Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
qbasic_forever
I'd bet this was a feature to support their in-store kiosks where people could play a DS and see the output on a TV. It'd be a lot cheaper and easier to pull some DS machines off the production line and reflash the firmware than to engineer entirely new units just for the kiosks.
jsheard
I don't remember there being DS kiosks with TVs attached, but DS devkits did support external displays so maybe it's a remnant from those
https://cdn.retrorgb.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/10100846...
qbasic_forever
They were definitely out there, I remember playing some DS kiosks at Target. This circuitry is specifically for the later DS lite models that came out in the later days of the DS line: https://consolevariations.com/variation/kiosk/nintendo-ds-ki...
Wowfunhappy
The article says that the devkits used different circutry.
Lammy
There was also a third-party USB video capture mod for original "phat" DS models (and amusingly not the DS Lite): http://www.3dscapture.com/ds/
The fun thing about the developer units is that the handheld part can be switched out. The photo above shows one with a phat DS controller, compare to one with a DS Lite attached: https://cooltrainer.org/nitro-capture/
jsheard
That'll teach me for rushing to post a cool photo before reading the article :)
bogwog
And to think Nintendo wants these to end up in a landfill.
Imagine if jailbreaking video game consoles (that is, modifying hardware that you own however you want), were actually legal. Old consoles like these could continue to provide value to owners via competing app stores, free and open source apps/games, cool hardware features like the OP, etc. All of that could happen without infringing on Nintendo's rights, or requiring them to do anything in any way.
But the DMCA doesn't allow it.
Wowfunhappy
To that extent that Nintendo has any influence in this area, I'd say they're quite supportive of people using their old hardware. Many Nintendo games display discontinued devices prominently (WarioWare, Animal Crossing), and there are stories on Twitter of Nintendo phone reps helping troubleshoot NES and SNES hardware issues.
Nintendo won't support people pirating their games, but as much as I think copyright lasts too long, this isn't exactly a surprising position from a game manufacturer.
bogwog
> To that extent that Nintendo has any influence in this area, I'd say they're quite supportive of people using their old hardware.
Nintendo is a member of the Entertainment Software Association (https://www.theesa.com/), which AFAIK is the main entity lobbying to keep console jailbreaking illegal.
Not to mention the fact that Nintendo shuts down online services and digital stores for old consoles, which means that you can't even download games you've purchased anymore.
Also, the issue isn't about whether Nintendo wants people to play old games on old hardware, it's that Nintendo doesn't want you to play new software on old hardware, and that they're actually able to enforce this through the DMCA's arbitrary special restrictions for video game consoles (by comparison, jailbreaking phones is perfectly legal under the DMCA)
That both suppresses competition, directly hurts consumers, and is just wasteful.
Wowfunhappy
But I don't think a logical extension from that is "Nintendo wants these to end up in a landfill."
LeoPanthera
> Imagine if jailbreaking video game consoles were actually legal
Is it not?
MarioMan
It’s an old article, but it’s laid out nicely here: https://www.macworld.com/article/1152935/jailbreak_exemption...
Essentially, bypassing DRM is a violation of the DCMA unless it has received an exemption from the government. Exemptions must be reevaluated every three years else they expire.
bumbada
As someone who jailbroke his DS in order to program and run homebrew on it, it was far from ideal.
You needed so many tricks in order to run those fast enough, like removing floating point code and replacing it with integer replacement for the different CPUs it had.
All the API had to be reverse engineered.
Programming mobile phones,or raspberrys is much better and you have much more freedom.
bogwog
Just because it's harder to develop on than modern devices doesn't mean that there aren't people who know how to do it/want to do it. If I knew that I could sell my indie game on the Nintendo DS, which sold 154 million units and a huge number of them are likely still circulating around, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
But more importantly, the only thing that matters is the end-user experience. The people playing games aren't going to care if the developer had to wrestle with some funky toolchain and weird hardware quirks. They just want new games for their old, but still fully functional console.
djmips
Pis you have a point but phones are far from having 'freedom'
bogwog
How many people own a raspberry pi with a screen (or two), battery, wireless connectivity, and enclosure with built-in digital/analog controls? Probably less than 154 million[1]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_cons...
undefined
SilverRed
It always blows me away when people work out this stuff so long after the product comes out. This hardware sold hundreds of millions of units and yet no one noticed it had a video output inside it? Just goes to show how complex this stuff is I guess.
accrual
I'm sure the internals were photographed and dissected a long time ago but maybe someone is just now getting into the guts of the SoC. It's fun to imagine all the interesting things we might have laying around that are hidden by a $DEBUG=0 flag...
SilverRed
There was a blog post where someone reverse engineered the IR protocol of the pokewalker and found that it had a bunch of commands which were never used but are still active in the firmware (some likely were planned for events)
MarioMan
It’s a good read. Here’s a link to the write up: https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=28.%20pokewalker
cbanek
I wish I could have decent output of a 3DS! I was looking into it and apparently it is really hard and one of the small setups modding them in Japan recently closed down!
bpiche
Kind of serendipitous but I have been getting really into DSi, N3DS, and PSP hacking recently and just watched this video last night. Take a look. I think it will blow your mind. I didn't make this video, of course.
"N3DSXL Hardware Mods Part II, Including Wireless Streaming" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7lGI3yGzPQ
cbanek
Wow that's really cool - thanks for sharing. This almost makes me want to get a new 3ds! I just have an old one. But I can't think of any other reason to upgrade. These days I'm living on the switch :)
SilverRed
I think most people just use an emulator when they want to record/stream 3ds games.
post_break
I just wish I picked up a DS. The prices for them now is ridiculous.
codetrotter
I bought a couple of Nintendo DS Lite consoles at the beginning of the corona virus but found these to be too small to be enjoyable so I bought a Nintendo New 3DS XL instead. The New 3DS XL was pretty decent. I played quite a few games and finally sold the New 3DS XL as well as the DS Lite consoles that I had bought.
Something worth keeping in mind is that if like me you don’t intend to keep them but only want to play with them for a few months, then I suggest you do like I did, stay on the lookout for a while to get a feel for how much people are asking and how much people are paying, when you then later find one at a decent price you will know that the price is decent. You buy it you play with it for a while and then you sell it for somewhere around what you paid for it. Try asking for a higher price first. But even if you sell it at a small loss, you (hopefully) got entertainment value out of it and it was worth it.
I was extra lucky with mine because after I bought the New 3DS XL, someone listed quite a few DS games and a couple of 3DS games that they were giving away for free in a neighboring city to mine. So I went and picked up 12 or 14 games or thereabouts, that was given to me for free. Maybe 2/3 of the games were low quality games that I only played a little, but there were some gems too. And when I sold the DS consoles I bundled the games with them, distributing the games I liked and the ones I did not like so much evenly. And still not asking much more for most of the consoles, just a little extra. And this way it also became a good deal for the buyers that bought them from me.
I probably would have held onto the New 3DS XL if I could afford to, but realistically even if I hadn’t needed the money I feel that I was done with it, and was not planing on devoting more time playing it in the near future. Better then to sell it to someone else. I get the money and they get to enjoy it.
chungy
The 3DS line has a bit of an unfortunate side-effect that, by default, it stretches the display of original-DS games with some pretty unsightly artifacts from a non-integer scale. The workaround is to hold Start+Select on launching the games, displaying them at the original 1:1 pixels, but then there's a large black border and the size of the game's display is also unsatisfying small.
For sure, if you can only pick up one console, a 3DS XL or 2DS XL is a good option. If you can pick up two consoles, I believe the DSi XL is an excellent complement. Large screens with the same native resolution as the original DS. By playing games on the DSi XL, you get a comfortable and large display of original-DS games and no artifacts from a non-integer scale.
SilverRed
The dsi XL is the ideal system for playing ds games on. The lite is far too small and the 3ds like you said, leaves games blurry.
I'd also suggest picking up one of those flashcarts on ebay for a few dollars so you can load roms on to it. Or installing twilight menu so you can do it off the sd card slot.
bpiche
I have bought about 8 DSi/DSi XL, a Phat DS, an SP, and a GBA over the last few months and never paid more than 80 for any of them. The average price for a used Phat DS or DSi on eBay is $50 bucks in my experience. It's extremely easy to hack the DSi as well.
5600
> The prices for them now is ridiculous.
Ridiculous like the back of Yvonne’s head[1] or the laughably bad kind?
I think as much as Nintendo can recover off of that property they should. The Atari 2600 sold as much as it did not because it was the best tech, but because it made the market through advertising. If you have supply, and you make the demand and/or there is demand, and you’re not concerned with staying on top, you can milk that cow.
t0astbread
The last descendant of the DS line went out of production some time last year so I guess Nintendo's not making money off of them anymore now.
Pet_Ant
Now if you could drive the lower screen with an iPad then you have a real winner and great accessibility for the disabled.
fmj
At that point I think it'd be easier to emulate a DS on the iPad and stream the top screen to an external display.
marinhero
Could this be one of the first iterations of the Switch?
fredoralive
Nintendo have offered handheld-on-TV options before with the Super Game Boy for SNES and Game Boy Player for Gamecube, so them considering a TV output for a DS wouldn't be entirely out of the question, although the dual screen / touchscreen nature of the DS would make it rather awkward.
Although as others have noted, adding it to the chipset might have been intended to make store demo units or developer / reviewer test units simpler to make, and not something for general public use.
lapetitejort
Nintendo also offered the Wide Boy 64 [0] to devs and journalists to capture GB/GBC/GBA footage.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_accessories#Wide-B...
undefined
Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
Reminds me of an interesting feature(?) of the old DS Phat. If you held it close enough, analog tv antennas could pick up the video signal going to the top screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VlCpZkVss4