Sarah Brown on Nostr: @[url=]Chris Trottier[/url] They’d just done the N64 and were crowing about its ...

@[url=https://atomicpoet.org/users/atomicpoet]Chris Trottier[/url] They’d just done the N64 and were crowing about its hardware 3D graphics.

As a side project they had us design an integrated RISC and graphics system for a handheld gaming successor to the Gameboy. We got some local games devs you’ve definitely heard of, but who I’m not going to name, to knock up a few 3D demo proof of concept games. There was a very fun racing game for example.

This was showed to the CEO of Nintendo who, as we were told, was impressed, and asked how we were doing the hardware acceleration for the 3D graphics because it was better than their N64 titles.

He was then told it was being done entirely in software on this little 32 bit chip that was barely more powerful than a 486 (although the 486, of course, ran Doom just fine).

Apparently he did not take this well, and as we thought at the time, buried the project.

Then suddenly, a couple of years later, the GBA launched, but pretty much only with 2D sprite based stuff. We knew what it was capable of, but it seems there was still a determination to not have it show up their consoles.