this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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VIDEO: Why is Nintendo 64 emulation still a broken mess in 2025? (www.youtube.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by lIlIllIlIIIllIlIlII@lemmy.zip to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
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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?

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[–] deltapi@lemmy.world 0 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

That depends on the accuracy of the core on the FPGA.

Your comparison of GBA on dsi is kinda like saying "my dos games didn't work well on my windows 2000 computer" same cpu sure, but OS and hardware 'locations' aren't necessarily the same.

[–] kadup@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

on the accuracy of the core on the FPGA.

Or in other words, FPGAs aren't miracle hardware clones and depend on the quality of their programming. Exactly as I said, got it.

Your comparison of GBA on dsi is kinda like saying “my dos games didn’t work well on my windows 2000 computer” same cpu sure, but OS and hardware ‘locations’ aren’t necessarily the same.

Which is why I mentioned it's an hypervisor, not running as if it were natively supported. It's more analogous to original hardware than a FPGA, though. Your analogy to DOS and Windows 2000 however shows you really do not understand how GBA2Runner or FPGAs work in general.

Your comment is got any point or it's just these two incoherent sentences?

[–] deltapi@lemmy.world 0 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Wow you're unnecessarily aggressive and oppositional. Who hurt you today?

FPGAs can absolutely be used to provide cycle accurate hardware replacements. The fact that they guarantee realtime execution of instructions also makes it easier to achieve cycle-accurate execution than can be achieved with emulation.

I'm not claiming FPGAs are a magic bullet, but when it comes to offering a retro gaming experience they offer a number of advantages for accuracy that is incredibly difficult to achieve with emulation, and with input latency far closer to the original experience than an emulator can offer.

Edit: Oh, and since you crapped on my parable, educate yourself with a Google search for "ntvdm"

[–] kadup@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

FPGAs can absolutely be used to provide cycle accurate hardware replacements.

And the sky is bright blue. Who said otherwise?

easier to achieve cycle-accurate execution than can be achieved with emulation.

Good thing my comment never claimed software emulation is easier then. Do if you are trying to "correct" somebody, I can do the same: FPGAs are still emulation.

I’m not claiming FPGAs are a magic bullet

Then your comment isn't relevant, because the only thing my comment ever said is to be careful with the marketing and comments claiming FPGAs are instantly accurate and perfect hardware clones.

but when it comes to offering a retro gaming experience they offer a number of advantages

Thanks ChatGPT

accuracy that is incredibly difficult to achieve with emulation

FPGAs are emulation. Also, given an arbitrarily powerful CPU, there's always a way to perfectly recreate the same result in software. It just obviously isn't practical for complex systems.