Reason why N64 emulation is so difficult is cause of the complexity of the system.
Basically, don't expect N64 emulation to be perfect for another 10-15 years.
I highly doubt Nintendo will bring a N64 mini to the market but.. stranger things have happened.
Why not? N64 Classic is the logical next step.
Although without the Rare classics it might be hard to find enough truly great games to fill the library. They could probably do Donkey Kong 64 because they own the IP but Banjo and Conker might be tough to get the licensing for. And in my opinion it just wouldn't be the same without them, Zelda OoT and Banjo-Kazooie are my top 2 favorite N64 games and absolutely must haves for me.
Just got me wondering, hypethetically if Nintendo are to release a Nintendo 64 classic mini next year, could this be the answer to the current shitty state of n64 emulation?
If someone were able to dump this hypothetically n64 classic mini and develop it for windows then we could have the perfect emulator assuming Nintendo follow the same methods as the nes and snes classic minis.
Would beat playing a the blur of a mess original n64.
And then hopefully recreate the n64 mini with a raspberry Pi?
What do You guys recon?
The emulator would not be perfect, they only need to ensure that the included games run perfectly, and with how difficult the N64 is to emulate that means that a lot of games will likely be incompatible or buggy.
There already is an answer, but not an emulating answer.
Buy a n64 and ever drive 64. It plays 99% of n64 roms 100% perfectly. Not through emulation, but native hardware. Sure there is a slight financial outlay, but the results are 99% perfect.
In regards to the n64 mini and it's ability to emulate n64 games, who knows?
Can someone fill me in as to how the wii/wii u emulate 64 games? Is the built in emulator in the wii/u custom made for the specific n64 games that are released on the nintendo shop? So if another non nintendo shop n64 is injected, the emulator isn't programmed to play that specific game and as such has poor emulation?
If the above is the case, I wouldn't hold out much hope for the n64 classic.
On Wii the emulator is bundled with the game and modified to work with every game, which is why for certain injects to work they must be injected into a specific WAD, and the compatibility list for VC injects is rather poor overall.
On Wii U things are slightly better, but the emulator (which is still bundled with the game for the record) needs game specific patches in the form of config files. However the emulator seems to be the same or mostly the same across different VC releases and only the config file needs to be changed for injects.
There's no reason to think that a N64 Classic would be much better, since they only need it to work perfectly with a handful of games. Although the hardware in NES/SNES Classic is powerful enough that it could do a better job at N64 emulation than the Wii U, it would probably be far from perfect with other games than those included.
They've already made their own emulators for the Wii and Wii U that play better than any PC emulator
But that being the case, I'm guessing that since those haven't been RE'd yet, a potential future N64 mini wouldn't be either
The Wii one was pretty crap TBH with awful compatibility and the Wii U one has that annoying darkening filter, although it's still better.
You could get a S-Video cable for the N64, and a S-Video to HDMI converter box to plug into an HDTV. It wouldn't be super expensive, and you could use the same setup on an NES and SNES since they apparently use the same connector.
It wouldn't fix the smearing, which is actually a feature of sorts of the N64. Supposedly it made things look better on old CRT displays, kind of like antialiasing but far more rudimentary, but with modern LCDs (and probably even a good RGB CRT display) it just looks terrible. On old CRTs you couldn't tell because the image was kind of blurry anyway so it worked out.
Edit: Here's a video that shows the difference with and without the smearing. It's night and day.
