VC problem that Nintendo is aware of...

[onyx77]

On Super Mario Brothers Three, when you play the screen is very choppy on the right side of the screen and a blue bar is on the left. It is choppy when you are moving only.

I called Nintendo and they are aware of the situation. They had me try to go into the game, plug in nun chuck, and press Z+A+1 to no avail.

They indicated that they would get back to me when they fix the problem.

Has anyone else had this problem?

[SKTTR]

Sounds like the typical NES graphic scrolling bug.
We got the same discussion when Kirby's Adventure hit the VC.
But it's common. SMB3, Kirby's Adventure and 600 other NES games have this weird borders.
You want retro gaming like 20 years ago? You got it.

[Pegasus]

Most of the NES side-scrollers have similar issues. I never thought there was a way to emulate a game too well. =D

[hippiecrite]

Yeah I had that issue too. I just figured that's the way the game always was since I haven't played the NES version in many, many years.

[onyx77]

I have about 30 vc titles (about 8 nes) and none of them do this. I have smb, smb 2, smb2 lost levels, pac man, punch out, Castlevania, techmo bowl... (but only smb3 does this)

I wish I could get this story on the first page of digg so that many other people could put in responses.

[ZueriHB]

The bar on the left side is to hide the fact, that the NES cannot have Sprites with negative position values (They would simply disappear on the left side), so it has the option to set this bar to hide that. Some games like Contra do not have the bar, but you can plainly see sprites disappearing.

The graphical glitches on the right side of the screen are palette issues, as the palette for a given tile is update after it is fully on the screen. (I think this only happens in games where vertical and horizontal scrolling is possible at the same time).

Both of those glitches are features and glitches, of the original hardware. And it really depends on the game and implementation (for the latter).

I myself prefer the single colored bar on the left side to missing sprites.

[onyx77]

A user on another forum posted this.

Aaron (USA) - 09 Nov 2007, 08:38 GMT
I'm having the border issue too. It's actually not pixellated. What seems to be happening is that the blue bar on the left side has a section "missing" from and it's being overlaid on the right hand side. If you watch the videos, (or play the game) as you move to the right, the background (such as clouds, boxes, etc) to the left is actually being redisplayed on the right-hand side and then the actual RHS of the background is displayed over it. It's happening on my system and is REALLY annoying me. So much so that it's distracting. I really can't play this game. I hated to do it, but I deleted it from my channels. This never happened on my original cartridge game. Here's hoping that Nintendo fixes this issue, if it can be fixed.

[ZueriHB]

Of course it 'never happened' on the original console, as it was not shown on the TV, but this phenomenon is called overscan.


It HAPPENS on the original cartridge on the original system, but was not visible on the TV-screen as the old tubes just cut the image of on the left, right, top and bottom.

[ICEknight]

Originally Posted by ZueriHB

The bar on the left side is to hide the fact, that the NES cannot have Sprites with negative position values (They would simply disappear on the left side), so it has the option to set this bar to hide that. Some games like Contra do not have the bar, but you can plainly see sprites disappearing.

The graphical glitches on the right side of the screen are palette issues, as the palette for a given tile is update after it is fully on the screen. (I think this only happens in games where vertical and horizontal scrolling is possible at the same time).

Guys, I believe this is the correct answer. So please read it again until you memorize it and don't contact Nintendo for this, as the game is being correctly emulated.

[ICEknight]

By the way, can somebody please capture some video footage from this PAL version and the original cartridge released in Europe, for comparison?

Just to make sure everything's correct, including speed.