So I'm an ambassador now

[Green Gibbon!]

So does anyone have any actual software for this thing yet? All I've got is Excitebike (which was free, and which I played only once for about 15 minutes on the train to Tokyo) and some puzzle platform looking thing starring a little sumo dude I downloaded from the eShop a few weeks ago. Haven't played that yet.

I've got Mario reserved, of course, but that's not happening until next weekend.

[Neo]

Between Excitebike, Zelda Four Swords and the ten Ambassador games, I'd say I've been having a lot of fun for "free". It probably helps that I never owned an NES back in the day. First ever full clear of Super Mario done while sitting on the toilet! Thanks, Nintendo!

I also have Ocarina of Time 3D, which is the whole reason I bought the damn thing at launch, and am looking forward to Super Mario 3D Land, which is basically the only other title which interests me so far.

The eShop is also slated to get some decent releases soon, such as 3D Classics Kirby's Adventure and VVVVVV. One can only hope Ninty has endured the worse and that the console will pick up steam with the holiday season.

[Green Gibbon!]

I actually didn't download a single ambassador game because I am totally not interested in having old games on my new machines. I took Excitebike because it was free, but usually I don't even play remakes. Ocarina of Time is a Nintendo 64 game. It's been out for 13 years and I played it 13 years ago.

I also won't play cross-platform games on anything other than the one they were originally released on.

[Jingles]

A bit more info on the eShop, including demos and DLC.

[M.C.Dillinger]

I actually didn't download a single ambassador game because I am totally not interested in having old games on my new machines. I took Excitebike because it was free, but usually I don't even play remakes. Ocarina of Time is a Nintendo 64 game. It's been out for 13 years and I played it 13 years ago.

I also won't play cross-platform games on anything other than the one they were originally released on.

Really, I'm the opposite. I love playing old games but I'm not enthusiastic about using old hardware. Order games tend to get overshadowed by new ones my mind so I often view these releases as a good opportunity to revisit something.

Also, apparently the 3DS caps at 300 play coins. Does anyone know what they're supposed to do? I heard Sonic Generations was going to use them for something. . .

[Neo]

I actually didn't download a single ambassador game because I am totally not interested in having old games on my new machines. I took Excitebike because it was free, but usually I don't even play remakes. Ocarina of Time is a Nintendo 64 game. It's been out for 13 years and I played it 13 years ago.

I like playing old games on new hardware because playing old games on old hardware means playing an inexcusably slow piece of shit if you happen to live in Europe. It's quite dramatic to think that the Dreamcast was the first home console released in the PAL region whose games could be played at the correct speed and without stupid letterboxing.

I also guess Nintendo doesn't want my money that bad since they go out of their way to present the same ass-flavored experience on the Wii's Virtual Console. Thank god for fucking handhelds.

[Jingles]

Also, apparently the 3DS caps at 300 play coins. Does anyone know what they're supposed to do? I heard Sonic Generations was going to use them for something. . .

To my knowledge, you can use them on the Streetpass Mii Plaza games, purchasing heroes for Find Mii and puzzle pieces for Puzzle Swap. No idea about actual retail games, though.

[K2J]

It seems to be a rule that the coins are used as an alternative to StreetPassing (in the case of Find Mii, a crappy one). As for retail games, Street Fighter IV uses them; you can spend Play Coins to get a second, SFIV-specific currency for getting figurines. I believe you can also get this second currency from StreetPass fights, but it's been a while, so I'm not 100% sure.

[gr4yJ4Y]

I actually didn't download a single ambassador game because I am totally not interested in having old games on my new machines. I took Excitebike because it was free, but usually I don't even play remakes. Ocarina of Time is a Nintendo 64 game. It's been out for 13 years and I played it 13 years ago.

I'm not a fan of buying remakes of games I already have, but if I somehow overlooked a classic game when it was released and it is now being updated and re-released, I'll go for the updated version. However there is some magic in playing a game on the original system that I can't deny.

Just out of curiosity, do you play your older systems only on SDTVs or do you put up with black bars to the sides? I feel like it'd bother me to try playing an NES game on an HDTV.

[Blount]

I have tried multiple times to try and understand why anyone would want to kill the original aspect ratio just to cover the entire screen. But I can't. It just seems stupid to me no matter how I look at it. So yeah, black bars.

I'm fine with zooming as long as the original aspect ratio is kept and if I don't get giant pixels due to a much larger screen resolution. This is why I usually play anything older than Mega Drive on my DS. There are also a few PS1 games that look much nicer when emulated at higher resolutions, unlike the way the PS3 handles them. It's not so bad when they're in 2D, but blowing up the resolution to fill an HDTV (rather than upscaling it like unofficial emulators do) brings out the worst in the late nineties' polygonal video-games.

[Arcade]

OKay, if most of 3DS tittles are just gonna be ports of Nintendo 64 games, most of witch I already own, I prefer to play said Nintendo 64 games. Sorry 3DS you are not in my Christmas list!

But, Animal crossing 3DS? Yes, get me that and I will buy the damn thing, okay? Heck, for a whole year Animal crossing for the DS got 80% of my playtime in the DS...

[Neo]

I have tried multiple times to try and understand why anyone would want to kill the original aspect ratio just to cover the entire screen. But I can't. It just seems stupid to me no matter how I look at it.

If the game is in 3D then it's bound to make you vomit, because having the camera move and turn around makes all the axes get warped, which is truly disorienting. But if it's a blocky 2D game, like Super Mario Bros. or Cave Story, with few perfect circles and virtually no sprite rotations, I can play it either way without it bothering me much.

In fact, when you consider that old video game consoles like the NES and Master System had a screen size of 256x240, which would then get stretched horizontally to 4:3 by the analog video output, the pixels were already displayed as rectangles to begin with, you're just exaggerating the phenomena.

[Blount]

I'm mostly concerned with how ugly things get when they're squashed. Older games aren't that bad, but everyone seems to enjoy watching TV in 16:9 regardless of the intended aspect ratio. Everything gets so squashed it looks like someone sat on the Farnsworth Parabox.

Some Master System games have a screen resolution of 256 x 192, the same as the Nintendo DS. They look great in it! It wasn't such a big deal back in the day because of how different TV screens used to be.

[Crowbar]

I'll chime in and say that I am also obsessive about things being in the correct aspect ratio. Playing old PC games is a pain in the ass, because AMD's graphics card drivers have a stupid bug (or an oversight) where the "Maintain aspect ratio" option is greyed out unless you change your desktop resolution to something that doesn't match the monitor, so I have to do that if I want to play Worms or Starcraft.