The Nintendo 64 has always been a difficult machine to emulate correctly. But in 2025 - we should be well and truly past all of it right? Not exactly. Issues with Plugins, performance, graphical glitches, stutters. Unless you have a very powerful machine, these are common things many of us will run into when emulating the Nintendo 64. But why? And Is there any hope for fast, accurate N64 emulation in 2025 and beyond?
I had no issue emulating n64 games on my piece of shit machine almost 20 years ago. What even is this?
I respect MVG a lot but this is honestly clickbait. All you have to do is:
- Download RetroArch
- Install Mupen64Plus-Next core
- Enable ParaLLEl RDP and RSP plugins in core settings
and you can play every game without issues. Not a broken mess by any means.
If you have resources leftover, you can even go into the core settings and turn internal resolution to 4x for better 3D graphics
You didnt watch the video, did you?
Cause the whole needing plugins and hacks to run games was exactly the point he was making, on why emulation of n64 is still in a poor shape, despite consoles before and after being emulated just fine without issue.
The only reason we still have this plugin paradigm is because that’s how N64 emulator culture evolved over time. That’s deliberate though, there’s no “mess” here.
I can easily download a cycle-accurate N64 emulator that depends on zero plugins. However, being the N64, it obviously takes a lot of power to emulate in such an accurate way.
Right, and on different platforms, too. Yes, your gaming PC can do it fine, but a PS Vita should have the horsepower to do it, too, and that’s not where things are at.
And then there’s homebrew stuff. Works fine on real hardware, but emulators often fail.
Not sure if this is related but I’ve been using project 64 lately and the control stick seems way more difficult to use than the original hardware. Anyone know why this is? It makes it really tough to aim.
Input lag?
Yeah that’s part of it but also it’s just really tough to do fine adjustments and it seems to jump all over the place. That’s the bigger issue though the lag is a compounding factor.
Try shrinking the stick’s deadzone maybe?
Tried that. The issue is that the it’s still too sensitive at the point the motion kicks in. Surprised p64 doesn’t have a sensitivity setting. Maybe another emulator would?
I thought P64 has a sensitivity curve editor? Hmm. One of the emulators has gotta have it
The core if it boils down to, when emulating older machines, is the consoles processor speaks language A, and our computers all speak language B
The emulator has to translate back and forth between A<->B faster than the speed the original processors would’ve just spoken A
So translating A<->B is a way tougher task than just reciting A. So you need a tremendously better CPU than what the console had to emulate it.
It’s kinda like, Dropping a rock in a pile of sand is easy. Simulating dropping that rock into the pile of sand in real time accurately is really challenging.
Not only that. Emulators must often ”cheat” to achieve high speeds. This means emulators doesn’t try to achieve a 1:1 replication of what’s happening inside the hardware, but something that’s gives close enough results and better tailored for modern hardware.
The reason why N64 is particularly difficult is because each game must be optimized individually (due to the heavy reliance on microcode). The emulator must replicate the hardware at a much lower level for an accurate emulation of all games. Emulator developers can apply optimizations on each individual game, but it’s incredibly time consuming to do so for every game in the N64 library.
why is its reliance on microcode making it so difficult? i tought this was the case across the board?
According to: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Nintendo_64_emulators
One of the biggest hurdles to emulating the Nintendo 64 was the Reality Display Processor (RDP), which used a custom design that had to be fine-tuned to get higher performance out of the system using microcode. To emulate the RDP accurately, one would have to execute said microcode the way the RDP did, which differed from the PC graphics cards of the day. To complicate matters further, API standards available on PCs two decades ago were nowhere near as flexible as they’re today. If you wanted to make an accurate GPU-accelerated RDP plugin in 2003, you simply couldn’t with the APIs of the time (OpenGL 1.x and Direct3D 9).
Accurate low-level emulation would only come to the GPU in 2020 when a new version of the Mupen64Plus-based ParaLLEl libretro core was released containing a rewritten RDP plugin using compute shaders in Vulkan.
And that’s the reason MVG is telling other devs: stop using those cheats, if the sceen is going progress they have start using low level standards.
It’s even more complicated than that, because for full accuracy, it must also emulate the clock speed at which the emulated processor ran, as well as the various memory busses etc
Emulating DK’s Jungle Parkway in MK64 goes brrrr
Emulators exist for the Switch. So it’s not just the fact that the emulator needs to translate, there is something specific about the N64’s ‘language’ that makes translating more difficult and time consuming.
The easiest way I could describe it, is that the languages are much, much more similar. Translating for the switch is like going from Spanish to Latin, while the N64 is more like going from Chinese to Latin - much less 1-to-1 and objective.
The “language” that the n64 used was basically in a totally different language family than what PCs and later Nintendo consoles use.
Think of it as if the N64 spoke Japanese, while PCs speak Spanish. There’s a lot of things that don’t translate cleanly from one language to the other, you can’t just feed it into google translate and expect what comes out the other end to make sense, you’re going to need someone who understands both languages to go over it, rewrite some of it to make sure all of the nuance is coming through, add some asterisks and translation notes to explain some concepts that don’t really have a direct equivalent in the other language, etc.
Later Nintendo consoles spoke something more like Portuguese or maybe even Mexican Spanish instead of PC’s Castilian Spanish. They’re much more similar languages that translate more directly and some things may not even really need translation as long as both parties slow down, speak clearly, and maybe throw in some hand gestures here and there, and google translate will get you like 99% of the way there, without the translator needing to add as many explanatory notes.
All those translation notes are what the emulator is doing, and the N64 to PC emulator has to do a lot more interpreting than the Switch to PC emulator.
There isn’t actually a ton of translating going on with the Switch, as it’s basically just a computer (an ARM computer, but still). The N64 had a very different architecture that doesn’t work like modern computers do. On top of that, games on it relied on low level graphics code that makes it very difficult to cheat like other emulators do.
EDIT: Sorry, I mixed up my comment chains.
Is Switch emulation HLE? Because if so, the Switch isn’t relevant to what the other commenter is explaining.
HLE just means the emulator needs to have the same output as the Switch.
LLE means the Emulator is kind of running an entire Switch.
There’s a difference.
EDIT: I think it’s more that the Switch’s “language” is much closer to a computer’s “language” today. Older consoles were complex beasts built completely differently from contemporary computers, let alone modern ones.
Switch is just a pretty standard ARM+Nvidia platform.
Back in 2015 I used the emulator “1964” to play some MarioKart64 and it ran well on a very weak computer, fwiw.
Do you remember if you had the black screen in this track?
It’s a classical issue in n64 emulators.
Or in perfect dark when the camspy didn’t work with a black screen thus being hard locked out of the game pretty early in
Maybe it is a similar issue: framebuffer emulation.
It looks different than I remember. Usually it was just a black screen.
How about the Kirby64 HUD?
The video says that emulation has always worked better on popular games. But if you try to emulate a less popular game, you will run into major issues. This is because the emulation must be tweaked for each game specifically due to how N64 hardware works.
I’ve never been able to play though Goemon’s Great Adventure on emulation. It always hits a game-breaking crash :/
Oddly enough this is the game I was trying to get to work a handful of years ago when I last gave N64 emulation a shot so I could play it with a friend. Ended up realizing the N64 emulation scene just wasn’t there yet. Guess it’s time to give it another go.
Where is the crash? I have it playing via the official N64 app on my modded Switch, but haven’t gotten very far. Wondering if the issue still exists there.
Turtle Island, it’s like world 4 or so. Hopefully it’s been updated, I haven’t tried again for probably 8 years
Especially Nintendo’s own games. Mario 64, Mario kart, etc, were usually the first to be emulated correctly.
N64 stuff runs brilliant on MisterFpga tho.
FPGA mimics hardware 1:1 without overhead, which is why it works well. This is talking about software emulation, which has to use lots of shortcuts to make it fast enough (for most machines). The N64 has a weird architecture though that makes it difficult to find shortcuts that work well.
People tend to overstate FPGAs. They are designed as software in a funny programming language and then “burned in” to hardware. They can and do have inaccuracies and bugs.
In the long run, real hardware is going to disappear through the attrition of time, so we do need this stuff for the sake of preservation. But people tend to put it on a pedestal without really understanding it.
Even hypervisors can have software bugs - running GBA games on the ARM9 core in the DSi is possible and even closer to “actual hardware” than a FPGA, but there are still weird side cases and glitches that only happen on this setup rather than actual GBA hardware.
FPGAs aren’t some magical hardware clone that bypasses software issues.
FPGA emulation is another level. The video says that FPGA emulation is near flawless except homebrew.
An interesting video, but I don’t really feel it got to answer the question posed. He also didn’t, for me, answer why he wants to focus on LLE instead of HLE as it’s been obvious that LLE is very resource intensive.
Maybe is too soon for cycle accuracy N64 emulators. We will get it eventually.
That was my issue with the video as well
I thought Kaze pretty much reverse engineered the whole thing? Or is that just for Mario 64?
Kaze just works on Mario 64. He’s torn that game up and rebuilt it for his needs. He’s even mentioned that emulators won’t even work with some of the hardware tricks that he utilizes.
Just Mario 64. However there is a very good implementation of the N64 in the Mister FPGA project. The downside is there aren’t many emulation features that you’d expect out of a software emulator (e.g. save states)
I didn’t have time to watch the video at the moment. What’s wrong with Dolphin?
Or is this about things people that had a n64 back in the day don’t even recognize as wrong?
Edit. Just saw its a MVG video. Everyone calm down, I’m going to watch it.
Edited: Good video. It makes sense to use cheats for each game, and it makes sense it’s hard to play lesser known games because of it.
Dolphin is not an N64 emulator.
Yes, you are correct Dolphin will not play N64 ROMs directly. It will however play SOME Wii virtual console games which includes around 22 N64 games. Soooo, sorta?? 🤷♂️
It’ll emulate an emulator on another emulator!
Xzibit approves
deleted by creator
And yet I play all my N64 games on it.
Then you are playing virtual console roms/injections, which typically have more issues than current proper n64 emulators.
If it’s good enough for you, that’s fine but it’s far from perfect.
What issues do you notice while playing the games?
Edit: Also, what you said has nothing to do with the video. So…
If you are only playing officially released virtual console games then they only have minior issues, Nintendo did a really good job with n64 on the Wii. With injected roms you will run in to a lot more issues. Like I said, if it’s good enough for you then that’s fine but a proper n64 emulator will be more responsive and give you more options.
Ah, an emulator within an emulator. Yes, I’m sure the results must be just like the original hardware!
The games work just fine. I played them when they were new, and get just as much enjoyment out of them now.
I’m not sorry i don’t care about milliseconds or whatever technical details the programmers care about. I am thankful for their hard work though.
How are you using dolphin to emulate N64?
Dolphin has no native N64 emulation support. Are you using N64 ports from the Wii? Those are running using Nintendo’s Wii-based emulator (which also has known issues) on top of the Wii emulation. That introduced a whole second layer of technical issues.
Not that the N64 roms aren’t playable, but the problem is more technical on why it’s so difficult to emulate the specific N64 hardware perfectly using just modern software
Thanks. Like i said i haven’t been able to check the video out yet.
I am enjoying everyone jumping down my throat about being able to play n64 games with no issues though. It’s giving me a good laugh with my coffee.
People are jumping down your throat because you’re talking about N64 emulation being just fine on a GameCube emulator which plays a total of 21 of the 388 N64 games.
That’s fine that you only like those games, but it’s irrelevant to a discussion about N64 emulators and it’s only a tiny subset of games for the system.
You can see this right? Surely you understand that?
can you explain how?
I boot up Dolphin, and then choose the game I want to play.
😅
no but, how do you make it handle n64 games? i’m interested in setting this up. like i have this old rom of airboarder 64, which to my knowledge was not on the gamecube, and it emulates terribly. how do i set it up to run with dolphin?
I just use the wiiware games. It covers pretty much all the N64 games I care about.
It’s funny, I can picture the Airboarder cover in my head. Kinda crazy how those things can get burned into your memory.
Feel free to commit a pull request. Don’t talk about it. Be about it.
The creator of this video is an emulator developer.
And?
that means they are about it.
Lol this is the best interaction. Props.
TBD. Apparently he’s not happy about the state of things. Not just his project, but the development community as a whole hasn’t been able to nail it down.
so you didn’t watch the video.
I sure did
“If you aren’t a programmer, don’t speak” is about what I expect from programmers, yes. That kind of elitism is why most programmer-only projects are utter shit.
This is even worse tbh, because, as someone else pointed out, the YouTuber is a programmer. This is saying “only write code, don’t discuss what kinds of changes are needed.”
That + the “commit a pull request” nonsense (you submit a pull request, which comprises commits; the PR only gets committed when it’s been reviewed and merged by a maintainer) makes me doubt that the commenter you replied to has ever collaborated productively on a software project.
Well, MVG is an experienced programmer, especially with emulation and homebrews, so he knows what he’s talking about.
