N64: A console better emulated?

[Ikaruga11]

No.

N64 has notoriously bad emulation.

[Guspaz]

Is it really? I remember playing some N64 games on emulation 10-15 years ago and it was pretty good back then. I'd assume that it's only gotten better over the intervening years.

[WelshMegalodon]

With the exception of one or two plugins, you assume wrong.

[RocketBelt]

Yes, some games are fine, but some have quite severe glitches and timing issues. Then there's the thumbstick that has to be set up just right or the controls are all off. And some games just look terrible upscaled.
I could do a list of various issues if you really want to be bored.
I prefer emulation for reasons of cost and convenience but only when the emulation is decent. N64 emulation has been hit and miss for years and seems to be going nowhere fast.

[Nekoi]

N64 emulation has been hit and miss for years and seems to be going nowhere fast.

Nowhere fast? There has been some interesting development last year. You should check out Retroarch: https://www.libretro.com/index.php/nint ... more-45042

[Guspaz]

That's really neat, they're basically taking a low-level software renderer for the N64's GPU and porting it to run on Vulkan compute shaders, giving you a GPU-accelerated software renderer. That should allow for some pretty high accuracy.

[tjstogy]

That looks cool... I'd love to see someone console-ize whatever emulation advancements come about in the upcoming years...the N64 is certainly a console I wouldn't mind not actually being the original console, due to the sheer amount of possible improvements. Strange how there doesn't seem to be too much of a fan-base for the N64 on this forum, though.

[CobraKing]

That looks cool... I'd love to see someone console-ize whatever emulation advancements come about in the upcoming years...the N64 is certainly a console I wouldn't mind not actually being the original console, due to the sheer amount of possible improvements. Strange how there doesn't seem to be too much of a fan-base for the N64 on this forum, though.

With all due respect it seems like you might have not liked the N64 back then therefore you still don't like it now.

It was and still is a great party system - get 4 controllers and have your pals over. I had my brother over (we're both in our 30s now) and had a blast playing WWF WM2000, No Mercy, Battle Tanx, etc... For what it's worth the graphics, slowdown, lag, 'blur', etc... are all part of the experience. You look past these things if the overall game experience is top notch.

Had it hooked up via the OSSC to a 40" Sony LCD and we were about 10 feet away from the screen - the image was fantastic.

[tjstogy]

Always loved the system actually, still my favorite system. Yep it's the king of couch-multiplayer, as well as platformers, IMO. Not knocking the system, instead trying to bring to light in a forum with people who love making old systems even better, that hey!... N64 is a system that can benefit the most from "tinkering"... there are hundreds of posts regarding improving the NES, SNES, etc... and not an equal amount of love for the N64. I think it was just a very divisive system, as it was kind of the cut off from old school to new school gaming.

With all due respect it seems like you might have not liked the N64 back then therefore you still don't like it now.

[Keade]

At least emulation automagically gives you "perfect" RGB output, which is a huge step up from the N64 composite output.
Yes there are RGB mods, but 1. they come with a cost 2a. will give you 480i at best (not progressive) 2b. will look bad anyway on progressive displays, unless they come with a good scaler.

Here are two more cent of mine:
*if* there has to be "improved" versions of old games, I think it is the part of the original developpers job to create proper remakes. Currently we are drowning in remakes / rereleases, but -sorry if this sounds like an "entitled gamer"- most of these look like, as some people say, "cash grabs".
Proper remakes (preferably done with access to the original game code, assets, etc. which unfortunately seems to be a rare opportunity) can give you what no HLE emulation or game reverse engineering could do.

[bobrocks95]

At least emulation automagically gives you "perfect" RGB output, which is a huge step up from the N64 composite output.
Yes there are RGB mods, but 1. they come with a cost 2a. will give you 480i at best (not progressive) 2b. will look bad anyway on progressive displays, unless they come with a good scaler.

But I mean that's the same for any console that requires an RGB mod, no need to single out the N64 on that front.

[ZellSF]

At least emulation automagically gives you "perfect" RGB output, which is a huge step up from the N64 composite output.
Yes there are RGB mods, but 1. they come with a cost 2a. will give you 480i at best (not progressive) 2b. will look bad anyway on progressive displays, unless they come with a good scaler.

Uh,
1: The Nintendo 64 outputs s-video without any modifications.
2: Most Nintendo 64 games output 240p (progressive).

[Keade]

At least emulation automagically gives you "perfect" RGB output, which is a huge step up from the N64 composite output.
Yes there are RGB mods, but 1. they come with a cost 2a. will give you 480i at best (not progressive) 2b. will look bad anyway on progressive displays, unless they come with a good scaler.

Uh,
1: The Nintendo 64 outputs s-video without any modifications.
2: Most Nintendo 64 games output 240p (progressive).

1: PAL models (sorry I didn't specify) cannot output S-Video, that too requires some tinkering
2: Maybe "Best" wasn't the right choice of word. Anyway, my point about video processing stands true Some TVs may handle 240p ok, other will process it as if it were 480i, so the end result will look beyond terrible (as pointed above, this is not specific to N64 indeed)

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

Strange how there doesn't seem to be too much of a fan-base for the N64 on this forum, though.

Basically no shmups on N64 though

[kamiboy]

My impression is that the majority of N64 fans where people who had it as their first console, and their affinities are heavily swayed by nostalgia. Shmup fans skew a bit older than that.

Looking at the N64's lacking library I have a hard time believing many would pick it as a favourite when there are such an overwhelming smorgasbord of other systems with much more varied and deep library of games to dive into for the unbiased player.

Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 are surely timeless masterpieces whose influence on the industry were profound, but only so much sky can rest on the shoulders of those titans.

[Elrinth]

I remember back in the day when we got our Voodoo 2 with whopping 12mb of graphics ram. Far better than my big bros Righteous 3D Pro with only 4mb ram.
This is when I played Turok on PC, but also when I used UltraHLE to emulate Mario 64 and Turok 64 on our PC
Not sure why I would do this as we owned the N64 plus the games I were trying to emulate. But I guess the N64 was hogged at the time by my big brothers or I simply wanted to see how it ran on PC.
Back then I also did play some Legacy Doom with really neat transparent water. Afaik this is completely gone from all newer Doom mods.

Anyways, back to N64: What baffles me is how little improvement has happened in the N64 emulation scene from the UltraHLE years. Maybe I remembered it wrong and it was total crap I know it had very very limited compatibility.

It will be exciting to see if RetroBlox or Kevtris ever gives a go for a N64 Core. But they'd go for authentic experience. I'm not sure they'd go as far to improve framerates and such.

Oh and regards the guy above who says we're on shmups forum. Do you realize there's a great Star Soldier game on the N64? I highly recommend it to anyone who likes good music and challenging shmups!

[FinalBaton]

My impression is that the majority of N64 fans where people who had it as their first console, and their affinities are heavily swayed by nostalgia.

This is the case with my irl friends who are into the N64.

Also, yeah we're on the shmups forums after all. So the N64 library starts with a strike before even getting to the plate

[tacoguy64]

N64 has some of my all time favorite games and loved playing multiplayer games on it. 4 player games were always a blast. Graphics were also good for the time and even today I still prefer them over PS1 graphics.

[panzeroceania]

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...

Frame rate drops can be solved by overclocking a real N64 and providing a better cooling solution. Removing frame rate caps would require reprogramming games on a case by case basis.

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. .

Not true on 2 counts. Firstly, the promise was not FullHD(1080p), it was HD(720p) nobody had an issue with this at the launch of the 360 and this was always the target resolution of games on 360 and PS3. The only reason this changed was because people got used to the idea of 1080p from Blu Ray and the like. Secondly, 95% of the games on these systems have an internal framebuffer of 720p, by design.

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.

It depends on the game, a lot of games from the PS1, N64, PS2, and GameCube start to fall apart at high resolutions as the original textures and polygon models weren't designed to be viewed like that. Some games like Wipeout look gorgeous, some games like final fantasy 9 fall apart. Even more modern HD re-releases like twilight princess, final fantasy X, and resident evil 4 don't look quite right

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.

The hardware was limited, and on PS1 and Saturn did not have dedicated 3D hardware, but instead dedicated 2D hardware. I think that the games that look best 20+ years later are games that used Sprite characters and simple geometric backdrops like Grandia (Saturn), Xenogears (PlayStation), Dragon Quest 7 (originally planned for 64DD, later moved to PlayStation), etc.

Is it really? I remember playing some N64 games on emulation 10-15 years ago and it was pretty good back then. I'd assume that it's only gotten better over the intervening years.

There's only one accuracy focussed N64 emulator and it does not run at full speed. Even at that emulation won't compare to an FPGA or real hardware.

The emulator is CEN64

[Lord of Pirates]

Frame rate drops can be solved by overclocking a real N64 and providing a better cooling solution. Removing frame rate caps would require reprogramming games on a case by case basis.


Not true on 2 counts. Firstly, the promise was not FullHD(1080p), it was HD(720p) nobody had an issue with this at the launch of the 360 and this was always the target resolution of games on 360 and PS3. The only reason this changed was because people got used to the idea of 1080p from Blu Ray and the like. Secondly, 95% of the games on these systems have an internal framebuffer of 720p, by design.

It depends on the game, a lot of games from the PS1, N64, PS2, and GameCube start to fall apart at high resolutions as the original textures and polygon models weren't designed to be viewed like that. Some games like Wipeout look gorgeous, some games like final fantasy 9 fall apart. Even more modern HD re-releases like twilight princess, final fantasy X, and resident evil 4 don't look quite right

The hardware was limited, and on PS1 and Saturn did not have dedicated 3D hardware, but instead dedicated 2D hardware. I think that the games that look best 20+ years later are games that used Sprite characters and simple geometric backdrops like Grandia (Saturn), Xenogears (PlayStation), Dragon Quest 7 (originally planned for 64DD, later moved to PlayStation), etc.

There's only one accuracy focussed N64 emulator and it does not run at full speed. Even at that emulation won't compare to an FPGA or real hardware.

The emulator is CEN64

Ugly textures and low poly models are no less apparent when you're running at low resolution than at higher resolutions. The only difference is one is aliasing soup (worsened if you fill the screen) and the other isn't. As far as the re-releases being inconsistent, that's the publisher being lazy.

[panzeroceania]

@Lord of Pirates

It's not a matter of low quality or bad assets, but how they are composited.

If you look at the final fantasy games on PlayStation, on hardware the characters marry to the backgrounds just fine but when you render at higher resolutions the characters stand out much more creating an unbalanced effect. The models and backgrounds are just fine, they just weren't designed for a high target resolution.

Other games after from character model movement appearing jerky, and animations the same. It's not that the animations are bad, but that the vertices are designed to move in the native resolution.

[Lord of Pirates]

@Lord of Pirates

It's not a matter of low quality or bad assets, but how they are composited.

If you look at the final fantasy games on PlayStation, on hardware the characters marry to the backgrounds just fine but when you render at higher resolutions the characters stand out much more creating an unbalanced effect. The models and backgrounds are just fine, they just weren't designed for a high target resolution.

Other games after from character model movement appearing jerky, and animations the same. It's not that the animations are bad, but that the vertices are designed to move in the native resolution.

Sure it is, bad is bad. The rest is merely preference.

[panzeroceania]

@Lord of Pirates

Perhaps I didn't explain with enough clarity. The main issue here is the compositing of different layers of effects and assets together. There is a balance that if disrupted enough can lead to really bad visual problems, to the point that while some aspects of the final image might look better, the overall image would look worse than the original.

It's not a matter of bad is bad, some of these assets are very skillfully created. You could argue the sprites in Seiken Densetsu 3 or DoDonPachi are crap because they're low resolution, but they aren't crap, they're very well designed, the problem again arises when you have a large disparity between assets you are trying to composite into a single image and instead they remain a fragmented mess. Some games have less parts to composite, like Wipeout or F-Zero X, while other rely heavily on many components, like Resident Evil 2, or Harvest Moon 64.

I'm not talking about aliasing masking bad design as you misunderstand, I'm talking about inadvertantly breaking screen composition, it's not a matter of personal taste but a matter of basic visual engineering, and it's no surprise. Often when you change something about a game, you can break other aspects that the game assets were not designed to deal with. You can see this also with widescreen mods, etc.

It will be exciting to see if RetroBlox

Retroblox is NOT using an FPGA so it would be no better than a PC emulator, NES mini, or Retron 5 in that regard.

Something from a legit FPGA designer like kevtris would be awesome, as many systems as possible should be recreated in an FPGA even if they offer zero enhancements.

[Lord of Pirates]

Eh, never mind.

[kamiboy]

SONY had their heads in the clouds as the PS3 was gearing to launch. They were actively encouraging developers to create 1080p games. I was in gamedev at the time and remember hearing stories of SCE bigwigs snobbing a project when they found out it was not rendering at 1080p.

This was Kuturagi era SONY though, still high off of the success of the PS2, with its head high up in the clouds and totally detached from reality.

I invite you to go back and watch that legendary 2005 E3 conference. They were shooting for moon alright.

I remember that the Lair devs did their share of chest pounding over their game allegedly rendering at 1080, although the reality was quite different. Didn't take long before gamers realized that 1080p was not going to happen that generation.

[panzeroceania]

You're right, it was definitely Sony instigating it. They were invested in selling 1080p displays and multimedia. It was all posturing and marketing

[Guspaz]

It didn't happen the generation after either: the XB1 and PS4 run lots of games at below 1080p. The half generation after (Scorpio/PS4 Pro) finally delivered that, one and a half generations after the PS3's early claims.

[panzeroceania]

Yeah, getting locked 1080p60 is still much rarer than it ought to be. A lot of developers will do adaptive resolution so the framebuffer resolution drops during taxing scenarios. I think the move to larger streaming worlds is proving more taxing than anticipated. This is even a problem on PS4 pro, they can often raise the resolution above 1080p but getting the framerate over 30 in most cases still proves too challenging due to CPU constraints. Even though we had 60fps games before the advent of polygon games, how sad.

[kamiboy]

Yeah, kind of telling that even 6 years of technological advancement could not deliver on those lofty claims. I am honestly miffed by the half step generation thing. I like consoles because I buy one and I am good for the next 5-6 years, with graphical advancements happening because of matured developer experience with the hardware. Then there is a new generation providing a significant and dramatic increase in graphical fidelity.

Consoles have already adopted other shitty aspects of PC gaming like constant patches, both of the system, and the games, which are then increasingly shipped in an incomplete state. I can certainly do without the need for more frequent upgrades in the console world. They should have held off with new hardware revision until they could at least do native full 4k.

[panzeroceania]

It's been a crapshoot ever since we've had a multitasking OS in the background. My expectation of a console is to insert game media, initiate power and be at the title menu in less than 3 seconds. All contemporary systems these days fail that test. Honestly I don't even find 2160p / UHD to be that compelling in the first place, there are other areas where we could use our computational budget.