N64: A console better emulated?

[tjstogy]

With all the recent advancements of FPGA's, it got me thinking about the N64- amazing at the time, but unlike consoles before it, feels incredibly dated today with it's terrible framerate issues and often just a blurry mess of an image. Which leads me to...

Has anyone ever searched for "60 fps n64 emulation" on youtube? I was just watching someone who emulated Goldeneye, 60 FPS, clean textures.... it was amazing.....come to find out, there are many titles that look amazing- way better than even the deblur feature/RGB board... and more importantly IMO, smooth-as-a-baby's-bottom framerates. There are also options to use lossless audio tracks, that were instead compressed-to-heck to fit on a cartridge. (Compare sound on same-games ported to contemporary disc based systems- it's night and day)

Now... I'm not one for emulation- I prefer the real console every time, with the real controller, and a real CRT. But- the N64 seems to be the console with the most untapped potential, and unfortunately I don't think it's potential can be fully realized on original hardware...

We can argue the original intended experience and yadda-yadda... but for example, playing most SNES games today doesn't feel "off" the same way playing N64 does... the framerate issue makes the majority of these "ancient" 3d games feel tired, choppy, and at times unplayable.

Just wanted to post my thoughts on this, as I kind of came to an "a-ha" moment after watching those youtube videos tonight. Curious to hear others input as well.

[kamiboy]

Never quite got this obsession people have with "improving" the N64. Firstly, the system has a very small library of quality games. Secondly, I never saw any problems with the graphics or frame rate of its small population of quality games.

When I go back to play games from another generationn I enjoy them on their own terms. Same as when I watch a movie from the 30's, 40's or any era with its own distinct style. I never quite wish for those to be "improved" with modern sensibilities. All this talk of improving resolution, textures or frame rate smells like the PC crowd, and their modding tendencies.

That is one of the many reasons why I never cared for that platform, or its crowd. RGB mods are where I draw the line in the sand for myself personally.

As such I never quite care for HD rereleases either. Taking an old game and just rendering it at a higher resolution ruins the dynamic harmony of the original graphics. Seeing N64 era polygonal graphics rendered at super high resolutions just creates a jarring contrast between the super sharpness of polygon edges, and still primitive texture, models, gameplay, etc.

Same result when I see people running Cube games in Dolphin at 1080p and trying to go, "see, see, it looks great!". My response is, no, it looks like an inconsistent mess now.

[qmish]

Same result when I see people running Cube games in Dolphin at 1080p and trying to go, "see, see, it looks great!". My response is, no, it looks like an inconsistent mess now.

Depends on a game. Killer7 looks gorgeous in HD and with antialiasing, though that might be cause sharp look exposes it's comic alike artstyle better.

There are also examples from more "realistic" games when they look better in resolution higher. See Okami, Final Fantasy XII or Dark Souls 1 (so many great texture details you notice previously unseen in its default resolution). Dunno about Xenoblade Chronicles etc. though.

Yet, i would agree some games look ridiculously bad when you run them in 4K with shaders filters etc. Especially when contrast between smoothed lowpoly models and lowres textures hurt your eyes.

smells like the PC crowd, and their modding tendencies

Don't you dare be a snob

[tjstogy]

So a couple things....

You said you don't like the console, so I would assume you don't/didn't put much time into it. It's probably my fav console, and I've been playing it since it came out..... if you actually played the console today, and don't notice how bad the frame rate issues are, that would truly surprise me. Your opinion that it's a modern sensibility is no different than others who consider RGB modding a system blasphemy....but you're pro/RGB modding consoles, and anti/mods that will help with framerates...?

A big difference however, is that old 3d games aged horrifically, and 2d games largely haven't.

Also.... I am a big fan of the old 3d remasters... on Xbox I've played Banjo Kazooie, Conkers Bad Fur Day, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Perfect Dark.... all remastered and all superior to their original console games, and largely because of the lack of frame rate issues. Some of those the graphics weren't even touched, and the game was still better. But hey, we all have opinions I suppose.

[kamiboy]

Well, Dark Souls I is the only one I would actually prefer running in 1080p than 720p.

HD console era games are a special case to me because those games should all have been running in 1080p in the first place, as that was the promise of that generation. However, since the hardware could not handle it they had ro render at oddball internal resolutions, and be scaled to 1080p or 720p internally. Most people have 1080p displays and HD games should reneder to the native resolution of the display device. But such internal scaling was always just an ugly, but necessary compromise.

As for anything running natively in SD, I feel they look perfectly sharp and consistent on a good CRT. If you choose to play them on fixed resolution displays, though. Well, that is whole other bag of shite.

[tjstogy]

Careful, he's a 1930's movie aficionado. I wonder how does he take his artisinal soy latte?

smells like the PC crowd, and their modding tendencies

Don't you dare be a snob

[kamiboy]

So a couple things....

You said you don't like the console, so I would assume you don't/didn't put much time into it. It's probably my fav console, and I've been playing it since it came out..... if you actually played the console today, and don't notice how bad the frame rate issues are, that would truly surprise me. Your opinion that it's a modern sensibility is no different than others who consider RGB modding a system blasphemy....but you're pro/RGB modding consoles, and anti/mods that will help with framerates...?

A big difference however, is that old 3d games aged horrifically, and 2d games largely haven't.

Also.... I am a big fan of the old 3d remasters... on Xbox I've played Banjo Kazooie, Conkers Bad Fur Day, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Perfect Dark.... all remastered and all superior to their original console games, and largely because of the lack of frame rate issues. Some of those the graphics weren't even touched, and the game was still better. But hey, we all have opinions I suppose.

I give each of my systems the time they deserve. I own maybe 10 games for the N64, and that is the maximum number of games I'll ever care to own for it. In contrast I have dozens for the Super Famicom, Famicom and PC Engine. I actually have played the console in recent times and was not really bothered by anything. I am perfectly capable of readjusting my head going from PS4 3D games to N64 era ones and enjoy each on their own merit. If a game was truly good, and playable when it was new, then it will still be so 20 years later. If it has not aged well, then it was never any good to begin with.

With the exception of the Famicom, doing an RGB mod does not tamper with the games themselves, just the analog video output circuitry side of the console hardware. That stuff is completely separated from the game. Doing RGB mods is no more invasive tampering than hooking a better pair of speakers to the audio output of the console.

Careful, he's a 1930's movie aficionado. I wonder how does he take his artisinal soy latte?

The PC crowd is prolly as elitist as they come what gaming communities are concerned. I love how they often use the term, master race, without a hint of irony. As such I have no qualms about flinging some snobbery back in their general direction.

Also, my favourite era for movies is actually 40-70's, and here in Denmark we are behind on advanced hipster tech, we don't have those fancy coffees. I'd love a soy latte, but alas!

[BONKERS]

Taking an old game and just rendering it at a higher resolution ruins the dynamic harmony of the original graphics.

This is wrong in so many ways.

If they could have run it at a higher resolution with a higher framerate at the time, with better textures and better texture filtering. You bet they would have. (Ex: Games that run at higher res or framerates with the Expansion pack. And every PS4Pro game that gives users a choice of a potentially better frame rate or better visuals. One PS2 specific example. Dark Alliance, uses super sampling. And runs at 60FPS most of the time. It's gorgeous, even with interlacing issues.).

Prime example: Zelda BOTW. A game with visuals severely limited by the platform it existed on. The number of technical issues can never be argued as part of some kind of design harmony. It's all a series of trade offs to get the game to run with the performance profile they want with the power of the hardware they have. The art design doesn't have anything to do with technical issues. Many of the technical issues make the true quality of the assets look far worse than they should. But are again compromised to hit a performance metric.

Shadows of The empire for example, was developed on SGI computers running at 1280x1024 @60FPS before they finally got the devboards and were able to transplant it to real hardware. (And then there after the Windows version. Which runs at 60FPS and high resolutions and looks great for the time.)

Resolution and Anti-aliasing are a gateway to the absolute ground truth of what the 3D rendering is TRULY supposed to look like. And every single 3D rendered game benefits from this. It shows exactly how it is supposed to look if they could run like that originally. Aliasing is an artifact. Not an intended design choice.
This isn't a low res 2D game designed to be displayed one way and one way only.


There's no logic in the world that would make this argument make any objective sense. Nostalgia and rose tinted goggles do not count.

[qmish]

If you choose to play them on fixed resolution displays, though. Well, that is whole other bag of shite.

I'd say 2D games are hurt more by that because of crazy shit about pixel aspect thing. I still cant believe internet full of "widescreen" Capcom CPS 1/2 screenshots
And, well, 240x224 2d game looks eeeeeh on modern 4k lcd

Though i must say, its 2017, crts are no more kind of, and there are other resons people dont keep crt at home

[Thomago]

All this talk of improving resolution, textures or frame rate smells like the PC crowd, and their modding tendencies.

Couldn't not think about this:

[qmish]

The PC crowd is prolly as elitist as they come what gaming communities are concerned. I love how they often use the term, master race, without a hint of irony. As such I have no qualms about flinging some snobbery back in their general direction.

Ah, that one crowd.


On a contrary, communities dedicated to relatively old pc games (around 1990-2005) are usually nice. Maybe because at that time pc got good games, lol.

Resolution and Anti-aliasing are a gateway to the absolute ground truth of what the 3D rendering is TRULY supposed to look like

Not always, not always. ps1 games in 4k and shaders look much worse. Balance is what it's about.

[ZellSF]

There aren't that many Nintendo 64 games that can run at a better framerate with emulation. So I wouldn't say that's a huge reason to go emulators over real hardware for N64. There's not exactly a high rate of games with higher quality music available either.

Higher rendering resolution? Sure, that's a good reason but also applies to almost every other 3D console (PSX 3D forced to higher resolutions looks bad), it's not all that specific to the N64.

[BuckoA51]

There aren't that many Nintendo 64 games that can run at a better framerate with emulation. So I wouldn't say that's a huge reason to go emulators over real hardware for N64. There's not exactly a high rate of games with higher quality music available either.

Some of the OOT texture packs and things people have done do look really nice, though they always seem to get uploaded somewhere stupid like Cloudshare or something and inevitably disappear over time.

The PC crowd is prolly as elitist as they come what gaming communities are concerned. I love how they often use the term, master race, without a hint of irony. As such I have no qualms about flinging some snobbery back in their general direction.

Never once heard it used as anything other than ironic. As someone that games on PC and console it seems more often than not it's the console only gamers that have the attitude and refuse to see the PC as a legitimate gaming platform because of generally stupid/largely false reasons like "it crashes" or "you have to tweak your settings" etc. When you point out that 5 minutes spent changing a screen resolution setting for a noticeably better experience in 20 hours or more of game play, you get back the old "ZOMG MASTER RACE ELITIST NERD LOL I JUST WANNA HAVE FUNN!" arguments time and again.

[tacoguy64]

I'm fine with only modding the system to output in rgb and having de-blur function.

[Tatsuya79]

It seems this label "PC Master Race" is thrown around those days a lot, is that some new trend?
Like you need some sort of elite machine to run some old games at 60fps, really?

I can't stand those N64 games that sometimes run at 10-15fps, I only play them if I can make them better.
That 1st generation of 3D consoles was lacking so much and aged so badly.

Fine for you if you can cope with this, you've got those original games you own to defend probably or something.

[Thomago]

Never once heard it used as anything other than ironic. As someone that games on PC and console it seems more often than not it's the console only gamers that have the attitude and refuse to see the PC as a legitimate gaming platform because of generally stupid/largely false reasons like "it crashes" or "you have to tweak your settings" etc. When you point out that 5 minutes spent changing a screen resolution setting for a noticeably better experience in 20 hours or more of game play, you get back the old "ZOMG MASTER RACE ELITIST NERD LOL I JUST WANNA HAVE FUNN!" arguments time and again.

Ah yes. There's a bunch of people out there who buy pretty much any HD collection and any new console revision day one and will constantly talk about resolution/framerates, but as soon as you tell them they might be better off playing on PC if they are so interested in getting the best technical experience possible, they switch into smug consolero mode ("Your PC bullshit doesn't matter" / "Gaming's not about tech specs, but about fun" / "You don't deserve gaming")
Weirds me out.

[kamiboy]

There is more to the gaming experience than the technical side. I could list all the aspects in which PC's fall short, for me personally, but who cares really. Life is about making choices and it is up to personal preferences how one chooses to prioritize. The outcome of an informed decision is due these personal preferrences and priorities.

[orange808]

Will Greedo shoot first, too?

[Guspaz]

The N64/PSX generation was always a black sheep for me: we went from amazing looking 2D games to really terrible looking 3D games, and so most N64/PSX games felt like a huge downgrade to me. Anything to make them look better it worth it, but I never had much attachment to them back in the day because I saw them as being such an inferior experience to their predecessors like the SNES, or their contemporaries on the PC. There are exceptions, games that work within the technical limitations so well as to lessen their impact (or 32-bit generation 2D games like Symphony of the Night), but many games from that era just felt broken. Some games suffered from such low resolution and framerate issues as to be almost unplayable (GoldenEye and Perfect Dark multiplier, I'm looking at you, 160x120 resolution per player at like 5 FPS). It didn't help that I hated (and still hate) Mario 64 as a game above and beyond the technical limitations, and never felt any real connection to Ocarina of Time like I did Link to the Past or Link's Awakening.

[Lord of Pirates]

There aren't that many Nintendo 64 games that can run at a better framerate with emulation. So I wouldn't say that's a huge reason to go emulators over real hardware for N64. There's not exactly a high rate of games with higher quality music available either.

Some of the OOT texture packs and things people have done do look really nice, though they always seem to get uploaded somewhere stupid like Cloudshare or something and inevitably disappear over time.

The PC crowd is prolly as elitist as they come what gaming communities are concerned. I love how they often use the term, master race, without a hint of irony. As such I have no qualms about flinging some snobbery back in their general direction.

Never once heard it used as anything other than ironic. As someone that games on PC and console it seems more often than not it's the console only gamers that have the attitude and refuse to see the PC as a legitimate gaming platform because of generally stupid/largely false reasons like "it crashes" or "you have to tweak your settings" etc. When you point out that 5 minutes spent changing a screen resolution setting for a noticeably better experience in 20 hours or more of game play, you get back the old "ZOMG MASTER RACE ELITIST NERD LOL I JUST WANNA HAVE FUNN!" arguments time and again.

Spot on. I've been preferential to PC all my life but, I'm not above playing a console game. If the console only crowd wants to miss out on great PC exclusives, so be it.

Ah yes. There's a bunch of people out there who buy pretty much any HD collection and any new console revision day one and will constantly talk about resolution/framerates, but as soon as you tell them they might be better off playing on PC if they are so interested in getting the best technical experience possible, they switch into smug consolero mode ("Your PC bullshit doesn't matter" / "Gaming's not about tech specs, but about fun" / "You don't deserve gaming")
Weirds me out.

It baffles me as well .

On the thread topic:
I think all 3D titles are best emulated when they can be. Resolution, and potentially framerate, increases are never a bad thing.

[qmish]

oh damn now this trhread attracts those, who cant stand early 3d games

[gray117]

Poorly designed system - handicapped itself then, and in future. Never-the-less there were some well timed gems. If framerate/clarity has a significant impact upon your enjoyment of a specific game, then sure, it's better emulated.

But really I'd only be inclined to see the charm in the case of the n64 as to the promise rather than the reality of the n64 games/system. In that light the nostalgic appeal would only be retained with a certain degree of lack in fidelity... Now the nice thing about emaulation is that you can at least tailor this degree of clean up to suit your personal taste.

But I'm not the right target here: Everytime I touch that innovative, but poorly made, controller, see those dumb arch shaped carts, there's a feeling of disdain that generally overcomes me for the whole platform...

[orange808]

To paraphrase Twain, it's only a classic if it's something we agree everyone should play, but nobody wants to actually play it.

[LEGENOARYNINLIA]

Gamers = whiners

[bobrocks95]

The only problem I have is when you up the resolution and the textures clearly look like they're meant for 240p display and absolutely nothing more. Then you get the lack of harmony I think kamiboy was talking about.

HD Collections on the PS3 and such usually upped the resolution, added widescreen, often have a better frame rate, and updated most all of the textures. Those look perfectly fine, though the few textures they lazily fail to update really stick out like a sore thumb. All-in-all I think they're typically the definitive versions of games, unless they were really botched ports (see: Silent Hill HD Collection).

Without texture updates, things do look weird though. But most 6th-gen plus games, especially Wii games, really shine when you render them in a high-resolution. The texture work already had a lot of detail that was lost in 480p.

You also have HD texture packs, but I've never seen an N64 texture pack that I thought looked good. They're very obviously fan-made and lack cohesive design, and usually look way too different from the original textures.

[tjstogy]

Imagine if there was a way to upgrade the frame rate on the n64 hardware...

Edit: Would this be technically possible with an FPGA based system?

[tacoguy64]

Imagine if there was a way to upgrade the frame rate on the n64 hardware...

Edit: Would this be technically possible with an FPGA based system?

The only thing I could think of if they featured safe over clocking of the cpu/gpu which i'm not sure how hard it would be to implement. If it does work then it should give you smoother frame rates.

[kamiboy]

I wouldn't get too excited about the the prospects of a purely "hardware" based fps upgrade. I imagine the game engines where written to cap at a certain ideal internal number of frames per second. I also imagine this cap was set far below peoples beloved 60fps. As such, even if you could manage to upgrade the CPU and GPU clock, somehow miraculously without causing parts of the game code to break, then the only thing you would gain is fewer dips below the internal engine goal fps.

If that goal is set to 20fps, then that is where the game will cap out, no matter how much you upgrade the CPU/GPU performance.

As such you would have to go into the game code and make modifications anyway.

[Lord of Pirates]

Imagine if there was a way to upgrade the frame rate on the n64 hardware...

Edit: Would this be technically possible with an FPGA based system?

You'd probably have better luck inquiring on an N64 emulator forum and asking if someone could patch the roms.

Higher framerates must've eaten Kami's children or something .

[Keade]

I bet hacks that allow for higher framerates probably come with some compatibility cost (probably depending on how the game was made and how the "patch" works).

Higher framerate / resolution sure are nice, but it should be stressed out that to this day, emulators cannot claim perfect (bsnes/higan level or close to that) compatibility. I think Cen64 is one of the only pretenders, and it still has a long way to go.