Why is Nintendo 64 emulation still a broken mess in 2025 ?

[@KazeN64]

An an n64 creator, I just hope the people either stick to JUST ONE old broken emulator (pj64 1.6) so you can make sure your games work on there. Or only advance to accurate emulators such as ares... but even with something like ares i had to go out of my way to make code modifications to make sure my game boots on there as well. (and some super rare n64 bugs seem to happen more commonly on ares due to very minor timing differences)

[@KazeN64]

I wanna say though ares is a great emulator, no disrespect. N64 emulation is just very difficult.

[@Jurarigo]

Small offtopic: I've seen people saying that we should use PJ64 1.6 for years instead of a more modern version, but why is that? I have a kinda modern version installed and it runs reasonably well.

[@solitudesf8111]

windows only. yeah no.

[@CaptainBuggyTheClown]

@@solitudesf8111 winehq with rice/glide gfx. This isn't 2008 anymore lol plenty of info on that. Also mupen is open source and on linux.

[@KazeN64]

@@Jurarigo its because the newer versions have that annoying popup and their installers came bundled with adware/malware at some point - and 1.6 (i find) is a lot easier to set up and use

[@OhKayEl]

The N64 emulation has been so bad for so long people have jumped straight to making native PC ports 🤣

[@thingsiplay]

Its not that bad. Its only bad if you try to play it on low powered devices like Raspberry Pi or the Vita. Emulation of N64 is pretty accurate and good on modern PCs.

[@puertoricanguy999]

Which, no joke, are a godsend.

[@TODAYWEARETALKINGABOUT]

I'm still waiting for blast corp to be nativepc

[@OhKayEl]

@@thingsiplay You shouldn't need a modern PC to emulate a console from the 90's...

[@knappesouls8150]

@@thingsiplay I would hope so on a device many 100s of times more powerful than the og hardware.

[@kered13]

It's kind of crazy that we have nearly perfect Gamecube and Wii emulation, but N64 emulation is still so challenging.

[@CalebCrazyVampire]

At the same time, it sort of makes sense if you think that it was the first 3D console of Nintendo.

[@gregoryrodriguez5621]

We even have wii u and switch emulation

[@Mostbaleia]

SEGA Saturn also has pretty bad emulation, and not a lot of people interested in developing a better emulator. Its funny because they are both from the same generation.

[@TheyCallMeSledge]

Pretty much the same with Saturn vs. Dreamcast. I have no issue with the Saturn now since I have a more newer and fresher PC but when I had my older one, Saturn emulation was a struggle while I had next to no problem with the Dreamcast.

[@ArtisChronicles]

​@@Mostbaleia that's pretty interesting. Seems I need to get me a dreamcast and hopefully not bankrupt myself into its library.

[@Zye1984]

Im hearing a lot about how emulation doesn't work but not about WHY the N64 is so hard to emulate.

[@wonderguardstalker]

Was hoping to learn more about that based on the title

[@Cyberfoxxy]

something something microcode, yeah i would have like more in-depth on that topic.

[@goranisacson2502]

I wonder if he considers thta too complicated for a 16-minute video... or he just plain forgot to mention the "why".

[@rarewhiteape]

If it could be clearly explained in a 15 minute video, we wouldn't be having trouble emulating N64 games 😅

[@ulgrimthemad]

Based on what he’s saying in the video it sounds like games have unique code that makes things work completely differently for their specific game. Because it’s unique to each game and the emulation isn’t 100% accurate to the original you end up getting scenarios where the microcode breaks the emulation. Need better emulation or a translation layer to allow for the differences.

[@sitton76]

Hi community staff member from the HM64 team here, also helped playtest the Starship port, and help with stuff for 2ship. Starship is not a Recomp based port as mentioned in 14:12. It does not rely on the recompile process that Wiseguy used for Zelda MM Recomp. Projects such as Decomp projects, Source Ports, and Recomps ports seemed to have meshed together in the public eye due to statements made in videos and in news articles, it gets a tad bit frustrating to see this confusion propagate and I imagine people from Decomp and Recomp teams feel the same.

[@slappymcphee]

great info to know!

[@Dylan_thebrand_slayer_Mulveiny]

Liar

[@greenknight421]

The way you phrase stuff implies that it is a source port. Is that correct?

[@sitton76]

@@greenknight421 Starship is built using the source code provided by its respective decomp project using LUS. Same as SoH and 2ship.

[@MiniBeas]

In one instance you have a team recreating the code, and in the other instance, one person has reverse engineered the N64 API and is allowing you to use the rom with modern APIs right?

[@DerekTurtleRoe]

Project64 contributor here. Just so everybody knows, we are working on removing a lot of hacks from the core as well increasing the accuracy of the core. There are currently a handful of contributors and a lot of them have full time jobs and family. I don't, but I've been very busy lately. Having said that, a lot of progress was made on the CPU, RSP, and the ROM database in 2024. I've also been working on updating dependencies and we are trying to get the core working on Android and eventually Linux as well. I've already ported the build system to CMake, we just need to rebuild the UI and it should compile on Linux. It plays all games now, and most homebrew and test ROMs work. We put a lot of effort into Project64 last year, and I'll be putting just as much effort into it this year (if not more). I also contributed to several other N64 emulators last year, and I've been working on my awesome emulators list, so some of my busy days have been my fault for sure. But it has been a great year with a lot of progress in N64 emulation. Side note: proper testing of Daedalus is on my list of things to tackle at some point. 😄

[@gardenstateboss]

that's great news for Project64 i've been a long time user

[@raphaelcalado4335]

PJ64 is my go too emulator for n64. I hope you guys can keep up with your great work on it.

[@-Monad-]

Is P64 the one with bundled spyware?

[@jbinary82]

That would be so nice!! Thank you for your great effort guys.

[@adventureoflinkmk2]

And constant nag screens, yes. ​@@-Monad-

[@boazplays7239]

I tried playing Majoras Mask many years ago in Project64. I got horribly stuck somewhere and couldn't figure out how to progress. So I set it down and played Ocarina of Time instead... but also got completely stuck in the Deku Tree. Turns out that the climbable vines texture wasn't rendering and I had no idea I was supposed to climb up (apparently blank) walls.

[@forgotten893]

z clipping is so fun to emulate. Thankfully most modern emulators have it down, although some textures appear to be floating above the wall/ceiling/floor instead of sitting right above it. Still, I think floating textures are better than the issue you went through.

[@bulbx1273]

I have project 64 on win10, OOT works perfectly.

[@SullySadface]

​@@bulbx1273Source?

[@boazplays7239]

@@bulbx1273 This was in 2009 or so

[@ThePoltergust5000]

oh MAN, memory unlocked. I remember playing OoT only after watching LPs of it and needing to just _remember_ where the climbable walls were

[@SpamNapkin]

A few years ago I decided to play Pokemon Snap on an emulator because I was feeling nostalgic and hadn't played it in over 20 years. But when Professor Oak graded my performance he couldn't detect a single Pokemon in ANY of the pictures I took, even when they were right in the center of the frame. Occasionally he'd spot one but it was really hit or miss. My first thought was "Damn, this game is way harder than I remember." and it got to the point that I seriously believed this game that I remembered being really chill and easy was actually insanely hard and I repressed the memory because it was too traumatic. Turns out it was a glitch exclusive to the emulator I was using. When I played the Wii Virtual Console version through Dolphin it ran perfectly. But I was seriously pulling my hair out.

[@fuckoff5893]

this is funny because I remember pokemon snap actually being pretty hard on my actual n64 as a kid.

[@janmeyer8150]

The Emulator I am using has a Glitch. Okay instead of switching the Emulator for that console, I turn to an Emulator for a different console to emulate the first console😂

[@wchorski]

learned that lesson the hard way too. If there was a Wii VC release get it first

[@ian.swift.31614]

the tragedies of the millennial generation are truly a horror.

[@Helloyousilverdevil]

Seriously problems like this in emulation took me from a hardcore all-in-one (aka PC, raspberry pi, etc) emu-only enthusiast, to a hybrid “tricked out original hardware with every game in its library on-board” enthusiast. Wii U and Wii, pretty un-emulatable for the full experience. PS3, Vita, DS, 3DS, N64, and to a point even the Gamecube and Xbox+360. They’re all their own ultra-upgraded-yet-official hardware now, connected to a beautiful HD CRT. No Raspberry or PC runs those games when I actually wanna play the real thing. Until emulation becomes 1:1, I say hybrid life is the way to go. Till then though, like MVG mentioned kinda indirectly, PSVita is *THE* perfect handheld emulation station

[@MediaMunkee]

Something I bemoan all the time is that because the microphone adapter for Hey You Pikachu was a separate piece of hardware, nobody's emulated it yet and that game might remain unplayable past the title screen on emulators forever. It wasn't a _great_ game but it's one of the few to embrace more of the 'digital pet' aspects of Pokemon and it had a surprising amount of little trophies and hidden items to uncover if you spent long enough with it.

[@themonkeyman468]

I've heard that you actually have to plug in a real N64 controller with the mic adapter using an adapter. That's literally the ONLY way to play Hey You Pikachu on emulators(if it even works, I haven't tested it).

[@watsonwrote]

I played that game constantly as a kid and I still have it. Wild that nobody has been able to play it since then 😮

[@ArtisChronicles]

If I could just connect a microphone and play Hey You Pikachu on an emulator, I'd do it. The little yellow rat was infuriating to work with. Love him.

[@ArtisChronicles]

​@themonkeyman468 I have way too much digging to do to even test that. So I probably won't be doing that anytime soon.

[@DoinThatRag]

Simple64 has an HLE implementation of the VRU available right now so you can play Hey You Pikachu. There are no LLE implementations because the ROM for the VRU hasn't been dumped yet. But there are a couple people working on it and once available, Ares plans on adding an LLE implementation of the VRU.

[@mcbpete]

9:15 Thank you so much for mentioning Ares! Over the years I've gone from UltraHLE -> Project64 -> Mupen64Plus -> Simple64 -> RMG. I felt I was finally 99% there with RMG with a *lot* of per-game tweaking and careful use of multiple reshade shaders, then I tried Ares last night and instantly was launched back to my brother's N64 setup in the late 90s. Flawless framerate, instant setup, and a selection of pre-configured shaders to make it look anywhere from our 14'' bedroom TV using RF from '97 to a perfectly calibrated PVM

[@magic_konchshell]

When you were playing on Ares, was your audio crackling super hard? I've tried changing a bunch of the settings and just couldn't get rid of it.

[@GoodMomo]

So happy that a large content creator has mentioned there are issues with the NSO version of FZero X. If anyone is wondering what they are, the game basically runs at a higher framerate than the original (IIRC, the original was something like 59.5 fps) so the CPU is always trying to catch up which causes the constant framedrops you see on NSO.

[@FerinitheBloodHusky]

59.5 is so crazy that its weird they wouldnt remember that

[@rashidisw]

NTSC frame rate are slightly less than 60 fps. Certain fps sensitive games would certainly exhibit noticeable issues when emulated at exactly 60 fps.

[@charizardoreo]

Yesss I thought it was only a me issue since no one else was talking about it

[@FerinitheBloodHusky]

@@rashidisw wait that makes it even more confusing why they did that

[@ShadowTasos]

The main issue with N64 emulation on the Switch is the fucking insane input lag. I thought I was going crazy, there's no way the games are that laggy, so I actually plugged in my N64 just to check and holy shit it's insane how bad the input lag is on the Switch. If you have never played N64 games before you might think that's just how games were back then, they were laggy, but no it was actually the other way around - controls are SO snappy on the N64, that when you go on to play them again on the Switch you're like WTF.

[@lpfan4491]

Not really. The latency on Switch Online is criminal(I actually think they patched it at some point, but it's still horrendous, especially on PAL games), but N64 in general is a high latency console. Iirc, the Wii VC release of Mario 64 is for some reason quite a bit more responsive than on original hardware and it was still not great.

[@ezg8448]

The latency on the Switch is very bad in general. It annoyed me so badly I stopped using wireless controllers just to try to minimize it as much as possible.

[@lpfan4491]

@@ezg8448 Aren't wired controlers even higher latency tho? Something to do with how they want to promote wireless, so the pollrate for wired is not configured the best.

[@Zalphos]

It's not limited to the Switch. Pretty much every modern N64 emulator has an input lag problem.

[@ezg8448]

@lpfan4491 - No, but it is possible to get good latency with wireless. PS5 controllers have excellent latency, but it comes at the cost of battery. Electrical signals sent via USB are much faster and more frequent than wireless. It polls at 250, 500 or 1000 times per second, depending on the system and internal setup. So the potential for controller signal to reach the system is faster. If your wireless protocal can poll just as fast then the signal is better, but you don't for battery concern generally. FYI, the wireless PS5 has measured poll rate of about 500 times per second.

[@RoccocoVs]

Emulating Super Mario 64 in 1999 was a time

[@HamburgerAmy]

i can hear my pentium III screamin' from the grave.

[@JebesNikove]

Ultrahle ftw :D It ran like shit on my PC but it ran :D

[@Paul-nh4tk]

I was there man. It was real.

[@IRMacGuyver]

Back when the only people with fans on their CPU heatsinks were overclockers

[@HamburgerAmy]

@@IRMacGuyver lots of people already had active cooling on their computers, some later models of x486's got pretty hot like the 166's and they were coming that way from smallbox computer builders (wild west times before the big 3 took over lol)

[@LuigiBlood]

In my opinion the big reason why N64 emulation is a broken mess: There's no proper graphics plugin that isn't parallel-rdp. RT64 is potentially getting there but it isn't ready for emulators just yet. GLideN64 doesn't just work. High compatibility with emulated games to some extent, but poor compatibility with low spec systems. If it gets a DirectX backend that would actually change though at least for low spec Windows systems (happens way more than you think). As soon as this is changed, then you can finally actually start offering a decent N64 emulator setup. The problem isn't all about accuracy (though, thankfully, we're getting somewhere now), the problem is about how it is not easy to use just because of reasons like this. For me the problem about N64 NSO is not about having the most accurate emulation, because we're on Switch, the problem is about how everything else is terribly managed. Poor control setup, poor graphics emulation, which reminder, it's using Vulkan, for me all they did was porting the Wii U GX2 renderer to Vulkan with barely any improvements ever since. I don't think there's any proper use of Vulkan's specifics to help N64 emulation like RT64 and parallel-rdp did. Other problems are also how N64 NSO started with an unreliable feel and that didn't really quite stop since. They still haven't figured out 3-point filtering. I still do not understand why this isn't implemented.

[@Zoinkity]

I know they don't want to split their time, but rather sad to see the non-vulkan branch die off. Nowadays if a system doesn't support vulkan, it doesn't support N64. Get into all the 2D (+-3D) stuff in the Japanese library and glide becomes a hot mess. Another huge problem with N64 is that the video out is actual analog with a rather nice, complex encoder. Like, if you manipulate the colorburst frequency you can simulate the scanning rainbow fields of the Tele-Games Pong Sports IV. --unless your modern TV autocorrects that, so try it on a CRT. The "USA, maybe PAL" focus of gamers leads to fewer bug reports on all the more problematic stuff in the Japanese portion of the library. There's some timing and math quirks that frustrate pretty much all of the emulators out there, even Ares--though it's a huge improvement. Try to translate Japanese games and you effectively require a flashcart. Props to the 3.x PJ64dev branch for having the only useful debugger option since Nemu64.

[@BenLiuChungHin]

Not sure if people old enough to remember the original N64 emulator (UltraHLE) that caused a massive storm since it was released in the early days of N64 and was basically doing on-the-fly calls to 3DFx's GLIDE (and then modded later to work with the full OpenGL set). This was considered revolutionary considering the emulator was released in 1999 while the N64 was released in 1997. Considering the PC standards back then was literally a Pentium 2/3 and 3DFX was still the standard, they did such an excellent job of emulating this. Super surprised that 26 years later, we "still don't have it right" with hardware that is 100x more powerful than back then.

[@mzxrules]

I don't know if it was UltraHLE as I wasn't computer savvy then but I do remember way back in the day during that time period my friend had Ocarina of Time on his PC around that time and couldn't beat the game because of an anti-piracy check preventing Zelda from opening the bars during the section where you have to escape the collapsing tower.

[@sytsma.justin]

I remember emulating N64 games as a teenager 20+ years ago and wondered why some of the games became unplayable (particularly Paper Mario).Still shocking all these years later that it hasn't fully been solved. I've settled on getting a flash cart for my N64 on a CRT :)

[@ArtisChronicles]

Now that's sad. Guess I should've bought the physical game years ago. Just dang

[@janmeyer8150]

@@sytsma.justin thats exactly my experience, I have still memories playing Mario Tennis with glitched graphics on my fathers PC. Most of the time I have spend with Project 64 was trying to figure out which settings might work for certain Games. Fun Times🤩.

[@canaldohector]

I have no idea how I was able to play Paper Mario with the how game flickering absurdly in some areas, thankfully it's way better now

[@rockhyde7775]

Emulation haters be like “just buy the real thing”

[@penvzila]

Emulators are not particularly easy to write, and there's a strong disincentive right now for creating good Nintendo emulators

[@ogto]

n64 is a sore spot but i'm still hoping for greater leaps in saturn emulation. a lot more quality forgotten games collecting dust on that console...

[@Theinvalidmusic]

I'm still astonished at how far Saturn emulation has come. Of course there's still more that can be done, but there are a big bunch of games that Mednafen emulates so well I can barely tell them apart from the real deal.

[@joeylalonde3458]

Agreed.

[@comment1353]

Reminds me of trying to use Yabause back when it was pretty much the only option for emulating Saturn. You essentially couldn't run almost anything outside of a few titles. Both Saturn and OG Xbox emulation have taken off, something that didn't seem feasible just over 10 years ago.

[@Kiyuja]

cries in Dreamcast

[@8bitnation419]

Saturn is making a lot of progress on the Mister.

[@MofoMan2000]

Zilmar is still working on Project64, and I believe he and his team are focusing very hard on accuracy. I don't know exactly where they are in their roadmap but it's always interesting to see what they're doing.

[@Domazin]

I have a lot of respect for Zilmar (and other legendary members of the N64 emulation community like Jabo and Azimer), but I feel like it's been so long (these guys have been working with N64 emulation for at least 25 years now...) and we don't see the breakthroughs that the N64 emulation scene needs. I have more faith that at some point some totally new and young genius coder will show up out of nowhere with some perfect N64 emulator.

[@lVl_A_L_B_O_R_O]

The only trouble I've had emulating N64 is mapping the buttons in a way that feels halfway decent. You just have to find a compromise and get used to it. I've not had any issues running the ROMs I want to though, thankfully.

[@stevenfinch4238]

I double map button Z to both triggers, and that made the difference for me. I also double map button A to A and X, button B to B and Y. Right analog is your C-pad, rest is self explanatory. If interested, retro fighters brawler controller is a great option, Bluetooth variant paired with smartphone and usb-c to HDMI is a viable solution.

[@lVl_A_L_B_O_R_O]

@stevenfinch4238 I think I mapped mine almost exactly the same as you did. It doesnt take very long to get used to

[@stevenfinch4238]

@@lVl_A_L_B_O_R_O I found the same thing, had maybe one or two days with a little frustration but after that it just feels normal now.

[@tylerdurden783]

9:33 To be fair, lots of N64 games (especially Goldeneye) do not run at 60fps on the actual console. Goldeneye couldn't even maintain 30 natively.

[@estusflask982]

It's like 10FPS

[@KasumiRINA]

@@estusflask982 aha, it also depends on where you look lmao, speedrunners used to point camera at the ground to go faster. Understandable why it failed in all countries that don't want to invade Greenland, we played PS1 games in 60FPS instead, and 30 for adventures that didn't need twitch reflexes. Have you SEEN Nintendo 64 fighting games? Lol, lmao.

[@potetnamnbaknamn895]

@@KasumiRINA Americans buying the N64 is a point in their favour.

[@Gravitatis]

@@KasumiRINA PAL territories ran games in 50HZ not 60

[@bayonetta1464]

​@@KasumiRINA 60fps in ps1? 😂

[@theshadowdirector]

Got to say, the N64 version of The World is Not Enough is seriously underrated, it took a lot of cues from Goldeneye and is probably one of the closest things you can play to a follow-up alongside Perfect Dark. Would be great if that could get any sort of re-release down the line but we know how difficult MGM have been about appreciating old school 007 games.

[@Gameprojordan]

I love that game. Got it for my birthday in 2001. I wanted goldeneye but my uncle didnt know the difference and just got me that one because it said 007 on it lol. Cant complain though

Years ago I'd have to flip a coin to which was the best 007 game on the N64. Today, I'm 100% positive TWINE is the better one. In fact, I don't think it's just better than Goldeneye, I think it's the best 5th gen fps, period, superior to Perfect Dark. It takes a while, but it grows on you over time. Graphics are superb, weapons and animations are awesome, and missions feel more arcade-ish and fun than either GE or PD.

[@mechboltxl4591]

The ps1 version for that game is inferior in every way.

[@theshadowdirector]

@ it had completely different Devs. Having completely different games, made under the same license for different platforms was still pretty common at the time. Games take too long to make now so that practice died out.

[@theshadowdirector]

And, FYI, TWINE 64 Was made by the same studio that did the reimagined GoldenEye for the Wii many years later.

[@ArmandoDoval]

Interestingly, the MiSTer's N64 core handles KazeEmanuar's recent Return To Yoshi's Island demo just fine, and if you follow Kaze you know he's pushing the N64 to its limits. Robert developed the core based on the behavior of commercial games, and it seems libdragon makes some odd choices that commercial games don't, like leave the RSP running all the time with an idle loop instead of letting it sleep.

[@Aberusugi]

Developing emulators to match all of the behavior of modern homebrew is a constantly moving target and it can be excruciatingly annoying for emudevs

[@lpfan4491]

@@Aberusugi But it's still important because the "behavior of modern homebrew" is just hardware behavior that commercial games rarely used. If it has to be, then the more specific parts of correct emulation can also be optional.(Like how Dolphin Emulator did infact implement some of the features they once said were never coming for performance reasons, but made them disabled by default)

[@Imgema]

The demo runs fine in Ares, Mupen64plus-next and Parallel Launcher. It's not that hard to emulate.

[@stefansynths]

"FPGA emulation" as the emulation community interprets it is severely hampered by their standardization around the DE0-Nano. It's like saying that PCs can't emulate N64 because your 15-year-old budget Dell can't handle it. There are _far_ more powerful FPGAs today. Yes, cost is a big issue, and so is portability, but those are solvable problems.

[@superviewer]

There was 64 likes on your comment (mine being the 65th) and I could hardly get myself to ruin it 😂 I'm also a MiSTer user. I had no-back-in-the-day feelings for the N64 (too old for it) but when the core arrived on the MiSTer, I started listening to how well it was actually turning out during developement.

[@erdemmemisyazici3950]

Space Invaders totally depended on hardware performance for game difficulty. I would love to hear that programmer's response when they asked, "Wow, it gets faster and more difficult as you shoot more aliens! How did you think of that?" It was probably something like, "Thanks. Totally meant that. Uhh... obviously the best part of the game." 😄

[@XavierHyena]

Ah yes, the enduring hardware timing issue. Saints Row IV got a PC port where the 7th mission can be more difficult or impossible due to framerate dependant logic. You fly through blast doors that close too fast on certain hardware and graphics settings.

[@KasumiRINA]

@@XavierHyena My PC was mediorce for SRIV so I had no problems outside of periodic frame drops, but a lot of games from the QTE era relied on frame timings, I remember stuck in Silent Hill Homecoming because a boss fight was based on quick time events, kind of like in Resident Evil 4, you had to mash buttons after knighting down the boss and getting into melee range, but it never worked because my computer was slow... what I read on forums was that I should try pressing the buttons SLOWER, because I was pressing too fast and they didn't register... IT WORKED! :3 Just had to keep up the rhythm. And that was an issue in PC-native game too. I can imagine emulators usually have throttling, like DOSBox does, to make One Must Fall rounds last more than a second.

[@falken42]

Like many issues in game development, the real reason for the performance issues is fairly mundane: we simply ran out of time. I was the lead programmer for the PS1 version of Space Invaders, and Mark's (who led the N64 version) desk was next to mine throughout the project. Initially, we were only planning a PS1 release, but more than midway through development, Activision asked if we could also produce N64, PC, and GBA versions. Since Z-Axis already had experience with N64 and PC projects, we agreed to handle those ports in-house, while another studio later took on the GBA version. By that point, the PS1 version already had more than six months of work invested. Mark began porting my PS1 code to the N64, and Larry and Sebastien adapted it for the PC. Hardware constraints weren’t a big issue on the PC side, but the N64 port had to squeeze all of our PS1 assets into just an 8MB ROM cartridge. Initial builds needed 16MB, but Activision didn’t want to incur higher manufacturing costs, so Mark spent every spare moment compressing and trimming code and data right up until the gold master deadline. Unfortunately, that left no time to optimize, and that’s ultimately what caused the performance setbacks.

[@XavierHyena]

@ Despite targeting PC players Fallout 76 (2018) allowed 'speed-hacking' by disabling v-sync or simply looking straight down to reduce lag. A serious flaw with PvP. Many emulators struggle with timing due to HLE, incomplete LLE and odd game behaviour. It's usually not as simple as limiting frames but it's a useful workaround for some games/platforms. Laggy or inconsistent QTE made me hate the concept for a while, but the SR IV frame-timing lies somewhere among event triggers, door animation and ship movement. Slower PCs often handled the mission fine. Lots of speculation about fast GPU/CPU, multi-threading or bottlenecks. PC port's QA didn't notice or (more likely) devs didn't have time to build a hardware agnostic solution. Management doesn't care until it affects sales.

[@azazelleblack]

I was surprised at the title of this video because I've been emulating N64 across a wide range of titles for years now with few issues. However, It's true that I'm using the latest software with a very powerful desktop gaming PC. I do feel it's necessary to point out that Mupen64Plus-Next works excellently as a libretro core within RetroArch, even on relatively low-power x86-64 machines like the ASUS ROG Ally. With that said, even that system is miles more powerful than a PS Vita, PS4, or Raspberry Pi (yes, even the 5.)

[@dugolas]

Mupen64Plus-Next is what I use as well. Runs everything I throw at it perfectly (as far as I can tell). I haven't had trouble playing N64 games in years

[@KasumiRINA]

Yup, whatever mumbo-jumbo in Retroarch emulates N64 games in really good speed on my cheap Chinese phone. That's $150 worth of hardware, and whatever you get now for this money will be better. HOWEVER, it's basically impossible to fix the system's issues like the stupid controller, I tried playing the Ocaringa thing and you have to be an octopus to ATTACK. The shoulder button you have to hold for Zelda guy to raise shield is ridiculous!

[@Cyberdyne12]

Wanna say, Steam Deck runs full ParaLLEl at 2x res across the whole library. You'll have to manually clock the CPU to 3.5ghz (you can limit the CPU to threads 0-3 to save power) and GPU to 1300mhz.

[@b4ttlemast0r]

Almost 30 years after the release of the console it's strange that there's still no perfect emulation

[@Novous]

Perfect requires it to be very slow. Modern emulators try to be a "wrapper" instead of an "emulator" where ever they can because whatever they do that "looks like" a modern PC, they just translate to a modern PC. The Gamecube doesn't have "shaders" but Dolphin can convert what it usually draws, into custom shaders, and then... use shaders. A "perfect" SNES emulator requires an over 2 GHZ CPU. For an >3.58 MHz SNES

[@GameBacardi]

...Nintendo lawyers hunting devs

[@Palo_din]

Especially since the N64 is probably the most overhyped console of all time, you'd think there'd be a pretty massive push to get this stuff right but progress has been so slow. PSX has been pretty much perfected for years now, even far newer consoles like the PS3 are getting close to overtaking it

[@TheMutantMindframe]

@@Palo_din comparing apples to oranges

[@lpfan4491]

I feel part of it is the issue of mentality. There are three steps to emulation development: Getting it working, getting it working well and then perfecting it. N64 emulation is barely starting step 2(More accurate emulation emerging, notably the act of finally trying to get rid of game specific hacks) and it really spent too much time in step 1. Meanwhile, something like Dolphin Emulator started step 3 a while ago and something like Duckstation is fairly late in step 3. I see a good future of N64 emulation somewhere, eventually, but it really should have been as far as it is now *15 years ago*.

[@livinlicious]

Many people dont remember the old ZSNES times. SNES Emulation was basically until the late 2000s in the same situation. Until cycle accurate was more possible like higan/bsnes. Same was with PSX, which only recently has been become somewhat correct with Duckstation/Swanstation. Anyone remembering the ols ePSXe days, knows what im talking about. N64 is just in the same place right now. Its good enough to play, but shit for accuracy.

[@napoleonfeanor]

Never had real problems with 00s SNES and PS1 emulators. What were the problems then that are now solved for someone who isn't a tech expert?

[@CaptainKenway]

That really isn't true at all. SNES and PS1 emulation were in a MUCH better state even in the early 2000s. Sure, things like ZSNES and ePSXe weren't perfect, but they ran the vast majority of games well. I played tons of SNES games on my PC around the turn of the century.

[@MajoraZero]

​@@napoleonfeanormostly in accurate, instead of stuttering or slow. And since it's sprite based, the innacuracy could be happening by effects not showing up, the game itself being faster/slower than intended, game bugs that only happen in emulators and lastly rom hacks that don't work or works only in that emulator (but not on hardware).

[@KenBladehart]

@@napoleonfeanor Early emulators prioritize speed over accuracy, so lots of tiny errors, bugs, glitches, you name it, pop up on emulators. Heck, some bugs/glitches/exploits on real hardware couldnt be replicated on those emulators (hence why speedrunning community doesnt accept runs done with emulators)

[@Aberusugi]

​@@CaptainKenwaythe vast majority of N64 games are playable and run, so the analogy is apt.

[@cmedtheuniverseofcmed8775]

Being a long term emulator enthusiast, I know that Project64 has been long going. It's true that the emulation hasn't been perfect, although it has gotten better over time. It isn't just N64, but consoles such as Sega Saturn's Emulation that suffers from the lack of unity in its creation. The Saturn is very difficult to emulate as it often deals with 2D and 3D graphics from multiple companies/designs. I don't flaw anybody as I know it's a challenge to overcome. MAME is another good example of overcoming the vast array of arcades that have come and gone. If anything, I praise everyone's hard work to save these games from oblivion. With all that said, there has been signifcant progress accross all emulation. I originally hadn't touched it for over 10 years and can see a dramatic difference today. MAME and Duckstation have made leaps and bounds. Not only that, but there's been considerable effort by the fan community to translate or mod games that were never sold to other countries. We can only hope that this trend continues in unearthing those hidden gems.

[@jorgemontero6384]

Mame has its own growing pains in the 3d era. When was the first time anyone could properly emulate, at full speed, the arcade version of NFL blitz on a PC?

[@KiritoDev]

As one of the main leads of the sf64 pc port its cool that you showcase it on your video, but fyi, its not a recomp project, we did a fully 64 bit port, you can learn more about it on the repo, it has some issues but thats mainly because we are two devs only.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

Thanks for clearing that up, very cool project.

[@KiritoDev]

@@ModernVintageGamer Really thank you, i appreciate you like it

[@audreygore]

Ive been struggling to find a solution for 64 emulation for so long. You've just convinced me to go back to the OG hardware

[@nathanddrews]

My favorite memory from the summer of 2000 was playing Perfect Dark on my PC side by side with my cart on N64. I would switch video inputs on the TV to do a quasi A/B comparison.

[@KnockinOnYourDoor]

That's crazy

[@icanthackit11]

I still remember the hype for perfect dark! Those were the days

[@casedistorted]

My favorite memory was watching a classmate load up Zsnes on the computer in computer tech class in middle school in 1999 (or around there), and realizing you could play Snes and other console games on PC for the first time.. my tiny little mind was blown. And I began downloading lots of things. Napster and Emulation, the wild west of the internet.

[@kylegusek]

​​@@casedistorted I had a similar moment around 2004. Was playing flash games and one of the stoner kids leaned over to tell me about playing N64 games on the computer. I thought he was messing with me until he went to coolrom and downloaded PJ64 and SM64 and booted it up. Completely blew me away. My friends mom was paranoid about us downloading weird things so we made a folder and changed the icon to the iTunes logo and convinced her that we got them from there. Good times.

[@Colt45hatchback]

​@@casedistorted for me my first contact with emulation was being handed a 3.5" floppy disk with smygb and pokemon green and red on it. My little mind was blown learning you could play gameboy on the computer (mostly due to not having to have a lamp on, sit at a weird angle and buy aa's to play pokemon at night (i had a gbc) i still have that disk 😂

[@compu85]

I had no idea the N64 was microcoded! I'm repairing some 80s Xerox computes which have microcoded CPUs. Learning this I'm not surprised at all emulation is a challenge. Microcode means the universe can change under your feet.

[@RatcheT2497]

the microcode to my knowledge is just what the n64 calls its gpu program, both the main cpu and gpu are mips or mips-based iirc, and i don't think risc cpus can be microcoded by definition. though honestly the fact it even has a gpu program at all for the time is impressive enough i feel (i say gpu because i don't remember whether it's the rdp or rsp, one is the thing that does the actual drawing and one is connected directly to it/handles stuffing it with data)

[@fake12396]

Yea the RSP is just a SGI custom MIPS-derived core with added SIMD vector instructions, and it looks to be in turn derived from some earlier SGI coprocessor that was used in their O2 for video codec stuff. Not really what I'd call microcode either even if it is the official Nintendo/SGI term, just a program running on a coprocessor. It's part of the GPU pipeline and was used for audio processing as well. Most developers and in turn 99% of games only got to use Nintendo's prewritten programs, which did get better over time but were not optimal. Later on a few select trusted developers got access to a SUPER secretive RSP SDK which allowed them to make custom programs and really make the system fly, though once again very few games saw the benefits.

[@gamerxt333]

It isn't all microcoded, simply that some games use their own microcode to get more out of the system. Usually the games with better graphics use microcode.

[@DoinThatRag]

As long as your emulator is built to actually emulate the hardware as accurately as possible, the presence of microcode shouldn't matter. The problem with a lot of early N64 emulators was that they were only trying to implement as much as possible to just 'play all the games'. There are hacks and timing changes introduced in these that are no where near how the N64 actual works but because the implementation is incomplete messing with these things can trick games into running. Recent emulators are attempting to actually emulate the hardware and not worry about how many games work. Because once you have emulated the hardware properly, guess what? All the games should work with no tricks or hacks. As long as the RSP implementation in your emulator then microcode should "just work". But a really accurate RSP is hard, and can be slow (you may need to introduce a recompiler or something to get it up to playable speeds). Ares has no issue running games with microcode now. Not to mention it can successfully run LibDragon based games, and even the Linux distro that runs on an N64. It still isn't perfect but it keeps getting closer...

[@RatcheT2497]

@@DoinThatRag i'mma be real, this comment feels out of place in the convo. not saying you're not right, mind you, but we were talking about the naming of microcode. nothing to do with emulators. specifically the fact that nintendo chose a stupid name. microcode by definition is something that usually works to implement cpu instructions themselves. on linux you often get microcode updates for intel cpu's for example. on windows i imagine they're just rolled into security updates without being named. nintendo 64 "microcode" on the other hand is just a gpu program and nothing more. closest thing in the modern day would be a shader, but not quite, since it's mostly for pushing data and the graphics rendering pipeline is completely fixed. the ps2 has a similar thing with the VU units, VU0 and VU1, except expanded.

[@kossmikman]

To my knowledge, there's still one commercial game no emulator can run properly: Knife Edge. So when Analog states that its solution will be 100%, I hope any reviewer first game run will be Knife Edge.

[@IgnacioGouk]

From the mupen git (to my knowledge, Fixed Audio Timing is a P64 setting): Knife Edge - Nose Gunner (U) FPS Fix (30fps hack) D00ECED3 00A0 800E0BDF 0002 D00ECED3 0070 800E0BDF 0000 810E0CF0 2402 810E0CF2 0001 Note: Counter Factor = 1 , Fixed Audio Timing = On This cheat will let you play the game from start to finish, and will run at 30fps in the menus, and in game.

[@dinierto]

@@IgnacioGouk I'm assuming it runs on MiSTer, because as far as I know every game is fully playable (although there are occasional glitches)

[@Death-to-casuals]

Reviewers tend to check only the more popular games. Very rarely some obscure ones.

[@RealAlphaDrum]

Analogue runs hardware emulation, an fpga, like a flashcart, not software emulation like traditional emulation.

[@eliasviberg2425]

I understand your frustration.. hopefully you’ll continue with your channel. You have literally 10k people following and watching your content :)

[@7thangelad586]

I ask myself this question daily. Thanks for explaining so thoroughly and succinctly!

[@interrobangings]

Would you make a video about the history of PPSSPP and/or Dolphin?

[@KesarisRandomBS]

Oooooohhh I still remember the flickering legs on infinite stages in Tekken 6 being an issue for a very long time on the PPSSPP.

[@Woodzta]

I've been having a blast with Rosalie's Mupen GUI which uses GLideN64 by default. Titles like Buck Bumble, Bomberman 64 and Ridge Racer 64 ran perfectly but other games have indeed forced me to tweak things here and there.

[@casedistorted]

The Buck Bumble main menu theme song is forever seared into my dang memory as a kid..

[@Makeshift_Mulder]

I've been using Ares for a more accurate N64 presentation and it seems to be doing the job even with deep cuts like Armorines. Everything is in place out of the box in native res, motion blur/AA and all. Its as close to the quality of Duckstation that I've seen but still can't compare.

[@stephanie12416]

Tried the emulator yesterday with mario party 10. Got about 25 mins into a party then poof, crashed

[@ELEKTROSKANSEN]

Personally, I'm using M64PlusFZ on Retroid Pocket 4 and so far the experience is really, really satisfying. 95% of games I want run 100% to my satisfaction, the remaining 5% have some minor issues or require manual tweaking of the settings to get well - which I hate, I want my emulators to run everything on stock settings so I don't need to mess with that. But anyway - it's good. Really good for my taste.

[@jeffhiner]

This brings back some really old memories. I actually wrote the first implementation of the mouselook emulation as a mod for N-Rage wayyyyy back in I think 2004 or 2005. It was intended for Goldeneye and Project Dark. No idea if that code is still even in there, but the approach was to store raw position offset from a baseline, then apply the delta iteratively as raw joystick position often over several frames. So if you sharply moved your mouse 400px you might get a full emulated stick deflection for the first 3 frames and then partial deflection for the 4th. The end result is aiming that tracks raw mouse position, eventually. It worked OK, but feels a bit floaty unless the turn sensitivity in game is cranked up. It required a lot of tweaking to dial in and was quite dependent on frame rate, but I still was able to aim better with it than an analog stick.

[@Games-tt9hu]

One big issue I have is the insistence on using Raspberry Pie for videos like this, which is seemingly something many KZbinr do. The Pie 5 you used is using A76 CPU cores, which were last used in mobile phone 6 years ago on the Snapdragon 855, and even that SOC had ADDITIONALLY A FASTER CORE on board. Many of the compromises you made to get playable performance at least aren't really there anymore if you use a modern flagship Android phone (yes, even with thermal throttling), yet alone a PC.

[@Hepponisme]

Finally a voice of reason, im gonna give you a tip, this guy videos are full of misinformation, this one aint a exception (sadly) most youtube videos on emulators, either are: they overhype prototypes or are just plain wrong.

[@KasumiRINA]

Flagship? Cheap Xiaomis from years ago do the job perfectly. My ~120$ Poco M5 has no issues with N64 emulation, of course it has a 7nm processor, which is light years ahead of overpriced retro-gamer branded stuff you get from AliExpress or Ebay. But yeah, I can imagine people planning to invade Greenland spending 500+ bucks on some overhyped junk devices from Wish and then having a surprised Pukicho face when it doesn't run close to cheapest phones people in third world countries use.

[@Cinderkin]

Grateful that I still own my N64 and have it modded for HDMI and use an Everdrive. While I still own my carts, it's nice to play some English patched games and try some of the titles I missed as a kid.

[@bowi1332]

With the restocking of RetroTINK 2X-Mini, now is a great time to build an N64 collection. 😅

[@PASRC]

Ares runs pretty well even on my four year old MacBook. As long as I ran it without upscaling, I was able to get 60fps on the recent RTYI demo. At this point, having accurate N64 emulation on low power devices is more just a matter of those devices getting more powerful and efficient.

[@Matoro2002]

I'm definitely excited about the prospects of further decompilation projects. I recently started a playthrough of the zelda MM recomp and it plays great, with the graphics actually holding up well on an lcd flat panel compared to just emulating it normally

[@treyzeine8026]

I have been emulating N64 since probably 2006 with no issues. In fact I had a flash drive loaded with the emulator, probably project 64 I don’t remember, and roms to play on the computers in my high school since all flash sites were blocked.

[@Martyste]

And in 2025 you STILL cannot even display PAL N64 games correctly on LLE: you have to either see uneven pixel lines due to the forced aspect ratio making non-square pixels, or you can only see the middle 240 lines if you use Simple64's vertical stretch, meaning any PAL optimised game will get cropped. Worse, it's fullscreen doesn't integer scale. I realised i'm just going to enjoy real hardware for a couple more years while these issues are finally dealt with.

[@slappymcphee]

meh....who cares about PAL anyway? NTSC or bust lol. J/K. This is a great thing to point out.

[@LonelySpaceDetective]

Yeah, this is actually part of a larger problem I have with even the _good_ N64 emulators: Even if game compatibility is good, the configuration and QoL experience is kind of ass. Want integer scaling? Aspect ratio customization? Scaling options at all besides bilinear vs. nearest neighbor? Nearest neighbor-filtered textures? Non-power of two resolution scales when upscaling? True color rendering instead of leaving the dithering alone or having to use the N64's blur filters to disguise it? Tough! Makes me appreciate the likes of DuckStation all the more, but still.

[@StopChangingUsernamesYouTube]

The N64 emulation situation is probably one of the main reasons I'm continually excited to hear about recomp efforts like Ship of Harkinian. It's definitely an extreme answer that I don't think anyone's likely to extend to games like Gex or South Park Racing anytime soon, but if that's the level of quality and modularity we'll see from most of these efforts down the line (hopeful, I know,) then I may find myself just putting emulation on the shelf when it comes to revisiting that console. To be fair to those working on emulators though, N64 may not be in the best place relative to practically every other non-modern console, but it's certainly not in stasis. Banjo-Tooie and DK64 just flat out didn't work in PJ64 or Mupen until maybe a decade ago. I don't recall DK64's primary failure mode there, but for BT it'd just never prompt you to press start. Paper Mario would give many solid black silhouettes for characters, and all we had to go on was ancient suggestions to break out a... 3DFX Voodoo in the mid-00's? Memory's honestly getting hazy on that last part, but needless to say that works just about as well as I could ask nowadays on whatever GPU I might have at the moment. Performance is definitely spotty the moment hardware oomph becomes even a slight concern, though. Not really the most comfortable comparison to make, but Dolphin now runs on a warm potato with decent framerates. Back in 2011, the recommended hardware was like an i7-2600k and there was just so much getting in the way of threading anything well. It was one of the most severe performance/accuracy trades I can remember in recent years. Want good audio? LLE and just all the single-thread performance you can muster. Tired of the slideshow and don't mind an occasional broken menu? HLE and a bunch of hacky stuff that usually didn't help all that much. In other words, expect extreme stuttering in all those old builds. So last month I enjoyed way too much Skies of Arcadia Legends on a phone from 2020 that, while surely pretty good, really just couldn't hope to hold a candle to a 2600k.

[@desmondbrown5508]

I agree the decomps are an extreme answer, but I think even if N64 emulation was in a better place, that those decomps have an even more important role, so to speak. Software like Ship of Harkinian is really amazing for being able to wrap all of the cheats, reapplication of old quirks/bugs/behavior, enhancements, and extras like randomizers all into one simple to use package (mostly) that just works with few to no issues. And things like randomizers can be even more advanced since their implemented at the source level. I see SoH kind of like those old DVDs that came with all the features, interviews, and extra deleted scenes. Just a real treat to use.

[@3dmarth]

I played DK64 on Project 64 in 2013. I had to adjust the counter factor setting, as the game would otherwise run too fast, with the sped-up timer in particular making some mini-games nearly impossible. So maybe that's what you're thinking of? With the counter factor set correctly, it worked fine, and I was able to complete the game with 101%. There were a few glitchy polygons that would appear on rare occasion, though, and distant objects would pop in instead of fading. (I was probably just using the default Jabo graphics or something.) PS: I'm not even sure about the phone being that much weaker than a 2600k... benchmarks are showing that a Pixel 7, for example, is faster than it!

[@XavierHyena]

Ship of Harkinian, 2ship2harkinian and Starship are source ports, not recomps. They take source code from decompilations and modify it for target platforms (Windows, OSX, Linux, Steam Deck or Switch). Recompilations (Zelda 64: Recompiled) use a recompiler (N64: Recompiled) to convert a ROM to source code with macros. Instructions can be manually patched. A runtime (N64 Modern Runtime) handles functionality, macros and output to a graphics renderer (RT64).

[@FAYZER0]

I always thought the plugin spec was holding N64 emulation back but since I lack emulation development knowledge it was just speculation on my part. I always thought that locking in an external api spec meant that you wouldn't be able to change aspects of the underlying emulation technique without breaking plugins. It sounds like you agree. To this day, I'm still surprised at the little stuff that just hasn't had any movement. Castlevania 64, as an example, still skips intro dialogue as the rendering is proceeding too fast, and the next chunk of dialog is triggered cutting off the previous chuck before completion in multiple emulators. But since this doesn't prevent completion of the game, and Castlevania on the N64 is not exactly beloved, it just remains as evidence of design decisions that hamper progress.

[@Groovewonder2]

Side note: holy hell, this is the first time I've seen someone even know about SF Rush 2049 outside of my friends who played it with me growing up. I need to play it again pronto.

[@PAPO1990]

FPGA will be a pretty complete solution eventually, the issue is likely the MiSTER is just not a large/ powerful enough FPGA for recreating the N64

[@devilmikey00]

The MiSter core is done at this point. There are a tiny handful of games (I think it's in the single digits) that don't work 100% but the rest are flawless. Dev has said it's as good as he can get it in the MiSters hardware and the handful that don't work are due to limitations of the de10 nano he can't get around.

[@IRMacGuyver]

N64 is one of those systems like PS3 where you're just better off wrapping each game in it's own individually custom tuned emulator than trying to build a one size fits all emulator.

[@YolandaPlayne]

The framebuffer and microcode subsystem (RSP) should be able to be recreated in modern FPGAs

[@ThatGuy-ky2yf]

I guess a good example is the Parallel launcher for Mario 64

[@bm-cy7ek]

@@YolandaPlayne no need

[@sesboks]

Given the N64's relatively small library, I guess it's doable 🤷

[@raafmaat]

well if you can do custom wrapping, why cant one build a program that does that automatically for any rom, thus creating an actual good working emulator ;)

[@TheCoolerFury]

Note: Starship is not a recompilation but just a port of the Star Fox 64 decompliation project by members of the Ship of Harkinian team.

[@IRMacGuyver]

What's the difference between a port and a recompilation?

[@Lester.Desicle]

@@IRMacGuyver Port uses entirely StarFox64 copy files which you should get yourself

[@ThatGuy-ky2yf]

​​@@IRMacGuyver iirc a decompilation for these games is when all the assembly code is converted to C code for easier modification which of course allows for better attempts at porting and romhacking. Recompilation is less thorough but allows for some less accurate ports I think. Still pretty new to this so correct me if I'm wrong.

[@Myako]

You should watch more of MVG's videos.

[@RedstonekPL]

​@@IRMacGuyver iirc recompilation is a more automatic process while a port can be written from scratch (at least the non-portable stuff) i might be wrong tho

[@EnigmaHood]

You really nailed it when you said that if you dig a little deeper into the N64 library, that's when the problems start to show. Trying to play anything other than 1st party or Rare games, the emulation becomes a broken mess for a lot of N64 emulators on anything other than major platforms (i.e. Windows).

[@dftfire]

"What do you mean it doesn't work... we've literally tested SM64, MK64, BK, Goldeneye, SSB, MM and OoT. What more do you need?" 😂😂

[@tuxedothemagnificent6738]

The PS5 parody song can be sung about this too, "It just got no games".

[@dftfire]

@@tuxedothemagnificent6738 Though difference is, it'll be many years yet before PCs will be running PS5 (or Series X) games in emulated form... though many games do see PC ports anyway now, so is increasingly less of an issue

[@RikkiSan1]

To play devil's advocate though, The first party games and Rare games are a big reason why people play N64, like most people will just play a handful of games they did as a kid and that's it. Like I don't hear anyone crying for a 1 to 1 accurate version of Superman 64.

[@dftfire]

@@RikkiSan1 Yes, most people are going to want to play Nintendo and RARE's catalogues only ... but not everyone. And I haven't found literally one single PS1 game that hasn't worked perfectly in DuckStation, or a rare PS2 game that has anything other-than minor graphical issues in PCSX2. But for N64, it's the norm to see "this effect won't work", "the sound effects here may not play", "the pause screen may be corrupted", "music night not sound correct" or "this game may not be playable full-stop". I speak mostly about Project64 there, but it's crazy we're over two decades on and yet some games still won't work without either changing plug-in or tweaking a ROM setting. I've got so used now to emulators that "just work"

[@kchrules775]

NSO emu is baffling. Paper Mario runs decent but it slows down on Lava Pirahna and messes up the timing on attacks. It’s never been a problem on Wii or WiiU

[@atarixle]

Pretty pretty nice report! Many things I knew already have been explained in more details, and many new things - mainly the current status of emulation - I just learned. Yes! I own a N64 for half a year now. Again. 20 years ago I had the one from my sister at my home, but she got it back. Prices are slowly grow, so we decided to buy it now - for more than we would have paid a year earlier. Your video is also a good explaination for something totally else: the difference between Altirra and Atari800 (two emulators for machines from 1979 - 1992).

[@thedisappointedgamer4239]

Happy new year MVG

[@IRefuseToUseThisStupidFeature]

Happy New Year Indeed.

[@VanDammage87]

I remember the early 2000s on the Emutalk forums when Rice would release a version of his plugin and everyone would chime in with feedback. He would update fixes the same day most of the time.

[@farisomeragic8900]

We need duckstation of n64 emulation

[@dftfire]

It's crazy how you still see people on the PS1 side recommending ePSXe... like, why? 😂

[@nateadams4770]

We have it. ParaLLEl core

[@farisomeragic8900]

@nateadams4770 I mean like a standalone emulator

[@ilfirinms]

@@farisomeragic8900 I mean like, why?

[@EpsilonChurchRVB]

​@@dftfire Because those people have been stuck with that emulator for ages and are afraid of moving on to another one. In their brains (if they have any), they think that ePSXe is just simple and accurate to run while Duckstation is somehow too complex for them to understand. In reality, Duckstation has the same simple settings with more gimmicks and stability added to it. Plus, it's way less glitchy when it comes to aspect ratios and FMVs, which I remember having trouble with some games on ePSXe for ages until Duckstation managed to fix all that.

[@AMDGBananaBen]

Timely video! I've just gotten back into 64 Emulation, pretty incredible to see how far it has come since the late 90s =)

[@jakearoo3539]

As someone who loves the N64 a lot. I find this video very informative to the idea of N64 emulation and how it can be better in the long run. I had no idea that N64 emulation was still this rocky after so long until I saw this video! To be fair though I had my theories after watching OneyPlays play Conker and would stutter like crazy at times. Also while i am excited for the Analogue 3D (and have one on order) I am sure there will be problems like MVG said. I suppose we will wait and see...

[@64-Bit-Gamer]

I'd like to see GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark WADs running perfectly on Wii

[@Curlyheart]

Or maybe Doom 64 because... WADs.

[@BFFoundation-ke2pi]

You can play custom goldeneye and pd campaigns like goldfinger and random user maps if you have an everdrive and ideally an expansion pak it’s what I do

[@warpedpolygon]

N64 emulation is not bad if you don't mind switching between plugins. Rosalies Mupen GUI is my choice. Between Parallel and Glide you can play the majority of the library with minimal glaring issues. Parallel is awesome providing you can run it. Hopefully the PC ports will come flooding in this year.

[@Antillles]

But the performance is part of the issue. Most people want to play at higher resolutions than native and ParaLLEI will quickly become too demanding. ParaLLEI shouldn't even be a common recommendation, it runs worse than PS3 emulation, but many times is the only choice.

[@LtGenBuffalo]

Currently running Mupen 64 plus on a fire cube gen 3. It's almost perfect, I did find on Ocarina of Time when you meet princess Zelda her face in some shots is messed up, one of the platforms in death mountain is transparent so you can see through it.

[@warpedpolygon]

@Antillles parallel should be a benchmark for new hardware

[@Forthelemon]

You don't have to switch between plugins. If your computer can run Parallel then you should use that exclusively, and if it can't then use Glide exclusively. There's no reason to switch. People make this stuff more complicated than it is.

[@KasumiRINA]

Just install retroarch on your phone, unless you got those slower, more expensive phones I guess?

[@revgen11]

I wouldn't put the ARES N64 emulator or the MiSTer FPGA N64 core in the "broken mess" category.

[@KasumiRINA]

OR you can run a free emulator on a cheap phone for better results, but have to justify buying for retro gamer -girl water- FXPUBOA amirite?

[@LonelySpaceDetective]

Or simple64, for that matter.

[@Textra1]

I have a MiSTer and as far as I've experienced, the games run flawlessly. I haven't played every game of course, but every game I have played have run without issue.

[@METR0lD]

@@Textra1 There are a few extremely minor edge cases. One of the Madden games still has exploding polygons that occur randomly while playing it. But that's probably the worst case I've seen on the current build. Otherwise, it is incredible, and in many ways, better than original hardware.

[@Zer0Skateboard]

Its actually things like these that make me wonder how long would it take until someone comes up with a groundbreaking AI-assisted emulator that can dynamically read and adjust various errors. Therefore completely rendering the plugin issue as obsolete. Or perhaps just having a palette of plugins for various audio, video and input aspects and blending them together to automatically give the best performance and visuals possible. If I knew anything about making emulators, it definitely would be something I would look into

[@danielkong6767]

Man how you have grown as a youtuber son. No stuttering, such confidence and a hella stylish beard. Hats of to you lad on ur progress!

[@nunyabiddeness6544]

You can tell he's a real youtuber now when he confidently reports on misinformation and doesn't fact check his statements before publishing. They grow up so fast!

[@danielkong6767]

@ huh?

[@TaelsDoll]

12:44 no it isnt an everdrive is literally double the price of a loose n64 without controllers

[@wootks]

He also mentions the SummerCart 64. These are sub $50 from aliexpress.

[@Yousie6]

Summer 64

[@Colt45hatchback]

I got a red everdrive clone on ebay, was like $40-60 and it came loaded with lots, i end up adding a heap as my system is pal and they were ntsc, still worked but the colour and picture dont line up perfect, in any case, i almost exclusively use that cart instead of the originals these days, to save wear on the edge connectors (goldeneye i still put my cart in so i can keep using my childhood save file) its a very handy thing at a low cost. In fact i was playing it not even 10 hours ago 😂

[@GuessTheSongMS]

EverDrive pays for itself considering people still want $30+ for most N64 games worth playing

[@onizuka4534]

I guess we would rather see all the N64 classics decompiled faster than a really decent emulator :) Recently tried the decompiled versions of Perfect Dark, Zelda, and Mario 64 - all worked like a dream on my Linux machine

[@miltonbates6425]

Try the N64 core on MiSTer FPGA...it's outstanding. There's even a turbo N64 core in beta that runs at a steadily high framerate with super fast load times.

[@flain283]

^^^ This

[@ajsingh4545]

It's great but the unfortunate part is that you can't run games in higher resolution unlike software emu

[@flain283]

@@ajsingh4545 this is true but you can run it through a retrotink 4k (expensive $$ yes) but you will probably get the best experience outside of doing the same thing with a real n64 and a flash cart. The upside of the MiSTer being that it's not just n64 that you get.

[@miltonbates6425]

@@ajsingh4545 There are higher texture patched ROMs that you can run on the turbo core.

[@g0dhard]

He already said at the end of the video there are issues.

[@TheNostalgicFuture]

I always thought it was interesting that N64 emulation was always a gamble. The weirdest part, is sometimes some of the lowest powered devices ive had over the years still emulate n64 the best

[@sniper007uk]

Really informative video. I’ve wondered about the specifics on this for some time but never had chance to put the research in.

[@jacksomness]

I see that Xbox One X XDK back there 2:01🥵

[@marksmithwas12]

Going forward it's looking like the only true way to play Nintendo 64 games on unintended hardware is to decompile them, and build them to run natively on PC and other platforms

[@XavierHyena]

Recompilation works too. It's not a perfect automatic process but it's a lot easier than normal reverse engineering. Basically you convert a ROM, add a runtime and set the graphics renderer.

[@KasumiRINA]

Retroarch works perfectly on my budget Xiaomi phone. I guess downloading a core is harder than recompiling lmao.

[@DJCube1701]

Or emulate them. Works great for all games

[@mattsephton]

Interesting topic. The script for this video seemed a bit disjointed and repeated a lot of points. Just some constructive criticism.

[@AquaticMammalOnBicycle]

Also it has almost zero insights, historically or technologically. Felt like a first google hit for topic keywords on a random discussion forum.

[@blueowl0708]

First time?

[@LuigiXHero]

Don't forget getting stuff wrong like calling starship a recomp.

[@ranchman693]

This is why my N64 is still plugged in. It NEEDS the original controller and emulation is hit and miss. Even with emulators, I still prefer real hardware.

[@jessehigginson]

I don't think it's fair to complain about modern hardware being unable to run N64 games at 60fps - the N64 couldn't do that, either. 30fps was luxurious and silky smooth for that system, and most games were capped at 20. Hell, that was just NTSC - the PAL versions of most of them ran at 16.6fps.

[@LuisPerez-5]

So everyone saying these retro emulation handhelds can run N64 well are lying?

[@SeanMcCaffrey4]

They’re not testing enough. The most popular games work fine

[@jimechols4347]

let's just say you'll be playing hacked versions of these games....

[@jimf14]

As far as Ive seen the N64 mister core works really well.

[@smkks]

Tried to play Top Gear Overdrive recently and couldn't find a single emulator that would run it properly. 😕

[@kurtzmann22]

Try simple64

[@Imgema]

It runs fine in Ares, Simple 64, RA Mupen core, Parallel Launcher, etc. Stop using the first crappy emulator in google results.

[@mafuds]

Great video! N64 emulation is one of my favorites but it's still the one I suffer the most with from time to time. Here's to the awesome community behind it! I really think they'll be able to advance greatly. MVG, I'd love to know more about how emulators REALLY work, like understanding how can the code really do what it does and replicate another machine. However, I'm certain I wouldn't understand a thing if I tried to study. One idea for a series would be for you to get one emulator you think could be reasonably easy and go through the parts to explain us how emulation is made possible

[@joshgiesbrecht]

I was emulating N64 games 7 years ago on a mid-tier gaming PC and never had much of an issue. Plus I had the entire N64 catalogue and played some pretty obscure games. Very, very few issues. Also next to no issues emulating N64 on my Nvidia Shield tablet from back in the day.

[@perpetualcollapse]

ParaLLEl is the GOAT for N64 emulation

[@Kaiser499TV]

Someone needs to reverse engineer WWF No Mercy to make it work on PC.

[@marklarz4399]

OG Xbox emulation: "Hello there"

[@dftfire]

I'd guess that was due to the power of the Xbox (64MB RAM, 733Mhz CPU, 233Mhz GPU), meaning until recently it's been hard for PCs and laptops to play the games at full-speed. But otherwise, it shouldn't be as hard to emulate OG Xbox, given it was an Intel CPU, ran a version of Windows and the games were based on DirectX. All of that is much-more understood than reverse-engineering the N64 or PS3.

[@CaptainKenway]

@@dftfire There are much more powerful systems than the original Xbox which are in a better state emulation-wise. It has little to do with the hardware specs. The real problem for Xbox (and Xbox 360) emulation is a lack of developer interest. The bottom line is that there simply aren't many people working on it compared to other systems. Unless someone like Stenzek decides to turn his attention to Xbox (360) emulation and contribute as he did with PCSX2, I wouldn't hold your breath for things to change much any time soon. You're also over-simplifying things by saying it should be "easy" just because it shares similarities to a PC. Whilst that's true in some respects, in others it isn't. There's no direct PC equivalent of the NV2A GPU for example (it's not just a GeForce 3), which has been one of the biggest hurdles to original Xbox emulation due to a lack of documentation.

[@dftfire]

@@CaptainKenway Oh sure, lack of developer interest is always going to be an issue. And with sales of 24 million compared to the 160 million of the PS2, it's clear where more focus would go to. But I would still think that were developers to get interested, it should be somewhat easier to make Xbox games run on Windows, given the OG Xbox literally ran modified versions of the Windows 2000 kernel along with DirectX 8.1 and a 32-bit Intel CPU. That's a better starting-point for reverse-engineering than some random custom CPU and GPU, surely?

[@EeveeEuphoria]

i mean, you say that, but i think xemu is getting to a better place waaaay quicker than N64 emulation. it took forever for someone to crack the code on good xbox emulation, but now that someone has, it's progressed way more rapidly than N64 emulation ever has.

[@pablosantiago5711]

@@CaptainKenway at the end of the day what drives community interest is the exclusive titles to the console

[@superplayer009]

ill be looking forward to your analysis of the analogue 3d, you and kaze are the two people i would truly trust on the topic

[@mph8er]

I hope Analogue releasing a console based on the N64 will reignite interest, but I’m starting to think FPGA has led most to abandon traditional emulators among those of us who are more discerning of accuracy. So many games have also been either ported or reverse engineered at this point that i’m curious whether the demand is there for the less discerning.

[@jansenart0]

I was always told that N64 emulation was the most difficult among the systems because of all the custom and varied cart hardware.

[@ComptonFalcon]

IIRC That was more of an issue with SNES emulation and the extra chips some games had, like Yoshi's Island I've never heard of N64 cartridges having unique hardware from one another (could be wrong though)

[@robinmattheussen2395]

@@ComptonFalcon I also haven't heard of that personally. NES and SNES games have the potential to ship custom hardware inside the carts, and LLE NES/SNES emulators (aka all of them) have to implement each individual "mapper" (as they're often called).

[@incrediLance]

last time I ran an n64 emulator it was a good enough experience, it was around 2003 or 2004, cant remember, but it was good enough back then haha

[@sc3ku]

Mario Golf is my favorite game. does anyone know WHY the putting grid slope is reversed on emulators (including NSO)? drives me nuts!! When you switch to view from the pin, the grid lines on the green indicate slope in the opposite direction as from the player view, so you get conflicting information on which way the ball will roll. On original hardware, the slope switches direction (since perspective flips 180*). Along with the awful input lag, it makes the NSO version 100% unplayable for me at huh difficulty levels. 😢

[@jimechols4347]

Probably has to do with emulating the floating point processor properly using integers.

[@GroundHawkX]

Fpga emulation feels like the best approach, and from there once it’s running flawless, then it can be simplified into a translation. But it’s clear that if homebrew games aren’t working through it then some execution is being missed in the code. Almost seems that it should run sandboxed and programmed to output a display signal like the computer is seeing it as a camera or video than trying to ask the cpu to directly interpret the commands. I’m probably blowing out my a** but I haven’t done hardware emulation in a decade.

[@wingsfromheaven8788]

HUGE thumbs-up on the content presented here! I think there's an interim solution... We can apparently leverage the common 'gamelist.xml' file used by most frontends (at least in Linux distributions). For instance, ArkOS/ES stores the game-specific emulator selection within the XML entry for each in the gamelist.xml file. This opens up the possibility of distributing pre-optimized 'gamelist.xml' file(s) for each processor, likely using the standardized 'no-intro' game title naming conventions. Furthermore, an optimized 'gameslist.xml' file could be supported with a recovery script: 'N64 game optimization'. Unfortunately, ArkOS/ES does not save 'plugin' selections within 'gamelist.xml' but the emulator, core and performance selections are a good start. I'm in the process of optimizing a generous portion of the N64 library (NTSC primarily but PAL where necessary, plus KazeN64 hacks, etc). That involves testing each game with all the N64 emulators (and plugins) available on ArkOS for the R36S. Obviously, the RK3326 processor won't have the grunt to emulate more than 65% of the N64 games using today's emulation options. Much less run highly-accurate plug-ins such as the AngryLion RDP plugin. But RK3326 testing provides a baseline among budget handhelds.

[@soknightsam]

The terribly limited button mapping is what kills it for me even on games that play well

[@MacroBlockArt]

Perhaps you would be better suited to using a front-ended emulation environment like retroarch that lets you map buttons more easily or a third party button-mapping software. I think there are forks of PJ64 that even inject the mouse into Goldeneye for mouse-look, though.

[@soknightsam]

@MacroBlockArt Thanks for the reply. I've got a pc running batocera and could never get the c buttons mapped properly for Star Fox so I still play an actual console. My main concern for dedicating a pc to emulation was to reduce wear on the console until emulation catches up

[@LtGenBuffalo]

If you have an elite 2 controller you can map the button layout on your Xbox however you want it. Save your setting to 1 or 4 options that will save to the controller itself. I use mine to play Ocarina of Time

[@soknightsam]

@@LtGenBuffalo I'm using a USB N64 controller. Could never get used to playing N64 emulation on any other controller. My hands refuse to learn I guess

[@LtGenBuffalo]

@soknightsam nothing wrong with keeping it OG, or some what OG 😂 DID N64 COME OUT WITH WIRELESS CONTROLLERS BACK IN THE DAY 🤔 I CAN'T REMEMBER IT'S BEEN SO LONG AGO.

[@FeliciaByNature]

Ya'll talking about back-porting HLE to the modern day, MAME's over here like "screw that we're gonna emulate everything down to the capacitors. I hope you like starting fires with your computer."

[@dftfire]

Part of the issue with N64 emulation is the coders, like many who owned one, didn't own or play many different games, so they only test a handful of popular ones. I asked a number of work colleagues and friends following this video: "How many N64 games can you name?" Virtually everyone: Super Mario 64 The two Zelda games (usually by their names) GoldenEye Mario Kart Donkey Kong 64 + Diddy Kong Racing Pokémon Banjo-Kazooie (though not always by name, but "that one with the bear and bird") After that though... "I seem to recall some Star Wars games" "Super Smash? Or did that start on GameCube?" "I think there was a Yoshi or Kirby game?" "Was there a Mario one where he plays golf, or was that on the SNES?" "Mario Party... can't remember which one I had though, there were like four or five of them I think" "There was a Mario game where he can turn sideways and goes like 2D" And virtually no-one mentioned any game that wasn't either a Nintendo or RARE title... sorry Rayman 2, Turok, Quake, DOOM, Hexen, Indiana Jones, Duck Dodgers, Perfect Dark, Pilotwings, Wave Race, Star Fox, Wipeout 64 and Yoshi (amongst others I'd expect people might've known). The only non-Nintendo or RARE ones were: "A Disney racing game" "A Bomberman one that was like a platformer" And then for totally-wrong answers: "Croc" "Harry Potter" "Soul Reaver" "Wario" "Was the first Tomb Raider released on it?" "That one where you have to chase monkeys"

[@bayonetta1464]

you are saying emulation/preservation people do not play anything? 😂

[@dftfire]

@bayonetta1464 No, I'm clearly saying that people who make N64 emulators likely play very-few games in them when testing. Hence why you can usually guarantee with most N64 emulators, Super Mario 64 is guaranteed to work, as should the two Zelda titles and GoldenEye 007, and after that most of RARE's catalogue along with the Pokémon titles are the games that receive all the focus. As they are the ones the developers also like. Try playing something like Tonic Trouble, Taz Express, Glover, Quack Attack / Goin' Quackers, Gex 3, Infernal Machine, Nightmare Creatures, Perfect Dark, Quake, Rayman 2, Spiderman, Toy Story 2 and so-on and results will then vary wildly from graphic or sound glitches, to even sometimes an emulator crash. It would help with N64 emulators if they actually asked people "could you test this game for us", as unlike other systems, N64 clearly requires custom-code for each game, which means they need to all be tested. But instead, the devs do their own testing, and play only the handful of games they personally like.

[@LonelyMarowak]

I can remember back in 2009/2010, when I was 12/13, I wanted to try to emulate some of the more obscure racing games for the N64, like Hot Wheels: Turbo Racing, Beetle Adventure Racing!, and Monster Truck Madness 64. Turbo Racing seemed to run fine on Project64 minus a couple of missing minor graphics, but the graphics on BAR! and MTM64 were always corrupted in some way, regardless of what plugin you chose. I specifically remember the text in MTM64 being rendered as long, silver boxes. I can also remember trying to memorize what option did what in order to start a single race at the difficulty I wanted.

[@The-Zer0th-Law]

I always had disappointing and painful experiences emulating N64. Either required super specific plugins, super specific settings, super specific EMULATORS... And often something broke anyways, like Kirby's UI not updating unless there's a full map reload/change.

[@DrJ3RK8]

IMO the MiSTer FPGA is the current best way to play N64 games now. It doesn't have a lot of enhancement features like emulation can, but it plays them very accurately to the way the N64 did/does. The N64 core is amazing.

[@kunka592]

It has widescreen and a turbo core available, at least. Not to mention different filtering options.

[@DrJ3RK8]

@@kunka592 Yes, the turbo core is quite nice. I would agree that it does some enhancement. Maybe just not to the degree that the emulators do. However, the accuracy is tip top. I actually ordered one of the Analogue N64s, so we'll see how that goes too. :)

[@segafrog]

the N64 graphics were always just a flat blurry ugly mess to me tbh. The Dreamcast on the other hand looked freakin' gorgeous, ..and still does on CRT

[@EpsilonChurchRVB]

Yep. Even PS1 looks better than N64 both native and emulation-wise despite its weaker hardware.

[@sebastiankulche]

Its also easier to emulate despite the specs difference.

[@Beavernator]

I recently boiught a MiSTER Pi FPGA... I no longer worry about my N64 or Saturn games... Works pretty much flawlessly...

[@Kaido_928]

This

[@matmachin9992]

Awesome thanks. I ordered a Mister Pi and it should arrive either this month or next.

[@GlowingOrangeOoze]

Very affirming to see I'm not the only one struggling. Over the last several years I've become less interested in maintaining actual hardware, but emulating N64 games has been so miserable. Framerate problems, obvious texture seams, sprites having outlines, controller detection problems, and GOD is it an ordeal to map your controls RetroArch. I don't think I hate any UX as much as I now hate setting up a controller in RetroArch.

[@LurkingCrassZero]

I'm pleased someone has highlighted this, as I've wondered this for years now.