7mo ago

Why Is N64 So Hard To Emulate In 2025? Modern Vintage Gamer Investigates

www.timeextension.com

12 comments

This "article" is pretty light on details. What are the actual technical difficulties being faced? Is it a lack of documentation for N64 architecture? A lack of thorough reverse-engineering of the original console? Wildly varying hardware between cartridges? Lack of interest?
- It’s that N64 emulation was built around High Level Emulation focusing on plugins and “getting individual games working properly”.
  The legacy of this being that there is little to no mature, accurate and performant low level N64 emulation -as is the case with other systems that we now have fast, accurate emulation of the base system.
  A significant problem being the way individual N64 titles would often have their own microcode written that differed from what Nintendo provided developers as a base.
  MVG is a big proponent of emulators. But even after all his investigating the current state of 64 emus, he comes to the conclusion that you’re still better off buying a used N64.
  
  I'd love to make something highly portable that could run N64 games alongside other retro consoles, so just buying old hardware wouldn't quite cut it.
- Forget the article, go to the source. The original video by Modern Vintage Gamer the article is referencing goes into the details.
  
  I wish that video were an article
Here's the referenced video
skimmed through the article apart from not playing on the original hardware hasn't n64 emulator being around for awhile...even to merely to try a game out
- There aren't performant, accurate low level emulators. Everything relies in custom plugins that may be tuned for specific games. The PS Vita should have the horsepower for N64 emulation, but it doesn't run well at all. Even FPGA cores can't run home brew that works on original hardware.
  There's so much more to it than just running Mario Kart 64 and Goldeneye.

12 comments