in either very positive or overwhelmingly positive brackets.

Gloomwood (first person stealth) and Fallen Aces are a couple of gems still in early access.

It's actually a golden age for fun video games, because we are swimming in new beautiful, engaging, original titles every year.

Some things really take you by surprise as well.

I never saw Inscryption, Disco Eliseum or Hades coming, and I think nobody did.

And even oldish games still have great value. I still play LoL or Isaac, and they are as good as they were on day 1.

Plus, you get the Switch then the Deck refreshed portable gaming experience. The latter made emulation so nice as well.

With terrific communities, insane speed runners, devs coming up with crazy new concepts and hardware that never stop to get better, it's hard to complain except that with a busy life, you will see only 1% of those masterpieces.

Inscryption is a must play.

I will remember it forever, it's a unique experience.

But it's such a weird combination of aesthetic, story telling and gameplay I have to assume it prevents a huge part of the gaming population from enjoying it.

If anybody read those comments, DO NOT LOOK THE GAME UP if you plan to play it. Go blind.

I binged it during the time I was trapped in my room with COVID. You're right, it is a very weird game(s?) in the best way, it's literally sent me off on a card game design jaunt that's still ongoing haha. And I found myself loving the characters of the, what was it, ocelot and the wizard apprentice who is glad to have any kind of STIM-U-LA-TION?

> I never saw (…) Hades coming, and I think nobody did.

I don’t think Hades came as a surprise to anyone who was already a fan of the devs from Bastion and Transistor.

Come on, Bastion is nice but nowhere as sophisticated as Hades. Neither the gameplay nor the replayability would have let you think the team had the ability at the time.

As for transistor, the story is basically "futuristic world is being destroyed by virus-type-invaders and your sword/companion is the key to beating it", with a predictable end and almost zero character dev.

Being able to make ok games doesn't translate to the skill to make a masterpiece.

It was a quantum leap.

It would be like saying you can deduce Divinity Original sin 2 would be amazing because you played the first one.

I disagree. Sure, there are fun games, but they're so hard to find among all the crap

The noise/signal ratio is worse for everything today: movies, music, tv shows.

But "finding good games requires a tiny bit of effort to me" is a first-world problem.

The problem is when even Nintendo’s own first party titles are struggling with the hardware. That wasn’t that common with the Wii, 3DS, or previous consoles but very very very noticeable on Switch

Super Mario 64 had abysmal performance for a title on the N64 that wasn't even that complicated compared to things that would later release on the console.

But in the 90s, when you got home with your very first device capable of rendering "real time" 3D graphics for $200, you didn't really care that "real time" meant 12fps at times. We used to have pretty low standards for framerate.

One guy optimized Mario 64 to run at 60FPS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_rzYnXEQlE

Mario 64 on the N64 was build without -O2 flags. Maybe with -O0 or even -g. After a simple compiler switch, the speed skyrocketed.

And from what I understand, it’s not due to incompetence; rather, it’s due to not yet having confidence that those optimizers wouldn’t introduce bugs. The SDK and toolchain were very new; SM64’s development itself parallels that of the dev toolchain.

So, better safe than sorry, especially with a pack-in launch title.

Kaze, who did that 60FPS optimization, has commented on other videos about how the CPU isn't fully utilized anyways, so -O2 doesn't make too much a difference in most scenarios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_gdOKSTaxM&lc=UgyhTG4Ol46Rr...

His comment, not the video.

Ah, TIL, thanks.

I forgive them for abysmal for one of the first games released for a wildly new platform for them.

A story does not require a bunch of words either but there are a lot of great, long books. There are also great short stories.

Same thing goes for games that demand high performance rigs. It’s all about what you want in the end, and there’s no single answer for what makes a game fun. Some people really like beautiful, realistic looking games with high resolutions and frame rates. To them that is fun.

Good point. Most of the games I have played in recent years have been indie titles. Sometimes they are CPU intensive but rarely GPU intensive.

It feels like graphics in games have reached a sort of plateau now where the most visually realistic games are only marginally more realistic looking than something from nearly 10 years ago.

Ray tracing might be eye candy, but fast streaming of assets from SSD enables experiences not possible before (large scale open world, super fast movement a la Spiderman, instant teleportation).

GPU-powered dynamic lighting and LOD is also pretty crazy.

For handhelds I'd say the Playdate [0] does this pretty well. Lots of fun and very experimental indie games.

For home consoles I hope a single board computer flls this role one day. In fact I've been experimenting with the raspberry pi to try and turn it into a console for new games but just haven't spent enough time on the project yet.

[0] https://play.date/

"I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding,"

It's been a meme for a while and I unironically agree.

I'm looking for recommendations for a 30~50 run anodized aluminum case, in a similar size as the Kawaii. Does anyone have any recommendations? The quotes I'm getting are closer to $95/pc and that seems quite high.

The price for a small-batch run is going to depend heavily upon how difficult it is to manufacture at small scale. If you got that $95 quote from a local shop, you can try asking them what you can do to make it cheaper. There might be some tricky features in your design that are jacking up the labor costs.

The cheapest way to make a small-batch aluminum enclosure is probably to base it off an off-the-shelf extrusion stock. I'd go on McMaster and find some C-channel stock that fits my needs, then I'd design a base plate that nests inside the C-channel. If you're trying to go for an upscale, professional look, you can have the machine shop run a wire wheel over the C-channel before anodizing it.

Have you tried https://www.xometry.com/ ?

They have a network of vetted shops who bid on jobs when otherwise unoccupied.

Hi, I have ordered in the past from JLC3dp[1] both metal printed parts and aluminum anodized CNC machined parts. I was happy with the quality and the pricing was a lot better than my local CNC companies.

[1] https://jlc3dp.com

+99 points for the name

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