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Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

tomshardware.com

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Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#11

Post by BearOso »

ranger_danger wrote: post #2

Jamulator did this for NES way back in 2013 but nobody really seemed to care... https://andrewkelley.me/post/jamulator.html There is also Winlator for running Windows programs on Android: https://github.com/brunodev85/winlator Also is the youtube video linked in the article using an AI voice?

Jamulator was unsuccessful because so much extra hardware was on the cartridges. Recompilation complicates things and doesn't provide many benefits in that situation.

The N64 is fixed hardware, so it's a little bit easier. Even so, this project still uses emulation for the RDP. I don't know how it handles generated RSP microcode, maybe it doesn't. A lot of games just used the official libraries.

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#14

Post by izzydata »

vaughnegut wrote: post #7
izzydata wrote: post #5

I hope this eventually also works for Linux so that N64 games can be reliably played on very low end portable handhelds. N64 is notoriously tricky to emulate, but building them for the platform natively removes all performance problems.

I watched the youtube video this article links to the other day and it mentioned that it supports Linux, specifically mentioning that it should be usable on Steam Deck.

The steam deck has way more than enough resources to power through any and all N64 emulation so that wouldn't change much there. I'm specifically talking about something $50 retro handhelds and the like.

For example Mario64 and Ocarina of Time are completely reverse engineered and have native support for Windows and Linux and they run perfectly on those systems as where they really struggle when trying to emulate.

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#15

Post by vundercind »

izzydata wrote: post #14
vaughnegut wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched the youtube video this article links to the other day and it mentioned that it supports Linux, specifically mentioning that it should be usable on Steam Deck.

The steam deck has way more than enough resources to power through any and all N64 emulation so that wouldn't change much there. I'm specifically talking about something $50 retro handhelds and the like. For example Mario64 and Ocarina of Time are completely reverse engineered and have native support for Windows and Linux and they run perfectly on those systems as where they really struggle when trying to emulate.

I still get audio pops and glitches with whatever the default n64 emulator EmuDeck installs is, on many games. Be nice to eliminate that.

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#16

Post by jerf »

protoster wrote: post #4

Do typical emulators compile ahead of time? Just-in-time? If not, why? This approach (ahead of time compilation) appears to have huge benefits.

You name the compilation and/or interpreter technique and there's at least one emulator that uses it.

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#17

Post by wodenokoto »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

One thing this could be cool for is games like Goldeneye, which is hard to play on PC because it expects that weird joystick input. It would be awesome to have a native Goldeneye port with normal mouse behaviour like other FPSes.

Wouldn't it still expect a weird joystick?

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#18

Post by LetsGetTechnicl »

jjice wrote: post #9
izzydata wrote: post #5

I hope this eventually also works for Linux so that N64 games can be reliably played on very low end portable handhelds. N64 is notoriously tricky to emulate, but building them for the platform natively removes all performance problems.

> N64 is notoriously tricky to emulate Huh, I wouldn't have expected that. I don't know much about the specifics of N64 emulation, but I've had N64 emulators running perfectly since the early 2010s. I played mostly the big classics, so I'm unfamiliar with more niche title performance.

You'd be surprised, even Nintendo doesn't get it perfect themselves. When N64 games were first made available on the Nintendo Switch Online platform, there were several problems with graphical effects and input lag. Here's an MVG video from the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSyBMSOfPxg

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#19

Post by haiku2077 »

wodenokoto wrote: post #17
vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

One thing this could be cool for is games like Goldeneye, which is hard to play on PC because it expects that weird joystick input. It would be awesome to have a native Goldeneye port with normal mouse behaviour like other FPSes.

Wouldn't it still expect a weird joystick?

The native ports have additional features, which are easy to implement starting from the native compilation. For example, the native port of Zelda has gyro aiming and automatic autosave options.

Re: Nearly all Nintendo 64 games can now be recompiled into native PC ports

#20

Post by claudex »

ranger_danger wrote: post #2

Jamulator did this for NES way back in 2013 but nobody really seemed to care... https://andrewkelley.me/post/jamulator.html There is also Winlator for running Windows programs on Android: https://github.com/brunodev85/winlator Also is the youtube video linked in the article using an AI voice?

>Jamulator did this for NES way back in 2013 but nobody really seemed to care...

At least Mr WiseGuy seems to care. From the N64Recom Github repo[0]: "This is not the first project that uses static recompilation on game console binaries. A well known example is jamulator, which targets NES binaries."

[0]: https://github.com/Mr-Wiseguy/N64Recomp

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