Nintendo's 135-year history will soon be brought to life inside the walls of a new purpose-built Nintendo Museum in Kyoto, Japan - and ahead of its opening on 2nd October, legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto has revealed some of its intriguing exhibits in a new video tour.

The Nintendo Museum has been built on the site of the factory where Nintendo originally made its Hanafuda cards, and which was later used for quality checks during the Famicom era. That building and its unremarkable carpark are no longer standing, however, now replaced by a shiny two-floor monument to Nintendo's history and a Mario-themed plaza.

Miyamoto's 13-minute tour begins on the second floor of the museum, where several huge curved glass displays - containing many of the products Nintendo has released since its founding in 1889 - can be found. This whole area is intended to chart the evolution of Nintendo's approach to entertainment, from its earlier non-video game products - including copy machines, baby strollers, RC cars, and pitching machines - into more familiar territory, beginning with 1977's early video game forays, the Color TV-Game 6 and Color TV-Game 15.

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Good news, Mega Man mega fans – five Game Boy Mega Man games have just joined the Nintendo Switch Online library.

In a Nintendo Online Switch update published to YouTube this morning, Nintendo confirmed that "the original five Game Boy Mega Man titles" are now playable to those with an NSO subscription: Mega Man: Dr Wily's Revenge, Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3, Mega Man 4, and – yes, you've guessed it – Mega Man 5.

Mega Man's first titular outing popped up on a Nintendo-flavoured console in 1987, but Mega Man: Dr Wily's Revenge – a handheld remake of Mega Man 1 and 2 – didn't debut on Game Boy until 1991.

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Nintendo has added more Game Boy classics to the Nintendo Switch Online subscription catalogue today, including the legendary Super Mario Land.

The new arrivals come as Game Boy passes its 35th birthday, and all date back to the handheld system's first year.

Accompanying Mario's first Game Boy adventure are Breakout puzzle clone Alleyway - which does also briefly feature the plumber mascot - and Baseball.

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An emulator that lets users play thousands of Nintendo games is currently the top free download on the iPhone App Store.

The Delta app currently supports downloaded versions of countless classics from the NES, SNES, N64 home consoles, as well as Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS handhelds.

The app's rapid rise in popularity follows Apple's recent change in app store policy to officially allow video game emulator apps onto its storefront for the first time. The move has been linked to growing pressure on the company by European legislators to make Apple allow third-party app stores and the use of emulators on iPhone without the need to jailbreak devices.

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Enlarge / A cropped portion of a ca. 1980 ad for the Microsoft Z80 SoftCard, which allowed Apple II users to run the CP/M operating system. (credit: Microsoft)

Last week, chip manufacturer Zilog announced that after 48 years on the market, its line of standalone DIP (dual inline package) Z80 CPUs is coming to an end, ceasing sales on June 14, 2024. The 8-bit architecture debuted in 1976 and powered a small-business-PC revolution in conjunction with CP/M, also serving as the heart of the Nintendo Game Boy, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Pac-Man arcade game, and the TI-83 graphing calculator.

In a letter to customers dated April 15, 2024, Zilog wrote, "Please be advised that our Wafer Foundry Manufacturer will be discontinuing support for the Z80 product and other product lines. Refer to the attached list of the Z84C00 Z80 products affected."

Designers typically use the Z84C00 chips because of familiarity with the Z80 architecture or to allow legacy system upgrades without needing significant system redesigns. And while many other embedded chip architectures have superseded these Z80 chips in speed, processing power, and capability, they remained go-to solutions for decades in products that didn't need any extra horsepower.

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An emulator that lets users play thousands of Nintendo games is currently the top free download on the iPhone App Store.

The Delta app currently supports downloaded versions of countless classics from the NES, SNES, N64 home consoles, as well as Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS handhelds.

The app's rapid rise in popularity follows Apple's recent change in app store policy to officially allow video game emulator apps onto its storefront for the first time. The move has been linked to growing pressure on the company by European legislators to make Apple allow third-party app stores and the use of emulators on iPhone without the need to jailbreak devices.

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Just days after changing its policies to allow video game emulators on iPhone, Apple has pulled Game Boy Advance emulator app iGBA from its App Store.

But this wasn't due to a change of heart by Apple on the moralities of emulators themselves. Instead, it was because iGBA turned out to be a rip-off of another emulator, the open-source GBA4iOS.

An Apple spokesperson confirmed the decision and the company's reasoning for the emulator takedown to MacRumors, and restated its position that emulators which ran downloaded versions of games, or ROMs, were still allowed on the App Store, despite piracy concerns.

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