The reason why I say that was during that generation, Nintendo released Earthbound Zero on the Wii U, and while they did not translate it, gave The Mysterious Murasame Castle a release on the 3DS.
I honestly think that this game was intended to come out during the Wii U's lifespan with full translation, and would have been sold for a couple of more bucks than other Wii U NES Virtual Console games. However, given the fact that the NSO catalogue on Switch and the NES Classic Mini's games run much brighter (see the video below for a direct comparison between Wii U and the NES Mini), it's clear that this dim presentation is a choice: one of those odd, Nintendo-patented, inexplicable choices which leaves us scratching our heads in confusion. It's fantastic to see Nintendo showcasing a retro release in this manner, and we sincerely hope this is the start of a trend which sees the company localise more older games for the West. The overall Fire Emblem package appears to be a decent one from what we've seen so far (keep an eye out for our review in due course), and the emulator's not a bad one by any means. They could have changed the colors very easily I'm sure of it.- LuigiBlood December 4, 2020 This writer tweeted LuigiBlood asking the following simple question: Nothing at all, they just used the Wii U VC emulator as is with hacks and nothing else. It's infuriatingly puzzling, to the point where we feel like we must be missing something some elementary piece of technical knowledge. While 100% accurate reproduction of an image originally designed to be viewed on a CRT television is impossible, surely there's a better option than an image which has us checking we haven't accidently turned our Switch's brightness setting to zero, no? You might assume that altering the colour and brightness values of an emulator would be a rudimentary tweak. It's a confusing state of affairs, that's for sure. This seems unlikely, however, given the fact that 'Kachikachi' (the emulator used in the NES and SNES Classic Mini consoles) displays much more vibrant colours that are far closer to the originals.Īssuming that this is the Wii U's emulator in action again, LuigiBlood even speculates that this project may have been completed years ago and sat on the shelf until being reworked for Switch. The Wii U's NES and N64 emulation was notorious for this darker appearance, and it was speculated that Nintendo was somehow attempting to avoid causing epilepsy-related seizures. They did a lot of work here, just that it is based on the previous NES emulator instead.- LuigiBlood December 4, 2020 I want to add this: I do not think this is lazy. Observe the difference in the quoted tweet below:
The code features numerous mentions of 'VESSEL' - the name of the Wii U's NES and N64 emulator - and this is speculated to be the reason why the colours appear so muted and dark once again. The game, which never came to the West originally, features an official English language localisation for the first time in addition to the save states and rewind functions you've come to expect from vintage re-releases (as seen in the Switch's Nintendo Switch Online catalogue of NES and SNES titles).Īccording to LuigiBlood, these extras have been added 'around' the Wii U Virtual Console code, which forms the "base" of this Switch release.
Well, in a Twitter thread on the subject of Nintendo's latest retro offering, software developer and gaming enthusiast LuigiBlood has delved into the Switch release and discovered that the game seems to be running courtesy of the same emulator the company used for NES and N64 releases on Wii U. Have you been playing Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & The Blade of Light? Noticed that it's a little dark and reminiscent of the Wii U Virtual Console releases that inexplicably dialled down the brightness of all the games that came to the service compared to the originals?