In Response to the Dig Crowd
Two things I’d like to say:
Yes, I incorrectly said Kb in every place I should have said KB. I might one day stop mixing up the abbreviations. I’ve fixed it now.
I went over all my figures again and found that my estimations were a little over what I now find them.
Thank you for the feed back, as you have aided my research stuff.
Is 512MB Enough?
I want to know if I'll need to invest in some SD cards for the overflow of games I may purchase for the Virtual console. Using NES, Snes and N64 ROMs with standard compression algorithms, I'm looking into what wii may be looking at for our classic games. I'll even throw in some prices!
Roughly
This is what we know. You download games to your Wii. The Wii has 512MB of Storage.
How many games can wii keep?
Minimum Number:
Assuming that all 512MB is used for the Virtual Console (its not),
Assuming Games are uncompressed,
Assuming Games are of the largest size possible,
You can fit 16 uncompressed N64 games at 32MB each.
Maximum Number:
Assuming that all 512MB is used for the Virtual Console (its not),
Assuming Games are compressed,
Assuming Games are of the smallest size possible,
You can fit 11,915 compressed NES games at 44KB each.
These are the two extremes: 16 and 11,915. I'm ignoring extra information put on top of the ROMs that the Wii will utilize. You know, picture of the game box or title screen, the game saves for the game. Stuff like that. I'm also ignoring that indie developers might make larger games than what were originally available.
Lets brake this in to sections, starting with the Nintendo Entertainment System A.K.A The NES.
NES Estimate
Nintendo's first console in the biggest console war. Dozens of consoles populated this time period. As many of the companies lost or were fading out, the NES came and revitalized the gaming industry. The Nintendo Stamp of Approval is the reason we still have such a thriving game market. You can now experience what those NES games were like.
So, How much of this world can you capture? The size of NES cartridge storage varied greatly from 24KB to 768KB. That means you'll get a minimum of 682 NES games on your Wii. If you factor in a 1.7:1 compression ratio (uncompressed:compressed), that figure increases to a minimum of 1,113 games!
These figures are just ridiculous. They occupy such little space in a large volume that the numbers just overwhelm the brains! We need to put down some exact numbers.
I took a survey of 74 NES ROMs. My survey revealed this!
Twelve different ROM sizes were discovered in the 74 games. The rang was 24KB to 768KB. Twenty five ROMs were 256KB in size making 256KB the most popular ROM size. The overall compression ratio of these NES ROMs was 1.84:1 (uncompressed to compressed). That compression confirms that the average game size of 246KB compresses to 134KB.
An a note of interest. All ROMs that were 512KB were sequels to previous games. Final Fantasy 3, Mega Man 4-6 and Castlevania 3 were some of them. The only file that was 768KB was Kirby’s Adventure. Yes, Kirby rocks! That was a celebrated game in it’s time. Other games like Zelda : Ocarina of Time pushed the limits of their game cartridges too, bringing great games to the people.
Okay, back to numbers and stuff. Lets assume you buy 50 NES games coming to 250 Dollars (USD). You'll buy games in a range of sizes. Even so, these 50 games will be around 6,700KB.*
Two hundred and fifty dollars (USD), 50 NES games, 7MB. Thats hasn’t even dented your storage! Its less than 1.5% of your storage in fact. Looks good so far, but how will the bigger more complicated games push the storage?
Snes Estimate
My favorite console was the Super Nintendo, A.K.A. the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Some people know it as the Snes too. These games have a bit of variation in size too. Many of the game cartridges were a nice 1MB. They were all in half integers from half a MegaByte to 4MB with the exception of about 5 cartridges that were 256KB. Ms. Pacman was one of them along with Atari Classics. Your 4MB games were those Fighting games with all their shinny sprite action. But I'm getting a bit sidetracked.
A survey on 102 Snes ROMs was preformed. Results:
Bla bla bla. Statistical results and stuff. All you really need to know is the average game size I came up with. The average compressed Snes ROM is... *drum roll* ...872KB! Yay! That’s 130KB under my first estimations that I made!
Lets use that 250 bucks again. I guess I’m using that figure because its the cost of the Wii. No real reason. So, $250 is 31 Snes games. Those 31 games come to 27,024KB.*
Five hundred dollars (USD), 31 Snes games, 50 NES games, 34MB. Wow! Things are looking good. We've gotten 81 games and its only taking up 34MB! Lets see what happens next.
N64 Calculation
The Nintendo 64. While the Snes had some 3D abilities, they decided to cut all 3D games before the end of console's life. They wanted the transition from Snes to N64 to be dramatic! And it was. Mario was free to roam his 8MB Cartridge in style.
The first cartridges had an 8MB limit. It wasn't to long before 12 and 16MB cartridges came along. And the massive 32MB allowed Zelda to be one of the highest celebrated games on the N64.
So, a survey of 51 N64 games reveals this:
The overall average works out to 13MB per game. Two hundred and fifty dollars gets us 25 N64 games at 324MB.*
Seven hundred and fifty dollars (USD), 25 N64 games, 31 Snes games, 50 NES games, 358MB! What? N64 games are huge! Then again, I suppose its not bad that you have 106 games on there. And you had to work your wallet hard to get it filled that much. Remember, newer games are $50 to $60. You’d only get 5 Wii games at best from that $250. Lets rap this thing up.
Conclusion
You won’t fill up your Wii too quickly, unless your going to pay $390 on N64 games. Even so, this is a look into the long run. There will only be about 30 games at launch with another 10 every month. Save the purchase of an SD card for later.
A 512MB SD card would serve as extra storage for those N64 games you don't play as often but some people suggest that you can delete your games and later download them again free of charge. Even then, an SD card may not be the only storage. Check the Rumor page for more info on that.
However you back up your games, you’ll have fun playing with your Wii.
Virtual Console Stuffs
*Just to let you know. I calculated these figures out beyond four decimals. All the figures displayed on this page have been rounded to be nice and pretty for you. So don’t go expecting figures on this page to add up to other numbers on the page.
