How Graphics worked on the Nintendo DS | MVG

The Nintendo DS launched in 2004, with its Dual Screens it was a smash hit for Nintendo, selling over 150 million units. It's graphics subsystem is a combination of Nintendo's proven 2d tile based renderer and for the first time on a Nintendo handheld, introduced 3d graphics in hardware. How does it all work? In this episode we take a closer look.

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#Nintendo #DS #Graphics

[nicholasfarley]

Developing DS games was a pain, if you hit the 1k triangle limit it would just stop rendering tris/models at random, making it hard to figure out if you had hit the limit. We ended up being very conservative to try and make sure we never hit that limit. It took real skill to get the best out of it.

[gamecat]

As a developer at the time, I wished they had implemented additive blending modes. Probably one of the most frustrating omissions when I was doing FX

[MarcoGPUtuber]

Incredible talents by devs putting all these graphics on such a small console.

[DrBagPhD]

Man, I remember getting Mario 64 on launch day and being blown away that something could look *that good* on a handheld. Really cool video!

[VampireBuddha]

Nintendo's decision to go with weaker hardware may, ironically, have been a factor in outselling the PSP. That resulted in a much cheaper and more robust console, and price and resilience are more important in a handheld than processing power.

[kopmis]

Something you failed to mention is that the DS contained two CPUs. One was the old GBA CPU that was used to run GBA back compat. The other was a new more powerful CPU. When running DS games both CPUs where used at the same time. The new CPU would run the 3D-enabled main screen and the older GBA CPU would run the 2D-only sub screen. So if you look at the map screen in say, Mario Kart DS, that's essentially like a mini GBA game.

[COLOFIDUTI]

As impressive as 3d on the DS was, i, to this day, am amazed by the quality of the 2d sprites.The colors, the manipulation of the sprites modes and the sheer crispy nature of them made a beautiful composition.All Castlevanias, wayfoward and inti creates games didnt age a day in my opnion, it carried on the GBA tradition.Praise to all those devs and sprite artists, for what i think was the last mainstream effort in pushing 2d art!

[Emelenyt]

I remember being super impressed with having those graphics in my hand

[GearSeekers]

Nintendogs was the killer app on the DS.

[biostemm]

I loved how you could play an RPG or other inventory/map/menu-intensive game, and not have to constantly switch screens just to check where you are, use an item, etc. The Castlevania games were some of the best they made...

[BKBorgerKing]

I really liked the mixed 2D and simple 3D graphics on the DS. Really unique visuals in a lot of games!

[sensei]

I was a kid when the original ds came out, me and all my friends were crazy about the device. The download play was one of the coolest aspects. It just blew our minds that only 1 person needed to own Mario Kart for us all to play together haha.

[HydratedBeans]

Holy crap, I can’t believe that Christmas was almost 17 years ago

[therealsnowwhite]

IIRC the Saturn's 3D subsystem was an extension of what Sega did with the Genesis. The polygonal quads it drew were sprites stretched and scaled according to Jon Burton of GameHut and Digital Foundry. It also accounts as to why it can't draw transparent objects easily compared to the PS1.

[xmlthegreat]

So now we can expect a "How graphics worked on the 3DS" video next.

[averagejackmedia]

Nintendo: "This isn't going to be used to replace the gameboy advance"
Also Nintendo: Includes a GBA cart slot on the DS

[psivewri]

My girlfriend and I still play Mario Kart on DS together 😃

[pw]

Great little machine. Was lucky enough to develop for this device back in the day - great devkit and very well documented, an absolute pleasure to work on!

[keatzthememelord]

I always looked at the DS like Nintendo's version of the PS1, especially in terms of the polygonal games graphically

[dan_loup]

You can also make 3D with two screens and more polygons on the DS by using it's "write to bitmap" 3D mode.
Basically you can optionally tell the DS to write the results of the 3D graphics to the VRAM, so you can reuse it with the 2D engines later on.
Some games like that OZ use it to render 2048 triangles on one pass, and then use the result as a background and draw the other 2048 triangles to get to 4096 on a maximum 30 FPS rate.
Other games render to the VRAM in a frame and to the screen in the next frame, and set the sub engine to display the vram to get the two screens in a comfortable fashion.