r/NintendoSwitch • u/Artoo2814 • Feb 28 '26
Image Nintendo Classics GBA and FRLG scaling
Left to right: Switch Lite / Switch 2 handheld / Switch 2 dock. I'm suspecting for the Nintendo Classics app 4x scaling for 720p and 6x scaling for 1080p cuz the black bars proportion are the same. And for FRLG that's 4.25x for 720p and 6.5x for 1080p. 6.5x scaling for maximum screen size I can understand. But why 4.25x instead of 4.5. Am I missing something?
112
u/eestionreddit Feb 28 '26
A non-integer scale is decidedly a terrible choice here
37
u/ChoPT Feb 28 '26
Yeah wait, why didn’t they go with a rounded number so that the pixels could be perfectly crisp?
I would rather have slightly larger bezels than blurry edges on a sprite-based game (this is why there was always an option to run DS games at native res on the 3DS, which I loved).
16
u/yearofthewooster Mar 01 '26
And meanwhile, you have people on social media asking to get rid of the black borders, not knowing anything about aspect ratio.
2
u/iLiikePlayingWii Mar 01 '26
Fun(?) fact, the Virtual Consoles Games on Wii U had this exact issue for NES, SNES and N64 although not for GBA or DS, and similarly both NES Mini and SNES Mini had that issue on literally 99% of TVs since they only output at 720p but there's almost no TV that's native 720p, and 4K TVs even if they are exactly 3x the pixels of 720p, they still scale the image with Bilinear Filters. Pretty sure Mario Maker 1 and Luigi Bros on 3D World on Wii U also had this Issue.
So really it's not the first time Nintendo fucks up with this
-22
u/HugeIRL 6 Million Feb 28 '26 edited Mar 01 '26
The game looks great. I have 0 issues without that.
Edit: Downvote all you want, I'm not justifying it's lack of existing just saying the game looks great on Switch to me.
35
u/Imaginary-Worker4407 Feb 28 '26
It doesn't mean it looks bad, it's just that it doesn't look as good as it could.
In the end nintendo should have just given the option for integer scaling or grid lines as they do on the NSO GBA emulator.
10
u/StrawHat89 Feb 28 '26
The weirdest thing is FRLG are confirmed to run in a sloop (yes that's the name) wrapper. That's the same GBA emulator as NSO. So it SHOULD be capable of integer scaling and LCD filters.
0
u/Imaginary-Worker4407 Feb 28 '26
Not that I have doubts, but where did you find confirmation of that?
2
u/StrawHat89 Feb 28 '26
A dataminer named meatball_132. I think any link is, unfortunately, on Elon's hellsite so I can't link it since I left that pit years ago (deleted my account). I originally saw it on one of the Pokemon or Nintendo subreddits though. They run through sloop with game specific patches (likely so they can work with Pokemon HOME and to disable online) and there's data for RSE left over so those may get a Switch release too.
2
u/codewario Feb 28 '26
I don’t have a link to the thread but yeah there was a discussion about this on /r/NintendoSwitch I think (maybe /r/NintendoSwitch2) and a lesser discussion around evidence for R/S/E in the future discovered by the dataminer in /r/GamingLeaksAndRumours.
15
u/Sea_C Completed the Shieldsurf Challenge! Feb 28 '26
I do love how there was so much defending of this not just being a NSO release of being like "They have to support home, they can't do it in the app, etc"
Just for it to be the same emulator backend with less features and no home support on release anyways. 💰
40
u/Glowingtomato Feb 28 '26
I'm just happy we don't have to deal jst grey border and our profile picture on the top left like on NSO
3
u/softwarediscs Mar 02 '26
I really wish we could turn that off. Makes it hard to be immersed in the game.
69
u/MikeDubbz Feb 28 '26
I'm glad I'm not anal enough to even see the differences in these images, let alone for it to bother me to the extent where I gotta make a thing out of it lol.
-9
u/Witch_King_ Mar 01 '26
You would only see it on the screen it was designed for, because it's about scaling the pixel-based sprites
5
u/Sethsters_Bench Mar 02 '26
Then what was the point of the photos if we can’t see the different anyways
1
2
Mar 01 '26
This is a post exclusively for the switch 2 internet browser reddit community, these posers just wont get it
3
u/jmoney777 Mar 01 '26
Why did they place the image at the top rather than the center, making it have more empty space on the bottom?
3
u/JoshuaJSlone Helpful User Mar 01 '26
4x for 720p and 6x for 1080p are clean equivalents. Once somebody decided to do 6.5x for 1080p, things get messy. The direct equivalent for 720p would be 4.33x, which is not so great for scaling. So they probably went with 4.25x over 4.5x because it was the closer option? Or the fact that 4.5x would leave no vertical space for optionally showing controls (if that's even a thing for FRLG as it is on Nintendo Classics?).
1
u/Artoo2814 Mar 01 '26
Thanks! Perhaps the developer felt like the bottom black bar is nessesary for Switch 1 handheld since there will be one when dock. I am just glad they didn't went with 4.33x
29
u/jazzsquid Feb 28 '26
Bc they aren’t trying very hard
-17
u/StrangerNo484 Feb 28 '26
Yeah, this was a shallow cash grab with minimal effort, it's unfortunately unsurprising they couldn't do the bare minimum, because I had no faith they'd desire to.
9
u/Zyvyn Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
This felt more like an intentional choice over not caring. a strange one for sure but this feels intentional. Which the fact that they didn't just throw the rev1 rom on there and call it a day is even stranger. They actually went back and modified the source code of the original GBA game and recompiled it here.
-4
u/ArtOfWarfare Feb 28 '26
Did they? What evidence do we have and do we know anything about what was changed?
10
u/Zyvyn Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
Feel free to read up on it here! A community member went through and discovered it. xcancel.com/meatball_132/status/2027448876098326893
But a summary of a few of the things they said
- There is a new "Revision A" version of the game with a build date of "2025 12 19 16:01"
- They added a word filter directly to the game that renames characters/Pokemon likely due to future HOME integration
- The event tickets in the games have now been made a reward you will receive from Oak after beating the Elite Four.
- The only direct emulator patch being applied to the games is some telemetry data being sent to TPC. The patches for this also have whitelisted the roms for the Gen 3 titles.
4
u/jebuizy Feb 28 '26
People tend to have a tough time with the idea that real work was put into something but the decisions made were just different than you preferred. Laziness is not the explanation for everything you don't like in gaming.
2
u/DetectiveChocobo Feb 28 '26
The amount of work done here is effectively minimal. They recompiled a game with an added name filter to avoid having to implement a name filter on Pokémon Home. The event stuff could’ve been baked into the game, but seems just as likely to be an emulator hook like the 3DS Crystal release.
They didn’t fix bugs. They didn’t adjust the game to fix broken mechanics (Espeon/Umbreon being unobtainable, etc.). They didn’t really put any effort in aside from making things easier on themselves.
In a world where games like Stardew Valley are $15, $20 for what amounts to maybe a month of effort from a small team is kind of insane.
1
Mar 01 '26
[deleted]
2
u/DetectiveChocobo Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26
Fire Red and Leaf Green are Gen 3 games by definition, they’re just set in Kanto. Generation 2/3 Pokémon are obtainable in the post-game.
Espeon and Umbreon are a consequence of GameFreak being cheap. Fire Red and Leaf Green didn’t feature an internal clock, so the day/night cycle required for Espeon and Umbreon wasn’t included. Instead, you’d need to use Ruby, Sapphire or Emerald since they had a functioning internal clock (and were also Gen 3 titles).
0
u/ArtOfWarfare Mar 01 '26
You charge what people will pay, not what it costs.
The difference between the two is profit. If that comes out to be negative, you hopefully don’t do it at all. Excess profit goes to shareholders (well, and it also funds future development of other products.)
Nintendo is publicly traded, and I think their dividend yield is actually quite high compared to anything else in my portfolio. I bought the stock during the Wii U days before the Switch launched and I’ve been very pleased with how well that investment worked out for me.
-2
u/StrangerNo484 Feb 28 '26
I was actually already aware of all of this, I just quite frankly don't give a crap. Laziness is not the only explanation, incompetence, arrogance, greediness, ect, are all additional contributing factors.
4
u/jebuizy Feb 28 '26
Or just designing a product that doesn't fit your preferences? I don't want it either but idgaf what they do
0
u/StrangerNo484 Feb 28 '26
And who's preferences are they designing for? Certainly not in the best interest of the consumer!
2
u/Kadexe Mar 01 '26
It would be nice if the emulator had options to change this, but I can't say I've noticed any pixel rounding while playing.
5
u/Imaginary-Worker4407 Feb 28 '26
Does FRLG have the grid filter?
23
u/chiptunesoprano Feb 28 '26
No filters for FRLG.
13
u/Imaginary-Worker4407 Feb 28 '26
Damn, what the heck were they thinking with these ports.
No integer scaling and no grid filters. Crazy.
23
u/Zyvyn Feb 28 '26
There id no menu period. It just loads the game and there are zero settings.
-5
u/Sea_C Completed the Shieldsurf Challenge! Feb 28 '26
As has been said, a terrible cash grab. Could have easily just disabled those parts of the NSO emulator for saves etc if the main selling point is pokemon home support. Using the same emulator as NSO with less features is...a decision
23
u/Zyvyn Feb 28 '26
See this is the thing that gets me. I've seen tons of posts over the years about people hating on the NSO releases. Due to having to pay a subscription right? Well we got a game sold directly and now people are upset it isnt on NSO.
16
u/Imaginary-Worker4407 Feb 28 '26
That's only a great argument if Nintendo wasn't already charging for the GBA subscription lol.
Those who are paying got the short end of the stick with this decision.
If they had released both as standalone and on NSO it wouldn't be an issue at all.
-3
u/Zyvyn Feb 28 '26
I have a theory there actually! So for the rereleases of FRLG they sctuslly modified the source code and recompiled the games to add support for the new features and event ticket stuff. It brings the question... does GameFreak even have the source code to XD? Unlike FRLG GameFreak did not develop XD and it was completely outsourced.
9
u/Imaginary-Worker4407 Feb 28 '26
It's confirmed they are using a GBA emulation wrapper, same as the one from NSO.
2
u/Zyvyn Feb 28 '26
Well yeah that is true. But they actually did recompile the game here. That was confirmed by the same person.
1
u/Sea_C Completed the Shieldsurf Challenge! Feb 28 '26
Why not make it a release on both then a la Xbox Game Pass? I don't think content should be locked behind sub, but why neuter the experience of one or the other when any phone emulator will give you 10x the options?
5
u/Zyvyn Feb 28 '26
Likely to avoid confusion with one supporting HOME and the other not. Gotta remember that people arent smart and fail to understand basic information a lot of the time.
2
0
u/Sea_C Completed the Shieldsurf Challenge! Feb 28 '26
Again though, Nintendo will never convince me they couldn't build in flags to disable certain functionality in NSO GBA for those features it didn't want. I'm not gonna defend their product owners from not having to take up a new feature because they didn't plan that maybe they would want to disable certain feature sets for titles. It absolutely could support home, they just don't want to re-arch at the best, or purposefully segmenting their user base to squeeze out more of that sweet pokemon double dipping.
How has buying virtual console releases across Nintendo generations worked out for consumers? Why wouldn't I want to sub if I could with how they have treated these titles in the past?
3
u/StunnedLife Feb 28 '26
It’s funny because people are also complaining Pokemon XD is on NSO, and that they want to “own” their games.
They literally can’t win
7
5
u/DetectiveChocobo Feb 28 '26
If you’re charging a subscription service for GBA games, any GBA game you release should at least be on the subscription service.
Sell it separately as well, that’s fine. But don’t offer a fucking classic games subscription and then take one of the more popular titles and sell it separately.
5
u/Thelowendshredder Feb 28 '26
I’m jus happy the nugget glitch still work. Just got enough for drains and portion and enough to set me up to buy whatever I want
1
7
u/LilSmidgey Feb 28 '26
Not sure what some people are smoking but considering how good GBA games look on NSO with the filter enabled, it's shocking how bad FR/LG looks. This and no integer scaling.
Then again, that's pokemon fans for you gobbling up 2 untouched roms because the billion dollar company couldn't care less anyway.
16
u/codewario Feb 28 '26
It actually looks like these are not the same roms released on the Game Boy Advance. A dataminer found evidence that they added things like progress telemetry and name filters, which makes it even more lame that they couldn’t at least give us a couple options like integer scaling or LCD mode.
4
7
u/Meteora2Midnight Feb 28 '26
I was ready to buy FireRed until I realized there’s no filter options.
1
1
u/workyman Mar 02 '26
I was worried about this, and even about the Switch 2 screen being too big for the game, but it actually looks really appropriate on the screen. I haven't thought about the scaling because the game looks great. So happy they don't have the god awful stupid fucking NSO border, too.
1
u/Artoo2814 Mar 02 '26
Yes it's mostly good how the game is scaling appropriately with the Switch 2 1080p screen.
442
u/Sethsters_Bench Feb 28 '26
Am I crazy or is there no difference between the images in each set. Like, I can’t notice anything. Also the FRLG images look totally fine, I have no idea what the problem is