Hacking 3ds plays N64 games?

[reaper527]

Might I ask where this 268Mhz number came from?

http://infocenter.ar...360f/index.html

Either I'm missing where they say the actual frequency numbers, or that document simply describes the architecture, the ARM11 MPCore. Anyways, doing a little digging myself on that, I found this....

http://www.arm.com/p...rm11-mpcore.php

...which seems to suggest that it can run between ~400Mhz and ~800Mhz.

Yeah, a quick google search says the two 266Mhz CPUs spec is fake posted by IGN...

fwiw, the 3dbrew wiki still has the cpu listed that way
http://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/Hardware#Specifications

I'm sure Nintendo could do it if they wanted to. Doubt they will though =/

nintendo doesn't have to make an emulator for n64 games. most of the games worth mentioning on the n64 (like any nintendo console in the last 20 years) have been first party releases. this means nintendo has the source and can do a direct port (and potentially upgrade), allowing them to charge full price instead of virtual console pricing.

 

[granville]

IGN's specs are already sketchy since they got the memory wrong in the article where they originally posted their specs. They claimed the 3DS had 64MB of memory. Turns out it has 128MB, 96MB of which is useable for game purposes. Prior to that, they flip flopped around on where the 3DS stood power wise. Originally, they claimed they had "insider sources" that told them the 3DS was as powerful as a PS3 or 360. LOL!

3dbrew has neglected to cite their sources for the CPU and GPU clock speeds they are claiming. Having a footnote that just says the words "official documentation" isn't a valid source of info...

There's really no way of knowing what the clock speed is at this point in time. Unless i missed something that is. IGN and a wiki aren't exactly great sources of information. Saying the GPU is a Pica200 in particular tells us nothing given the Pica200 is the name of a series of GPU's. There were a couple of Pica200 models shown during the past 5 years or so, and newer models show dramatically higher polygon performance at far lower clock speeds. It's unknown just what model the 3DS is using. And for that reason, the clock speed isn't very important until we know what the actual model is.

 

[Taellon]

I've looked into the 3DS specs quite a bit and the truth is that almost nothing is known about the system. We know it has 128MB of RAM capable of speeds around DDR3 memory, which for those that don't know, is very fast. The only other thing we know about the 3DS is the GPU family it's GPU comes from. Everything else is speculation. The whole ARM11 thing itself is even speculation and hasn't been proven at all.

A lot of people are underestimating the 3DS's power, and largely due to bogus specs that people spread around like a bad religion. Speculation is not fact. With that in mind, I've made some observations of my own concerning statements given at various times by various developers and such and what I've seen of the games themselves. I don't remember where each source is so I'm not going to bother posting them. If you want to find them comb the 3DS stories from the past year and a half to find them.

Resident Evil Revelations is a fantastic looking game, arguably the best on the system currently. But that game isn't even close to using all the 3DS's power. Capcom themselves stated they were only using 80% of the system's capability, developers always overestimate how much they are taxing the system to make their game sound like a better achievement than it actually is. Another thing to note is that the original 3DS dev-kits weren't as powerful as the final 3DS system that we all have now. This is part of why almost every game released so far doesn't look as good as GCN/Wii games do.

There's a lot more evidence I've found, but the general image I've developed is the the 3DS is in fact more powerful than the Wii, not just in lighting/shaders like everybody thinks but in absolute raw power as well. It might be hard to see the jump in what I've posted, this is just the short version of my findings. I don't have any numbers to back it up, but educated guessing leads me to believe the 3DS is significantly more powerful than people give it credit for.

One last comparison for where I believe the 3DS lies in terms of power. The PSVita is said to be using a Tegra 3 SoC or something very close to it. My speculation leads me to believe the 3DS is slightly better than a Tegra 2 SoC in terms of power. Basically, the 3DS is much closer to the Vita than people think. Close enough that you could potentially see Multi-platform games between the two like you see with 360 and PS3.

This is my own speculation, but it's based on educated guesses about various findings and observations. I believe that to be a much more reliable source than any of the other so called "3DS Specs" floating around on the internet. You have every right now to believe me and I encourage you not to take my word as fact. Just keep in mind that everything is speculation right now.

 

[Deleted User]

I've looked into the 3DS specs quite a bit and the truth is that almost nothing is known about the system. We know it has 128MB of RAM capable of speeds around DDR3 memory, which for those that don't know, is very fast. The only other thing we know about the 3DS is the GPU family it's GPU comes from. Everything else is speculation. The whole ARM11 thing itself is even speculation and hasn't been proven at all.

A lot of people are underestimating the 3DS's power, and largely due to bogus specs that people spread around like a bad religion. Speculation is not fact. With that in mind, I've made some observations of my own concerning statements given at various times by various developers and such and what I've seen of the games themselves. I don't remember where each source is so I'm not going to bother posting them. If you want to find them comb the 3DS stories from the past year and a half to find them.

Resident Evil Revelations is a fantastic looking game, arguably the best on the system currently. But that game isn't even close to using all the 3DS's power. Capcom themselves stated they were only using 80% of the system's capability, developers always overestimate how much they are taxing the system to make their game sound like a better achievement than it actually is. Another thing to note is that the original 3DS dev-kits weren't as powerful as the final 3DS system that we all have now. This is part of why almost every game released so far doesn't look as good as GCN/Wii games do.

There's a lot more evidence I've found, but the general image I've developed is the the 3DS is in fact more powerful than the Wii, not just in lighting/shaders like everybody thinks but in absolute raw power as well. It might be hard to see the jump in what I've posted, this is just the short version of my findings. I don't have any numbers to back it up, but educated guessing leads me to believe the 3DS is significantly more powerful than people give it credit for.

One last comparison for where I believe the 3DS lies in terms of power. The PSVita is said to be using a Tegra 3 SoC or something very close to it. My speculation leads me to believe the 3DS is slightly better than a Tegra 2 SoC in terms of power. Basically, the 3DS is much closer to the Vita than people think. Close enough that you could potentially see Multi-platform games between the two like you see with 360 and PS3.

This is my own speculation, but it's based on educated guesses about various findings and observations. I believe that to be a much more reliable source than any of the other so called "3DS Specs" floating around on the internet. You have every right now to believe me and I encourage you not to take my word as fact. Just keep in mind that everything is speculation right now.

Uneducated view:
-Less pixels than Vita
-F1 2011 looks shit

-3DS is shit
-Crap graphics
-Just another DS

-End

It's a sorry state of affairs.

 

[NES SNES V.B. N64 G.C. Wii WiiU]

General rule of thumb: One console has to be 10x more powerful to emulate another.
I'll let you do the math.

 

[Toad King]

I've looked into the 3DS specs quite a bit and the truth is that almost nothing is known about the system. We know it has 128MB of RAM capable of speeds around DDR3 memory, which for those that don't know, is very fast. The only other thing we know about the 3DS is the GPU family it's GPU comes from. Everything else is speculation. The whole ARM11 thing itself is even speculation and hasn't been proven at all.

A lot of people are underestimating the 3DS's power, and largely due to bogus specs that people spread around like a bad religion. Speculation is not fact. With that in mind, I've made some observations of my own concerning statements given at various times by various developers and such and what I've seen of the games themselves. I don't remember where each source is so I'm not going to bother posting them. If you want to find them comb the 3DS stories from the past year and a half to find them.

Resident Evil Revelations is a fantastic looking game, arguably the best on the system currently. But that game isn't even close to using all the 3DS's power. Capcom themselves stated they were only using 80% of the system's capability, developers always overestimate how much they are taxing the system to make their game sound like a better achievement than it actually is. Another thing to note is that the original 3DS dev-kits weren't as powerful as the final 3DS system that we all have now. This is part of why almost every game released so far doesn't look as good as GCN/Wii games do.

There's a lot more evidence I've found, but the general image I've developed is the the 3DS is in fact more powerful than the Wii, not just in lighting/shaders like everybody thinks but in absolute raw power as well. It might be hard to see the jump in what I've posted, this is just the short version of my findings. I don't have any numbers to back it up, but educated guessing leads me to believe the 3DS is significantly more powerful than people give it credit for.

One last comparison for where I believe the 3DS lies in terms of power. The PSVita is said to be using a Tegra 3 SoC or something very close to it. My speculation leads me to believe the 3DS is slightly better than a Tegra 2 SoC in terms of power. Basically, the 3DS is much closer to the Vita than people think. Close enough that you could potentially see Multi-platform games between the two like you see with 360 and PS3.

This is my own speculation, but it's based on educated guesses about various findings and observations. I believe that to be a much more reliable source than any of the other so called "3DS Specs" floating around on the internet. You have every right now to believe me and I encourage you not to take my word as fact. Just keep in mind that everything is speculation right now.

Do you have links to some of these sources on the 3DS's power? It doesn't sound too far-fetched though. It's very possible to have the CPU is more powerful that the 266Mhz. (If that is the speed, it is most likely downclocked, and a higher speed can be achieved with a hit to battery life.) What I think the place the 3DS is scaled back on is the graphics power, since only having to power 2 400x240 screens (left + right) and one 320x240 screen would not require as much to power the HD screen on the Vita or other mobile devices. Plus, at the lower revolutions, less detail (model detail, texture detail) is needed to create a quality picture.

But once again, this is all speculation and we will probably not have any hard details on the power of the 3DS until hackers can run their own code to get benchmarks on the speed, or find the boot code that sets the processor speed. And even then we'll need to find out more details first, like the exact architecture used on the CPU (what version of ARM) and how to even use this new graphics chip.

 

[Janthran]

There's no way that an N64 game would fit on the 3DS memory. The VC would have to have a player cart or something.

That would actually be a good idea, though.. Use an emulator cart that lets you buy DLC N64 games..

 

[Skelletonike]

There's no way that an N64 game would fit on the 3DS memory. The VC would have to have a player cart or something.

That would actually be a good idea, though.. Use an emulator cart that lets you buy DLC N64 games..

N64 games are quite small compared to games nowadays, it would prolly fit in the 3DS built in memory, but as long as you use mmc's you don't really need in built memory...
PSX games are way bigger than N64 games for example.

 

[DiscostewSM]

General rule of thumb: One console has to be 10x more powerful to emulate another.
I'll let you do the math.

That was the general rule of thumb, as back in those days, the method of emulation was interpreted mode. Now, we have dynamic recompilation, hardware acceleration like our current video cards, etc.

There's no way that an N64 game would fit on the 3DS memory. The VC would have to have a player cart or something.

That would actually be a good idea, though.. Use an emulator cart that lets you buy DLC N64 games..

N64 games are quite small compared to games nowadays, it would prolly fit in the 3DS built in memory, but as long as you use mmc's you don't really need in built memory...
PSX games are way bigger than N64 games for example.

Largest N64 game is 64MB, and the N64 has either 4MB of it's own RAM (8MB with the expansion). 3DS has 128MB of RAM, 96MB of that being dedicated to games. So, yes, it can fit inside the system's RAM, and still have a good amount for other things such as the emulator itself. PSX games are different because of the method used to read the data (CDs vs cartridge). If a PSX emulator was made for the 3DS (whenever it gets hacked), memory will not be an issue.

 

[Jumbojack656]

honestly if they made 2 different 64 games into new 3ds games i'm sure they can make them in downloadable features, but i doubt they will....

 

[Deleted-236924]

honestly if they made 2 different 64 games into new 3ds games i'm sure they can make them in downloadable features, but i doubt they will....

So, by your logic, the DS can emulate the 64.

 

[Jumbojack656]

i would think they could find a way if they found na way to put em into games they could always lower the quality or something

---

 

[DiscostewSM]

i would think they could find a way if they found na way to put em into games they could always lower the quality or something

---

 

[Jumbojack656]

i never said anything about that i jus said if they made them into 3ds games why wouldn't they with others....

 

[Janthran]

i would think they could find a way if they found na way to put em into games they could always lower the quality or something

---

 

[Taellon]

I know it was a big post, but I mentioned that I'm not going to bother finding all the sources for the various bits of information. The sources are out there but it would take a long time to track down each and every one.

I also called out the 266MHz thing as bogus specs. They are completely unfounded bits of information that somebody made up and then they spread like wildfire despite being completely made up. Also the 3DS uses a 800x240 screen and a 320x240 screen. Vita is, IIRC, 960x544 or something like that.192000+76800 vs 522240, Vita still has more pixels to render(almost double). I actually believe the 3DS resolution to be it's biggest weakness. Touchscreen resolution is fine, it's not the main screen, but the top-screen should have been something like 1600x480 but that resolution might be too big, so we'll scale that back to about 1152x360(16:10). Anyways, the point is that 3DS game will always have "jaggies" because of it's poor resolution. I'm confident the hardware could have supported at least 1152x360 and still been able to deliver quality graphics. So 3DS games will always look worse than Vita games because the low resolution limits how much detail can be seen, even if they had the exact same processing power.

Another point people are overlooking is the amount of effort developers are putting into their games. You can have the most powerful system in the world and if a developer doesn't put in the effort than their game will still look like crap. The Wii suffers from this big time, and now the 3DS is going to see a similar fate if developers don't step up. I'm not say every developer is lazy, but it's clear that some games didn't receive the type of effort they should have. 3DS is going to become just as much a dumping ground for shovelware as the Wii is. If you look for the quality titles you will see the power of the system shine through, or at least as much the poor resolution will show. First gen 3DS games are going to look like enhanced DS games compare to the kinds of titles we will see on the 3DS in the next few years.

Uneducated view:
-Less pixels than Vita
-F1 2011 looks shit

-3DS is shit
-Crap graphics
-Just another DS

-End

It's a sorry state of affairs.

If you're going to troll at least put some effort into it.

If you want an example of some of what the 3DS is capable of, you can see it in this video: http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=168577
Those graphics blow me away. I'm used to playing high-quality titles on PC with amazing graphics, but it just blows my mind how much power this handheld system has. It is honestly gorgeous. Sure it's nowhere near the levels of graphics I can get on my PC but the graphics are still amazingly well done.

 

[Jumbojack656]

I'm sure Nintendo could do it if they wanted to. Doubt they will though =/

yo sherlock i was referring to this i never said a word about an emulator epically being in 3D...

 

[manuel1984]

honestly if they made 2 different 64 games into new 3ds games i'm sure they can make them in downloadable features, but i doubt they will....

I cant believe people don't get the difference between an emulation and a remake...

The games you're talking about are remakes, specially coded for the 3DS. On an Emulation, the 3DS must EMULATE, for example, the N64. All processors, MM, RAM and its access time etc.

@all:
The 3DS CPU cant Emulate, even with its 2 Cores, the N64. The Architecture is to much different, that it could translate the Code into ARM Code and an emulation, as I said, is not possible.

 

[DiscostewSM]

@all:
The 3DS CPU cant Emulate, even with its 2 Cores, the N64. The Architecture is to much different, that it could translate the Code into ARM Code and an emulation, as I said, is not possible.

Dynamic Recompilation says hello.

 

[badnat]

I'm sure Nintendo could do it if they wanted to. Doubt they will though =/

yo sherlock i was referring to this i never said a word about an emulator epically being in 3D...

yo sherlock your language fails as this sentence makes no sense grammatically nor contextually.