-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Tomohiro Kawase might've been hired by Nintendo to put ROM headers into VC [Updated Dec. 1, 2018]
- Thread starter delete12345
- Start date
Hi I registered just to defend myself since people keep linking me to this thread.
I think it's pretty clear in my GDC talk that I'm putting out a theory based on a very loose "investigation," I just watched it again and I am not stating it as some indisputable fact. My entire line of thinking is in the talk: there's an iNES header in a Nintendo product, and the iNES header format was created within the amateur emulation community outside of Nintendo, therefore they
a) copied that exact header format when doing their own in-house emulation (I didn't say this in the talk, but that's one interpretation) or
b) they downloaded the existing ROM from the internet and used it
Either way, the point I was trying to make, and maybe I didn't do the best job of making it, was that Nintendo directly benefited and profited (and apparently poached!) from the work of the amateur emulation community while attacking it and calling it a legal threat, and that this attitude toward the work of amateur emulation is what put is in the shitty situation we're in today where I can't legally download Clash at Demonhead. I don't care where their ROMs came from and neither should you, a ROM is a ROM no matter who dumped it. "Nintendo downloaded a ROM off of the internet" isn't some hill I'm willing to die on or some cause I'm championing.
That said, I've read through the thread twice now and I'm still not seeing what evidence there is that the Super Mario Bros. ROM definitely came from Nintendo's archive. Yes, the ROM in Virtual Console is identical to the ROM in Animal Crossing...it would also be identical to a ROM that was downloaded from the internet before Animal Crossing came out, or a ROM that you would dump off of a cartridge right now. There is no digital signature in a ROM dump of an NES cartridge.
The investigation work in this thread is rad and I had no idea who Kawase was until I read it, and I believe that the theory that Kawase developed internal tech for extracting data is sound and extremely likely. Do I personally believe that Nintendo had the capability to extract its own ROM data, or that it kept a digital archive that it culled from? Sure, I can believe that. Do I also believe that it's possible that they lost some of that data and sourced it from the internet? Yeah, I do, and nothing in this thread has convinced me otherwise. This isn't uncommon. I have personally dumped ROMs for three major Japanese companies in recent years. We also had to dump a lot of the ROMs ourselves from original media back when I worked at GameTap, because our partners didn't have everything. Just because a company is old and/or Japanese does not mean that they have extensive digital archives.
(but Nintendo probably does)
I am unclear of the timeline nor who the precise amateur developer who made the header format is, but if it was Kawase, and he was getting paid by Nintendo and just happened to use the same format for both projects, I'm not sure I would call that poaching.
Let's find out, shall we?
First off, i grabbed a copy of the Interactive Multi-Game Demo Disc version 17. (Note that it's not the first version to include a GBA game, that would be version 16. Which featured Mario Vs Donkey Kong.)
Thankfully, the way the whole disc is set up makes it easy to understand what we're looking for in Dolphin (Which conveniently has a feature that lets you view and extract files from the filesystem of any Gamecube or Wii game), all of the demos are split into their own .tpc files. So we just need to grab the one named Mario Pinball Land.
Then we have to convert the file into a .GCM to allow us to be able to open it using GCtool, using the aptly named "TGCtoGCM" tool. So what's inside it?
Well, the name is wrong. But i'd imagine Nintendo wasn't expecting the average consumer to acquire this disc in the first place, much less try looking into the files for it. The .txt file would be the easiest thing to check, so let's read it.
That's the entire file. But we got a name out of it, "k.yosizaki". Going by the assumption that "yosizaki" is a misspelling of "Yoshizaki" leads us to a man known as "Koji Yoshizaki". Who is credited as the sole programmer for the Pokemon Mini emulator in Pokemon Channel,
and more importantly, is one of the programmers behind Pokémon Box Ruby & Sapphire. Which did in fact include a GBA emulator for running Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire. Just like the "GB Tower" mode that Tomohiro Kawase helped make for Pokemon Stadium.
Don't quote me on this because i don't feel like checking, but i'm pretty sure Mega Party Games is actually a proper port. It has much higher quality audio compared to the GBA game, just compare a track between the Gamecube and GBA versions and you'll see what i mean.
Let's find out, shall we?
First off, i grabbed a copy of the Interactive Multi-Game Demo Disc version 17. (Note that it's not the first version to include a GBA game, that would be version 16. Which featured Mario Vs Donkey Kong.)
Thankfully, the way the whole disc is set up makes it easy to understand what we're looking for in Dolphin (Which conveniently has a feature that lets you view and extract files from the filesystem of any Gamecube or Wii game), all of the demos are split into their own .tpc files. So we just need to grab the one named Mario Pinball Land.
Then we have to convert the file into a .GCM to allow us to be able to open it using GCtool, using the aptly named "TGCtoGCM" tool. So what's inside it?
Well, the name is wrong. But i'd imagine Nintendo wasn't expecting the average consumer to acquire this disc in the first place, much less try looking into the files for it. The .txt file would be the easiest thing to check, so let's read it.
That's the entire file. But we got a name out of it, "k.yosizaki". Going by the assumption that "yosizaki" is a misspelling of "Yoshizaki" leads us to a man known as "Koji Yoshizaki". Who is credited as the sole programmer for the Pokemon Mini emulator in Pokemon Channel,
and more importantly, is one of the programmers behind Pokémon Box Ruby & Sapphire. Which did in fact include a GBA emulator for running Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire. Just like the "GB Tower" mode that Tomohiro Kawase helped make for Pokemon Stadium.
Don't quote me on this because i don't feel like checking, but i'm pretty sure Mega Party Games is actually a proper port. It has much higher quality audio compared to the GBA game, just compare a track between the Gamecube and GBA versions and you'll see what i mean.
Absolutely nuts. I love this, can't wait for your video.
I wonder where these developers are nowadays..
Yep, there's stuff like the Super Game Boy and the Wide Boy 64 (Basically an internal use only device that runs Game Boy Color games. Made to allow game devs and journalists to take screenshots of GBC games. There's also a later model that adds GBA support, predating the Game Boy Player by a year or two.) but those have actual Game Boy hardware inside them. Nintendo also experimented with releasing an Adaptor for the Super Famicom that would let you play Famicom carts. But it was never released and is clearly just a smaller Famicom that you'd plug into the Super Famicom.
Yeah my understanding is that the SFC had an AV in port, and one of those three switches on the front switched it between native SNES output and pass through. All it did was act as a bridge and carry the signal to your TV so you could have both hooked up at once. The FC you're seeing next to it is what became AV Famicom.
What does that even mean ? Do you think Nintendo are making real emulators but the others are not ?
Not only that but that Reddit comment just below your post is giving some interesting context worth looking into.
OP
OP
How though?
Unless it's done by a reputable reporter with access to a Japanese translator (WSJ, Polygon, Kotaku Japan, GameInformer, Eurogamer, Destructoid), it's impossible to get in contact with him.
(I don't know if Eurogamer has access. I do know Destructoid had one at one point.)
No to both. Basically, what that article is saying is that instead of emulating the nintendo Data Recorder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famicom_Data_Recorder), nintendo opted to hack the game rom so it backs up in the same method that most cartridge based games did - to sram, which every NES emulator already supports. So the game thinks there is a battery even though there is not.
OP
OP
And you still need a Japanese translator to respond to and fro. And we can't verify if the account on the social media site is actually Tomohiro Kawase.
If some dedicated and passionate journalist go all out and wanted to write a report or a news article involving Tomohiro Kawase by traveling to Japan, that would be super great.
GameXplain has just done a video on the subject.
They actually contacted me before starting work on it. Asking if i could help make sure the video is 100% accurate. So that's what i did.
More importantly, i just discovered some more info on Tomohiro Kawase.
The iNES site includes a page fully documenting the NES Architecture, with a list of contributors who helped out.
See that listing for a "Kawasedo"? I did some research on where that name came from, which lead me to this guestbook page. Notice an interesting name on that list?
The domain listed in that E-mail address is linked to the Maekawa Laboratory, a lab (Now known as the Ohsuga, Tahara, Sei Lab) located at the University of Electro-Communications.
He's actually listed on the members list in this archived version of the page.
More importantly, it wouldn't be the last time he used that name, as it also just so happens to be listed in the GBA Bios.
Nope, the domain now redirects to a completely different lab at the same location.
They actually contacted me before starting work on it. Asking if i could help make sure the video is 100% accurate. So that's what i did.
More importantly, i just discovered some more info on Tomohiro Kawase.
_________________________________________________
The iNES site includes a page fully documenting the NES Architecture, with a list of contributors who helped out.
You may notice that it seems like Tomohiro is not listed, but that's actually not the case.
See that listing for a "Kawasedo"? I did some research on where that name came from, which lead me to this guestbook page. Notice an interesting name on that list?
"川瀬 智広" translates to "Tomohiro Kawase", in other words, Kawasedo is effectively an online username he used back then. The page itself is dated to January 27th 1997 according to this directory listing, matching up with the initial release year of iNES.
The domain listed in that E-mail address is linked to the Maekawa Laboratory, a lab (Now known as the Ohsuga, Tahara, Sei Lab) located at the University of Electro-Communications.
He's actually listed on the members list in this archived version of the page.
More importantly, it wouldn't be the last time he used that name, as it also just so happens to be listed in the GBA Bios.
I'm still looking to find what documentation he made on the Famicom, but so far i'm mostly getting dead ends due to how long ago this was. But hopefully i can dig something interesting up.
Nope, the domain now redirects to a completely different lab at the same location.
Last edited:
OP
OP
Wow, looks like my plans to start quoting your posts altogether isn't going to fit into my OP.
Are we able to get in contact with Tomohiro Kawase by emailing politely via the university email address?
Are we able to get in contact with Tomohiro Kawase by emailing politely via the university email address?
Last edited:
GameXplain has just done a video on the subject.
They actually contacted me before starting work on it. Asking if i could help make sure the video is 100% accurate. So that's what i did.
More importantly, i just discovered some more info on Tomohiro Kawase.
_________________________________________________
The iNES site includes a page fully documenting the NES Architecture, with a list of contributors who helped out.
You may notice that it seems like Tomohiro is not listed, but that's actually not the case.
See that listing for a "Kawasedo"? I did some research on where that name came from, which lead me to this guestbook page. Notice an interesting name on that list?
"川瀬 智広" translates to "Tomohiro Kawase", in other words, Kawasedo is effectively an online username he used back then. The page itself is dated to January 27th 1997 according to this directory listing, matching up with the initial release year of iNES.
The domain listed in that E-mail address is linked to the Maekawa Laboratory, a lab (Now known as the Ohsuga, Tahara, Sei Lab) located at the University of Electro-Communications.
He's actually listed on the members list in this archived version of the page.
More importantly, it wouldn't be the last time he used that name, as it also just so happens to be listed in the GBA Bios.
I'm still looking to find what documentation he made on the Famicom, but so far i'm mostly getting dead ends due to how long ago this was. But hopefully i can dig something interesting up.
Nope, the domain now redirects to a completely different lab at the same location.
Wow, that's some amazing find (on top of all the rest)!
But those two are the same thing to the general public. Fact is that tons of older games will never see the light of day because they're so bad at giving people legal ways of buying their old stuff. You can preserve a bunch of stuff in a room nobody sees all day, doesn't matter if 99.9999% of people have no access to it. Access is also a part of preservation. Nintendo has been hilariously anti-preservationist when it comes to others' efforts to increase availability of games that they see as piracy but refuse to make legally available for a long time.
On topic though, interesting find, but it still doesn't mean Nintendo didn't download it. We don't even know Kawase's role in iNES or if he even came up with the headers (doesn't seem likely from the info given on the page to me, just seems like he gave info on how the NES works, and the header's creation is still attributed to Marat Fayzullin).
If the headers were on games he worked on, it's possible he borrowed the idea from the iNES project but didn't come up with it himself. But we have no way of knowing if they did or didn't resell the ROM. The header doesn't really tell you anything as it will always be the same for a given game (which is the point of it), so we have no idea the origins of said header. Even without knowing of Kawase's involvement at Nintendo, there's no way you could assert that Nintendo resold it from that (they could just be using the header for their emulator like most other emulators out there). We just don't know, so in my mind saying that they didn't is just as wrong.
Do you have an example of a Nintendo game that is hard to get access to? Even Sky Skipper is available these days.
A few of the Famicom Disk Games are hard to get access to.
Nintendo titles:
Famicom Grand Prix 1&2
Famicom Detective Club series
Golf Japan Course
Golf US Course
Mario Bros Return
Knight Move
Tokimeki High School
You sure about those? Sorry I don't have time to go through the whole list now, but gran prix is available on Amazon for about 1200¥, and Tantei club series games were released for the virtual console...
I suppose there are probably some things that are hard to get hold of. But the list of things people want to play, and are willing to pay a reasonable price for is probably very small when it comes to Nintendo properties.
Yeah, I recognize John Stiles too. I knew him online for a bit in the good old days, he was a big name in the early emulation scene on Mac. He did the Mac port of SNES9x, MacMAME, and some other emulators (I think an NES one but I don't remember which one) before moving on to work at Blizzard for a bit. I think he also worked on the main x86 version of MAME for a bit too. No idea what he's doing now, I think he left Blizzard at some point.
Every one of those is on ebay this very minute, and easy to get in Japan. Also relatively cheap to extremely cheap to buy.
There are ways to provide access to public without it being a free download on the internet for everyone.
As said earlier, the Satellaview games are a big example. And a lot of the lesser known games out there are only playable now because people have ripped it. FDS games are already becoming useless and eventually the entire library will be unplayable on the original media since it's floppies. My point is that fans do the work Nintendo refuses to really.
I didn't say it had to be, just saying that the reality is the rights holders aren't stepping up to do so, so it seems silly to me to go after them for those games. Most people would buy 'em if they could.
That's irrelevant. You can still do preservation without piracy. Platform holders are against the privacy not preservation. To use the preservation angle is simply dishonest
You nor I have any clue what Nintendo does. Many of the big FDS games are available and have continually been distributed through Nintendo's virtual console service and soon through Famicom Online. Most FDS games still work, and you are legally allowed to keep your own copy. You can buy virtually all the games at a used shop such as Super Potato, Galaxy, etc, or off Amazon, Yahoo Auction, or Mercari.
There are some BS games that are hard to get because they were available for a limited time. Their problem is that even if Nintendo did re-release them for retail, there is not much of a market for them. Fortunately, this new Famicom Online service will allow them the opportunity to give players a chance to try games that would not sell on their own, such as the BS games.
You have no right to play games you did not pay for, that is until their copyright expires. Nintendo has no obligation to make games you did not pay for available to you.
If you are having difficulty finding some particular games, I can help you find where to purchase them, since aside for some BS games, they are not difficult to find.
Satellaview games are a strange breed for a lot of reasons. Some were pure marketing and promotion; a version of Super Mario Bros. starring Japanese radio hosts, for example. And there were games with audio streamed alongside the ROM that wasn't part of the game itself; even if you had these games, it's impossible to play them as they were originally experienced because of the very method with which they were broadcast.
Some of these games will simply never see the light of day officially for reasons that are beyond Nintendo's control, and some of them would need work to be presented in a manner that could more accurately replicate the original experience. But you're right that we have no idea what Nintendo's position on rereleasing BS titles is.
So... You've never used one I assume.
FDS games are extremely reliable if not abused. More reliable than carts or cards, I've had more PCE games die than FDS. I've bought games at flea markets etc that ended up not working, but have never had a well looked after game go from working to not working in the 25 years I've had an FDS, which I can not say of several other platforms.
And there are cheap tools to back up your own copies easily, and re-write them to the magnetic media if it ever should fail. I have something approaching a near complete FDS set and have backed up all my own copies legally.
So as an actual genuine archivist of the FDS platform, I have zero need for for-profit piracy sites to 'preserve' anything.
Yep, I am personally preserving most of that entire platform in original and backed up form. Zero piracy involved.
Last edited:
They're against both in practice because they make no efforts to increase availability of older titles. I'm not saying piracy is an ideal method of doing it, but it's the only one that has allowed a lot of games to continue on in the public's minds.
Pretty presumptuous of you to assume I've never used one. I own a few and a good number of games for it (30+) and their reliability has gone down over time despite being stored in a dark room isolated from one another. If you think magnetic storage media are more reliable than cartridges, I've got bad news for you (and boxes of lost floppies I had in the 80s and stored in ideal conditions). They're going to die much faster, it's just a reality of the medium. Even if you copy them again, they will just lose their magnetism over time. I've never had a cartridge fail me that used to work and I have about 500+ Famicom/NES ones (other than the battery of course, and even then some of my old cartridges from the 80s still save). Cartridges can be entirely physically replaced also with modern components (including EEPROM chips and such...pretty much anything short of a bad trace, which probably wouldn't happen much without human tampering) if need be, FDS disks can't because not only are they a proprietary format, but even if they weren't, it's hard to find newly produced regular floppies.
Also, said program to copy/back up FDS games was made by a fan, not Nintendo, thus proving my point that it's the fans, not really Nintendo, doing all the work of preserving these games. If you preserve FDS games then tell me, what has Nintendo done to help out in that regard?
I never said piracy was legal. Most FDS games aren't sold by Nintendo anymore (or anyone for that matter, I'm not referring to the originals). Tell me where I can legally buy a modern digital version of Electrician or Ai Senshi Nicol or Esper Dream. I can't.
Market shouldn't be a factor when preserving games, they should be available regardless. And if Nintendo has made an emulator for the system, porting additional games would be very trivial (you could argue about mappers for something like the NES, but on FDS this is not a concern at all...nor for Satellaview as far as I'm aware).
Again, I'm not talking about the original physical releases. Of course you can still buy them (although a lot of less common titles are hard to even find a copy of, so it's arguable whether even those are available). I'm talking about Nintendo's efforts to make sustainable digital releases that will truly survive the test of time, which have been pathetic.
And not trying to be antagonistic here, I legally own a lot of rare games which I would use as an example...but is something like Gimmick (which I do own for Famicom) a game that should only have a few copies even on ebay at a given time and if I bought all of them the game would be impossible to find for a lot of people (something not unfeasible at all for a lot of people) for probably a few weeks? Well, that's what you're looking at if you don't ever use piracy. And yes, I know, the PSX collection is on the Japanese PSN, but for one thing, it's a lot of work for most people to buy it this way, and for another, that version is inferior IMO...you could just pretend I put some other rare game like Little Samson in there instead or something, there's no shortage of examples of these.
Is that Sunsoft's fault just as much as Nintendo's? Probably, but I personally emailed Sunsoft in Japanese months ago to ask if they could support a VC release of the game and they said it was on Nintendo, so I guess it's just a blame game and nobody wants to take responsibility.
My point is really that we shouldn't have to pay hundreds of dollars to someone for these games and not have the rights holders make a dime on the game really. They need to step up and provide access to these games. I understand licensing issues and the like, but for a lot of games it's like they're not even really trying.
But anyway, this is all off topic...my main point is that we can't say if Nintendo downloaded the game off the internet and resold it or not. There's just no way to say they did or that they didn't from the information given.
Last edited:
The public does not have a right to have any game available at any point.
And Nintendo does not have to offer you a game for sale at your convenience for it to be preserved.
You have not managed to justify your pro-piracy-sites 'preservation' grounds stance at all. I have literally personally preserved a huge chunk of the FDS library with no piracy. And I have zero doubt Nintendo themselves have every single one of their developed games perfectly preserved in multiple forms, they've shown this to be the case several times when releasing long-lost (to everyone else) games.
'Preservation' as a pro-piracy stance for Nintendo games is a bullshit excuse for 'I want everything all the time for cheap or I'll steal it'.
Bumping because that video i was working on is currently done and should be up on Youtube in a few minutes, i'm not going to post it directly to avoid breaking any self promotion rules. so instead i'm just going to list a few misc findings i discovered while making it.
The many patents of Tomohiro Kawase.
This chart is taken from a September 2002 patent from Tomohiro himself. In case you can't tell from the image, it's basically the method Nintendo used to downscale emulated NES games to fit on the GBA's 240×160 pixel screen. First used with the E-reader and Animal Crossing's GBA link functionality. (They were both released on the same month in Japan.)
This isn't the only patent he's listed on, either. The full list is...
Did Nintendo fix the Wii U VC emulation?
One thing that has been reported before was that Nintendo allegedly fixed the Wii U's emulation in Smash Bros's Masterpieces. While i don't have Kirby's Adventure unlocked in that game. I did end up doing a quick test comparing it with a similar application, Amiibo Tap! Alongside the Original Wii VC.
The results show that aside from the aspect ratio, the image is pretty much identical between the Wii U VC and Amiibo Tap. With both the darkened image and smoothing being visible in both cases. The Wii's VC on the other hand, does lack them. giving a much cleaner image despite being limited to 480p.
The lost Sharp Zaurus Famicom games.
A little known part of Nintendo's history is that they actually allowed two of their titles, Clu Clu Land and Balloon Fight. To get ported to the Sharp Zaurus PDA back in 2001.
Info on them is a bit hard to come by, but what we do know is that they were developed by a company known as "Sonic Powered" (Most likely without Tomohiro's involvement.) costed about 1000 yen each on launch, and completely lack music.
I did manage to find someone on Twitter who has both games.
But i have no way of contacting him in an attempt to properly dump it.
Metal Gear Special Disc?
One of the most obscure examples of Tomohiro's work at Nintendo is the "Metal Gear Special Disc", a emulated version of the Famicom version of Metal Gear included with the "Premium Package" edition of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.
I was able to acquire a copy of this, where i discovered that the game appears to use the exact same emulator that was included in the Zelda Collector's Edition. Sharing several quirks like having a proper banner and description when extracted out of the ISO.
and only running at 240p. Which unfortunately makes taking non-emulated footage of it impossible on my end.
The disc also includes a trailer for the Twin Snakes itself, which thankfully proved to be much easier to find.
The many patents of Tomohiro Kawase.
This chart is taken from a September 2002 patent from Tomohiro himself. In case you can't tell from the image, it's basically the method Nintendo used to downscale emulated NES games to fit on the GBA's 240×160 pixel screen. First used with the E-reader and Animal Crossing's GBA link functionality. (They were both released on the same month in Japan.)
This isn't the only patent he's listed on, either. The full list is...
- The Gamecube to GBA link functionality. Dated April 2000.
- More GBA Link stuff, specifically the 4-player functionality used in Four Swords Adventures. Dated May 2001.
- The Nintendo DSi menu. Dated April 2008.
- The Nintendo DSi itself. dated October 2008.
- More DSi Menu stuff, specifically about moving icons around. Dated April 2008.
- Transferring data from one GBA to another with nothing inserted. Dated August 2001
Did Nintendo fix the Wii U VC emulation?
One thing that has been reported before was that Nintendo allegedly fixed the Wii U's emulation in Smash Bros's Masterpieces. While i don't have Kirby's Adventure unlocked in that game. I did end up doing a quick test comparing it with a similar application, Amiibo Tap! Alongside the Original Wii VC.
The results show that aside from the aspect ratio, the image is pretty much identical between the Wii U VC and Amiibo Tap. With both the darkened image and smoothing being visible in both cases. The Wii's VC on the other hand, does lack them. giving a much cleaner image despite being limited to 480p.
The lost Sharp Zaurus Famicom games.
A little known part of Nintendo's history is that they actually allowed two of their titles, Clu Clu Land and Balloon Fight. To get ported to the Sharp Zaurus PDA back in 2001.
Info on them is a bit hard to come by, but what we do know is that they were developed by a company known as "Sonic Powered" (Most likely without Tomohiro's involvement.) costed about 1000 yen each on launch, and completely lack music.
I did manage to find someone on Twitter who has both games.
But i have no way of contacting him in an attempt to properly dump it.
Metal Gear Special Disc?
One of the most obscure examples of Tomohiro's work at Nintendo is the "Metal Gear Special Disc", a emulated version of the Famicom version of Metal Gear included with the "Premium Package" edition of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.
I was able to acquire a copy of this, where i discovered that the game appears to use the exact same emulator that was included in the Zelda Collector's Edition. Sharing several quirks like having a proper banner and description when extracted out of the ISO.
and only running at 240p. Which unfortunately makes taking non-emulated footage of it impossible on my end.
The disc also includes a trailer for the Twin Snakes itself, which thankfully proved to be much easier to find.
OP
OP
Just watched the video. Well done research, though seems like you mispronounced Doubutsu no Mori as "Detsu no Mori".
Bumping because that video i was working on is currently done and should be up on Youtube in a few minutes, i'm not going to post it directly to avoid breaking any self promotion rules. so instead i'm just going to list a few misc findings i discovered while making it.
The many patents of Tomohiro Kawase.
This chart is taken from a September 2002 patent from Tomohiro himself. In case you can't tell from the image, it's basically the method Nintendo used to downscale emulated NES games to fit on the GBA's 240×160 pixel screen. First used with the E-reader and Animal Crossing's GBA link functionality. (They were both released on the same month in Japan.)
This isn't the only patent he's listed on, either. The full list is...
Nothing particularly of note here, as we already knew Tomohiro was still working at Nintendo as late as 2008 due to him being listed in Wii Music. But it's still an interesting look into Nintendo's history.
- The Gamecube to GBA link functionality. Dated April 2000.
- More GBA Link stuff, specifically the 4-player functionality used in Four Swords Adventures. Dated May 2001.
- The Nintendo DSi menu. Dated April 2008.
- The Nintendo DSi itself. dated October 2008.
- More DSi Menu stuff, specifically about moving icons around. Dated April 2008.
- Transferring data from one GBA to another with nothing inserted. Dated August 2001
Did Nintendo fix the Wii U VC emulation?
One thing that has been reported before was that Nintendo allegedly fixed the Wii U's emulation in Smash Bros's Masterpieces. While i don't have Kirby's Adventure unlocked in that game. I did end up doing a quick test comparing it with a similar application, Amiibo Tap! Alongside the Original Wii VC.
The results show that aside from the aspect ratio, the image is pretty much identical between the Wii U VC and Amiibo Tap. With both the darkened image and smoothing being visible in both cases. The Wii's VC on the other hand, does lack them. giving a much cleaner image despite being limited to 480p.
The lost Sharp Zaurus Famicom games.
A little known part of Nintendo's history is that they actually allowed two of their titles, Clu Clu Land and Balloon Fight. To get ported to the Sharp Zaurus PDA back in 2001.
Info on them is a bit hard to come by, but what we do know is that they were developed by a company known as "Sonic Powered" (Most likely without Tomohiro's involvement.) costed about 1000 yen each on launch, and completely lack music.
I did manage to find someone on Twitter who has both games.
But i have no way of contacting him in an attempt to properly dump it.
Metal Gear Special Disc?
One of the most obscure examples of Tomohiro's work at Nintendo is the "Metal Gear Special Disc", a emulated version of the Famicom version of Metal Gear included with the "Premium Package" edition of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes.
I was able to acquire a copy of this, where i discovered that the game appears to use the exact same emulator that was included in the Zelda Collector's Edition. Sharing several quirks like having a proper banner and description when extracted out of the ISO.
and only running at 240p. Which unfortunately makes taking non-emulated footage of it impossible on my end.
The disc also includes a trailer for the Twin Snakes itself, which thankfully proved to be much easier to find.
Thanks! btw you can post your own stuff just fine, you just can't make a new thread about it. If you link it in a normal post somewhere (like here), it doesn'T matter.