Why is the N64 apparently so hard to emulate?

[Anarchist420]

The Sega Saturn is said to be the most complex, which it is. Yet, SSF is almost perfect (with the 2 exceptions being that Rayman doesn't work and Nights is unplayable due to no 3D Analog support) as is the most popular PS1 emulator, while every N64 emulator I've tried sucks big time. And I've tried all of them with every graphics and RSP plug-in.

The funny thing is that the N64 only has two processors and all of the emulators for it crash, and have serious graphics errors.

How many total microcodes are there? Is that why it's so hard to emulate? Apparently, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine uses a unique one and isn't compatible with any of them.

Fortunately, the Sega Saturn is my favorite of its generation (and probably my favorite console ever after the Super NES).

 

[Veliko]

Project 64 doesn't suck, it's very good.

 

[coxmaster]

Project 64 doesn't suck, it's very good.

This. I used to play Project 64 quite a bit and I never had any problems with it

 

[Anarchist420]

What are some games you've used with it? I've tried Killer Instinct Gold and it had serious graphics corruption and errors, I've tried indiana jones with some special LLE plug-ins by Ziggy, supposed to work, but didn't work, I tried Rogue Squadron, crashes right before the story text comes up plus choppy audio and no aa.

 

[thilanliyan]

I tried Ocarina of Time with Project64 and it was totally fine.

 

[simonizor]

Project 64 has been working great for years.

 

[jman19]

Uh, I used an N64 emulator ten years ago and it was fine... what's the problem?

 

[Narmer]

Link or PM for an "almost perfect" SSF?

 

[zinfamous]

I tried Ocarina of Time with Project64 and it was totally fine.

yep.

...though i don't remember many roms being available for it at the time.

This was years ago, though. I did find several Roms that simply didn't work very well, but OoT was flawless for me.

 

[juiio]

Most games without custom microcode work well, all things considered.

I think the main issue is that hardly any emulator authors care about the N64, so there isn't a lot of work being done to try to progress N64 emulation past its current state.

 

[Ross Ridge]

How many total microcodes are there? Is that why it's so hard to emulate?

The "microcodes" are entire programs for the Nintendo 64's GPU, so there's potentially an unlimited number of them. It's hard to emulate for two reasons, one is that it's all essentially undocumented, so the emulator writers just don't know what all the individual microcode instructions are supposed to do. The second is that it's designed to be run on a GPU with specialized hardware, and emulated interpretation or recompilation of the microcode on the CPU, like is done for the main N64 CPU, would probably end up being way too slow. The only practical solution is to figure out what each microcode program is supposed to do and use the PC's GPU to do the equivilent operations.

Since most N64 games use one of two different microcode programs, ones who's behavior, if not implementation, was well documented by Nintendo, emulating the N64 GPU for these games is easy. The rest use custom microcode programs whose behavior was never doucmented, and since the documentation for the GPU is poor, it's very hard to reverse engineer what they were supposed do.

Also while the Saturn was ridiculously complex machine it was also a less powerful and more primitive machine. It's more easy to emulate it through slower but more accurate "brute force" methods.

 

[coldmeat]

Ya, I played OoT, Goldeneye, Majoras mask, banjo kazooie, and a bunch of others with project 64, and an actual n64 controller.

 

[Sureshot324]

PJ64 works very well for me but yes KI Gold is one of the games that it still has problems with. Why not play Killer Instinct 2 for MAME instead? The N64 version was basically a bad port of the arcade version anyway.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Yeah, I wanted to play Rogue Squadron but couldn't get it to work on anything. The PC version wouldn't work either (Win7). And my N64 is like freezing. No Rogue Squadron for me.

 

[mmntech]

I had Ocarina on Project 64 a while ago. Even got the updated HD texture pack for the game, which made it look fantastic. The difficulty is with the controls, given the weird layout the N64 controller. Doesn't map out well to the 360 one IMO.

 

[coldmeat]

I had Ocarina on Project 64 a while ago. Even got the updated HD texture pack for the game, which made it look fantastic. The difficulty is with the controls, given the weird layout the N64 controller. Doesn't map out well to the 360 one IMO.

I bought one of the adapters from play-asia.com, and it worked perfect with a regular n64 controller.

 

[Fox5]

I remember N64 emulators being the best of the 3d systems, but required lots of fiddling and different plugins to get them to work right.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Why not just buy an N64 and the games? Seems like more trouble than it's worth to run emu's usually from my experience, with obvious glaring exceptions.

 

[Malak]

Why not just buy an N64 and the games? Seems like more trouble than it's worth to run emu's usually from my experience, with obvious glaring exceptions.

I run emulators on my phone so I can play the games on the go. I don't believe I've even tried an N64 emulator though because I didn't like the N64 myself.

This is the first time I have ever heard anyone say the sega saturn was a favorite...

 

[fr]

I finished Ocarina of Time on UltraHLE.

 

[BD2003]

I had Ocarina on Project 64 a while ago. Even got the updated HD texture pack for the game, which made it look fantastic. The difficulty is with the controls, given the weird layout the N64 controller. Doesn't map out well to the 360 one IMO.

Yeah, mapping face buttons to the right analog stick was definitely unwieldy.

Still, ocarina looks great in 1080p. Much better than 240i at least.

 

[Anarchist420]

PJ64 works very well for me but yes KI Gold is one of the games that it still has problems with. Why not play Killer Instinct 2 for MAME instead? The N64 version was basically a bad port of the arcade version anyway.

I do play KI2 in MAME, but it just kind of bothered me that no N64 emulators worked with well with KI Gold, since I don't have an N64 anymore.

Why not just buy an N64 and the games? Seems like more trouble than it's worth to run emu's usually from my experience, with obvious glaring exceptions.

It would just be nice to be able to play all console games on a PC emulator that's accurate.

This is the first time I have ever heard anyone say the sega saturn was a favorite...

Well, I like the Saturn the best because I think it's games are the most fun, and it had the most Japanese-style games of it's generation. Since most Saturn games load very fast, it proves that Nintendo made a huge mistake going with carts. Some N64 games have noticeable access times anyway. Although I think Nintendo may have gone with carts because they were more difficult to copy.

 

[Anarchist420]

Link or PM for an "almost perfect" SSF?

It's good enough for me. It's not perfect, but it's close enough from the games I've tried.

I've tried just about all of them and they're all pretty accurate, even if they're not perfect.

 

[IGemini]

Yeah, it's a real pain to play emulated N64 unless you have either a native controller with an adapter or a six-button controller. Only one I found that did an acceptable job was an older Logitech Wingman Action pad.

 

[Minjin]

I still think Super Mario 64 was one of the best all around games I've ever played.