NES Classic

[Jagosaurus]

Wait, so save states utilize the reset button. Can someone walk me me through this? That's a pain. Why not also include short cut keys like all emulators.

[Ziggy]

Why not also include short cut keys like all emulators.

Yeah, I said the same thing here. I use FCE Ultra GX on the Wii with a NES to GCN controller adapter. Pressing Select + Start + A + B on the NES controller brings up the menus. I'm not sure why Nintendo couldn't have done this.

[Gunstar Green]

Because it would make too much sense I suppose.

They want you to experience that old school reset button.

[MrPopo]

Because if you want to save you need to hold down reset and then press the power. Damn kids today with your "reliable save systems".

[Gunstar Green]

Because if you want to save you need to hold down reset and then press the power. Damn kids today with your "reliable save systems".

You know when you put it that way I kind of forgive it.

[TSTR]

Doing that used to terrify me that I wasn't doing it right and would lose my saves. Then cart batteries started dying and it didn't matter anyway, lol.

[ExedExes]

Wait, so save states utilize the reset button. That's a pain.

Because if you want to save you need to hold down reset and then press the power.

It's not a bug, it's a feature! Nintendo really did think of everything.

So then I thought WHY did we have to do that to save games? I was thinking it was to protect a voltage spike issue on the save battery or some such thing. So I did some research.

Holding RESET allowed the NES to finish saving data before it is powered off.

Holding RESET would send both the console and the cartridge into a low-power state, that would prevent power surges from damaging the battery when powering off (unlikely)

When powering off, the NES' CPU would experience power spikes that potentially could write data at random locations, including the battery-powered registers of the cartridge, overwriting and corrupting savegames in the process. Holding RESET would send the CPU into a low-power state which would prevent any power surge from overwriting any register.

The reason why this was required on the NES and not on newer consoles, was because the NES was never designed for saving data in the first place. The first game to have supported saving onto the cartridge directly was The Legend of Zelda which was released 3 years after the original Famicom, and 1 year after the NES.

So there! Knowledge bomb!

[Gunstar Green]

Doing that used to terrify me that I wasn't doing it right and would lose my saves. Then cart batteries started dying and it didn't matter anyway, lol.

I keep wanting to go through all of my battery carts to fix them up with new batteries but I never do.

[Tanooki]

Funny story, the two times I actually held RESET then pressed power -- I lost my save games. Original Zelda did this (and still I have that same cart with a still working battery 30 years later now) and then the copy of Dragon Warrior IV I had up until earlier this year as I did it there after a few hours work, wiped. Learned my lesson long ago, had to re-learn it again a year or two ago too. Bad luck I guess as I never lost a save just turning it off.

[pierrot]

I don't entirely understand why anyone wants this. I get the feeling it will be shoved into the bottom of so many closets by the end of next year. With the numerous better options, these days, I don't see any explicit value in it. So it surprises me a bit than anyone will buy it, but I suppose it shouldn't.

So then I thought WHY did we have to do that to save games? I was thinking it was to protect a voltage spike issue on the save battery or some such thing. So I did some research.

Holding RESET allowed the NES to finish saving data before it is powered off.

Holding RESET would send both the console and the cartridge into a low-power state, that would prevent power surges from damaging the battery when powering off (unlikely)

When powering off, the NES' CPU would experience power spikes that potentially could write data at random locations, including the battery-powered registers of the cartridge, overwriting and corrupting savegames in the process. Holding RESET would send the CPU into a low-power state which would prevent any power surge from overwriting any register.

The reason why this was required on the NES and not on newer consoles, was because the NES was never designed for saving data in the first place. The first game to have supported saving onto the cartridge directly was The Legend of Zelda which was released 3 years after the original Famicom, and 1 year after the NES.

So there! Knowledge bomb!

I'm scratching my head a bit on this. It's not really satisfying to me. If there were an inductive load, I could accept it implicitly, since switching it off would give that characteristic negative (theoretically infinite) "back voltage" due to the instantaneous rate of change in the current, with respect to time. That shouldn't be the case here, and even if it were, not using a snubbing diode would just be stupid. Even if the transformer voltage weren't properly rectified, the system should be isolated from the transformer coils once the switch is thrown. The explanation given sounds like it could be talking about ground bounce, but that's typically an issue of the parasitic inductance in copper traces and component leads at very high frequency switching, and the NES' CPU only has a 1.79 MHz clock. It's generally pretty simple to correct for, anyway.

The only quasi sensible thing I can come up with is switch bounce on the power switch itself. The effects of the mechanical inertia of the switch/push-button making a very brief, intermittent, electrical connection between the contacts could be limited by holding the reset button. If this happened to be the underlying cause, I still can't conceive of a compelling reason to not account for it in the design, regardless of whether or not they had foreseen saving data into nonvolatile memory at some future date.