Nintendo Filed a Patent for the Best Retro Video Game Emulator Ever

Classic Nintendo franchises like Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda mean a lot to the people who grew up playing them on clunky Game Boys. Decades later, those old handhelds are likely lost deep in a dusty closet somewhere, leaving vintage gamers scrambling to find old hardware to play their favourite games.

Nintendo appears to be planning to solve this problem with smartphone apps and seat-mounted consoles on planes and trains that mimic the experience of playing its most classic Game Boy, Game Boy Colour, and Game Boy Advance titles. To wit, the company submitted a patent application for an official Nintendo software emulator yesterday.

Emulators are programs that use the capabilities of the device they're running on—whether that's a phone or a computer—to mimic those of old gaming consoles and devices, which contained custom processors and other specialized hardware not found in modern devices.

Homebrew emulators are currently available for Android and iOS, but they're pale imitations of the real thing. The new application indicates that Nintendo want to build the best emulator on the market; one that is carefully designed to deliver as close an imitation of the original experience as possible.

"A number of [Game Boy] emulators have been written for a variety of different platforms ranging from personal digital assistants to personal computers." the application states. "However, further improvements are possible and desirable."

Nintendo first filed a patent for a software emulator back in 2012, making yesterday's application a "divisional patent," or a patent filing that contains information from an earlier one. This could indicate that Nintendo is refining its approach to emulation. At the very least, it means that an official emulator is still on the company's radar.

Some gamers are speculating that Nintendo is filing the patent merely to squash a thriving online homebrew emulator culture through lawsuits. Nintendo's patent suggests that itt's more likely the company is aware of this online community, and it's unsatisfied with the product it engenders—and knows it can make money selling something better.

"Unless the software emulator is carefully designed and carefully optimized, it will not be able to maintain real time speed performance when running on a slower or less highly capable processor," the patent filing says. "Slow-downs in game performance are generally unacceptable if the average user can notice them since they immediately affect and degrade the fun and excitement of the game playing experience."

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has previously stated that the company would not release its classic titles on smartphones or otherwise non-gaming devices due to quality control concerns.

"Our games such as Mario and Zelda are designed for our game machines so if we transfer them into smartphones as they are, customers won't be satisfied," Iwata told Bloomberg earlier this year. "If customers aren't satisfied with the experience, it will decrease the value of our content."

While that statement would seem to contradict Nintendo's patent activities, but the point of both is that old games lose their charm if they don't work as intended. It's early going, but Nintendo might just be planning to do hardcore fans a huge favour by providing an officially endorsed and designed alternative to well-meaning, but ultimately unsatisfactory, apps and desktop emulators.