Items tagged with Nintendo
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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The Nintendo Switch has been a hot item during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the console has been going in and out of stock for the past few months (with some new, sealed consoles commanding a premium on third-party marketplaces like eBay). Switch inventory is once again reaching low points as we are in the Christmas shopping rush, but Walmart has one particular bundle in stock that might catch your eye. The standard Nintendo Switch is priced at $299, and only includes the console, the two Joy-Cons, the TV dock, and a power adapter. That's it, no games, no freebies; it's just as barebones as you can get for a console. However, Walmart’s current bundle offer gets you the Switch console, a carrying...
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If people can get Doom running on old Nintendo hardware, surely Doom can come to the Nintendo Switch, right? Well, Bethesda is telling gamers to “Prepare for Joy-Con Carnage” as Doom: Eternal will be coming to the Nintendo Switch on December 8th. Doom: Eternal is the action-packed fifth entry into the Doom series that we looked at when it launched. You play as the main character, Doom Slayer, who returns to Earth the vanquish the demons from Hell that have killed most of humanity. Now gamers will have a new way to play, as anyone can “RAZE HELL any way [they] want when DOOM Eternal launches on Nintendo Switch!” When Doom Eternal reaches the Nintendo Switch, you will...
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If you're big into Fortnite and also just so happen to fancy the Nintendo Switch, there's a new console bundle available today that might interest you. Nintendo has launched a Fortnite-themed Switch console that is currently available from the usual suspects like Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and GameStop. Unlike the Switch + Mario Kart 8 Deluxe bundle that launched for Black Friday, this one is actually in stock (for now). But whereas the Black Friday bundle got you a free digital copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and 3 months of Nintendo Switch Online for the regular $299 price, this new Fortnite bundle is decidedly less ambitious. Nintendo Switch Fortnite Wildcat Bundle $299 @ Amazon Nintendo...
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Well that did not take long. Nintendo's reborn Game And Watch handheld console has been on the market for all of two seconds (technically, about a week and a half, but you get the point—it's brand spanking new) and already it has been hacked to run Doom. Because, you know, that is like a right of passage for electronics. Beside, if Doom can run on a Ti-Nspire or Ti-83 calculator (and it can!), then surely the Game And Watch should be up to the hell raising challenge of playing Doom, right? The answer is 'Yes!', though it was not a simple or straightforward hack that got it running. That said, no hardware modifications were required to get it to work. At this point you might be wondering,...
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If you're playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch and sharing the system (and a single island) among family members, we're sure that this story will be a familiar one. There's a rivalry between siblings or across generations as parents and kids get out of bed early each morning and start shaking trees, hoarding all of the fruit for themselves. Or maybe there's a disagreement about how to decorate the island. Maybe, just maybe, there's competition for playing time for other games where the rest of the family just isn't into the island life. Rejoice, Animal Crossing fans, for Nintendo has heard your plea. As part of the Winter Update, Nintendo has rolled out the Animal Crossing:...
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