A HDMI mod is already in the works for the N64, and allows you to get the best possible picture out of the vintage system. However, that's not the only modification which brings retro hardware bang up to date - there's a similar mod available for the older NES which performs the same trick.
Available via Game-Tech, the Hi-Def NES mod not only cleans up the picture dramatically, it comes with a wide range of additional benefits:
- Zero lag HDMI generated by your real NES - no frame buffer
- All signals, video and audio, are all digitally created therefore noise free. No analog conversion in the kit!
- Fits into top loading and front loading NES units, as well as AV Famicom's. More consoles are being tested, including the Sharp Titler.
- Automatic PAL/NTSC chipset detection.
- Three NTSC video modes: 480p, 720p, 1080p 60fps (NTSC CPU/PPU only)
- Three PAL video modes: 576p, 720p, 1080p 50fps (PAL CPU/PPU only)
- Four selectable palettes.
- Five scaling methods.
- Cropping on all four edges of the screen.
- Fully adjustable scanlines.
- Width adjustment to fine tune aspect ratio.
- The Hi-Def NES circuitry replaces the existing power with a more efficient design.
- Expansion audio is generated without the actual hardware in the cart, so if you have a rom with exp audio on your flash cart just turn on the option in the hi-def and it will work!
- Complete extended audio chip support: VRC6, VRC7, MMC5, N163, Sunsoft 5B and FDS.
- Realtime audio register viewer.
- Each audio channel is fully pannable.
- Countdown timer on the main menu that starts on powerup, for people timing speed runs.
- Reconfigurable hotkeys that can reset the system, overclock, underclock, and get into the menu.
- Software upgradable by using .nes file on flash cart or burned to EPROMs.
My Life In Gaming - the same chaps who did such amazing coverage of the N64 HDMI mod - have put together another video which shows this incredible mod in action. Have a look and let us know if this is the kind of thing you'd like installing on your classic console.
[source retrorgb.com]
Comments 73
How do you install it? Is it easy?
I'm appalled by how crappy NES games look on Wii U VC. So blurry and dark. N64 games looks way too dark as well. Only saving grace is M2's handling of GBA and NDS games. At least Nintendo did a decent job with SNES games.
VC NES and N64 games look better on the Wii!
@Kobeskillz At least with the N64 mod they only sell them to installers with some good soldering skills. I'm fairly good myself and they just let me know they were available this last weekend. The N64 mod is $120 each kit and requires that you buy at least three to install, so a modder would likely charge $150 or more to do that mod on your console. The NES mod may be easier with larger solder points, but you'll likely need to send your console off to someone or if your skilled enough buy three and install/sell them to friends or others. I'm guessing the price point will be about the same, so not very cheap.
that Wii-U image is a lie, wtf
@Kobeskillz They look better on the Wii, too bad it's still component video.
Nintendo seriously needs to fix the nes vc. 5 dollars for the worst quality imaginable? No thanks
Wow, I'm actually really disgusted how NES games look like on the Wii U, it's a hd system but yet the modded NES looks better then it?!?
@vonseux
A quick YT search of Wii U VC and the differences are a tad minor to the Wii U sample here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6907EYjX7U
Still looks pretty bad though.
What's going on with that NES comparison?
Seriously, the Wii U VC does not look anywhere near that bad from my experience. I wouldn't even bother paying for the games if it did.
I smell shenanigans.
@Nico07 where can I find someone? Ebay?
As a Framemeister user, it does have one or two advantages over HDMI-NES.
1) the x4, x5 options tends to be more accurate
2) My console can still use CRT TVs ranging from Composite to RGB while the HDMI model is restricted to HDMI.
Still pretty cool to have if your only console is the NES/Famicom and you have no CRT TVs.
@Nico07 from the site: Kit will cost $120 and installation under $100.
Nintendo's in the bad habit of replicating poor display outputs for older systems, I wish they wouldn't do that.
It's a big reason why I don't like using their VC software, along with the lack of button remapping (at least on 3DS)
That Wii U VC comparison is actually fairy accurate although most TVs will brighten it up a bit. I really doesn't make sense when you consider that they have the original ROMS. I've been debating for a while on what I want to do with my NES setup. I just can't find room for my WEGA anymore so I'm stuck using an HDTV. I thought about AV modding my toploader but now I'm not sure.
Any suggestions?
@Kobeskillz They just started to ship the initial batch of the N64 product this last week. Once they get enough product available they said they planned to post a list of installers on their site http://retroactive.be/ This product is still in it's early stages, and the NES version will likely be a month or more before it's initial batch releases to installers.
I never noticed the TV issues with the Wii U VC since most of the time the NES stuff is being played on a gamepad. Still this is a cool mod, and I have been giving serious thought to a retro system lately.
Love the NES, but these mods are just a bit too rich for my blood.
I didn't realize the poor quality of the NES VC until I started playing Super Mario Maker. Man, those "8-bit" graphics are so bright, crisp, and beautiful.
I've never noticed NES games on Wii U to be that bad. I'm wondering if maybe the comparison picture exaggerates a little bit.
But 64 games on Wii U look terrible. Way too dark, with washed out colors. I thought it was my imagination but comparing Ocarina of Time on Wii U VC and Wii VC, Wii wins every time (except for the rumble feature). Wii U's VC is a huge disappointment.
I hope they do the same thing with the SNES. I'm also interested in that one.
That wiiu picture is a lie! Wash your screen -.-
I know for a fact, at least here in the UK though can't speak for anywhere else, that the Wii U NES virtual console games don't look like that. In fact I'm playing The Legend of Zelda right now!
Virtual console games on the WiiU and 3ds do look darker. Specially GBA games on the 3ds.
Wii U VC is too dark but this is an incredible exaggeration of how bad it is.
I don't get it?
From those four pictures shown above, the Wii U VC version clearly looks the best. No hard edges, everything looks smoother and not so pixelated.
Especially on a large screen (projector) this looks way better than without a smoothness filter.
And who cares if it's a bit darker? Honestly, I hadn't noticed that on my Wii U at all, it's this comparison picture that shows me the increased darkness for the first time. But I don't mind it. If you want it brighter, change the brightness of your screen.
The Wii U NES VC is terrible. Blurry, dark and lags on the gamepad. Seriously, on the gamepad! They may have done this to compensate for laggy TVs, but I run things in gaming mode and the TV update is ahead of the gamepad. The SNES is perfect, so why so much trouble on NES?
Makes me feel a little upset....
@shani They did not smooth out SNES, and they give an option to smooth GBA titles. Why not give an option on NES?
@Sir420 Indeed, you're right, I just tested it with Mario & Yoshi and Super Mario Land on my Wii U. Hadn't noticed that before and I don't really care that much.
I thought that picture above was from SNES VC and already smoothed. Even if it's not, I still think the darker and smoother picture in the comparison looks best.
I've got a 35" tv that is only there for my retro gaming habit. It's in my oldest sons room with his PS3 and then my n64, Atari 2600, 5200, and my community snes which a friend has right now. I sold my new a few years ago since I have so many wii vc games. Really didn't use it. Besides, I'm not above playing wii/vc games on my gamepad with a classic controller.
What the fronk? NES games on Wii U VC are WAY brighter than that! I would have never purchased or "upgraded" as many NES games as I have on the Wii U VC if they looked anywhere near that bad...
The Framemeister image is about how bright the NES games on Wii U VC are.
Indeed I tested this last night to decide if I'll transfer my games or not, bought Castlevania III and Punch Out and made a comparison on Wii VC, WiiU VC and WiiU Wii mode.
The result, Wii and WiiU Wii mode looked almost the same to me, maybe a tiny bit brighter on the latter and a slightly color difference, but almost the same really.
On WiiU however, it definitely looked blurrier, less pixelated and darker. It wasn't as bad as I would imagine except that color fidelity is not the same. For example, because of the darker background the mermaid monsters in Castlevania or the candles looked more red, the zombie things a bit more purple instead of blue... things like that. And worse is I had to reset the game because the sound suddenly disappeared.
So in conclusion, Wii VC = WiiU Wii mode > Wii U VC
@waluigifan1 Plus if you're in Europe you're sometimes forced to settle for 50hz...
Is everyone's Wii U broken or something because NES games look perfect on mine.
Excuse me for sound a bit winey (And I have enough cheese to go with it), but why hasn't ANYONE made one of these for the Saturn? The only damn console out there that is almost impossible to emulate properly.
Ya NES WiiU VC is a disgrace to me. Not how those games should look on an HD LCD
@shani I will be the first to admit that the super sharp, blocky and pixelated look of 8-bit on LCDs is far from what programers intended, but I am still a fan of that look.
The Wii U VC ads a filter which has the job of catching and preventing flashes. In the older days, a lot of games included flashes as a special effect, and they have been shown to be capable of causing epileptic seizures.
Wow are Wii U VC really that dark?
I got a 7" Sony Trinitron. Everything looks good on that thing, even Wii U running through composite
@foobarbaz This allows you to emulate scanlines. And your point about using a CRT is different - you're confusing "best" with "most authentic".
It's plain to anyone with eyes that the HDMI image is better than anything you'd get on a CRT, RGB or no.
you know, you can disable softness by pressing the left analog stick!
thank you!
@shauntu: This. The NES's heyday was way before the Electric Soldier Porygon incident (December 16, 1997). This is the same reason EarthBound took so long to get a rerelease; that with all its flashy effects was released well before the incident as well.
Along with what @Koniec pointed out, there really shouldn't be this much complaining.
@Kenology I suggest you look again, GBA and DS VC definitely have the same treatment.
@shauntu No such filter exists, the game is either patched to remove/reduce flashes or the flashes become less threatening because of the colors. It's still a threat since they mention it in the e-manuals multiple times.
Yeah, no way Wii U VC games are THAT dark and blurry. I have a few on my system and they look fine. Not perfect buy definitely not anything like the picture above.
@AlienX I suggest YOU look again. GBA and NDS emulation is excellent in terms screen clarity. You're wrong here, bro. Clearly.
@Kenology They literally stick a solid black overlay and reduce the opacity.
See 3DS VC's config.ini, the MASK section, the dark0 option.
Anyway I'll take your suggestion to heart and look again. Let's let everyone see who is correct...
Let us see Brain Age (the paid version, not the freebie) Miiverse shot:
https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69imAW30FZUmMc-
Is that background supposed to be gray?
http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/1367/397935-brainage_2.jpg
Apparently not; no way!
For GBA let's try Sonic Advance a Jap exclusive, they always get the best stuff don't they? First Miiverse:
https://d3esbfg30x759i.cloudfront.net/ss/WVW69iW0sR0rNjIP1t
Looking good, eh? Not so much when you compare it to the original:
http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/8/8a/Sonic_Advance_zone_1_Beach.png
They should have compared to Kirby's Adventure on the 3DS, not Wii U. Just my opinion but 3D remakes are the best anyways.
It is true that NES games look dark on Wii U.
@Yeahman Quality of Miiverse screenshots does not matter for this. The colors remain mostly the same, for example if the color is white 0xffffff, it still remains like that, compressed areas might change to say 0xfffefb, but that's still white to any human's eyes. Plus I don't see why I have to keep proving my point, just look at it! DS VC is 20% black just like the Game Boy Player startup disc, wow they've been doing it since 2004.
Look just take a completely white image 0xffffff, and a black image 0x000000, layer the black one over the white one, and reduce the opacity of the black one to 20%, the white becomes 0xcccccc, this color matches the Miiverse screenshot go figure.
@AlienX Check out this link:http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Wii_U_Virtual_Console
It does state that all NES games have a pixel filtering filter. The cause is indeed to reduce instances of flashing. More blatant flashing they also remove on a per-game basis.
@Mijo http://www.cnet.com/products/neoya-wii2hdmi-converter-for-wii-console/
@shauntu That's bilinear filtering, it doesn't help reduce flashing, it fixes the image because for some reason only Nintendo knows, NES VC on Wii U uses an incorrect screen size, without filtering you would get scrolling artifacts and uneven pixels.
Eh, the FameMeister still looks better.
My $300 dollar tv that I bought during a late night milk run to Wal Mart does better on the Wii U VC than what these images show.
I love how games look on it. Yes this mod makes sense for those with a huge library, but I get my $5 each and everytime I buy an NES game on the eShop.
@Dakt Agreed.
Play it on a CRT TV and it'll look 10x better than everything you see up there.
What is wrong with your WiiU? Did you hook it up to a potato? Sure, VC games are a little dark, but they certainly don't look that bad on my TV. However, I do mostly play on the gamepad, and I think they look much better there than on an HDTV, since the gamepad resolution matches older TVs (480p).
Yeah. Wii VC didn't have these issues. I don't know how Nintendo botched the emulation like this. At least the games are playable, but I'd like them to try to make it look more like the Hi-Def NES above.
@VanillaLake Yes they're a bit darker than they should be, but the image in the article must have been taken from a 30+ year old TV on its last leg, because both mine and my friend's NES Wii U VC games look about the same as the Framemeister image in the article.
See while true, the image is a gross exaggeration of the actual issue.
@Neko_Ichigofan Yes, it looks not only dark but also blurry on the comparison.
So much for Nintendo fixing their awful VC graphics if these comments of "oh its fine on my TV. you must be the ones wrong or are LIARS" are anything to go by.
Your eyes can get used to the dark screens and if you've not seen how it should look on the same screen it is easy to believe the darkness you are seeing is the same as how it should look when it isn't.
Really Nintendo give themselves an own goal here with things like Mario Maker and NES remix where the graphics look a lot different (NES remix still suffers from lag though). I hope the CRT filter doesn't go away as it is a good start.
Really options are useful here something Nintendo is adding at a glacial pace. It is also useful as sometimes darker can be correct for some GBA games which skewed themselves to brighter colours to compensate for the unlit screens (Tales of Phantasia is a good example where they actually darkened the palette back to normal for the US release but Japanese and EU releases used a very bright palette). DS might be similar.
I thought something wws wrong with me at first when I played Mario 64
@Damo Check out the Shmups forum - the most authoritative place to go re. scalers, CRTs etc. You'll find that a BVM image will outclass this (or any scaler) by a good margin. Nothing beats a really high class CRT.
@andykara2003 I've dabbled in CRT, scalers and much more besides over the past decade. A lovely RGB image via a CRT is authentic and you can't beat the nostalgia of scanlines, but an upscaled image via HDMI is sharper as the tech it's running on is higher resolution. It's all about preference - some people will pay a lot of money to get that authentic image, and fair play to them.
@Damo It's still just 240p linedoubled and scaled to 1080p, it's not fundamentally running a higher resolution in any way. All it's doing is making low res (240p) look good on your HDTV, it can't actually raise the base resolution. Have you tried running RGB on a 1000 line Sony BVM, i.e. the 20E1E? From your answer I am hazarding a guess that you may not have. These are the very best 15Khz CRTs ever produced (cost today's equivalent of around $20,000). The image is spectacular - stunningly sharp and vibrant - and has a very high reputation among the most knowledgable retro game enthusiasts. I understand your enthusiasm for this mod which looks fantastic, but as a game site editor, if you are going to make sweeping statements like "It's plain to anyone with eyes that the HDMI image is better than anything you'd get on a CRT, RGB or no", then you will need to know this stuff inside out or you will get called out. There are also other 15/31Khz CRTs used for retro gaming that are close to the BVMs in quality and I think you really need to experience the very best available alternatives in person and make a clear comparison to be able to make these kind of statements. If you really want to discover more on this, I would do some further research over at the Shmups forums. There are people over there with extremely in-depth knowledge who can set you straight on this.
@andykara2003 If you do a quick search on the site then you'll see that I've reviewed upscalers and scanline generators in the past (NL was one of the first to review the SGL generator), and I've owned several gaming monitors and CRT TVs in the past. While I wouldn't claim to be an expert, I know quite a bit about this. The tech behind a CRT TV - no matter how good - is still inferior to modern tech. I'm not saying it can't look good - I love the look of retro systems on a decent CRT - but it's largely a nostalgia thing. You simply can't beat devices like this NES mod when it comes to sharpness.
Of course, this is just one person's opinion but after spending an insane amount of money getting a commodore 1084 monitor and getting the right RGB leads modded to run all my retro systems on it, I can say hand on heart the effort simply wasn't worth it. Not when there are mods and devices like this which offer a cheaper and (IMO) better alternative.
@Damo
I'm sure your knowledge on scalers is good, but be assured that to a CRT enthusiast, the fact that you've cited the Commodore as a support to your argument shows that you still have some way to go in understanding the world of high end professional CRT broadcast monitors.
While the Commodore 1084 is a good monitor, it's not even remotely in the same league as a Sony BVM. The former is just a consumer monitor originally developed for the Amiga and produced at a price that was affordable to the general public. The BVM 20F1U/20E1U was used by companies such as the BBC and Sky as their top reference monitor. Their specification was such that they cost $12,000 in 1998! I noticed you mentioned CRT TVs in your post above. Note that I'm not talking about CRT TVs here but professional CRT broadcast monitors - something quite different.
I don't want to argue on this as I'm sure you are a good guy - I will say, though that if you really want to have a rounded knowledge on professional CRTs, here is a good place to start:
http://shmups.system11.org/viewforum.php?f=6
These monitors have increased in popularity for retro gaming in recent years and it's an interesting area to look into I think...
P.S. you spent insane money on a Commodore 1084? They can be picked up quite cheaply..
@andykara2003 Are BVMs still used by the TV industry today, or has that particular industry moved onto HD LCDs?
@Damo
They've migrated to 4K OLED now, but still under the BVM name - 30 inch is £24,000
http://www.sony.co.uk/pro/product/broadcast-products-professional-monitors-oled-monitors/bvm-x300/overview/
The good thing is that because the industry doesn't generally use CRTs any more, you can pick up a top of the range 15khz BVM CRT for around £200.
I'm not very familiar with this isue at all, but judging from this video, it seems like a 90% toss-up between the HDMI-NES and the Retron 5, in overall quality terms.
@Utena-mobile just from a small sample of games on the Wii U VC, I much prefer the classic Wii hardware for Virtual Console use. While I may never see the crip HDMI output seen here, on my tv, I can still get a great picture with the component cables. Even with games requiring precise timing, the upscaling hardware is amazingly quick for a 480 signal.
I wish Nintendo would get their ass in gear and get something called "variety" on the Wii U. I'm a bit down that DK64 never got to the classic Wii since N64 games run and look great on the old hardware among TurboGrafx, Genesis, and other consoles that just are not on board with Nintendo this time around. I'm glad I didn't merge my data to the Wii U since I still play some GameCube games on it along with VC games and classic Wii games.
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