Nintendo Patents Game Boy Emulator for Phones

In what could be seen as potentially a big change of opinion for Nintendo, the company has filed a patent for a Game Boy emulator for “a personal digital assistant” and “a cell phone”. 

Nintendo has previously been strictly against the idea of releasing its games on other platforms and more specifically, mobile devices. Investors have on numerous occasions rallied at Nintendo, which been losing money recently, to re-release classic Nintendo titles on smartphones and tablets. It’s no surprise, as clearly the company could easily make a fortune by selling Mario, Zelda and Pokemon games to the hundreds of millions of smartphone users that exist today.

“A software emulator for emulating a handheld video game platform such as GAME BOY.RTM., GAME BOY COLOR.RTM. and/or GAME BOY ADVANCE.RTM. on a low-capability target platform (e.g., a seat-back display for airline or train use, a personal digital assistant, a cell phone) uses a number of features and optimizations to provide high quality graphics and sound that nearly duplicates the game playing experience on the native platform. Some exemplary features include use of bit BLITing, graphics character reformatting, modeling of a native platform liquid crystal display controller using a sequential state machine, and selective skipping of frame display updates if the game play falls behind what would occur on the native platform.”

Is this merely an act of experimentation or is it something we’ll see in the future?

Source: TechCrunch