"Last year, when I saw that Windows NT had been ported to the Wii, I felt a renewed sense of motivation. Even if my lack of low-level experience resulted in failure, attempting this project would still be an opportunity to learn something new."
The gist of the idea is to run the whole user environment, desktop and all, inside WINE. So it's something like a bare-metal WINE sitting on top of the Linux kernel, with just enough plumbing to connect them up. This is significantly different from the current way, which is to run a completely Linux-based stack - the kernel, an init, a userland, a Linux display system, and a Linux desktop, and then run Windows programs inside that.
BetterVR is a newly released mod for the Wii U-emulated version of Breath of the Wild that lets you play through the entirety of the game through the eyes of Link himself. You'll need a copy of Breath of the Wild on Wii U, a somewhat powerful PC, the Cemu emulator, and, of course, a virtual reality headset like the Meta Quest 3. But if you have all that, you can now virtually explore Breath of the Wild in a whole new way.
Like the company's GB Operator that debuted in early 2021, the SN Operator is a standalone USB cartridge slot that lets you play and archive old Nintendo console games on PCs, Macs, or handhelds like the Steam Deck using their original carts. But where the GB Operator was built for Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and GBA games, the SN Operator instead supports any Super Nintendo and Super Famicom game.
It plugs into your TV set and lets you play a wide variety of classic 1980s videogames - or, if you prefer, drop down to a BASIC interpreter and explore coding. It's exactly the same size and shape as an original Sinclair Research ZX Spectrum - to the extent that you can place Spectrum keyboard overlays over its squishy "dead flesh" type keyboard, for instance to help you remember the controls to a complex game such as Lords of Midnight by the late Mike Singleton.
Retro Games Ltd (RGL), the company behind THESPECTRUM and THEA500 Mini, has started accepting pre-orders for its full-size Amiga 1200 replica, THEA1200. It's not quite as snazzy as Valve's upcoming Steam Frame, but under the hood, they're both Arm64 computers running Linux and relying on emulation of a totally different CPU to run existing games. In July 1985, two much-loved franchises launched.
Nintendo says 14 Virtual Boy titles will be made available to Switch Online Expansion Pack subscribers over time. The eventual software list includes cult-classic Nintendo first-party titles like Virtual Boy Wario Land and Mario's Tennis, as well as extremely hard-to-find third-party games like Jack Bros. and Virtual Bowling, which can command hundreds or thousands of dollars for an original cartridge. The fact that Nintendo is officially acknowledging these games at all is a bit surprising after all these years of neglect.
First and foremost, on Switch 2 your GBA games-dating from 2001 to 2010-will now apparently run in a far shinier 1080p even when playing in handheld mode. Now, clearly this sets up quite the battle lines between those who believe emulated games should be played at the scale and resolution that was originally intended, ideally on the cloudy-screened technology of its era, and those who like it when things look pretty.
Even retro console superfans would be forgiven for not knowing about the LaserActive, a pricey LaserDisc player released in 1994 alongside swappable hardware modules that could add support for Sega Genesis and NEC TurboGrafx-16 games and controllers. Using those add-ons, you could also play a handful of games specifically designed for the LaserActive format, which combined game data and graphics with up to 60 minutes of full-screen, standard-definition analog video per side.
