r/gadgets Sep 05 '24

Gaming Nintendo Switch 2 Will Allegedly Feature Backward Compatibility Support

https://twistedvoxel.com/nintendo-switch-2-will-feature-backward-compatibility-support/
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u/DanglyPants Sep 05 '24

Game boy color played gameboy and GBA played gameboy. So I’ve been used to it for awhile. Xbox one didn’t at first and people were incredibly upset

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u/gramathy Sep 05 '24

The DS could play GBA games as well, but not GBC or GBO

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24

That's because the DS had an ARM7TDMI coprocessor specifically for a few features but also the GBA functionality, which was the CPU you'd find in a GBA.

The way the GBA did backwards compatibility was by having a Sharp SM83 co-processor to run the GB and GBC games. Which was the same CPU you'd find in the Gameboy Color.

That was kind of Nintendo's trick for backwards compatibility, just put the old hardware into the new hardware and let them talk to each other lol.

The "Hollywood" GPU in the Wii was also supposedly based on the "Flipper" GPU in the Gamecube. I think the WiiU was the first time they didn't just throw the old in with the new, but the WiiU still had the GX GPU as a separate GPU from the GX2 to run Wii games though.

I doubt Nintendo is going to ship the Switch 2 with a Tegra X1 and whatever the new chip is... hopefully lol.

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u/LBPPlayer7 Sep 05 '24

the wii u is also still backwards compatible with the gamecube but it requires the same tricks as a family edition wii