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Eurogamer: Nintendo Switch's online N64 games have some issues.

S

SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member
I think you already know....

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SegaShack

Member
N64 emulation was ok, but Nintendo DS emulation was unbelievable. It is a shame that they only ported a bunch of games, when the emulator runs pretty much anything fine (aside DSi and DSi Enhanced games).
Not as well as you'd think, a lot of games crash at certain parts. But Nintendo would've optimized the emulator for each game.
 

stranno

Member
Not as well as you'd think, a lot of games crash at certain parts. But Nintendo would've optimized the emulator for each game.
I finished a bunch of games, tested many more and the performance and graphics were flawless. I'd say it is the best emulator, by far, ever seen on a Nintendo console.

Never got any crashes, only graphical errors in some games, like Goemon DS.

A bunch of examples:







All of those were captured with the emulator.
 
If people are actually paying for this shit, they should be refunded, no questions asked. This is beyond embarrassing. Coming from a guy that sold both his switches to buy a switch oled just for the better screen, I am objectively not the best judge of value and even I am pissed off about this.
 
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fart town usa

Gold Member
The Wii U was a criminally overlooked console. I will keep mine forever, even though I lack the testicular fortitude to mod it and make it realize its full potential.
Right, same here. I even have the DS Brain Age game downloaded so I can do the permanent mod. Part of me is afraid to do it though cause my Wii U library is god-tier. I'd be devastated if I somehow bricked my console. That being said, the Wii mod and DSi softmods are insanely easy to do so I'm not that afraid for the Wii U, just not worth it at this time.
 

marquimvfs

Member
Well, i actually didn't cared for the emulated games at all. Just were excited for the controller launch and still am hoping to be able to pick-up one without buying their shitty service and manage to use it in other platforms (pc for example). I, somehow, knew that the service wouldn't be as good as Wii VC.
 
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MrA

Banned
What in the name of god. Looks like what they did to Silent Hill HD.
I was about to say the same thing, Nintendo certainly dropped the ball here, should have been an easy win, but instead, they decided to mess up in fantastically perplexing ways.
 

Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
I still can't understand, as a company like Nintendo, after 15 years, they can't emulate their games from that time well, when on PC there even have improvements in their games.
 
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TLZ

Banned
Eurogamer

Are you telling me Nintendo did a half-assed job for which they're charging outlandish amounts of money? :messenger_open_mouth:

Mario Kart 64, for example, displays a warning that the game will not let you save Ghost Data - as this feature required an N64 Controller Pak in the original game.
The irony in calling this the Expansion Pak and not having N64 Controller Pak working.
 

Jsisto

Member
Ironically, I’ll probably invest in this once they release Earthbound for SNES. They should not be rewarded financially until they release Earthbound. There’s no excuse.
 

Xellos

Member
Pretty disappointing, I expected at least Wii VC quality from this. Hope there's enough of a backlash that Nintendo is forced to fix this.
 

TLZ

Banned
As a hardcore Nintendo fanboy, I'm glad I stayed away from this, I smelled the half cooked efforts a mile away, already got burned with Mario 3D All Stars.
I thought Nintendo was all about quality. What happened to that?
 

carlosrox

Banned
This has gotta be a pretty widespread public backlash, think they're gonna fix it?

This has got to be one of the most obviously shitty and indefensible things they've done.

I'm even totally fine with the price, but then to go and do this WITH that price? Come the fuck on. There must be people genuinely excited for this and they're paying the money for it and they're gonna pull some shit like this? I feel bad for those people.

And for the love of fuck Nintendo let us remove those stupid bars to the left and right and just let us play borderless.
 

Jsisto

Member
To think all this backlash could have easily been avoided if they did the most obvious thing that everyone was asking for. And of course what I'm referring to is including Chameleon Twist and it's awesome battle mode with online play. Sheesh.
 
Who developed this shitty emulator?
It can't have been NERD, cause their precious efforts with their NES, SNES, DS and GCN-emulators have been great.

I'm not usually critical of input lag but this is unplayable for me.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
I don't understand why Nintendo hasn't released a VC for the Switch rather than , or in addition to, this mess.
 

nkarafo

Member
N64 games should be played on the last console that did VC right, the Wii U. And this applies to all VC games really. These paid "services" are ridiculous.

N64 games should be played on accurate homebrew emulators like m64p or RetroArch+Mupen/Parallel RDP.

Homebrew emulation will always offer the superior experience compared to every half assed official effort.

Unless you like those darker colors, that high input lag, those ROM changes and those 50hz PAL roms (at least they doubled down with that last one).
 

nowhat

Member
I don't understand why Nintendo hasn't released a VC for the Switch rather than , or in addition to, this mess.
The reason is very simple. If Nintendo were to release VC on Switch, people could just buy a game they're interested in and be done with it, whereas now they have to subscribe to a service to play that game/hope that a game eventually makes it to the subscription service.
 

nkarafo

Member
Even if the emulation was perfect, that would still be the way to go. The 3DS remasters of OoT and MM were great.
They weren't really good "remasters". They changed the art style too much, to the point they felt like different games, especially OOT. MM is better in that regard.

Is Yoshi's Story supposed to be 60fps? Because performance isn't really great :messenger_poop:
Yes, the N64 game on the console or a decent emulator doesn't have performance issues.
 

Shut0wen

Member
Honestly baffled at nintendos n64 emulator for the switch, it makes 0 sense that the emulators used for wii and wii u are exactly the same and were quite good, at one point nintendo were releasing them once a month for the wii u so why the hell have they spent time and resources creating different emulators? Only explanation i can think of is that the nividia chip used for the switch is a bitch to use for n64 games, back on the ps3 there were quite afew games that ran like shit or unplayable if you put either a ps1/2 disc into the ps3, it was that bad that later newer models of the ps3 didnt have that feature and only a selected few could of been brought digital, even most android phones struggle to run the whole n64 library
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
The reason is very simple. If Nintendo were to release VC on Switch, people could just buy a game they're interested in and be done with it, whereas now they have to subscribe to a service to play that game/hope that a game eventually makes it to the subscription service.

Shame, but I guess this is the way gaming is headed. Soon everything will be only playable with a subscription service.
 

nkarafo

Member
even most android phones struggle to run the whole n64 library
Well, duh, that's natural.

If you expect N64 to be properly emulated by a low powered device, you better wait for an additional decade or so.

N64 console is a bitch to emulate and if you want accuracy without bugs and glitches, you better use something with more juice. The Parallel RDP, which is the best thing right now, requires a half decent PC at least. The switch simply doesn't have that power and neither the Wii or WiiU before it. So you end up with buggy HLE emulators that can't even get Zelda right. And this is how emulators get bad rep. Because these buggy emulators are the ones released to the mainstream and only enthusiast know how to properly emulate.
 
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Sure Accessibility is a big thing but if the execution is shit then people will just not bother. And at the price they have it at almost feels like self-sabotage.
 
Honestly baffled at nintendos n64 emulator for the switch, it makes 0 sense that the emulators used for wii and wii u are exactly the same and were quite good, at one point nintendo were releasing them once a month for the wii u so why the hell have they spent time and resources creating different emulators? Only explanation i can think of is that the nividia chip used for the switch is a bitch to use for n64 games, back on the ps3 there were quite afew games that ran like shit or unplayable if you put either a ps1/2 disc into the ps3, it was that bad that later newer models of the ps3 didnt have that feature and only a selected few could of been brought digital, even most android phones struggle to run the whole n64 library
The N64 for the Wii was very good and better than any emulator. On WiiU it started to get wrong: black filter and lags. Power has very little to do.

I bought 2 N64 games on WiiU: Super Mario 64 and Donkey Kong 64, and then moved back to emulators. Then Nintendo gave the GBA to M2… It is still so good! So Nintendo knows what they are doing and doing trash on purpose.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Who developed this shitty emulator?
It can't have been NERD, cause their precious efforts with their NES, SNES, DS and GCN-emulators have been great.

I'm not usually critical of input lag but this is unplayable for me.
There is actually frequent slowdown when scrolling the screen when playing Yoshi’s Story in handheld mode I really do not remember being there.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Well, duh, that's natural.

If you expect N64 to be properly emulated by a low powered device, you better wait for an additional decade or so.

N64 console is a bitch to emulate and if you want accuracy without bugs and glitches, you better use something with more juice. The Parallel RDP, which is the best thing right now, requires a half decent PC at least. The switch simply doesn't have that power and neither the Wii or WiiU before it. So you end up with buggy HLE emulators that can't even get Zelda right. And this is how emulators get bad rep. Because these buggy emulators are the ones released to the mainstream and only enthusiast know how to properly emulate.

The expectations on this service is not a generic emulator that handles thousands of titles at launch, but an emulator that on Switch matches the speed and accuracy as it did on the single core 700 MHz Gekko CPU on Wii… also, per title patches to ensure the emulator has per title hacks to ensure accurate and fast emulation are expected when you are drip fed titles.
 
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