© NintendoYou may not know the Nintendo European Research & Development (NERD) by name, but you will surely be familiar with its work. NERD has created emulators for the NES and SNES Classic Editions and downloadable Wii / DS games on the Wii. Super Mario 3D All-Stars, too.
Inclusive versions of Super Mario 64, Sunshine, en galaxy, many of you will know that 3D All-Stars will be removed next week, but – although it did fly under the radar first – before it happens, NERD gave us more details on how they made it run on Switch.
This latest update focuses specifically on Sunshine, which outlines the technical challenges of following GameCube games on Switch. It was read briefly and you can find the original message here, but here is what was said in full:
NERD’s own Nintendo GameCube emulation technology was used in Super Mario 3D All-Stars to bring Super Mario Sunshine to Nintendo Switch.
One of the biggest challenges was following the old but powerful MPU (microprocessor) of the Nintendo GameCube on the Switch’s custom processor: a number of optimistic tricks were needed to get the game running at full speed.
In addition, NERD has teamed up with the Super Mario 3D All-Stars team on various features to give Super Mario Sunshine a modern twist. It features 16: 9 HD version, updated control links for an optimal Joy-Con experience, and more … The videos in the game have also been upgraded to HD using NERD’s own deep learning engine.
Utilizing the similarities between Nintendo GameCube and Wii hardware architectures, NERD has also supported Super Mario Galaxy porting efforts by providing graphics and sound emulation technologies.
It also provides a possible insight into why we have not seen more GameCube games on Switch so far. Homebrew emulators have been achieving this for a long time, but they seem to be working on ‘optimal tricks’ on the Switch’s custom processor, to make it work.
Since Sunshine has proven how well the Switch can handle this, we remain hopeful that GameCube games will finally appear.