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Discussion Presenting... The Nintendo Iris!

Dcubed

Dcubed

Paratroopa


This is amazing!! Someone has managed to obtain an actual, fully functional Nintendo Iris development kit! And they've managed to get it to boot the original tech demo designed for it!

For those that aren't aware, the Nintendo Iris was originally supposed to be the successor to the GBA, before it was eventually refitted into Project Nitro (AKA, the Nintendo DS).

This is the first time we've ever seen an actual functioning Iris prototype (circa 2003, before it was turned into the Nitro/DS), and as it turns out... It's... well... looking very much like a DS with only a single screen!

A facinating piece of Nintendo history, never before seen either way though :D
 
That's an amazing bit of kit. So it was roughly DS level of power but with one screen? I can't help but think if it'd come out like that the PSP would've mauled it. The power gap with none of the DS's additions might've found it much more of a threat.
 
Phantoon said:
That's an amazing bit of kit. So it was roughly DS level of power but with one screen? I can't help but think if it'd come out like that the PSP would've mauled it. The power gap with none of the DS's additions might've found it much more of a threat.
Click to expand...

a successor to gba would have carried the game boy name, have a great battery life, and cost $100. iris wouldn't have received all the games that propelled the ds to new heights, but it would have arguably been more future proof in not chasing high-end tech. by 2008-2009, smartphones would have fully replicated or replaced the function of a psp for the wider non-gaming public. psp's sales probably play out the same exact way as our timeline, with a game boy 64 successful in its own right due to a lower price point and utlizing the n64's library more often that what we actually saw play out in the handheld space.
 
Stu Benedict said:
a successor to gba would have carried the game boy name, have a great battery life, and cost $100. iris wouldn't have received all the games that propelled the ds to new heights, but it would have arguably been more future proof in not chasing high-end tech. by 2008-2009, smartphones would have fully replicated or replaced the function of a psp for the wider non-gaming public. psp's sales probably play out the same exact way as our timeline, with a game boy 64 successful in its own right due to a lower price point and utlizing the n64's library more often that what we actually saw play out in the handheld space.
Click to expand...
Well, the Game Boy saw off plenty of technically superior rivals in its time, but none of them were Sony. Reception of the PSP around people I know at the time (who weren't especially gamers) was very positive until the DS got into hands. Anecdotal, I'm aware, but the Iris would've been hugely technically outmatched. Would the price difference save it vs that and Sony's marketing? If N64 games would've been more common, would that have helped against a console that could do Playstation ports, but really cheaply and with no compromises?

I don't know why you're mentioning 2008-2009 smartphones here. The PSP was out by 2005 at the latest. The battle would've been long over by then. In the DS's and PSP's time, smartphones are irrelevant. And they don't retrospectively make either handheld any worse or better.
 
Do we know what got changed enroute to the DS? was the ARM7 GBA CPU added as a result of the dual screen? (i think not as it's required for GBA BC) were the clocks on the ARM9 increased instead?
 
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That's a great find! Makes a lot of sense that the DS started as a regular GBA successor. It probably wouldn't have been nearly as successful as the DS ended up being, so it was a good call to change course.
 
0
Phantoon said:
Well, the Game Boy saw off plenty of technically superior rivals in its time, but none of them were Sony. Reception of the PSP around people I know at the time (who weren't especially gamers) was very positive until the DS got into hands. Anecdotal, I'm aware, but the Iris would've been hugely technically outmatched. Would the price difference save it vs that and Sony's marketing? If N64 games would've been more common, would that have helped against a console that could do Playstation ports, but really cheaply and with no compromises?

I don't know why you're mentioning 2008-2009 smartphones here. The PSP was out by 2005 at the latest. The battle would've been long over by then. In the DS's and PSP's time, smartphones are irrelevant. And they don't retrospectively make either handheld any worse or better.
Click to expand...

big alternate history post incoming:

sony's whole thing about the psp was to replicate what they were trying to do in the home space in the handheld scene. at home, they were trying to build the one machine you need next to your tv that handles your entertainment. that vision was fulfilled, eventually, with ps3 and solidified with ps4 and ps5. the very idea of what the psp is would have been outclassed in 2007 and functionally replaced 1-2 years later. consumers might buy more handheld all-in-one devices like psp that could play movies, games, and music - but smartphones made that whole business model obsolete. with or without ds, the psp's main features, and sony's vision for handheld gaming, would have gone from new hotness to old and busted as long as they stuck to physical media and as long as their handheld couldn't offer all the utility that a phone could.

in short, psp might have done better than our timeline, for a small amount of time, but it would be made obsolete in a matter of years. sony's phone division failed in our reality too. i doubt much changes.

iris would have faced derision and seen as a kids platform in the short term. in the long term, it would have probably seen steady sales, especially if it really did continue the gba line of development. maybe the biggest change is iwata unable to secure dragon quest ix and other major japanese support that kept the ds going the way it did. the other ripple effects would happen on the console side if nintendo's core ideology was not about finding new experiences with alternative technology. wii would have not had wii sports, for example. super mario galaxy, twilight princess, and other games might be seen as a return to form instead. basically, the hardcore of the hardcore rallying around nintendo the same way they did for the wii u and to a lesser extent, the 3ds.

in this alternate reality, we probably would have gotten to nintendo dropping their console line instead of making a hybrid device like they did with switch. without a resurgent nintendo disrupting the market on two fronts, microsoft and sony wouldn't scramble to find their motion control solution in the middle of the gen. 360 would have been strong in the us and uk, and ps3 strong elsewhere. 360 wouldn't have had its second wind in 2010. ps vita would be a psp2 that competed more against smartphones, but it wouldn't matter. sony would probably see better sales on the machine, but just like in our timeline, the ps3 would need saving, and the sony handheld project would be seen as a major failure within siea. maybe dq ix combined with monhun and ffvii give it an extra lift against a weaker nintendo, but it probably wouldn't matter in the end.

and microsoft wouldn't go down the route of kinect. mattrick might have his tv tv cauladuty conference regardless, but it would be centered around a remote control or game controller. not sure what changes the trajectory of xbox one in a major way. the competition between ps4 and xb1 plays out as usual, except with weaker platforms due to an overall smaller video game player base worldwide for all major hardware manufacturers.

iris vs psp in 2021 eventually results in a similar situation to where we are now, but with smaller hardware sales for everyone. nintendo drops the console line in 2012 to focus on their new handheld, and sony drops the handheld line at some point around the time they dropped the vita too. the playstation userbase is stronger than it is in japan, and nintendo doesn't focus on expansion into film and theme parks. the mini console wave from 2016-2019 never happens, but pokemon go happens as planned.
 
Stu Benedict said:
big alternate history post incoming:

sony's whole thing about the psp was to replicate what they were trying to do in the home space in the handheld scene. at home, they were trying to build the one machine you need next to your tv that handles your entertainment. that vision was fulfilled, eventually, with ps3 and solidified with ps4 and ps5. the very idea of what the psp is would have been outclassed in 2007 and functionally replaced 1-2 years later. consumers might buy more handheld all-in-one devices like psp that could play movies, games, and music - but smartphones made that whole business model obsolete. with or without ds, the psp's main features, and sony's vision for handheld gaming, would have gone from new hotness to old and busted as long as they stuck to physical media and as long as their handheld couldn't offer all the utility that a phone could.

in short, psp might have done better than our timeline, for a small amount of time, but it would be made obsolete in a matter of years. sony's phone division failed in our reality too. i doubt much changes.

iris would have faced derision and seen as a kids platform in the short term. in the long term, it would have probably seen steady sales, especially if it really did continue the gba line of development. maybe the biggest change is iwata unable to secure dragon quest ix and other major japanese support that kept the ds going the way it did. the other ripple effects would happen on the console side if nintendo's core ideology was not about finding new experiences with alternative technology. wii would have not had wii sports, for example. super mario galaxy, twilight princess, and other games might be seen as a return to form instead. basically, the hardcore of the hardcore rallying around nintendo the same way they did for the wii u and to a lesser extent, the 3ds.

in this alternate reality, we probably would have gotten to nintendo dropping their console line instead of making a hybrid device like they did with switch. without a resurgent nintendo disrupting the market on two fronts, microsoft and sony wouldn't scramble to find their motion control solution in the middle of the gen. 360 would have been strong in the us and uk, and ps3 strong elsewhere. 360 wouldn't have had its second wind in 2010. ps vita would be a psp2 that competed more against smartphones, but it wouldn't matter. sony would probably see better sales on the machine, but just like in our timeline, the ps3 would need saving, and the sony handheld project would be seen as a major failure within siea. maybe dq ix combined with monhun and ffvii give it an extra lift against a weaker nintendo, but it probably wouldn't matter in the end.

and microsoft wouldn't go down the route of kinect. mattrick might have his tv tv cauladuty conference regardless, but it would be centered around a remote control or game controller. not sure what changes the trajectory of xbox one in a major way. the competition between ps4 and xb1 plays out as usual, except with weaker platforms due to an overall smaller video game player base worldwide for all major hardware manufacturers.

iris vs psp in 2021 eventually results in a similar situation to where we are now, but with smaller hardware sales for everyone. nintendo drops the console line in 2012 to focus on their new handheld, and sony drops the handheld line at some point around the time they dropped the vita too. the playstation userbase is stronger than it is in japan, and nintendo doesn't focus on expansion into film and theme parks. the mini console wave from 2016-2019 never happens, but pokemon go happens as planned.
Click to expand...
You have too much faith on the PSP.
The PSP didn't sell poorly, it sold well, people just didn't buy very many games, UMD was a flop and ultimately it wasn't even close to the power of the PS2 when it launched on the last years of its existene so the 'console experience on the go' experience was fleeting outside of Wii downports and japanese mid tier games. The DS didn't cause any of that, but it did do one thing, it sold even better and sold more games
 
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The Wii would've still happened in this alternate timeline though; motion control almost happened for the Gamecube, and Nintendo's experimentation with alternate control schemes was starting there. That's the significance of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. The DS was forced on Iwata by Yamauchi, the Wii was not. There's no record I'm aware of of an alternate hardware to the Wii being worked on at all.

Now the thing we really have to ask ourselves; without Nintendo popularising touch controls, what does the iPhone look like?
 
Phantoon said:
The Wii would've still happened in this alternate timeline though; motion control almost happened for the Gamecube, and Nintendo's experimentation with alternate control schemes was starting there. That's the significance of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. The DS was forced on Iwata by Yamauchi, the Wii was not. There's no record I'm aware of of an alternate hardware to the Wii being worked on at all.

Now the thing we really have to ask ourselves; without Nintendo popularising touch controls, what does the iPhone look like?
Click to expand...


Actually if there was a console planned before the Wii, some information about this was actually leaked in one of those big Nintendo leaks of late, sorry I don't have the information handy. Perhaps searching a little can be found.

It was called Project Vegas, a HD console for 2005-2006.

Look, the part where it says "Nintendo's Xbox 360-PS3 Killer" wanted to make a next-gen console to that served as a worthy, affordable successor to the GameCube - one that was ready to tackle improved graphics. Eventually, the project was scrapped, and Nintendo refocused efforts into the Wii "

The successor of Gamecube according to the leaked powerpoint images of the project was going to have a performance capable of competing with PS3 and Xbox 360 in power.
 
Phantoon said:
That's an amazing bit of kit. So it was roughly DS level of power but with one screen? I can't help but think if it'd come out like that the PSP would've mauled it. The power gap with none of the DS's additions might've found it much more of a threat.
Click to expand...
Worth remembering that they would most likely have been targeting a price point of $99.99 with the Iris (same price as the GBA when it first launched), the PSP would've been almost 3x as expensive! (and would also have paled in terms of battery life too - The DS was already significantly ahead of the PSP in that regard, Iris would've been even better in terms of battery life than the DS ever was).

Of course, once they added the second screen, touch screen and mic, that significantly increased the price of the console to the $149.99 that the DS originally sold for (the DS price itself was already a risky gambit back in 2004!)

I know it's hard to remember a time when Nintendo handhelds had a ceiling of $99.99, but that used to be their target.
 
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Onizuka said:
Actually if there was a console planned before the Wii, some information about this was actually leaked in one of those big Nintendo leaks of late, sorry I don't have the information handy. Perhaps searching a little can be found.

It was called Project Vegas, a HD console for 2005-2006.

Look, the part where it says "Nintendo's Xbox 360-PS3 Killer" wanted to make a next-gen console to that served as a worthy, affordable successor to the GameCube - one that was ready to tackle improved graphics. Eventually, the project was scrapped, and Nintendo refocused efforts into the Wii "

The successor of Gamecube according to the leaked powerpoint images of the project was going to have a performance capable of competing with PS3 and Xbox 360 in power.
Click to expand...
That's fascinating. I wonder how far it got, those slides look to be from pretty early in the timeline.

It seems to have been a very experimental time for Nintendo, we could've had much more conventional hardware. I'm kind of glad we ended up in the weird timeline.
 
I know that this is an old thread, but we have some new news regarding this Nintendo Iris prototype!

As posted in the Climax Studios Diddy Kong Racing Pitch thread, a new ROM was recently leaked by Forest of Illusion that captured an earlier build of that tech demo that pre-dated the release of the DS by around 5-6 months... Now, this new early build ROM didn't seem to work on retail flash cards on real DS hardware, so somebody had the bright idea to try it out on the Nintendo Iris board, and...




its-alive-gene-wilder.gif

​

Well, well well. It turns out that this new tech demo ROM is actually not a DS ROM, but rather it's an Iris ROM!! We officially have our first real Nintendo Iris software! :D

It also proves that the Iris really did have the same hardware specs as the DS (minus the second screen and second "2D Engine"). Still don't know if it has a touch screen or WiFi mind you (though I would assume that the latter would at least have been there).
 
I would assume it has the touch screen. If you take a look at the left edge of screen on devboard, you can see a ribbon cable with at least 4 traces coming out of it. Those are likely the 4 wires needed for the resistive touch interface.
 
BlueManifest said:
I guess this was a single screen device? Was it stronger or weaker than DS
Click to expand...

This is the DS/Nitro before it was turned into a dual screen device. It also doesn't yet have a touchscreen module or WiFi chip on this PCB; though that doesn't necessarily mean that the final Iris hardware (Let's call it "Game Boy 3D" for clarity's sake) wouldn't have had those bits added on before it was finalised and sold.

As far as the system's CPU/GPU specs go, it's the same as the final retail DS, albeit with one of the 2D GPUs (AKA "2D Engine") missing; for obvious reasons.
 
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Something that has always bugged me -- Satoru Okada said that Iris was named after the flower, because The explanation for this name is simple: since it was for us the fifth generation of Game Boy, we chose the symbol of May (the fifth month of the year). In the Hanafuda playing cards, the month of May is symbolized by the Iris.

But it wasn't the "fifth generation of Game Boy"!

1. GB
2. GBA
3. ???
4. ???
5. IRIS

It only works if you are counting two between the GBC, Project Atlantis and the Virtual Boy.

Perhaps they were counting the Game Boy models developed by Nintendo RED, i.e. with Okada as the only lead designer without Yokoi. This works as an explanation, but, well, it is not "simple".

1. GB Light
2. GB Color
3. GB Advance
4. GB Advance SP
5. IRIS

First world problem, I know.
 
Gingerbread Man said:
Something that has always bugged me -- Satoru Okada said that Iris was named after the flower, because The explanation for this name is simple: since it was for us the fifth generation of Game Boy, we chose the symbol of May (the fifth month of the year). In the Hanafuda playing cards, the month of May is symbolized by the Iris.

But it wasn't the "fifth generation of Game Boy"!

1. GB
2. GBA
3. ???
4. ???
5. IRIS

It only works if you are counting two between the GBC, Project Atlantis and the Virtual Boy.

Perhaps they were counting the Game Boy models developed by Nintendo RED, i.e. with Okada as the only lead designer without Yokoi. This works as an explanation, but, well, it is not "simple".

1. GB Light
2. GB Color
3. GB Advance
4. GB Advance SP
5. IRIS

First world problem, I know.
Click to expand...
Yeah, this has always annoyed me too; but I think that their internal list considered the following...

1: DMG
2: GBC
3: GBA
4: GBAsp (I know...)
5: Iris
 
0
Dcubed said:
I know that this is an old thread, but we have some new news regarding this Nintendo Iris prototype!

As posted in the Climax Studios Diddy Kong Racing Pitch thread, a new ROM was recently leaked by Forest of Illusion that captured an earlier build of that tech demo that pre-dated the release of the DS by around 5-6 months... Now, this new early build ROM didn't seem to work on retail flash cards on real DS hardware, so somebody had the bright idea to try it out on the Nintendo Iris board, and...




its-alive-gene-wilder.gif

​

Well, well well. It turns out that this new tech demo ROM is actually not a DS ROM, but rather it's an Iris ROM!! We officially have our first real Nintendo Iris software! :D

It also proves that the Iris really did have the same hardware specs as the DS (minus the second screen and second "2D Engine"). Still don't know if it has a touch screen or WiFi mind you (though I would assume that the latter would at least have been there).
Click to expand...

Holy hell, how do people even find shit like this...
This is flat out amazing.
 
Stu Benedict said:
big alternate history post incoming:

sony's whole thing about the psp was to replicate what they were trying to do in the home space in the handheld scene. at home, they were trying to build the one machine you need next to your tv that handles your entertainment. that vision was fulfilled, eventually, with ps3 and solidified with ps4 and ps5. the very idea of what the psp is would have been outclassed in 2007 and functionally replaced 1-2 years later. consumers might buy more handheld all-in-one devices like psp that could play movies, games, and music - but smartphones made that whole business model obsolete. with or without ds, the psp's main features, and sony's vision for handheld gaming, would have gone from new hotness to old and busted as long as they stuck to physical media and as long as their handheld couldn't offer all the utility that a phone could.

in short, psp might have done better than our timeline, for a small amount of time, but it would be made obsolete in a matter of years. sony's phone division failed in our reality too. i doubt much changes.

iris would have faced derision and seen as a kids platform in the short term. in the long term, it would have probably seen steady sales, especially if it really did continue the gba line of development. maybe the biggest change is iwata unable to secure dragon quest ix and other major japanese support that kept the ds going the way it did. the other ripple effects would happen on the console side if nintendo's core ideology was not about finding new experiences with alternative technology. wii would have not had wii sports, for example. super mario galaxy, twilight princess, and other games might be seen as a return to form instead. basically, the hardcore of the hardcore rallying around nintendo the same way they did for the wii u and to a lesser extent, the 3ds.

in this alternate reality, we probably would have gotten to nintendo dropping their console line instead of making a hybrid device like they did with switch. without a resurgent nintendo disrupting the market on two fronts, microsoft and sony wouldn't scramble to find their motion control solution in the middle of the gen. 360 would have been strong in the us and uk, and ps3 strong elsewhere. 360 wouldn't have had its second wind in 2010. ps vita would be a psp2 that competed more against smartphones, but it wouldn't matter. sony would probably see better sales on the machine, but just like in our timeline, the ps3 would need saving, and the sony handheld project would be seen as a major failure within siea. maybe dq ix combined with monhun and ffvii give it an extra lift against a weaker nintendo, but it probably wouldn't matter in the end.

and microsoft wouldn't go down the route of kinect. mattrick might have his tv tv cauladuty conference regardless, but it would be centered around a remote control or game controller. not sure what changes the trajectory of xbox one in a major way. the competition between ps4 and xb1 plays out as usual, except with weaker platforms due to an overall smaller video game player base worldwide for all major hardware manufacturers.

iris vs psp in 2021 eventually results in a similar situation to where we are now, but with smaller hardware sales for everyone. nintendo drops the console line in 2012 to focus on their new handheld, and sony drops the handheld line at some point around the time they dropped the vita too. the playstation userbase is stronger than it is in japan, and nintendo doesn't focus on expansion into film and theme parks. the mini console wave from 2016-2019 never happens, but pokemon go happens as planned.
Click to expand...

I think if things played out with Iris + no Wii motion controls or blue ocean tech, another possibility is that they would have just done it with the line of consoles they release in 2011-12. This basically would have just delayed everything that did happen by six or seven years or so but a lot of it would have played out similarly. They'd see the huge success with their 2010s Wii/DS-type consoles. Less so for the handheld maybe, with smartphones on the market, but the console could be even bigger than the Wii having launched in the age of social media and being a platform that's (presumably) more powerful and more able to get ports of PS4/X1 games than the Wii was for 360/PS3. But then they'd probably be undergoing their slump right now with the followup, as then they'd try to release Wii U/3DS esque platforms in 2018-19 or so (that are obviously more powerful than those were) and the market wouldn't buy into either of those. 3DS-type thing would probably do way worse than the 3DS proper did too since it would be competing against smartphones even more.

Not sure if this makes sense or adds up though. I guess this also means Sony and Microsoft do the Move/Kinect-type things as part of their mid-gen refreshes. Instead of doing PSVR, Sony just does Move.
 
I think that Nintendo's hand would've been forced to find an alternative strategy at one point or another. I think it's safe to say that in a timeline where Iris and Project Vegas (360 style successor to the Gamecube) came out, the PSP would've been much more succesful than it actually was, the Iris wouldn't have been the absolute juggernaut that the DS was (though probably still a 100 million seller), and Project Vegas would've most likely have been a Gamecube level failure.

In this timeline, I still think that Iris would've beaten the PSP, but the margin between the two would've been much smaller (probably 90 million PSPs vs 100 million Iris'). Iris might not have had the blue ocean audience, but it was still the successor to the GBA (a console which was a massive sales success, cut down in its prime by the early launch of the DS), with reletively impressive 3D graphics for the time (if not the insane futuristic offering of the PSP), with 10-15 hours of battery life, being sold for almost 1/3 of the price of the PSP. NSMB, Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart DS would still have come out for the system more or less unaltered; while it probably would've also have gotten a lot more direct PS1 and N64 ports I reckon.

Project Vegas was absolutely doomed to failure though. There was absolutely no way that Nintendo could ever have competed head-on, they would've gotten completely destroyed; and the massive costs involved with the jump to HD back then could well have spelled the total end of Nintendo's console game development, period.

Perhaps we could be looking at a future where Nintendo remained a handheld only manufacturer? Or perhaps a Switch-like system could've come much earlier instead of the Wii U?
 
We are assuming IRIS wouldn't have had a touch screen, right? Because with a touch screen, every blue ocean game released on DS would have mostly worked.

Without a touch screen, and thus without the blue ocean audience... Idk, IRIS would have been a de-facto poor man's PSP. Everything IRIS could have done, the PSP would have done better. Mario and Zelda were also in a relative decline in the early 00s and I feel NSMB and Phantom Hourglass (and on Wii, Twilight Princess and NSMB Wii) owe their success, in part, to the new audience brought in by the blue ocean games and the fact the DS was a cool device to have.

Pokémon games would have saved the ship, but at this point Nintendo would have become heavily dependent on the Pokémon franchise. It was never said explicitly, but I think one of the points Iwata wanted to achieve with the DS was creating an appealing line-up even without factoring in the Pokémon games -- on GBA, Nintendo sold 90 million units of software... of which 35 million units were Pokémon games. This is not very healthy.

Additionally, without the confidence gained with the DS, Nintendo would have never released the Wii and they would have been crushed hard by Microsoft and Sony.

Ultimately, I think going down this traditional route would have either turned Nintendo in a company focused in retro-inspired games and the Pokémon franchise (which is... depressing, really) or only delayed a Wii/DS-like device, as @GamerJM said (though I think they would have focused on the handheld market).
 
Gingerbread Man said:
Something that has always bugged me -- Satoru Okada said that Iris was named after the flower, because The explanation for this name is simple: since it was for us the fifth generation of Game Boy, we chose the symbol of May (the fifth month of the year). In the Hanafuda playing cards, the month of May is symbolized by the Iris.

But it wasn't the "fifth generation of Game Boy"!

1. GB
2. GBA
3. ???
4. ???
5. IRIS

It only works if you are counting two between the GBC, Project Atlantis and the Virtual Boy.
Click to expand...
They could be stretching it a bit and considering Game & Watch as a pre-generation.

1. G&W
2. GB
3. GBC
4. GBA
5. Iris
 
Gingerbread Man said:
We are assuming IRIS wouldn't have had a touch screen, right? Because with a touch screen, every blue ocean game released on DS would have mostly worked.

Without a touch screen, and thus without the blue ocean audience... Idk, IRIS would have been a de-facto poor man's PSP. Everything IRIS could have done, the PSP would have done better. Mario and Zelda were also in a relative decline in the early 00s and I feel NSMB and Phantom Hourglass (and on Wii, Twilight Princess and NSMB Wii) owe their success, in part, to the new audience brought in by the blue ocean games and the fact the DS was a cool device to have.

Pokémon games would have saved the ship, but at this point Nintendo would have become heavily dependent on the Pokémon franchise. It was never said explicitly, but I think one of the points Iwata wanted to achieve with the DS was creating an appealing line-up even without factoring in the Pokémon games -- on GBA, Nintendo sold 90 million units of software... of which 35 million units were Pokémon games. This is not very healthy.

Additionally, without the confidence gained with the DS, Nintendo would have never released the Wii and they would have been crushed hard by Microsoft and Sony.

Ultimately, I think going down this traditional route would have either turned Nintendo in a company focused in retro-inspired games and the Pokémon franchise (which is... depressing, really) or only delayed a Wii/DS-like device, as @GamerJM said (though I think they would have focused on the handheld market).
Click to expand...

This prototype board does not have a touch screen... or WiFi for that matter.
 
Dcubed said:
No lol, that’s just what has been reported by Forest of Illusion and the guy who actually owns the board.
Click to expand...
Ohh, I see, maybe I can help to clarify some of those points since I am the one who owns it. I noticed that some people already had good eye to catch some details in previous replies :)
 
consolemystery said:
Ohh, I see, maybe I can help to clarify some of those points since I am the one who owns it. I noticed that some people already had good eye to catch some details in previous replies :)
Click to expand...
Oh crud! I didn't realise it was actually you, the Mystery Console themselves!! Congrats on getting the board up and running! :D

Any other major differences you've noticed between this Iris board and the final Nitro PCB? I assume that programming for it is generally similar (using the pre-release SDK) as with the final DS? But I can imagine that there's also probably a few weird quirks (more than usual for Nitro!) with this unfinished hardware, anything particularily noteworthy in that regard? (sprite limits, the 2048 vertex limit etc). Is audio handled the same way as with the DS/Nitro? (As in, the ARM 7 handles everything as a "black box" of sorts).

What an incredible find! How did you manage to find this Iris board anyway? Any clue as to where it came from? (if you can't say either way, that's fine).
 
Last edited:
Little bit more info regarding the Iris prototype from RGD...



Nothing too earth shattering, but some confirmation given regarding the specs of the unit are included in the video.
 
Dcubed said:
Little bit more info regarding the Iris prototype from RGD...



Nothing too earth shattering, but some confirmation given regarding the specs of the unit are included in the video.
Click to expand...


Great, any contribution however small it may seem about this type of thing, I find it amazing.
 
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