|
Post by Super Orbus on Apr 16, 2014 23:35:01 GMT -5
As far as I understand things, the regional lock only impacts games that were developed specifically for the DSi. According to the list on wikipedia, that's only five games, none of which are Japan exclusive.
EDIT: Okay, maybe that's not entirely true. Face Training appears to be Japan and Europe exlusive - no North American release. But either way, you're not missing much. The vast majority of retail DS games are not locked, including after the release of the DSi. It's only really a consideration with 3DS games.
|
|
|
Post by ReyVGM on Apr 16, 2014 23:43:34 GMT -5
Yeah only DSi games are region locked, which are mostly digital games.
|
|
|
Post by Weasel on Apr 17, 2014 0:03:19 GMT -5
Okay, wait wait wait. Do the DSi and DSiXL put out at a different resolution to the original DS? Or is the screen merely a different size?
This is FALSE. The 3DS XL has the same screen resolution as the standard 3DS; the pixels are merely larger. So the same scaling occurs on DS games on the 3DS XL that occurs on standard 3DS.
|
|
|
Post by jorpho on Apr 17, 2014 0:09:09 GMT -5
The other consideration with the DSi is that there are some flashcarts that are only compatible with the original DS or DS Lite. In particular, the DSi won't allow the cart to be ejected while the system is on, which is required by the handy-dandy homebrew savedata backup utilities. But there are plenty of flashcarts that work on the DSi, too. (I seem to recall that some will even allow homebrew to take advantage of the enhanced DSi hardware.) so recently I dug up my original model Nintendo DS which I haven't played since 2009 and unfortunately the screens on it are shot, they're all dim and stuff Are you sure the backlight isn't simply switched off?
|
|
|
Post by Scylla on Apr 17, 2014 0:39:24 GMT -5
As far as I understand things, the regional lock only impacts games that were developed specifically for the DSi. According to the list on wikipedia, that's only five games, none of which are Japan exclusive. EDIT: Okay, maybe that's not entirely true. Face Training appears to be Japan and Europe exlusive - no North American release. But either way, you're not missing much. The vast majority of retail DS games are not locked, including after the release of the DSi. It's only really a consideration with 3DS games. Not quite. You're thinking of the DSi-exclusive games, which can't play on a regular DS from any region (or a DSi from a different region), and, yes, there are only five of those to the best of my knowledge. "DSi-enhanced" games are compatible with all non-DSi models, but they're region-locked on DSi models. I don't know the exact number of DSi-enhanced games, but there's a considerable amount of them. I became all too familiar with this pain when I imported Solatorobo when it first came out in Japan (so it was a good while before the US release came along). Since it's a DSi-enhanced game, it won't play on my US DSi XL, but it will work just fine on my US DS Lite (which had a busted bottom screen when I imported the game, then the replacement screen I ordered took forever to ship from China and showed up broken, and, ugh, it was an ordeal but I eventually got it working again and could finally play the game). It's extra annoying for the fact that many of these "enhanced" games don't use the DSi features for anything particularly worthwhile. If I remember correctly, all you can do in Solatorobo is take a photo to use as an icon on the screen that displays your save file. All that hassle for something so useless. :/
|
|
|
Post by Jungyin on Apr 17, 2014 0:44:25 GMT -5
I think you're a bit confused about how LCD screens relate to display resolutions, ReyVGM. The physical size of the LCD screen doesn't have an effect on whether the display will be stretched, it's the resolution of the screen itself that determines whether or not it's necessary. (I'm sure I'm getting some terms wrong here, if anyone knows better please correct me.)
The DS, DS Lite, DSi, and DSi XL screens all have the same resolution and thus will have no stretching/filtering/blurring, but on the larger screens of the DSi's and DSi XL's the picture will look more pixelated, simply because the pixels themselves are bigger. This also means the "hold Start or Select on booting the game" doesn't exist on the DSi and DSi XL. The 3DS and 3DS XL have higher resolution screens, so when playing DS games on them the picture gets stretched to fit. But because the difference in resolution is not at a whole number ratio (this term is definately wrong), the picture gets filtered to look better. Holding Start or Select when booting DS and DSiWare on the 3DS and 3DS XL will cause the game to display at a 1-to-1 ratio, at the cost of the picture not taking up the whole screen.
About the DS games displaying at twice the size on the 3DS XL, that may be the case in terms of physical measurements, but because of the reasons stated above, it's still filtered.
I'm terrible at this, could someone word it better?
|
|
|
Post by GamerL on Apr 17, 2014 3:58:37 GMT -5
The other consideration with the DSi is that there are some flashcarts that are only compatible with the original DS or DS Lite. In particular, the DSi won't allow the cart to be ejected while the system is on, which is required by the handy-dandy homebrew savedata backup utilities. But there are plenty of flashcarts that work on the DSi, too. (I seem to recall that some will even allow homebrew to take advantage of the enhanced DSi hardware.) so recently I dug up my original model Nintendo DS which I haven't played since 2009 and unfortunately the screens on it are shot, they're all dim and stuff Are you sure the backlight isn't simply switched off? I'm pretty sure that's not the problem, perhaps lack of use is what caused it? I know there was about a two year period (2007/2008) where I never used it at all and then when I last played it in 2009 I remember the screen looking worse than I remembered and that was already 5 years ago, so you can imagine what it looks like now I think you're a bit confused about how LCD screens relate to display resolutions, ReyVGM. The physical size of the LCD screen doesn't have an effect on whether the display will be stretched, it's the resolution of the screen itself that determines whether or not it's necessary. (I'm sure I'm getting some terms wrong here, if anyone knows better please correct me.) The DS, DS Lite, DSi, and DSi XL screens all have the same resolution and thus will have no stretching/filtering/blurring, but on the larger screens of the DSi's and DSi XL's the picture will look more pixelated, simply because the pixels themselves are bigger. This also means the "hold Start or Select on booting the game" doesn't exist on the DSi and DSi XL. The 3DS and 3DS XL have higher resolution screens, so when playing DS games on them the picture gets stretched to fit. But because the difference in resolution is not at a whole number ratio (this term is definately wrong), the picture gets filtered to look better. Holding Start or Select when booting DS and DSiWare on the 3DS and 3DS XL will cause the game to display at a 1-to-1 ratio, at the cost of the picture not taking up the whole screen. About the DS games displaying at twice the size on the 3DS XL, that may be the case in terms of physical measurements, but because of the reasons stated above, it's still filtered. I'm terrible at this, could someone word it better? I read ya, it seems loud and clear that a DS lite is the best choice for me and thankfully it seems like it's much cheaper than a DSi XL anyway, so that's cool I can see why to a layman a "bigger screen" must seem like a win-win but I'm just glad I know better since from my experience when you play a 2D game on an emulator and you up the resolution past a certain point (increase the screen size if you will) it doesn't look so good, which is what made me hesitant thanks for the help folks
|
|
|
Post by ReyVGM on Apr 17, 2014 4:07:26 GMT -5
Okay, wait wait wait. Do the DSi and DSiXL put out at a different resolution to the original DS? Or is the screen merely a different size? The regular DSi has a bigger screen size when compared to the DS. The screen like half an inch bigger (not to mention that the DSi is actually more powerful than the DS. Think of the GB / GBC situation). According to wikipedia, the screen resolution is still the same as the DS (256 × 192) though, however, if that were the case, DSi exclusive games would look stretched to fit the screen (or at least with a square border), but they don't. So I think DSi exclusive games might be running on a slightly higher res. Ok, I think we're getting confused here. Resolution is one thing, screen size is another. I never said the resolution is twice as big, I said the screen size is twice as big. So that way DS games don't have to be stretched to fill the screen (and thus, making them look blurry). But that's something I heard/read when the 3DS XL was released, something about DS games looking "correct" with no blurriness/stretching and no need to use the Start/Select trick or something. But again, I don't even have a 3DS to confirm. *edit* What Jungyin said. 1 to 1 pixel mode. Apparently it's something the 3DS XL let's you do (but not the regular 3DS?).
|
|
|
Post by Super Orbus on Apr 17, 2014 8:44:39 GMT -5
I think it's more that with the normal 3DS, the resolution of the screen is higher than the DS/DSi, but the screen size is still roughly the same. So if you drop DS games back to their native resolution, they end up coming out unplayably tiny. The 3DS XL has the bigger screen, so even if you kick DS games back to their native res, they're much more playable.
I don't have a regular 3DS to confirm, but I as far as I know it's not so much that you can't do it. It's just that you wouldn't want to.
I can say though, I've played a ton of DS games on my 3DS XL, and they look fine upscaled. I did the native res thing once or twice because it's a neat trick, but I don't ever actually play that way.
|
|
|
Post by zellsf on Apr 17, 2014 10:01:31 GMT -5
DS/DS Lite/DSi/DSi XL are all the same resolution. DS/DSi games are all the same resolution. There is no stretching and scaling on these, just different size screens. 3DS/3DS XL have a higher resolution and needs to scale DS/DSi games. If you're concerned about image quality then this looks pretty bad. 3DS/3DS XL also has a 1:1 scaling mode, which will fill out about 33% of the screen with black borders and will make DS games look perfect, if you can accept the black borders and the (severely) reduced screen size. The difference between regular revisions and XL revision is just screen size. They don't use different resolutions, they don't use different scalers (or use scalers when there previously wasn't one). It's VERY simple: buy a XL if you want a larger screen. The image will look EXACTLY as it does on a non-XL unit except larger. There'll be no scaling artifacts, no pixelation that wasn't already there (you'll just see it better now), no blurriness etc. I have NO idea why there is so much misinformation on this subject. This is for reference what both a 3DS and 3DS XL do in 1:1 mode for DS games:
|
|
|
Post by Jungyin on Apr 17, 2014 10:26:44 GMT -5
I believe the misinformation comes form people not knowing the difference between physical screen size, resolution, and pixel density, and not knowing what scaling and filtering means or when it's required. Or knowing but not able to clearly explain to others. The result is people saying bigger screen = bigger resolution.
|
|
|
Post by Scylla on Apr 17, 2014 14:13:57 GMT -5
It's VERY simple: buy a XL if you want a larger screen. The image will look EXACTLY as it does on a non-XL unit except larger. There'll be no scaling artifacts, no pixelation that wasn't already there (you'll just see it better now), no blurriness etc. I have NO idea why there is so much misinformation on this subject. While there is misinformation out there, I think a lot of people confuse "misinformation" with people stating the practicality of it all. You can say there's "no blurriness", but when I play my DSi XL versus my DS Lite, the appearance of the games on my XL is undeniably blurrier to my eyes. Yes, the technicality of it is that there is no scaling or stretching or whatever, but like you said in regard to pixelation, you see things on a bigger screen that weren't apparent on a smaller screen. When it comes down to actually playing games, that's all that matters. I'm not playing hardware specs, I'm playing what I see and hear before my eyes.
|
|
|
Post by zellsf on Apr 17, 2014 15:15:31 GMT -5
It's VERY simple: buy a XL if you want a larger screen. The image will look EXACTLY as it does on a non-XL unit except larger. There'll be no scaling artifacts, no pixelation that wasn't already there (you'll just see it better now), no blurriness etc. I have NO idea why there is so much misinformation on this subject. While there is misinformation out there, I think a lot of people confuse "misinformation" with people stating the practicality of it all. You can say there's "no blurriness", but when I play my DSi XL versus my DS Lite, the appearance of the games on my XL is undeniably blurrier to my eyes. Yes, the technicality of it is that there is no scaling or stretching or whatever, but like you said in regard to pixelation, you see things on a bigger screen that weren't apparent on a smaller screen. When it comes down to actually playing games, that's all that matters. I'm not playing hardware specs, I'm playing what I see and hear before my eyes. One of the most frequent sources of misinformation I see is people believing their personal perceptions are universal. You think it looks blurry, how is that not misinformation to a person who perceives no blur at all? Or doesn't define what you perceive as blur? Technical details on the other hand can tell you exactly what you'll get if you understand them. They're also very easy to understand in this case, if OP has any questions I'll try to explain.
|
|
|
Post by Discoalucard on Apr 17, 2014 15:26:22 GMT -5
Yeah, the image QUALITY on an XL (either DSiXL or 3DSXL) is arguably worse looking than the smaller models, just because they're already fairly low resolution images that are made larger. However, I feel it's a reasonable trade-off since I hate looking at small screens and find them uncomfortable to hold.
DS/DSi resolution: 256x192 3DS resolution (bottom screen): 320x240 3DS resolution (top screen): 400x240 (technically 800x240 but that's just doubled to account for the 3D image)
The problem, as Jungyin described, is that the DS resolution is not a multiple of the 3DS resolution. So in order to either fit the extra screen real estate, it either (A) stretches the 256x192 image to a 320x240 one and applies a filter, blurring it (it does this by default), or (B) displays the original 256x192 image but with huge borders around it. This is why I still keep my DSiXL around, because DS games will always, always look worse on the 3DS.
This is not a problem on the Vita. The PSP runs at 480 × 272 while the Vita runs at 960 x 544, which is exactly double (or, rather, quadruple, if you're counting pixels). Therefore, it can be precisely scaled. The optional bilinear filter actually looks pretty good too, since the higher quality of the Vita screen makes the pixellation of the PSP games more evident, and it smooths them out without really reducing the picture quality.
|
|
|
Post by GamerL on Apr 17, 2014 15:53:18 GMT -5
oh boy, now this is getting confusing, I wish I could see firsthand the difference between a DS lite and DSi XL screen to judge which one I like better, but that would require buying both since I don't know anyone who owns both
I may just play it safe and get a DS lite since I don't have to have a bigger screen, anything that's a step up from my original model DS is what's most important
|
|