Topic: 3DS player on Wii U like Gameboy Player for Gamecube

You've got a problem when trying to utilize this with the Wii U.

Here's the thing. Unlike the Super Gameboy and Gameboy Player, the only ports this player could plug into are the USB ports. They operate at average 25MB/s, which actually pale in comparison to the cartridge slot of the Super Nintendo and the high-speed port on the bottom of the Gamecube. A single frame (excluding audio) with 3DS games using no 3D runs at (resolution x bpp) per screen (assuming 24bpp), so that's (400x240x3)+(320x240x3). That's roughly 518KB per frame. At 60fps, that becomes roughly 31.3MB/s. Already that's over the average limit of the port, and USB ports work under burst modes, which are not consistent.

It'd be a decent idea, crippled by the fact many great DS/3DS games just do not work with the TV + Game Pad setup. Like this one:

How the hell can you hold the TV and Game Pad horizontally? So yeah, Bowser's Inside Story and Dream Team are pretty unplayable on a TV any time soon. And their 'touch screen and main screen' interaction gimmicks (like Bowser's body and the Dream World) would be... interesting to mess around with if two people were playing at once. Interesting being 'at least one of you would want to beat the other one up super badly afterwards'. And good luck with the Zeekeeper battle in one of said games, unless you want to try and dodge attacks going from the main screen to the Game Pad and deal with a main character who flies between them with motion controls.

And as said, both Mario & Luigi Partners in Time and Yoshi's Island DS make good use of two screens with only a small amount of seperation... this would make no sense on a Wii U.

Nor would trying to close the console during Phantom Hourglass...

That's not how it works. If they were going to do it it would be closer to how the Virtual Console works. The same way it worked on the versions of this they've done previously. Same setup on a bigger screen but with minor perks like better colour and fancy borders.

For a start USB2 is capable of pushing around about that sort of speed consistently. I just benchmarked it and it was hovering at around 29~33MB/s. So even if it was an entirely RAW video stream it would probably be able to just manage using your assumptions. Assumptions (24bit, 60fps) which I won't dispute. However there's the fact that video compression circuitry is fairly cheap these days. When's the last time you watched a 24fps Cinema quality 1080p video at 150MB/s or 1.2Gbps? Or one at 3Gbps for 60Hz? Even 16x Blu-Ray is <600Mbps. And that's with constantly moving images, the bottom screen of the 3DS is usually fairly static.

Then there's also the fact that I don't think that's how it would work at all. There's a good chance that a modern version of the "Super Gameboy" would let the main console do the processing. They could probably be good enough especially with the in-house knowledge Nintendo has of the 3DS hardware for Nintendo to build a decent enough emulator. If that happened what you'd be getting would be a 3DS Cartridge reader.

I FULLY SUPPORT this idea. I suggested a similar idea a while back (3DS games for purchase on the eShop to play on Wii U), but this sounds great too

I would buy it because I hate using my 3DS. It would have to compete with Sony's Vita TV though..since that's a similar concept.

There are so many things wrong with this idea:

a) As already stated, the relation between the Wii U and 3DS screens is different. Many games wouldn't work properly.

b) Stretching textures across a regular sized TV is going to look horrendous.

c) Some 3DS games require 3D, such as Super Mario 3D Land. This is already going to be a problem for the 2DS, but the target audience shouldn't be using that feature.

d) Why would people buy a 3DS if they can play games from both the 3DS and Wii U both for $300

To be fair I don't think people not-buying the 3DS is much of a problem. Look at the headlines on this site for the last week or so, Monster Hunter 4 sold almost 2mill units in two days. In terms of translation to actual global hardware sales that alone puts it about on-par with some of the best days of the DS and Wii. And that was just Japan, imagine what will happen when Pokemon launches globally in a couple of weeks......

I agree that it's a fairly average idea and I don't like it for a number of reasons. However hurting 3DS sales isn't one of them. They could do a global ad campaign featuring Hitler playing the 3DS and talking about how good it is and they'd still move units.

Some counter-arguments
a) The majority of 3DS games just have some sort of menu on the bottom screen. There are very few games out there where you actually need to have both screens adjacent to each other. The Wii U essentially does the same thing to a degree. Both Nintendo 3DS screens could fit on the gamepad however...so that could probably solve issues with games that do rely on the positioning of the 3DS screens for gameplay or cutscenes or whatever.

b) N64 games STILL look fine today, so the 3DS wouldn't suffer. It wouldn't really be much different than playing a Gamecube game.

c) No games REQUIRE 3D. That's why there's an option to turn it off. It just enhances some games, but I know a lot of people who don't use it. Nintendo could probably add 3D to the Wii U if they really wanted to, however, for 3D-capable TVs. PS3s never used to have 3D capabilities, but Sony added it with an update, so I don't see why Nintendo couldn't do the same thing.

d) A 3DS is portable/handleheld. A Wii U is not. Come on, now!

Many do use both screens in that way. See, Mario & Luigi Dream Team (and Bowser's Inside Story), Yoshi's Island DS and some others. Those are unplayable on a TV/Wii U.