To refresh, these games are displaying in what is essentially high definition, as they’re being run through a Wii emulator on a PC. So if the Wii could manage high definition (which it can’t), this is probably what Mario would look like. Nice, no?

[Wii emulator can do 720p @ NeoGAF, via VG247]

Touch Arcade points out that “a number of apps in the App Store” already violate that provision, including:

[...] CHIP-8 emulators, programmable calculators and, of course, Frotz, a Z-machine interpreter. In fact, Sega’s Golden Axe and Sonic iPhone games are nothing more than emulators packaged with the original game ROMs.

The app was denied last week; no word on what the next step is for the developers. But since they went to the trouble of signing a proper deal with the licence owners for the Commodore 64, it’s a good bet they won’t give up the first time they’re told no.

Otherwise, there’s always Cydia. Make it happen, guys. I dig that old school keyboard and Wico stick interface.

Here’s a video of the emulator in action.

Full Commodore 64 Emulator Rejected by App Store [Touch Arcade via Joystiq]

The SNES is old enough that any hankering to play Super Mario World can be satisfied entirely by emulator. Still, here’s a USB hack that lets you plug old carts to a PC.

Hackaday reader Matthias rigged up this solution, which makes the cart show up on a PC as an external drive with the ROM file inside. From there, it’s playable on one’s choice of emulator.

Admittedly, the number of cases in which one has a working cart but no working console, and a working emulator but no working ROM, are probably quite low. But I remember Dad asking me what was the point – when free WiFi is so plentiful – of jailbreaking my iPhone and rigging it to serve as a dialup modem for my laptop. “Self esteem,” I said.

In other words, whatever this thing does for you isn’t important; the thing you made it do, however, is. Good work, Matthias.

USB Reader for SNES Game Carts [hackaday]

The system’s successor, the FC Mobile II, not only shrinks down the handheld’s dimensions with a classier casing, but allows you to output its signal to a TV set. Which means it needs to come with controllers, so it’s bundled with two control pads and a light gun.

The controllers are wireless, as is the light gun, and best of all the gun is fairly close match for the original NES Zapper. So you can get your Duck Hunt on (reminder: the FC Mobile is compatible with real NES carts).

It’ll go on sale in May, should retail for around $US60, and comes in two colours, black and white.

fc mobile 2 the best portable nes gets a 1up

Full-time thinking man and part-time Kotaku Guest Editor Ian Bogost has asked some kids at Georgia Tech to come up with an emulator that can not only recreate an old game on a new platform, but recreate how it actually looked back in its day.

For example, the Atari 2600 was designed to run on 1970s TV sets. Big, clunky, cathode ray TV sets, on which a pixel looked a lot different than it does a crystal-clear monitor or HD TV set. So the GT computer science students have created some tweaks for the popular Stella emulator, which are able to recreate the way a game would have looked on a dusty, wood-panelled television set.

The results are, for this misty-eyed nostalgic, wonderful. Bogost says talks are currently underway to have these tweaks incorporated into Stella’s release builds, so hopefully they’ll be made available to the public soon.

A Television Simulator [Ian Bogost]

Just weeks before the release of Punch-Out!! for the Wii comes the unofficial release of the original NES game’s Nintendo-aborted sequel, Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch. It’s Punch-Out!! plus aliens, minus quality.

According to GameSetWatch’s quick primer on the Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch, the game was originally planned to be a proper Punch-Out!! sequel, developed by Beam Software and published by Nintendo.

The game was not just a demonstration of Tyson’s outer space boxing prowess, but also a showcase of the amazing ineptitude of publishers to generate capable follow ups to hit games at the time. The sequel removes both Little Mac and Doc Louis, replacing them with Tyson and manager Don King.

While the game was ultimately released without Tyson’s likeness under the name Power Punch II, the original working prototype ROM for Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch has been released by a collector and no small investment from the community.

The ROM can be downloaded for free, thanks to their efforts. It can also be purchased in NES cart format, for extra authenticity/masochism. You can also learn much more about the game and its journey from prototype to product at GameSetWatch.

Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch ROM Released [GameSetWatch]

If you’re not digging SpongeBob Squarepants and Nirvana updates, this nifty NES emulator program might be just the fix for Rock Band/Guitar Hero fatigue.

8BITar Hero takes audio generated from a NES game run on an emulator and runs it into a “Rock-Band game” with up to four separate music tracks.

If that isn’t straightforward enough for you and the video isn’t doing it either (or, like me, you’re in class where you shouldn’t be watching YouTube vids), here’s the description from the actual site:

8BITar Hero is basically Rock Band except with a Nintendo emulator generating the music and levels.

Gameplay levels that are procedurally generated from the act of playing a game. One person plays NES games on an emulator, others play a Rock-Band game with levels that are generated algorithmically from the audio code of the NES game. The focus here is the generative nature of the game, and the process by which the levels are created.

No, you can’t use your plastic instruments to play 8BITar Hero — but run Mega Man 2 through the emulator and you’ll really be giving your hand-eye-coordination a workout.

8BITar Hero [Insignificant Studios via Offworld]

You guys got opinions – put ‘em to use. A researcher at the University of Maryland wants to hear from gamers on subjects like culturally significant games, how they should be preserved, emulation and others.

Looking through the survey the researcher, Rachel Donahue, seems to be interested in what qualifies a game for being significant, and preferences regarding emulation vs. original console play. Some questions are multiple choice, but others invite longer answers.

The research is conducted in conjunction with the Preserving Virtual Words Project of the Library of Congress. Preservationists are committed to storing and protecting significant works, but being such a new medium, need to build methodology for how best to do that.

At any rate, someone values your opinion and will put it to a serious use, instead of selling you crap or creating games you don’t really want. If you have 10 minutes, cruise over and let our community be heard.

Surveys on Record Keeping in the Games Industry [Grand Text Auto]

While we’re all pretty much over it, it’s still a lingering disappointment that we’ve missed out this generation on seeing high definition Nintendo games. But wait, what’s this? A workaround?

Provided you get your hands on a Dolphin emulator for the Wii and legally copy your own games to your PC, you can see what they’d look like if Nintendo had decided to bring the Wii’s graphics into the 21st century.

These clips (don’t forget to click “HD!”) show the game running in what equates to 720p, and while this will be nothing new to the emulator crowd (who are used to seeing these kind of clean-up jobs), it’s something new to the high definition dreamers out there in the Mushroom Kingdom.

[renebarahona @ YouTube, via Go Nintendo]

FCEUX is a cross-platform NES emulator. It supports Lua, a lightweight embeddable scripting language. Look, that’s not important. What is important is what it does, allowing you never-before-seen control of Super Mario Bros.

Using the mouse, players can wield Goombas and Koopas like some sort of Mushroom Kingdom deity, often with amusing, potentially brain-melting results. This isn’t necessarily a function of FCEUX, but looks to be a custom Lua script that lets the player manipulate tiles and enemy sprites for originally unintended Mario manipulation.

We’re not sure if this is currently Super Mario Bros. specific, or if we could, say, make Mega Man 2 a hell of a lot easier with our crappy Logitech mouse. It’s not currently publicly released, but we hope that’s remedied soon. Very cool stuff.

Thanks to Chris for the heads up.

Super Mario Bros. 1 Drag & Drop (FCEUX 2.1 + Lua) [YouTube]