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The state of N64 emulators in 2019

Deleted member 21601

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Oct 28, 2017
810
  • We archieved pixel accuracy in most games with Angrylion RDP-Plus (requires a very good CPU and is entirely CPU dependent since its a software renderer).
  • GlideN64 has become the goto plugin for most games.
  • m64p which is a collection of mupen64 + GLideN64 + Angrylion in a most upstream form is now hiding behind a patreon paywall.
  • But the Retroarch team is developing mupen64 - next or nx which is the same thing as m64p only with GLideN64 and free.
  • So my recommendation is if your PC is fast enough use Angrylion RDP-plus. And if its not GLideN64.
  • Also the current mupen64 builds have a new 64bit dynarec compiler which has a speed improvement of 25-50%. (in m64p or mupen64-nx on Retroarch)
  • Parallel on Retroarch is a fork of Mupen64 currently (they plan to create a completly new emulator) which runs the most up to date version of Angrylion-RDP-Plus and also has the new 64 bit dynarec speedup)
  • Project 64 also works well with the recommended plugins.
  • Cen64 (cycleaccurate) is not very activly developed currently.
  • r64 is fairly new in development and dosnt run comercial games yet. But its written in rust which should make it pretty fast. It also aims at accuracy.

I think that the current progress means that we will soon be at a stage where N64 emulation is like SNES emulation and the entire library will be playable without problems or tinkering with configurations for each game.


You can see the current state of the emulators / plugins here (check the commits):

 
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TSM

TSM

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Oct 27, 2017
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N64 really needed a ground up project like Dolphin to start over from scratch about 10 years ago, but I guess this works.
 
Alvis

Alvis

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Oct 25, 2017
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N64 emulation is so bad than if the game I wanna play was available on Wii VC I just play the VC version on Dolphin. Such a shame.

m64p works great but the UI is such a piece of shit.
 
RestEerie

RestEerie

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Aug 20, 2018
13,618
i played the entirety of Mario 64 (and attained all 120 stars to boot) using Project 64 in the early 2000s...............thanks to save-states.

Is it still the best for the layman?
 
Combo

Combo

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Jan 8, 2019
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How are Nintendo's own emulators in the Wii and Wii U compared to those created by these other parties?
 
elektrixx

elektrixx

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Oct 26, 2017
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N64 emulation is finally at a "good enough" level for me thanks to m64p, however I want more from polygonal emulation. A res bump is a given, but I try to run N64 games in 16:9 whenever feasible. Some games handle it fine. Some have wild graphics on the sides, some assets stretch instead of maintaining their correct size and some even have baked in overscan borders, despite still drawing assets in and around this space making the effort pointless.

For the games I want to play to length, I go out of my way to create custom overscan crop, aspect ratio and GameShark settings on boot.

Currently I'm working on dual-stick support for GoldenEye 007. I've got the controls sorted no problem, but I'm not sure how to load my controller config exclusively for this game without changing global settings on other games.

In a somewhat related note, my Retro-Bit 8Bitdo N64 controller hasn't fared too well after going through all the tricks in 1080 Snowboarding's training mode. No dust yet, but the stick is becoming loose, which is unfortunately accurate to the genuine article.

harbl-kun said:
No but it still has some annoying popup after the 2nd start which can be disabled by a config change.
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I donated $20 to the PJ64 team maybe ten years ago. A few years later when I got the nag screen, I was also told from a developer to just change the file instead of going by whatever the normal paying method was.
 
Kaeden

Kaeden

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Oct 25, 2017
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Xharos said:
N64 emulation is so bad than if the game I wanna play was available on Wii VC I just play the VC version on Dolphin. Such a shame.

m64p works great but the UI is such a piece of shit.
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I haven't used m64p but is the UI so bad that it makes you just wanna ditch it all together? I know I could probably be turned off completely if it's really, really bad.

edit: And ofc I do a google search for the emulator and it takes me to a Era topic. OoT looks damn good in that 3rd post via the Citra 3DS Emulator.
 
Alvis

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Oct 25, 2017
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Kadin said:
I haven't used m64p but is the UI so bad that it makes you just wanna ditch it all together? I know I could probably be turned off completely if it's really, really bad.
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It's terrible. Things like changing the aspect ratio aren't a toggle, you have to write "0" to set it to default, "1" to force 4:3, "2" to force 16:9, things like that. Basically the "GUI" for video settings is just a GUI to help yo edit a .ini. You also can't change that stuff while the game is running. Well, you can, but it won't apply the settings until you close and open the emulator. There's also no game list, you have to browse for the individual ROM file manually.

Dolphin's UI has spoiled me.
 
elektrixx

elektrixx

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Oct 26, 2017
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Xharos said:
It's terrible. Things like changing the aspect ratio aren't a toggle, you have to write "0" to set it to default, "1" to force 4:3, "2" to force 16:9, things like that. Basically the "GUI" for video settings is just a GUI to help yo edit a .ini. You also can't change that stuff while the game is running. Well, you can, but it won't apply the settings until you close and open the emulator. There's also no game list, you have to browse for the individual ROM file manually.

Dolphin's UI has spoiled me.
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I was the same way, but priority #1 for me was compatibility. m64p handles games much better. It's gotten to a point now where I directly edit the config files anyway.
 
sir_crocodile

sir_crocodile

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Oct 25, 2017
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I was very hopeful for Cen64, but development activity fell off a cliff a couple of years ago. Hopefully someday it becomes more active again.
 
Irminsul

Irminsul

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Oct 25, 2017
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elektrixx said:
I was the same way, but priority #1 for me was compatibility. m64p handles games much better. It's gotten to a point now where I directly edit the config files anyway.
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Yeah, m64p works fine for me as well, at least in most games. I settled on a couple of settings that generally work, and if it's really bothering me for some games, I'll just create special settings for these ones. I try to stay pretty close to the original, though. It's basically just a *2 resolution change on each axis so games running at 292*212 don't look quite as awful, but at least to me, with higher resolutions, some elements in games always clash and they really don't do the mushy textures any favours.

The only exception to the *2 rule are Factor 5 games, which run like shit on that setting. A shame, really, as they would probably look really good at higher resolutions.

Oh, and Rayman 2 randomly crashes and I'm still not quite sure why. On that note, funnily enough, one of the first games I ever played in Project 64 back in the day was Mario Tennis, and while a far cry from the issues it had in that emulator, there a still quite a few UI glitches. Thankfully, nothing while playing a match, which I remember was pretty awful on Project 64.
 
logan_cadfgs

logan_cadfgs

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Oct 28, 2017
945
Thanks for getting people up to speed, OP. N64 emulation accuracy/ease-of-use has come a long way in recent years, and it's good to have a quick rundown of the best options!
 
Razor Mom

Razor Mom

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Jan 2, 2018
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I was surprised at the flawless emulation of a couple of titles on my Raspberry Pi 2B (In recent recalbox). Mario64 was perfect, Ocarina of time was almost perfect, even goldeneye was playable (and ran a little better than the original in some spots).

Nowhere near PS1 emulation though, which is basically fire and forget. Someday maybe...
 
boris_feinbrand

boris_feinbrand

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Oct 26, 2017
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What is it that makes N64 emulation such a bitch to emulate? I mean after all those years you'd think that it should be pretty well reverse engineered down to the core no?
 
Bomblord

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Jan 11, 2018
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It's weird that N64 emulators have been running commercial game since the N64 was barely on the market itself and we're only now seeing this level of accuracy.
 
Allan Holdsworth

Allan Holdsworth

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Oct 30, 2017
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boris_feinbrand said:
What is it that makes N64 emulation such a bitch to emulate? I mean after all those years you'd think that it should be pretty well reverse engineered down to the core no?
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Don't know the details, but I remember reading some games use custom microcode which has to be reverse engineered for each of them. Though that only applies to a few games.

But yeah, N64 emulation is pretty bad, at least on my old-ish PC. Can't run Angrylion at full speed, sadly.
 
mudai

mudai

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Oct 27, 2017
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Someone please tell me there's a way to finally emulate Mystical Ninja starring Goemon without any weird sound issues (crackling noises, slowdowns etc.). That's all I need (for now).
 
Iztok

Iztok

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Oct 27, 2017
6,133
Weird, the games I wanted to play I could perfectly even on UltraHLE in 1999.
I guess I don't really delve that deep into the N64 library to find faults with emulation.

But then also my N64 collection is 100+ and I prefer to play the genuine article, anyway.
 
erlim

erlim

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Oct 26, 2017
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I'm so glad for the assistance from this board to get goldeneye running with dual analogue sticks and modern controls. I use retroarch and steam rom launcher. Happy to have my N64 library digitized and ready to go.
 
Anth0ny

Anth0ny

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Oct 25, 2017
46,815
gave up on n64 emulation a while ago and backed up my collection onto an everdrive lol

nice to see it's finally coming along, though. only took 23 years!

I hope to see more stuff like this in the future as n64 emulation continues to evolve:

 
ssnick37

ssnick37

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Oct 27, 2017
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Anth0ny said:
gave up on n64 emulation a while ago and backed up my collection onto an everdrive lol

nice to see it's finally coming along, though. only took 23 years!

I hope to see more stuff like this in the future as n64 emulation continues to evolve:

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This is glorious. I want the same for Ocarina of Time so badly. And please dont say "just play the 3DS version"
 
Inugami

Inugami

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Oct 25, 2017
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Code Artisan said:
Why wasting CPU cycles with software rendering when we have much more powerful GPU designed for that?
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Because the N64 doesn't do 3D like PCs do, and the results are inaccurate at best, and completely broken at worst.
boris_feinbrand said:
What is it that makes N64 emulation such a bitch to emulate? I mean after all those years you'd think that it should be pretty well reverse engineered down to the core no?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Bomblord said:
It's weird that N64 emulators have been running commercial game since the N64 was barely on the market itself and we're only now seeing this level of accuracy.
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Drencrom said:
This, N64 emulators have been around for nearly two decades at this point...
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N64 came at a very weird time and it's hardware is pretty unique. It was close enough to a modern PC that HLE (high level emulation) worked and worked cheaply at around 1998, but HLE is very inaccurate on systems like this and you basically need huge amounts of patches and hacks applied to individual games to get them working. On top of that, if the devs knew how to work the system and didn't use Nintendo's provided microcode, they could develop their own which does NOT play well with HLE.

So the solution is low level and even cycle accurate emulation of the hardware so that the microcodes (mostly) don't matter. But that requires a lot of power and essentially starting over or throwing out 20 years worth of code and work and most people just don't care as long as their favorite games work at all.

SNES emulation was the same way for a long time before Byuu, Nach, and a few others took up the call to nearly completely rewrite Snes9x and create bsnes. That said, few people are as dedicated as Byuu who paid to have chips scanned under an electron microscope or paid tens of thousands of dollars to get a copy of every SNES game ever released in every region just so he could insure there were known good dumps of every game and and that it was tested and working.

Here's a really good read on the subject by Byuu himself. Of course a lot of it doesn't apply to the N64, but then again a lot of it does.
 

NuclearCake

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
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KojiKnight said:
Because the N64 doesn't do 3D like PCs do, and the results are inaccurate at best, and completely broken at worst.



N64 came at a very weird time and it's hardware is pretty unique. It was close enough to a modern PC that HLE (high level emulation) worked and worked cheaply at around 1998, but HLE is very inaccurate on systems like this and you basically need huge amounts of patches and hacks applied to individual games to get them working. On top of that, if the devs knew how to work the system and didn't use Nintendo's provided microcode, they could develop their own which does NOT play well with HLE.

So the solution is low level and even cycle accurate emulation of the hardware so that the microcodes (mostly) don't matter. But that requires a lot of power and essentially starting over or throwing out 20 years worth of code and work and most people just don't care as long as their favorite games work at all.

SNES emulation was the same way for a long time before Byuu, Nach, and a few others took up the call to nearly completely rewrite Snes9x and create bsnes. That said, few people are as dedicated as Byuu who paid to have chips scanned under an electron microscope or paid tens of thousands of dollars to get a copy of every SNES game ever released in every region just so he could insure there were known good dumps of every game and and that it was tested and working.

Here's a really good read on the subject by Byuu himself. Of course a lot of it doesn't apply to the N64, but then again a lot of it does.
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0_0

That's both amazing and insane at the same time.
 
ASaiyan

ASaiyan

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Oct 25, 2017
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I'm still holding out hope for an N64 Classic console. An official, NERD-developed emulator with wide compatibility would be a dream...
 
TSM

TSM

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Oct 27, 2017
5,821
KojiKnight said:
Because the N64 doesn't do 3D like PCs do, and the results are inaccurate at best, and completely broken at worst.



N64 came at a very weird time and it's hardware is pretty unique. It was close enough to a modern PC that HLE (high level emulation) worked and worked cheaply at around 1998, but HLE is very inaccurate on systems like this and you basically need huge amounts of patches and hacks applied to individual games to get them working. On top of that, if the devs knew how to work the system and didn't use Nintendo's provided microcode, they could develop their own which does NOT play well with HLE.

So the solution is low level and even cycle accurate emulation of the hardware so that the microcodes (mostly) don't matter. But that requires a lot of power and essentially starting over or throwing out 20 years worth of code and work and most people just don't care as long as their favorite games work at all.

SNES emulation was the same way for a long time before Byuu, Nach, and a few others took up the call to nearly completely rewrite Snes9x and create bsnes. That said, few people are as dedicated as Byuu who paid to have chips scanned under an electron microscope or paid tens of thousands of dollars to get a copy of every SNES game ever released in every region just so he could insure there were known good dumps of every game and and that it was tested and working.

Here's a really good read on the subject by Byuu himself. Of course a lot of it doesn't apply to the N64, but then again a lot of it does.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Basically there's no incentive for anyone to start over and do N64 emulation right because all the users will just continue to use the buggy emulators that work with their favorite games now. A new emulator would have to work with most every popular game, and do things better than the current options before a sizable user base would form.
 
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