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

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

#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?

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

#3
This is really cool. Many of the foundational tools created for N64 decomp are finding their way into other system decomp packages. I recently came across https://decomp.me/ which allows collaborative decompilarion for a bunch of systems with presets for their relevant SDKs and hardware. I’d imagine this happening several more systems in the coming years.

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

#6

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

A fair amount of 32-bit and later emulators do have JIT recompilation, but I'm not aware of any ahead-of-time translation unless that's how TeknoParrot works (you can run linux arcade games that use ELF binaries on windows with it for example), but I wouldn't call that emulation either way since the architecture is the same.

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

#7
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.

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

#8
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.

That will likely require full decompilation. This is akin to wrapping the emulator up with the rom, with a few common functions (found via decompilation) being updated to support more modern rendering approaches. This isn't so much "native" as it is a patched container in an executable form.

EDIT - But hey, you can always just add another layer of emulation via Proton to run it in Linux.

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

#9
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.

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

#10
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’m pretty sure Linux is natively supported via N64Recomp: https://github.com/Mr-Wiseguy/N64Recomp

An example of this can be found here: https://github.com/Mr-Wiseguy/Zelda64Recomp?tab=readme-ov-fi...

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