Analogue - the company behind the revered Analogue Pocket have announced their latest product, the Analogue 3D.

The Analogue 3D is an FPGA based home console capable of playing N64 cartridges but sporting modern technical capabilities such as 4K output, Bluetooth and 2.4ghz wireless controller support and more. As it is an FPGA solution, this means that the emulation is done at a hardware level - not software. The chips are programmed to emulate hardware functions directly instead of relying on software or higher level code to do so which often results in improved accuracy and latency.

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The Analogue 3D promises "100% compatibility" across all software and much like the Pocket, will offer different display modes - using "reference quality recreations of specific model CRT’s and PVM’s" these display modes intend to mimic the output of an original N64 producing results that original hardware would have displayed at the time.

Analogue 3D

• Wireless Bluetooth and 2.4g.
• 4 original-style controller ports.
• Completely engineered in FPGA.
• Analogue OS.

No emulation.

• A reimagining of the N64.
• 4K resolution.
• Original Display Modes.
• Reference quality recreations of specific model CRT’s and PVM’s.

The first and only aftermarket solution supporting 100% compatibility in every region. USA, EU & JP. Coming in 2024.

Details are scarce right now but we will cover more on the Analogue 3D in the future and will hopefully be reviewing the product some time next year.

Source

 

[Coto]

Nah they’re not but whatever.

You have no idea what's the difference between what LLE does on software layer, vs LLE implementation in wire. And because of that, Analogue 3D devs are going the latter route. Mark my words.

For instance CX4 on SnemulDS is HLE because it calls directly (as in software layer) CX4 commands. That excludes the wire logic and timings to talk across the SNES unit as well the exception vectors, at the expense of bugs or innacuracies.

LLE is still software, but the commands & protocols can be transcribed to wire. And it's the way to implement co processors in FPGA , I mean, just read the commits.

 

[Jayro]

They've gotta be using one beefy chip. I'm excited to see the hardware specs and price.

 

[Thejax]

I love analogue but, I’d still really wish there was some rom backup system. Make there be no external backups at all, only on device, and I dunno, mark bad roms from piracy sites

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I'm waiting for a company to make a clone console that can accept and play all the retro Nintendo cartridges: NES, SNES, N64, and GB(C) and GBA

MiSter Multisystem.

analogue pocket makes sense... it's portable FPGA emulation, you can't find this anywhere.

analogue home consoles do not make sense... they cost more than the said OG console + upscale (or more than OG console + CRT TV), so why? Those are even less available and harder to obtain than the OG consoles, so again, why???

Now 8bitdo N64 controller? That's AMAZING!!!

N64 video output sucks even with an upscaler.

They've gotta be using one beefy chip. I'm excited to see the hardware specs and price.

Or separate FPGAs for the RSP/RDP/RCP.

I love analogue but, I’d still really wish there was some rom backup system. Make there be no external backups at all, only on device, and I dunno, mark bad roms from piracy sites

There will surely be a jailbreak, every Analogue has had them.

 

[ciaomao]

Something like this... View attachment 399578

You can HDMI (DVI-D + audio technically) mod a real N64 for under £20 With the Pico-DVI N64 software.

wow, this is something i need to check out and it comes from kbeckmann! the guy who ported the software for the anniversary g&w. Update: just ordered parts. how good is the pico solution compared to the previous digital/digital mods?
my current setup is s-video + retrotink. it looks not too bad already. i like the smoothing filter.
Oh, no cool projects from you atm? ->

 

[spinal_cord]

I was gonna say, I get a better N64 picture than that running S-video from the 64 to the Framemeister, and 720p scaled over hdmi to the TV.

If you think my TV going from 480p to 4k digitally is bad, you should have seen it do 240p to 4k from RCA. You couldn't even see some of the details in conkers bad fur day, ropes for example were completely blured out, took me ages to get out of that pit once because I couldn't see the roppe to climb up.

 

[MohammedQ8]

I am waiting for Playstation 2 fpga console.

 

[MariArch]

Honestly. I’ll pass on this one. N64 library is pretty lackluster in retrospect. Now a ps1 analogue.. that would be sick

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Something like this... View attachment 399578

You can HDMI (DVI-D + audio technically) mod a real N64 for under £20 With the Pico-DVI N64 software.

That blur ruins it though.

 

[YuseiFD]

People are still too stuck in the past...

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Honestly. I’ll pass on this one. N64 library is pretty lackluster in retrospect. Now a ps1 analogue.. that would be sick

I can't disagree, the library is pretty small. Still, there's Banjo Kazooie, Tooie, Conker, Zelda, Mischief Makers, Mario Party 2&3, Super Smash Bros. Enough reasons to revisit the console every now and then. For the right price - if it's a cent over $400 I'll probably have to pass, but $300 would be a day 1 preorder. I just can't justify spending that much when there are other things I need more.

I think $300 is the price sweet spot for this. I don't expect it to be less than $300, and I think there's a high chance it'll be more than that, but that is the maximum price they should aim for if they want this thing to sell well. Presumably, like the Super Nt it won't come with controllers, so people are still looking at spending $400+ if they want controllers to go with it.

 

[RatherSimple]

Adjusted the brightness of controller if anyone is interested.

 

[spinal_cord]

That blur ruins it though.

True, but that's my TV, not the hdmi adapter. Samsung TV's never upscale without bluring, there are no options for that. Even a Wii with pixel perfect component cable blurs on a Samsung.
Computer monitors are perfect though.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

True, but that's my TV, not the hdmi adapter. Samsung TV's never upscale without bluring, there are no options for that. Even a Wii with pixel perfect component cable blurs on a Samsung.
Computer monitors are perfect though.

I'm not thinking of the upscaler but the N64' forced blur filter, the edges between different colors just aren't as crisp as they should be.

 

[lordelan]

Just as a heads-up: The MiSTer's N64 has recently gotten pretty far so apart from the cartridge support, it does that too.

As an owner of an Analogue Pocket I just hope the A3D will receive openFPGA support too, turning it into Analogue's perfect MiSTer alternative TV console.

 

[shaunj66]

Adjusted the brightness of controller if anyone is interested.

Thanks! I added it to the first post if you don't mind

 

[UltraHurricane]

i genuinely wonder what kind of hardware they'll be using to replicate the n64 since i can only imagine it would have to be more powerful then a standard MiSTER board

I've been wanting this for over a decade; a 1:1 hardware clone (or as-close-to as possible) of an N64. I hope to GAWD that this thing is under $400USD, but it will likely be $500 USD.... Time to start saving up.

This thing and a Boxy Pixel Hinged SP are my two projects for 2024 so far, but damn... They're both gonna be expensive.

Post automatically merged: Oct 17, 2023

I'm willing to bet that there's one of two things going on inside... Either they built-in an upscaler using another FPGA, or the main FPGA is just god-like powerful and can internally render the games at something like 720p/1080p and then upscale the rest of the way. I dunno, but I'm excited. It could be what Mazamars has been working on in secret, because his twitter went dark on his FPGA N64 project after he finished the RDP core. So I'm willing to bet he's been contracted by Analogue for a few years now under development of this thing, and is likely under an NDA. The man is a fucking genius, and also ports cores to the Analogue Pocket in his free time, so it's not that much of a stretch. Robert, the guy making the N64 core for the MiSTer is also doing an incredible job getting his core in tip-top-shape in just a few short months! He's been an absolute MACHINE lately!!! (I watch his progress on Pixel Cherry Ninja's YouTube channel.)

now i'm REALLY curious what kind of hardware they'll be using to replicate the n64 since i can only imagine it would have to be more powerful then a standard MiSTer board in order to have the features and compatibility they're promising, since you still need a hefty overclocked set-up to get the current core running

 

[ZER-O]

I love analogue but, I’d still really wish there was some rom backup system. Make there be no external backups at all, only on device, and I dunno, mark bad roms from piracy sites

use Everdrive 64 cart with it

 

[64bitmodels]

fuck me that's looks terrible. unless this thing can support texture packs it will be pointless playing n64 in 4k

It looks fine. It looks like how you'd expect a 27-28 year old early 3D platformer to look. It isn't developed for an RTX 4090, neither is it developed on Unreal Engine 5.

Not to mention a mere texture pack doesn't do shit. The texture are lo fi because the models are lo fi. You'd need to completely upend the geometry and add an actual lighting system in order to have a game that looks up to modern standards.

 

[Jayro]

i genuinely wonder what kind of hardware they'll be using to replicate the n64 since i can only imagine it would have to be more powerful then a standard MiSTER board

now i'm REALLY curious what kind of hardware they'll be using to replicate the n64 since i can only imagine it would have to be more powerful then a standard MiSTer board in order to have the features and compatibility they're promising, since you still need a hefty overclocked set-up to get the current core running

I'm willing to bet it's more along the lines of the up-and-coming MARS FPGA platform. MARS is capable of simulating Dreamcast/NAOMI and more.