January 2015
NERD enables Wii games on the Wii U eShop
Following a long tradition of Nintendo console backward
compatibility, the Wii U has always been able to play Wii games
from disc.
However, in this age of permanent internet connection,
Nintendo felt that its users should have new ways of enjoying
Wii games – namely being able to access them as downloadable
content.
There was a catch: Wii games were never intended to run from
anything but the optical disc. Yet, after much hard work, and
overcoming a number of technical hurdles, the engineers at NERD
finally succeeded in running Wii games from Wii U internal
memory and external USB HDDs.
Thanks to a tight-knit collaboration between NERD, Japanese
and American developers, Nintendo then made it possible for Wii
games to be launched directly from within the Wii U menu and
allowed users to play select titles with the Wii U GamePad.
Although bringing these improvements has been tricky – our
hardware and software had to be used in quite unintended ways –
it fills us with great pride to know that they are out there
for users to enjoy today.
Learn More
October 2014 - NERD teams up with hardware experts in Japan to deliver
"super-stable 3D" on the New Nintendo 3DS.
The first generation Nintendo 3DS, launched in February 2011
in Japan, was equipped with an autostereoscopic screen,
allowing a user perfectly centered with the device to view
stereoscopic images without the use of any additional headgear,
thanks to a parallax barrier screen.
The New Nintendo 3DS, launched in October 2014 in Japan,
uses a new "super-stable 3D" screen that redefines
the sense of immersion and comfort offered by 3D displays.
Our team of software engineers created a new technology that
takes full advantage of the New Nintendo 3DS system’s dynamic
parallax barrier, by tracking the user's face with the
internal camera and infrared LED to adjust the screen
accordingly.
To further improve the user experience and react to faster
motion, it leverages on several technologies including machine
learning, adaptive prediction, sensor fusion, etc. In the end,
it provides 3D viewing with a significantly wider range
compared to the original Nintendo 3DS.
For this thrilling project, NERD's software team
developed a close cooperation with Japanese colleagues in
charge of the hardware.
Learn More
June 2014
NERD creates a high speed, high quality Nintendo DS emulator for Wii U
The Nintendo DS platform, thanks to its vast game catalog
and variety of gameplays, is a prime choice for Virtual
Console.
However, emulating the Nintendo DS poses a considerable
challenge in terms of speed and accuracy, due to the difference
in architecture with the Wii U.
Adopting a fresh approach, NERD created a novel way to
overcome this challenge, relying on state of the art
technologies including JIT, multicore architecture, GPGPU
computations, etc.
NERD also developed a large array of reverse engineering
tools in order to speed up emulator development.
In close collaboration with Japan headquarters, the NERD
team in Paris has created an industrial-grade emulator that
successfully meets Nintendo's high quality standards.
Learn More
About
Nintendo European Research & Development (formerly
Mobiclip) is a subsidiary of Nintendo located in Paris,
specialized in the field of highly optimised software
technologies. We are committed to providing the gaming
industry with the latest innovations in middleware. NERD is
currently working on a number of exciting and innovative
projects, which we cannot discuss in detail due to their
highly confidential nature. You can get an idea of our work
by reading up on previously released projects above.
Team
We are a team of highly focused engineers who strive to push the
limits of software. Leveraging on the synergy of our diverse skills,
we are able to create disruptive technologies from low-level
hardware to high-end software stacks. You can find more details
about the team in this
Iwata Asks NERD
interview.
Jobs
Talented people are always welcome!
Please review the open position(s) below and contact us if you think
your profile matches our expectations.
We like programming challenges at NERD. If you enjoy
reverse-engineering and/or math-oriented problems, feel free
to have a look at our difficult programming contest(s) below
(although you don’t HAVE to solve them to apply at NERD):
