Hacking N64 Emulation on 3DS

[Maikel Steneker]

I think there are plenty of people who would want PS2 on a handheld. But i think many of even our less intelligent gaming population can understand how impossible that would be on current consoles. There is only one PS2 emulator for PC, and it requires at least a 3ghz dual core processor (a good one too) along with a decent graphics card to get it running fairly. Even then, that's sometimes not enough. Best case scenario is a Core i7 clocked near 3.8ghz running in software mode to take full advantage of the power.

The PS2 is much more powerful than an N64 as well... What's your point?

Also, you're talking about PCSX2, an emulator made by hobbyists. If Sony were to develop an emulator to run on the PS3 or some type of future handheld device it would be a completely different case.

 

[iYoshi-]

i can be sure wether or not it will be powerful enough, like said in so many posts.
What im wondering is if it will be gba emu capable.

 

[Donald Serrot]

I want to point out something that reading through this topic I haven't seen mentioned yet but is a vital piece of evidence.
TAKE THAT! *Phoenix Wright ~ Objection, Cadenza version, plays*
May I present the fact that games like Mario 64 DS and the N64 VC games aren't exactly ports. They are rebuilds made specifically for those systems. At least as far as the DS is concerned, I haven't personally looked too much into the Wii VC games but I do know they are "updated" for higher standards.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the generally accepted thing that a machine should have 4x the power of whatever it's trying to emulate? Anything less and it'll have issues. (Try playing Smash Bros. 64 on a PSP. It's nowhere near perfect.) I read that somewhere a long time ago so I can't personally confirm it or provide sauce. So in order to truly emulate the N64 the 3DS would have to be 4x it's power. And for Gamecube emulation? Next it'll be run with cold fusion.

Also I want to hit on people saying the PSP can play PSX games easily. PSX was also originally going to be an addon for the SNES. It came before the N64 and is pretty much a midway between SNES and N64. If a PSP can run N64 games, then it would easily be able to run the less powerful PSX games.

Not you may be thinking "Don, what about the GBA on the DS Phat? Or the GC on the Wii?"
I'm glad you asked. The machines were built for that. That's why the DSi needs a special flash cart to play GBA games, it wasn't made to play them and the card adds what is missing. And since we are now able to emulate GBA games (with help) on the DSi I'm fairly sure we'll see it emulated on the 3DS.

So the bottom line, will we see N64 emulation on the 3DS? No clue. We won't know until we see the system and find out what's in it. But I know people sure will try no matter what we learn. It's only logical. *ears get a little pointier*
Not again...

 

[coolbho3000]

Everything in this thread is speculation until we know the specs.

If it's truly a Tegra2 then it should be able to emulate the N64 easily, with appropriate optimization. Probably a 600MHz ARMv7 processor can do it, and the Tegra2 is a multi-core Cortex A9. If it's an ARM11 Tegra with no fpu you probably can't do it.

Im sure the hardware in this is going to be nothing like what youd see in a PC. So "My ancient PC runs N64" doesnt really apply.

My wii is way more powerful than my PC, but it cant even run conkers bad fur day or DK 64.

Your PC is very, very, very, very old if it's less powerful than the Wii.

 

[Rydian]

May I present the fact that games like Mario 64 DS and the N64 VC games aren't exactly ports. They are rebuilds made specifically for those systems.That's what a port is. When you take the source of the game and such and rebuild/modify it for a different platform, you're porting it. Whether you add new features or not does not affect it being a port, it's still a port if you add 4 characters and 25 minigames, and it's still a port if you don't add jack shit and actually take away a few levels.

At least as far as the DS is concerned, I haven't personally looked too much into the Wii VC games but I do know they are "updated" for higher standards.Howso? Name some examples?

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the generally accepted thing that a machine should have 4x the power of whatever it's trying to emulate? Anything less and it'll have issues.

IIRC it was eight times, and that's a rule of thumb because a metric fuckton of technical stuff goes into whether emulation will be up to speed or not, since there's no single measurement of "speed" or "power" for a computer.

QUOTE(Donald Serrot @ Apr 28 2010, 12:12 AM)

Also I want to hit on people saying the PSP can play PSX games easily. PSX was also originally going to be an addon for the SNES. It came before the N64 and is pretty much a midway between SNES and N64. If a PSP can run N64 games, then it would easily be able to run the less powerful PSX games.

The reason there's such big differences in how well it emulates both have been explained in my posts, and it's not directly related to how powerful each system is, otherwise N64 would be running much better than it is since it's so much closer to the PSX than it is to the SNES.

 

[Beats]

It's not out yet, no specs released yet, so this topic is stupid.

 

[Donald Serrot]

My understanding of a port is an exact version of the original, no changes made. I guess some people would define that differently. I'd call the Megaman Battle Network 1 DS "remake" a port since all they added was a bottom screen map and one side story, other than that it was exactly the same as the GBA game down to the sprites and BGM. Or the resent Sonic Classics that was found to be a fancy emulator playing the original games themselves. Again, no real changes. Mario 64 DS was a graphical upgrade, slight story tweaking, and overall gameplay change, and a big change from the original in the end. I wouldn't call Mario 64 DS a port by any means.

As for the Wii VC upgrades it was listed in Nintendo Power back when they first started putting N64 games up. Even showed side by side screenshots. Star Fox 64 was the example they showed. In essence they would not be playable on their original systems because of the upgrades. I haven't played too many of the N64 VC games mostly due to lack of money/points and any of the good ones I still have the original N64 game of. And on the flip not I haven't looked too much into how they work either, so they probably could be just ports with a clean coat of paint.

Again, as I said it was something I read a long time ago. Numbers don't treat me too kindly in short term, and with a passionate hatred in the long run.

And I never said it was directly related to the power of the system. And most likely the PSP was made with some PSX backwards compatibility just to make it easier for them to release ports of older games like Persona, and as a result making emulation much much easier for those games. It would be logical that games made for a Sony system would play better on a Sony system than a game made for a non-Sony system just to begin with. Then add to that the fact that the N64 is still a more powerful system than a PSX and it's not looking pretty at all.

 

[Rydian]

My understanding of a port is an exact version of the original, no changes made. I guess some people would define that differently. I'd call the Megaman Battle Network 1 DS "remake" a port since all they added was a bottom screen map and one side story, other than that it was exactly the same as the GBA game down to the sprites and BGM. Or the resent Sonic Classics that was found to be a fancy emulator playing the original games themselves. Again, no real changes. Mario 64 DS was a graphical upgrade, slight story tweaking, and overall gameplay change, and a big change from the original in the end. I wouldn't call Mario 64 DS a port by any means.In the realm of computer programming, a "port" is the opposite of emulation for bringing a program to a different system. It's where the source is recompiled for the new architecture (since they have the source they can make changes), as opposed to translating the precompiled machine code on the fly.

As for the Wii VC upgrades it was listed in Nintendo Power back when they first started putting N64 games up. Even showed side by side screenshots. Star Fox 64 was the example they showed. In essence they would not be playable on their original systems because of the upgrades. I haven't played too many of the N64 VC games mostly due to lack of money/points and any of the good ones I still have the original N64 game of. And on the flip not I haven't looked too much into how they work either, so they probably could be just ports with a clean coat of paint.I don't read nintendo power so my best guess is just running it at a higher resolution and perhaps some texture filtering, both of which emulators are capable of doing.

QUOTE(Donald Serrot @ Apr 28 2010, 10:53 AM)

And most likely the PSP was made with some PSX backwards compatibility just to make it easier for them to release ports of older games like Persona, and as a result making emulation much much easier for those games. It would be logical that games made for a Sony system would play better on a Sony system than a game made for a non-Sony system just to begin with.

Makes sense, companies love making money off a game twice.

 

[Painguy]

assuming that the rumors are true and it does use the Tegra 2 then it should easly be able to emulate n64 games. (also assuming we are able to hack it.

 

[Thunderboyx]

assuming that the rumors are true and it does use the Tegra 2 then it should easly be able to emulate n64 games. (also assuming we are able to hack it.

Well considering that we're still trying to hack the DSi, it would take a long while before we can hack it and before then they might will release the next ds

 

[Deleted User]

What would be cool is if it gets hacked, there should be a plugin for Kaillera.

 

[kriane21]

I hope 3ds can emulate ps1 game

if it those surely a great console

 

[Rydian]

assuming that the rumors are true and it does use the Tegra 2 then it should easly be able to emulate n64 games. (also assuming we are able to hack it.The tegra is a graphics chip, not a main processing chip, isn't it?
The main problem with emulating the N64 (or any game system, really) isn't the graphics (as you can see the DS beats the N64), it's the main processor.

What would be cool is if it gets hacked, there should be a plugin for Kaillera.The Kaillera client hasn't been updated in seven years, the server in over 8 years, so I'm not exactly sure how that's going to work.

QUOTE(kriane21 @ Apr 29 2010, 12:12 AM)

I hope 3ds can emulate ps1 game

if it those surely a great console

The PSP already can, though it's not perfect it's way better than most homebrew emulators, and already exists for sure.

 

[Deleted User]

What would be cool is if it gets hacked, there should be a plugin for Kaillera.

The Kaillera client hasn't been updated in seven years, the server in over 8 years, so I'm not exactly sure how that's going to work.

I found an unofficial update of Kaillera sometime last year but cant remember the name of the website.

 

[Rydian]

I've seen an emulator author or two voice that they didn't want that to touch their emulator, and I think they even referred to it as a "hacked" copy. But I have no clue where I read that.

 

[RchUncleSkeleton]

If nintendo wants me to buy a 3DS it better be more powerful than the gamecube! I mean come on look at the PSP, which runs at 333Mhz and the Gamecube runs at 486Mhz(PowerPC CPU), seriously the 3DS should be as powerful as the wii seeing as the wii is already 4 years old I don't see a reason why they couldn't pack the power of the wii into a handheld unit these days.

Off Topic: If your PC can't handle emulating the N64 then you must have an old ass PC...My 6 year old desktop can more than handle all the N64 games with Project64.

As far as the PSP Emulating PS1 games yeah it does, but with sony's own emulator made for their games sold through the playstation network....so they have more funding and know their own hardware better to create a working emulator than every other team programming console emulators. It's not some 3rd party emulator that's just being developed by a team of guys online, it's a professionally made 1st party software that's been hacked to work with EBoot ISO files(that have been converted from original PS1 ISO's).

 

[Rydian]

Older Processors.
The "Intel Pentium 4" 2.26ghz processor scores 288.

Newer Processors.
The "Intel Core 2 Duo P7350" 2.00ghz processor scores 1,318.

So it's 100% possible for a processor with LESS ghz to be better. More ghz does not mean the processor is better in every case. Only when comparing two of the SAME processor.

Ghz is like RPM in cars. It describes how fast it's cycling. How much it does per cycle, however, varies between processor models, like it depends on what gear you're in in a car.

 

[Sir-Fritz]

If nintendo wants me to buy a 3DS it better be more powerful than the gamecube! I mean come on look at the PSP, which runs at 333Mhz and the Gamecube runs at 486Mhz(PowerPC CPU), seriously the 3DS should be as powerful as the wii seeing as the wii is already 4 years old I don't see a reason why they couldn't pack the power of the wii into a handheld unit these days.

Off Topic: If your PC can't handle emulating the N64 then you must have an old ass PC...My 6 year old desktop can more than handle all the N64 games with Project64.

As far as the PSP Emulating PS1 games yeah it does, but with sony's own emulator made for their games sold through the playstation network....so they have more funding and know their own hardware better to create a working emulator than every other team programming console emulators. It's not some 3rd party emulator that's just being developed by a team of guys online, it's a professionally made 1st party software that's been hacked to work with EBoot ISO files(that have been converted from original PS1 ISO's).

Also a psp and a psone have similar architecture so its not as hard to emulate n64 on a psp for instance.

 

[OrGoN3]

If nintendo wants me to buy a 3DS it better be more powerful than the gamecube! I mean come on look at the PSP, which runs at 333Mhz and the Gamecube runs at 486Mhz(PowerPC CPU), seriously the 3DS should be as powerful as the wii seeing as the wii is already 4 years old I don't see a reason why they couldn't pack the power of the wii into a handheld unit these days.

Off Topic: If your PC can't handle emulating the N64 then you must have an old ass PC...My 6 year old desktop can more than handle all the N64 games with Project64.

As far as the PSP Emulating PS1 games yeah it does, but with sony's own emulator made for their games sold through the playstation network....so they have more funding and know their own hardware better to create a working emulator than every other team programming console emulators. It's not some 3rd party emulator that's just being developed by a team of guys online, it's a professionally made 1st party software that's been hacked to work with EBoot ISO files(that have been converted from original PS1 ISO's).

Also a psp and a psone have similar architecture so its not as hard to emulate n64 on a psp for instance.

Sorry but I can't see that connection, unless I missed the sarcasm?? How does saying the PSP has similar architecture to a PSOne help at all to an N64? Yes they came out only 2 years apart from each other, but vastly different architectures. Also, while it was rarely used, N64 did have a 64-bit processor.

 

[Rydian]

They meant to type that it's not as hard to emulate a PSX as it is an N64 on the PSP.