© NintendoYou may not know the name of Nintendo European Research & Development (NERD) by name, but you are sure to know its work. Having created emulators for classic NES and SNES editions, and downloadable Wii / DS games to Wii, NERD recently helped Super Mario 3D All-Stars, too.
Includes emulated versions of Super Mario 64, Ground, i galaxyMany of you will know that the All-Stars 3D will be retired next week, but while it is true that it flew under the radar at first, before that happens, NERD has given us more details on how it was made to work. a Switch.
Specifically, this latest update focuses on Sunshine, which describes the technical challenges of emulating GameCube games on Switch. It’s a short read and you can find the original post here, but here’s what was said in its entirety:
NERD’s Nintendo GameCube emulation technology was used in Super Mario 3D All-Stars to bring Super Mario Sunshine to the Nintendo Switch.
One of the biggest challenges was emulating the old but powerful MPU (microprocessor) from the Nintendo GameCube to the Switch’s custom processor: several optimization tricks were needed for the game to run at full speed.
In addition, NERD worked with the Super Mario 3D All-Stars team on various features to give a modern twist to Super Mario Sunshine. These include 16: 9 HD rendering, updated driver links for an optimal Joy-Con experience, and more … Game videos were also updated to HD using NERD’s own deep learning engine.
Leveraging the similarities between the Nintendo GameCube and Wii hardware architectures, NERD also supported Super Mario Galaxy’s portability efforts by providing graphics and audio emulation technologies.
It also offers a potential insight into why we haven’t seen more GameCube games on Switch (so far). Homebrew emulators have been around for a long time, but running them with the Switch’s custom processor at a higher quality seems to depend on “optimization tricks.”
Given that Sunshine has shown how well the Switch can handle it, we continue to hope that GameCube games will end up appearing.