MiSTer FPGA N64 Core Updates! As Good as Real Hardware; Five "Perfect" Games

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Robert (or FPGAZumSpass) is done with active development of the MiSTer FPGA N64 core, giving us 99% of a fully functioning Nintendo 64 on MiSTer FPGA. Let's talk about what happened, when N64 will his MiSTer FPGA Update_All, the videos I have planned for the future and generally just celebrate the progress made on a Nintendo 64 FPGA Core! and a MiSTer FPGA review of the N64 is coming soon...and I have plenty of MiSTer FPGA tutorials and MiSTer FPGA guides on the playlist!
But lets look at five more perfect N64 games on the MiSTer FPGA Nintendo 64 core!
The impossible Nintendo 64 FPGA core just got updated again on MiSTer FPGA! With huge improvements to the MiSTer FPGA N64 core bringing new life to so many best retro games! We now have LOD or level of detail which is another N64 hardware feature added to the MiSTer FPGA N64 core! N64 FPGA fun incoming! and now we have YUV support too so we have a FEATURE COMPLETE N64 FPGA core! and now Bangai-O has been fixed and is playable!
and here comes the big tests! Is MiSTer FPGA as good as real hardware for N64?
and now we have a MiSTer FPGA N64 Turbo core! That runs many games faster and better than a stock Nintendo 64!
SUPPORT THE CHANNEL : / videogameesoterica
If you need a setup guide my previous Nintendo 64 MiSTer FPGA video has that so here you go: • MiSTer FPGA N64 Core G...
Patreon Thanks: Seth Peterson, John Thompson, Paul Daniel, Porch, Jon Anderson, RayceARoni, Kuranghu, Jason Hixon, Alex Tessler, Jonathan Leung, Martin Donlon, Tom Van Deusen, barabob, Steve Randall, Ahab, K-2, Renaissance 2K, Ivar Wennerhold, Adrien Sebbane,
Mike Puelinckx, Tony Escobar, H7, Ben Parfitt, Holger Schmidt, Tim Lehner, Shad Uttam, Dan L, Coupon Joe, Sunder Raj, Dorfus the Maple Syrup Man, John Booty, Richard S, Eric Gutt and Robert Alger!
I asked, you answered...and I try to listen :) Of all the requests for new content on the channel one of the most frequently asked for videos is a series on the Terasic DE-10 Nano MiSTer FPGA hardware...so here it is! Retro gaming goodness.
On this episode of our MiSTer series we are going to be talking about the recent happenings in the MiSTer FPGA scene in regards to the potential of a Nintendo 64 core for MiSTer FPGA! Nobody saw it coming...and it was long considered an "impossible core" but perhaps Nintendo's first 3D console might be coming to MiSTer soon! Which would be amazing as there are a ton of great games for it and software emulation, while much improved, is still a bit hit or miss. Plus modding a N64 for HDMI out is expensive and VERY difficult!
N64 on MiSTer FPGA would be a huge moment for video game history and preservation too!
The N64 core RSP work seems to be getting buttoned up...so next comes the RDP or Reality Display Processor which is in progress and it now has perspective correction built in! . Which means we can now "play" Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Wave Race 64, even The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask...and some other items! and most of the corrupted graphics have been solved by this point in time! Plus F-Zero and Pokemon Snap now too! and Cubivore! And Animal Crossing...and 007 (no not GoldeEye yet) plus Pokemon Stadium! And Harvest Moon 64, and Extreme G and Glover 64...plus some beta Ocarina of Time!
But after the PS1 core on MiSTer (developed by Robert as well) and the PSX 2X core…nobody should doubt his talents!
and when it comes out just play Bomberman Hero, the N64 hidden gem of choice around this channel!
Questions? Comments? Just leave them below and I will do my best to answer each and every one of them!
/ videogameesoterica
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VGE
#retrogaming #misterfpga #nintendo #nintendo64 #retrogamer #retrogames #emulator #emulation #gaming #gamingcommunity #gamingvideos #gamingvideo

[@AndyDo]

The core has brought me to a place where I actually *HAVE* a list of 5 games! Prior to this I had played so little it would have been Pod Racer and then credits. The core has really given me an appreciation for the console I didn't have contemporarily.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

You just installed five duplicate files for Superman 64 I bet

[@AndyDo]

@@VideoGameEsoterica BACON WINS

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I only play Batman, Superman 64, Iggy’s Wrecking Balls, Elmo and earthworm Jim myself

[@elphive42]

I don’t really get the hate for Earthworm Jim 3D - I played that one for a bit recently, and found it pretty decent. Is there something I’m missing there?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s not terrible. But it’s not great

[@jmssun]

I used to hope I’d get to play N64 and DiskDrive on Mister.. Can’t imagine I am now taking the existence of this core so granted.. 😮😮 I am really happy

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

From impossible to possible!

[@ninetendopesaitama2107]

Played perfect dark with the 80 MHz turbo core and it makes the already good game even better. First try the audio was muted but after a reset it worked flawless. ☮️

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It speeds it up so dramatically

[@euqet01di]

GE campaign on the turbo core is definitely well improved. I'd like to see some analysis of GE and PD multiplayer frame rate improvements.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I’d need more hands for that one

[@ninetendopesaitama2107]

@@VideoGameEsoterica the higher stable frame rates make it smoother to play. It's like the og n64 is a too weak pc for the game. You avoid drops to the single digit fps is a nice bonus. ☮️

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Yes the extra frames def make a difference

[@MisakaMikotoDesu]

N64 core still has problems loading some games, not even obscure ones. Jet Force Gemini for example. It's great that we have what we have now, but the accuracy has a long way to go by the standards the other cores have set. I'm not complaining though. I use this thing all day for N64 and PS1 on my CRT. It's awesome.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

JFG is one game that does not function unfortunately

[@euqet01di]

Can't miss the VGE N64 specials! 😁

[@andrewcamacho3364]

The N64 was the only reamining, "real" retro console I still had hooked up. Now with how far this core has come, I think I'm cool to finally unhook the actual hardware.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The time has def come unless you really need to play JFG or Conker

[@twistedspine7300]

for me it's 3 systems: nintendo 64, dreamcast, and original xbox. none of those three have great emulation (until now with mister for n64.) i run all 3 through a retrotink 5x-pro but i may remove the n64 with the everdrive to free up more space in my living room now.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Dreamcast has the best of the three I’d say

[@twistedspine7300]

@@VideoGameEsoterica yeah, the dreamcast is one of my all time favorite consoles so i'm probably somewhat biased about keeping original hardware for that one =) and i have the GDEMU chinese clone with an SD card with every USA retail release so i love it

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Then don’t miss tomorrow mornings video ;)

[@czr5014]

We just need to figure out how to do some FPGA internal game scaling to HD and beyond

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Whole diff project for a future date

[@joefuentes2977]

We? Hahahahah.... We... 😂

[@richarddukard8989]

For you, what’s the best N64 button layout for a PlayStation 3/4/5 controller?

[@Reprogrammed_By_SEGA]

What about the 50 odd games that have been published as not perfect though? with issues. Not the ones with hard crashes.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I’ll talk about them in a separate video. At least a few

[@bearonguitar]

Everything looks as it should and flows smoothly. There is no sudden frame drops, weird micro stuttering, audio glitches or momentary hang ups as I would experience with software emulators. It is absolutely beautiful that this core is now a reality.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The frame pacing is the best you are gonna get for sure

[@Imgema]

Proper N64 emulators don't have these issues so these are mostly user related or a case of using obsolete ones.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

That’s why I only really recommend Ares

[@bearonguitar]

@@Imgema Unfortunately emulators, even when using g-sync, enabling hard gpu sync and messing with all kinds of settings to achieve the best possible performance within Retroarch on Windows, still all exhibit weird frame pacing and micro stuttering and generally have too much latency. The experience is unfortunately not the same to playing on real consoles. From my own experience it seems though that the same emulators perform more stable on dedicated Linux retro gaming handhelds where the OS is optimized purely for emulation, without the potential for any unneeded background tasks, driver and system updates messing things up, and is overall a very enjoyable experience. I'm assuming it would be the same case on the Steam Deck using it's own Linux based OS. I can not use Ares as my system is not able to run it, so I can't comment on this specific emulator which appears to be very accurate. Still I can see what I call micro stuttering in the Ares and Mister comparison that VGE posted just recently. On the audio side my personal opinion with emulation is that it's generally even worse than the video situation, as emulators vary the playback speed of the audio output to have it synced to the unstable video framerate, which does create unnatural sounding distortions to both pitch and timing, similar to the effects of wow and flutter inherent with tape machines but dependent on the specific frame timing in any given moment. I recall in a direct comparison example posted online that this method of syncing audio to video would cause the intervals between musical notes to shift to where they were drifting out of tune enough to cause them to appear dissonant and cause increased beating effects. And while it's possible to turn this syncing method off entirely, it will then result in audio clicking and popping whenever the video and audio start to drift apart. In both cases, accurate audio playback is not possible. Generally overall audio quality in emulators appears to not be very good sounding mostly, likely due to insufficient approaches to deal effectively with aliasing distortion which causes distortion artifacts to be present in the audio playback, possibly also in part caused by the earlier mentioned distortions caused by the audio syncing method. I do not notice any of these effects with the Mister, which is what I mean by saying it flows perfectly. Not just the video being perfectly smooth and consistent in itself, but also the audio being perfectly pure, in-sync and stable in both pitch and time, as it doesn't need to be synced to the video output in an artificial way that causes it to be distorted and skewed. The Mister also performs very well in preventing aliasing distortion, from my own experience most likely even much better than most if not all of the original consoles themselves, while also offering the options of using filter presets to emulate the frequency response of the original systems, making the Mister technically better than even the original consoles as both video and audio outputs will effectively be cleaner and slightly more high definition. The upside here could be that due to the nature of the FPGA system the audio output can be up-sampled to a much higher frequency than an emulator, if I recall correctly the audio on the Mister is being up-sampled to somewhere into the region of a megahertz or beyond, while also having effective aliasing filters implemented at Nyquist frequency to prevent and reduce aliasing distortion artifacts, all without incurring any additional delay. Where as in comparison even just increasing the quality of the audio resampler used inside Retroarch will increase the latency noticeably, causing a situation where a decision has to be made whether a snappy experience with lower quality audio, a balanced experience or a quality experienced with more lag is preferred, where as with the Mister you just get to have the best possible quality with the lowest possible latency. I understand that not everyone will care about or understand these details and very specific issues, some will probably not even notice the differences, and for this reason it's great to have so many possibilities and options to play retro games. For those that do care about these details, the Mister platform is without a doubt the best retro system you can have.

[@Imgema]

I can assure you i have non of those issues you mention. But thanks for the detailed post.

[@jamiec2023]

I want beetle adventure Racing maybe one day it will be real

[@WillbaldStreamen]

upvoted, that game was legendary

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

A classic for sure

[@draketungsten74]

Oh, I want to mess with the NES emulator just because I can.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s a fun party trick

[@Pawnband]

@@VideoGameEsoterica I tried this at a party and everyone said I was super cool. And then they all clapped!

[@draketungsten74]

@@Pawnband 🤣 Yes!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Lolol

[@babayaga26]

omg, and Topgear overdrive is my favorite racing game on the n64! Superb "real" music, and yes, its a bit slow in the beginning but after a while getting the better cars, the speed is awesome :)

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Some people really love it. I’ve always been “it’s ok”

[@simpson6700]

star wars ep1 racer is actually a lot of fun, im not much of a star wars guy myself either.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I’m glad I’m not alone haha

[@vicsorvino1784]

After using the N64 core for a few months now, the only thing that has stood out to me when comparing it side by side with real hardware is the lower color depth (I'm guessing?) which results in color banding on textures. I've seen this problem using analog video from the mister (I've tried composite, s-video, rgb both through direct video and from the io board) and also over HDMI. The 24 bit color depth toggle in the core seems to help a bit in some situations but it never completely matches what I see on my original N64 (connected with composite, s-video, and rgb mod all with the same result). Am I missing something? I'm hoping that the soon to be released analog pro io board from misteraddons will fix this?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The new 24bit color depth boards will improve the banding for sure

[@vicsorvino1784]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Looking forward to it's release. Do you think it will match original hardware exactly or will there still be a visible difference? Obviously this the most minor complaint, I got all 120 stars in sm64 before I ever noticed but it does bug me. But considering I heard for years the N64 core was impossible I think I could live with it. Thanks for all the videos!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I’ll have to test before I can really answer :)

[@JPB7032]

Retrotink 4k?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

No just MiSTer I to capture card

[@YanFaLi]

It's great how polished this is now.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

It’s like 99.95% perfection

[@METR0lD]

Gotta hand it to Andy D. He's a class act!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Cause he isn’t from Wisconsin

[@METR0lD]

I'd rather be a cheese act than a class act! 🧀

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Oh you are cheesy alright

[@simpson6700]

With the prices of N64s already being as high as a mister clone i might as well go for this instead.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

A good choice

[@DWildWolf]

How is Conker's Bad Fur Day playing right now? Did anyone test it?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I’ll have a vid soon

[@Hacheefe]

Ok we are finally here, this is what I was waiting for to get a Mister.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The time is now!

[@KokoTheGorilla69]

Good thing you waited for the price to rise several hundred dollars!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Everyone starts at their own place

[@Hacheefe]

@@KokoTheGorilla69 Good thing, years ago I couldn't afford it, $$$ ain't a problem now.

[@KokoTheGorilla69]

@@Hacheefe it's always better to spend more later

[@Cookiedon15]

I personally like OTT better. Sure, MMs' graphics and characters are improved over OTT. I find myself wanting to play and complete OTT when I do play it. MM's pacing just doesn't feel as fun

[@Wobble2007]

OOT is a better/grander game, but MM has the cooler atmosphere and the side missions, I'd love to see OOT & MM along with Master Quest come together one day by Nintendo and made into the ultimate HD Remake, I mean TOTK engine but with OOT & MM better, more tightly nit and enjoyable experience, add in more side missions to MM and add them to OOT too, I'd love to think it's gonna be a Switch V2 launch game, along with a Mario Kart x Pilot Wings collab/mix game, give us a sequel to Snipper Clips too and Kururin Squash DX, I'm usually freakishly accurate at guessing these things for some reason.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

That’s fair. We all get opinions :)

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

The atmosphere in MM really does it for me

[@n64fan60]

8:12 I don't think Anakin appears on top of the beam like that on my N64.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Hmm I’ll have to check

[@ecoao80]

just wanted to say if you look at conversations about this from a year or more ago people said this would never happen or be impossible. be careful making assumptions about the mister project just because they're parroted by everybody in youtube/reddit/etc

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Some things are more possible than others

[@MrIndigoninja]

Is that window texture clipping normal at 1:46? I've noticed similar instances occasionally whilst playing OoT, but I never actually owned an original n64. My memories are of the gamecube release with windwaker.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I believe that is in real hardware yes

[@MrIndigoninja]

@@VideoGameEsoterica Thanks, I looked up the original intro and it's there too. Being not familiar with the n64 I wouldn't know if it wasn't perfect, which I suppose is a good thing!

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

I had a feeling it was :)

[@emmettturner9452]

You mean the Z-fighting?

[@RetroT80]

Are there games that are not perfect on Mister? Is the core still incomplete?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Yes I did a vid on that around three weeks or so ago

[@DisasterMillennial]

I thought Rayman 2 had an issue on mister when it shows the title with black lines on it but firing it up on my N64 with an everdrive showed me no yeah those black lines are there on hardware. kinda wild that mister is on the level where it's mimicking actual visual bugs. Also, might get some hate for this, but Star Wars is better as a video game setting than as movies imo lol

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Yes it actually replicated the original glitches and that’s wild

[@x0j]

this video literally made me buy a misterfpga kit, looks absolute kino

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Enjoy it :)

[@AndyDo]

Re: Top Gear...you can drive a taco. QED

[@judsonrodriguez8328]

I was curious in the video you mentioned the FPGA seemed to be better than using emulator....i dont want to put words your mouth so please correct me, are the N64 and PS1 cores technically "inferior " to real hardware or emulation due to the lack of 24-bit color output ? my understanding all the other cores are basically indistinguishable from real hardware

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

24 bit color analog out boards will be available soon

[@Imgema]

In the case of N64, both Ares and Simple 64 are more accurate and more compatible than the current FPGA core.

[@judsonrodriguez8328]

​@@VideoGameEsoterica Thank you, i guess Ille have to disarm my case hopefully they are compatible with MisterADDons case. Awesome video !

[@judsonrodriguez8328]

@@Imgema Thank you for this information, im a stickler for details so this is good to know.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

👍

[@ignignxkt]

Does F Zero X play perfectly?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

IMO yes

[@ajsingh4545]

This is off topic, but I've updated all and X-Men vs street fighter on Saturn is still crashing for me 😢

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Which ram?

[@ajsingh4545]

@@VideoGameEsoterica dual ram Mister and I have emulator setting set to 4 mb ram cart

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

What ram module version? 2.5/2.9/3.0?

[@reinhart.sieger]

do I have to own an original copy on cartridge of each game I want to download?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Technically yes. But you do you

[@delresearch5416]

In a alternate universe you owned all of them. So your OK borrowing them in this one.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

🤣

[@apr2499]

Is there something with the Algorithm that causes KZbin Creators to always say the year in their video? Just curious? A lot of KZbinrs do this? Do you get better views?

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

No? Not that I’m aware of at least. Not sure where I said the year in this

[@apr2499]

@@VideoGameEsoterica It’s not typically you. For example Modern Vintage Gamer, RGT85, MetalJesus Rocks, and some ordinary gamers. They all do that. They throw in the phrase in “in 2024”. It just sounds awkward in the context of their discussions. I was wondering if that helps the algorithm’s pick up their videos better.

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Nope no algorithm diff. We’re postmarking the info. Keep in mind I don’t know when anyone will watch a video so I leave the info as to when in them :)

[@jamiec2023]

Can or will nitty do anything about this

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

Huh?

[@jamiec2023]

@@VideoGameEsoterica will they sue?

[@jamiec2023]

@@VideoGameEsoterica like the emulation stuff

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

No. Not something they’d win

[@justinholmes5614]

I can’t stand Majora. Tried so hard to like it

[@VideoGameEsoterica]

That’s fair. Some people didn’t click with it