Items tagged with Nintendo
Although the Nintendo Switch is now four years old, that hasn't cooled off interest in the portable game console. The Switch launched to much fanfare in March 2017 and has since become one of Nintendo's fastest-selling consoles and could soon eclipse the iconic Wii. However, demand from the COVID-19 stay-at-home crowd has resulted in even stronger demand for both the Switch and the cheaper Switch Lite. As a result, Nintendo could be boosting production of the console for its current fiscal year, which runs March 2021 through March 2022. During that time, Nintendo will produce 30 million Switch consoles, according to a new report from Nikkei Asia. Nintendo Switch To put those numbers into perspective,...
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After a full year of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, we wondered if Nintendo would keep the same old holiday celebrations or wrap them up in a fresh coat of paint. It's pretty unusual for a game with not much multi-player appeal to captivate gamers for more than 12 months, but that's exactly what Nintendo's modern classic has done for us. If it hasn't done so for you, there's no time like the present to dust off your Nintendo Switch and get back into its adorable island escape. While the egg-themed Bunny Day celebration didn't really change this year from the previous, the maze-focused May Day event is new for 2021. How To Cash In On May Day Fun With Mazes And Prizes Just like before, Animal...
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If you are of a certain age, the Nintendo Game Boy was likely a constant companion during childhood. The original was powered by four AA batteries, could easily be slipped into a pocket, carried along for long car rides (if it wasn't too dark outside), and generally provided hours of gaming fun. As its name implies, the Game Boy was a relatively small device for its time, but one Nintendo fan made a supersized version of the console. Witness the Game Man, which skipped straight over adolescence into adulthood, and is the brainchild of a gamer named Grumpy Modeler. While the original Game Boy stood 5.8 inches tall with a monochrome display that measured 2.6 inches across, the Game Man's off-the-shelf...
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The 20-year span between 1985 and 2005 saw the release of literally hundreds of classic game titles that were -- and are still -- beloved by millions of people around the world. From Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda, to modern classics like Halo and Metal Gear Solid, most of gaming's biggest franchises spent their formative years on consoles plugged into standard-definition cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions, the warm glow and rounded geometry of which would provide countless hours of fun. If there's one problem with those consoles, however, it's that it can be difficult to get one running -- and more importantly looking good -- on modern HD television sets. Don't worry, though....
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Battle Royale games are some of the most popular out there right now, with popular titles such as Fortnite and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds. Since these games came out, companies have been trying to twist the genre, and Nintendo is the latest to shake things up. In the new Pac-Man 99, players can show off their “chomping chops” against up to 99 other players simultaneously. When you think of the typical battle royale game, you may think of all the players being in the same lobby and competing in the same location. With Pac-Man 99, however, players play on their Pac-Man maze while trying to mess up opponents via power-ups and be the last Pac-Man standing. You can see how...
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Listen up folks, if you want to score a mammoth payday in the future, start being a pack rat. Remember all those comic books, baseball cards, and collection of original Garbage Pail Kids you had as a kid, and got rid of long ago? Some of them might have been worth a mint. So goes for an individual who managed to hold onto an seal copy of Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and just sold it at auction for a cool $660,000. Original NES games are fetching big money these days, like an also-sealed Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge that sold at auction for $156,000 last year. Like that game, the first Super Mario Bros. game is not exactly rare by any stretch, or even expensive....
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Most people would never consider trying to mine Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) on an original Game Boy, a handheld console released by Nintendo over three decades ago. But would it be a feasible mod if someone paired a Game Boy with Raspberry Pi Pico, which is less than a year old? The answer is still no, but someone did it anyway. For the most part, Bitcoin miners have turned their attention to specialized ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) hardware these days. These devices are capable of mining north of 100 terahashes per second (100TH/s). Remember that figure, because we are going to circle back to it in a moment. But first, let's talk about the Game Boy mod. YouTube user "stacksmashing"...
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Late last year, a copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 for NES went up for auction with a starting bid at $62,500. After 20 different bidders got in on the auction, that price rose to a whopping $156,000, which beat out the previous record of $114,000 for an NES game. Now, a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. is up for auction, and it is currently sitting at $310,000 with seven days left. This auction could beat out the most expensive video game collectible of all time in base value. Though it may be one of the most common video games out there, it is fairly rare to find an NES copy of Super Mario Bros in near-mint condition. Wata Games is a renowned gaming grader who gave this copy of Super Mario...
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Earlier this month, a significant report alleged that the Nintendo Switch Pro is launching in late 2021. Today, the original story source is back with new information on the hardware featured inside the upgraded gaming console. The big news is the alleged addition of NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), which uses a GPU's tensor cores to run neural networks to upscale a game's resolution. For example, developers could use a lower 1080p target on the Switch Pro and employ DLSS to render scenes closer to native 4K resolution. While the results aren't 100 percent perfect, the increase in rendering quality is quite noticeable. It also doesn't result in the big performance hit that...
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Can you imagine what life would be like without Super Mario, perhaps the world's most famous plumber? Neither can we, nor do we want to. In celebration of the iconic character and his upcoming Mario Day—not his birthday mind you, but March 10, or MAR10 (get it?)—you can save up to 35 percent on a bunch of Nintendo Switch games (and even more in at least one instance). Mario continues to look quite spry for his age. His first appearance came in 1981 as jumped over barrels tossed at him from Donkey Kong, another iconic character, and then in 1983 he debuted in his own game, Mario Bros. Now four decades later, he and many of Nintendo's other characters comprise some of the most popular...
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Tell us if you've heard this one before: Nintendo is working on a more powerful version of the Switch to maintain its brisk sales momentum while fending off the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. Although the Japanese gaming giant has either denied or demurred on these rumors in the past, today marks the four-year anniversary of the console's original launch. With that anniversary comes a highly credible report alleging that the Switch is in for a significant display upgrade. The new Switch is not only getting a bump in size to 7 inches (at 720p), but it is shifting to OLED technology. Besides offering better contrast and faster response times than the displays on the current Switch and...
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Over the past 25 years, players have been catching and battling Pokémon from around the world in a variety of different blockbuster games. During today's Pokémon Presents stream, Pokémon Company president Tsunekazu Ishihara announced a continuation of the 25-year adventure on the Nintendo Switch with three new games coming late this year and early next year. In 2006, Pokémon trainers entered the Sinnoh region in Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl on the Nintendo DS. Just over 15 years later, players can return to the region in faithful recreations of Diamond and Pearl in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Pokémon Shining Pearl. Developed...
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Animal Crossing: New Horizons is closing in on its one-year anniversary since release in March of 2020, and Nintendo is finishing up the last several holiday-themed events that haven't yet happened in the game. There are actually three concurrent events happening right now, so it's time to get into town and check out everything that's available. We'll hit these from soonest to latest, to make it easy to prioritize what to buy from Nook Shopping either at the Automated Bell Dispenser machine inside Resident Services or on the Nook Shopping app available on your in-game Nook phone. First up, today is Valentine's Day, both in the game and in the real world. To commemorate this day of love...
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Browser extensions like password managers and shopping aids can be very handy tools, or they can be up to no good, such as hidden crypto miners and keyloggers. Some of them even embed game console emulators and ROMs as a means to bypass typical download sites or torrents. In one weird case, however, Microsoft itself advertised illegal copies of many classic games hidden away in browser extensions on its own Edge Extensions store. Microsoft's @MSEdgeDev Twitter account tweeted a link to download extensions that hosted Sega and Nintendo properties like Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros, and Mario Kart 64. Nintendo in particular is often particularly quick to catch illegal downloads of...
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Coinciding with the release of Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury, a handful of retailers have also begun selling a Mario themed Nintendo Switch console. This is a limited edition release, and like the Animal Crossing: New Horizons themed console that came before it, the Nintendo Switch - Mario Red & Blue Edition is probably going to sell out fast as well. It fact, it is already showing as "sold out" on Nintendo's webstore, and Amazon only shows marketplace listings with inflated pricing. Perhaps both sites will have more inventory in the coming hours, days, and maybe even weeks. In the meantime, you can still find the console in stock at places like Best Buy and Target. Here is a roundup...
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There's no question that the Nintendo Switch is a wildly popular gaming console, which is a testament to its approachability and strong library of first-party games. Nintendo recently reported that cumulative sales for the Switch have nearly approached 80 million, surpassing the 3DS. However, there's a community of Switch owners that aren't particularly interested in preserving the default Nintendo-crafted operating system that is installed on the gaming console. Instead, they thrive on using third-party alternatives that allow them to expand the capabilities of the device. For those users, the Nintendo Switch can now [unofficially] run Android 10. Support for Android 10 comes courtesy...
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It is pretty remarkable to think that Nintendo took a chance on releasing a hybrid game console nearly four years ago and it continues to pay dividends, in a big way. In fact, lifetime sales of the Switch have now surpassed the 3DS, with 79.87 million units having been sold to date, compared to 75.94 million units of the 3DS. And by this time next year, it might pass the Wii (101.63 million units). Catching up to and surpassing the legendary 3DS happened because of a monster run during Q1 through Q3 for Nintendo's fiscal year ending March 2021, during which time Nintendo sold 16.77 million Switch systems. That amounts to a massive 33.5 percent gain over the same period from a year prior. Likewise,...
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For those that are always on the lookout for the hottest deals on tech gear, mega retailer Best Buy's big 4-day sale is ending today. The company has been piling on the discounts on games, laptops, 4K TVs, and cellphones (among other things). We've decided to give a few examples of the best deals that are available, so buckle up! Given that Super Bowl LV is just a few weeks away, it shouldn't come as a surprise that Best Buy is discounting large screen TVs. In this case, the HiSense 75H6510G 75-inch Android TV is available for just $749. This is a $250 discount from its normal $999 price tag, and it of course comes with free shipping. The TV supports Bluetooth for wireless connecting a soundbar,...
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Back in early November, Nintendo Launched its diminutive Game & Watch portable console, which brought the joys of playing the original Super Mario Bros. game that first launched nearly four decades ago on the NES. Besides Super Mario Bros., the console also included Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels. In addition to the usual D-Pad and B/A button controls, the Game & Watch includes a USB-C port for charging and not much else. Needless to say, tinkerers ripped off the case and started mucking around with the PCB to upload their own NES ROMs to play on the console. Some even went one step further by loading Doom on to the Game & Watch, although its performance left much...
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It's New Year's Eve but it's also still 2020, the year of the pandemic that we long to put in the rear view. As such, it's very likely a whole lot of people will be celebrating the coming of the new year from the comfort of their own homes. For gamers who have been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there's still a way to go out on the town, however, in virtual bliss at least. Right now and through midnight tonight, Tom Nook and Isabelle are hosting the New Year's Eve event with free gifts, fun seasonal items, and a countdown to the new year. We'll start off with the free stuff. Turn on the Nintendo Switch and wander on over to the town plaza in front of Resident Services (which is...
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Whether it's a Nintendo Christmas ornament or an original Game Boy, we love seeing Raspberry Pi-based retro consoles stuffed into into nostalgic spaces. The ingenuity and effort required to make these contraptions that were not originally designed to do this sort of thing work is pretty astounding. The Game Boy in particular was pretty wild because it was a fully functional, playable machine. However, the mod we'll look at today takes the cake. Reddit user Josh0O0 showed off a retro console stuffed into the shell of Super Nintendo controller with not only a Raspberry Pi Zero running an SNES emulator, but also all the inner workings required for controlling games and displaying them on a...
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When people think ray tracing, typically they think of some pie in the sky idea with an incredibly powerful GPU inside an incredibly powerful computer. That does not have to be the case, however. Ben Carter, a freelance game developer and software engineer from Japan, made a device for the Super Nintendo (Famicom in Japan) to do ray tracing in what he calls the SuperRT expansion. Carter, who is part of Shironeko Labs, had a goal in mind when he started this project: “learn Verilog and FPGA design.” This idea eventually grew into building an expansion for the SNES to do raytracing. From there, he “wanted to try and do was something akin to the Super FX chip used in titles...
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