I had no issue emulating n64 games on my piece of shit machine almost 20 years ago. What even is this?
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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The first time I played ocarina of time, it was on a k6-2/450 with a voodo3-3000. It ran well enough that I considered it on par with a real N64. Edit: this would have been 2002/2003.
i just didn't want to say 25 years ago and have someone 'um akshuly' me about when emulation started getting viable.
To be fair, I was using ultrahle, which was a very high level emulator targeting mario64 and specifically needing a GLIDE-supporting card. It did well enough on ocarina as (my understanding is that) it used the same graphics engine as Mario64 and therefore the same function calls... but there were many other games that wouldn't run at all.
I respect MVG a lot but this is honestly clickbait. All you have to do is:
- Download RetroArch
- Install Mupen64Plus-Next core
- Enable ParaLLEl RDP and RSP plugins in core settings
and you can play every game without issues. Not a broken mess by any means.
If you have resources leftover, you can even go into the core settings and turn internal resolution to 4x for better 3D graphics
You didnt watch the video, did you?
Cause the whole needing plugins and hacks to run games was exactly the point he was making, on why emulation of n64 is still in a poor shape, despite consoles before and after being emulated just fine without issue.
The only reason we still have this plugin paradigm is because that's how N64 emulator culture evolved over time. That's deliberate though, there's no "mess" here.
I can easily download a cycle-accurate N64 emulator that depends on zero plugins. However, being the N64, it obviously takes a lot of power to emulate in such an accurate way.
Right, and on different platforms, too. Yes, your gaming PC can do it fine, but a PS Vita should have the horsepower to do it, too, and that's not where things are at.
And then there's homebrew stuff. Works fine on real hardware, but emulators often fail.
The core if it boils down to, when emulating older machines, is the consoles processor speaks language A, and our computers all speak language B
The emulator has to translate back and forth between A<->B faster than the speed the original processors would've just spoken A
So translating A<->B is a way tougher task than just reciting A. So you need a tremendously better CPU than what the console had to emulate it.
It's kinda like, Dropping a rock in a pile of sand is easy. Simulating dropping that rock into the pile of sand in real time accurately is really challenging.
Not only that. Emulators must often ”cheat” to achieve high speeds. This means emulators doesn’t try to achieve a 1:1 replication of what’s happening inside the hardware, but something that’s gives close enough results and better tailored for modern hardware.
The reason why N64 is particularly difficult is because each game must be optimized individually (due to the heavy reliance on microcode). The emulator must replicate the hardware at a much lower level for an accurate emulation of all games. Emulator developers can apply optimizations on each individual game, but it’s incredibly time consuming to do so for every game in the N64 library.
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It's even more complicated than that, because for full accuracy, it must also emulate the clock speed at which the emulated processor ran, as well as the various memory busses etc
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Back in 2015 I used the emulator "1964" to play some MarioKart64 and it ran well on a very weak computer, fwiw.
Do you remember if you had the black screen in this track?
It's a classical issue in n64 emulators.
Or in perfect dark when the camspy didn't work with a black screen thus being hard locked out of the game pretty early in
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It looks different than I remember. Usually it was just a black screen.
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The video says that emulation has always worked better on popular games. But if you try to emulate a less popular game, you will run into major issues. This is because the emulation must be tweaked for each game specifically due to how N64 hardware works.
Especially Nintendo's own games. Mario 64, Mario kart, etc, were usually the first to be emulated correctly.
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N64 stuff runs brilliant on MisterFpga tho.
FPGA mimics hardware 1:1 without overhead, which is why it works well. This is talking about software emulation, which has to use lots of shortcuts to make it fast enough (for most machines). The N64 has a weird architecture though that makes it difficult to find shortcuts that work well.
People tend to overstate FPGAs. They are designed as software in a funny programming language and then "burned in" to hardware. They can and do have inaccuracies and bugs.
In the long run, real hardware is going to disappear through the attrition of time, so we do need this stuff for the sake of preservation. But people tend to put it on a pedestal without really understanding it.
I did some FPGA programming in school, so I totally get it. The hardware is really amazing, but the janky proprietary development toolchains not so much. Plus, Verilog is kind of a pain in the ass.
Even hypervisors can have software bugs - running GBA games on the ARM9 core in the DSi is possible and even closer to "actual hardware" than a FPGA, but there are still weird side cases and glitches that only happen on this setup rather than actual GBA hardware.
FPGAs aren't some magical hardware clone that bypasses software issues.
That depends on the accuracy of the core on the FPGA.
Your comparison of GBA on dsi is kinda like saying "my dos games didn't work well on my windows 2000 computer" same cpu sure, but OS and hardware 'locations' aren't necessarily the same.
on the accuracy of the core on the FPGA.
Or in other words, FPGAs aren't miracle hardware clones and depend on the quality of their programming. Exactly as I said, got it.
Your comparison of GBA on dsi is kinda like saying “my dos games didn’t work well on my windows 2000 computer” same cpu sure, but OS and hardware ‘locations’ aren’t necessarily the same.
Which is why I mentioned it's an hypervisor, not running as if it were natively supported. It's more analogous to original hardware than a FPGA, though. Your analogy to DOS and Windows 2000 however shows you really do not understand how GBA2Runner or FPGAs work in general.
Your comment is got any point or it's just these two incoherent sentences?
Wow you're unnecessarily aggressive and oppositional. Who hurt you today?
FPGAs can absolutely be used to provide cycle accurate hardware replacements. The fact that they guarantee realtime execution of instructions also makes it easier to achieve cycle-accurate execution than can be achieved with emulation.
I'm not claiming FPGAs are a magic bullet, but when it comes to offering a retro gaming experience they offer a number of advantages for accuracy that is incredibly difficult to achieve with emulation, and with input latency far closer to the original experience than an emulator can offer.
Edit: Oh, and since you crapped on my parable, educate yourself with a Google search for "ntvdm"
FPGAs can absolutely be used to provide cycle accurate hardware replacements.
And the sky is bright blue. Who said otherwise?
easier to achieve cycle-accurate execution than can be achieved with emulation.
Good thing my comment never claimed software emulation is easier then. Do if you are trying to "correct" somebody, I can do the same: FPGAs are still emulation.
I’m not claiming FPGAs are a magic bullet
Then your comment isn't relevant, because the only thing my comment ever said is to be careful with the marketing and comments claiming FPGAs are instantly accurate and perfect hardware clones.
but when it comes to offering a retro gaming experience they offer a number of advantages
Thanks ChatGPT
accuracy that is incredibly difficult to achieve with emulation
FPGAs are emulation. Also, given an arbitrarily powerful CPU, there's always a way to perfectly recreate the same result in software. It just obviously isn't practical for complex systems.
FPGA emulation is another level. The video says that FPGA emulation is near flawless except homebrew.
Not sure if this is related but I’ve been using project 64 lately and the control stick seems way more difficult to use than the original hardware. Anyone know why this is? It makes it really tough to aim.
Input lag?
Yeah that’s part of it but also it’s just really tough to do fine adjustments and it seems to jump all over the place. That’s the bigger issue though the lag is a compounding factor.
Try shrinking the stick's deadzone maybe?
Tried that. The issue is that the it’s still too sensitive at the point the motion kicks in. Surprised p64 doesn’t have a sensitivity setting. Maybe another emulator would?
I thought P64 has a sensitivity curve editor? Hmm. One of the emulators has gotta have it
Last time I used project 64, I used a retrobrawler (the really plugs into a N64 one) and a raphnet adapter. It was great, and the stick control did feel better than an xb360 controller.
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