VIDEO: Why is Nintendo 64 emulation still a broken mess in 2025?

The Nintendo 64 has always been a difficult machine to emulate correctly. But in 2025 - we should be well and truly past all of it right? Not exactly. Issues with Plugins, performance, graphical glitches, stutters. Unless you have a very powerful machine, these are common things many of us will run into when emulating the Nintendo 64. But why? And Is there any hope for fast, accurate N64 emulation in 2025 and beyond?

turkalino,

I respect MVG a lot but this is honestly clickbait. All you have to do is:

  1. Download RetroArch
  2. Install Mupen64Plus-Next core
  3. Enable ParaLLEl RDP and RSP plugins in core settings

and you can play every game without issues. Not a broken mess by any means.

If you have resources leftover, you can even go into the core settings and turn internal resolution to 4x for better 3D graphics

dh3lix,
@dh3lix@lemmy.world avatar

N64 stuff runs brilliant on MisterFpga tho.

lIlIllIlIIIllIlIlII, (edited )

FPGA emulation is another level. The video says that FPGA emulation is near flawless except homebrew.

rhombus,

FPGA mimics hardware 1:1 without overhead, which is why it works well. This is talking about software emulation, which has to use lots of shortcuts to make it fast enough (for most machines). The N64 has a weird architecture though that makes it difficult to find shortcuts that work well.

Endymion_Mallorn,
@Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org avatar

An interesting video, but I don't really feel it got to answer the question posed. He also didn't, for me, answer why he wants to focus on LLE instead of HLE as it's been obvious that LLE is very resource intensive.

lIlIllIlIIIllIlIlII,

Maybe is too soon for cycle accuracy N64 emulators. We will get it eventually.

Aussiemandeus,
@Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone avatar

That was my issue with the video as well

prole,

I thought Kaze pretty much reverse engineered the whole thing? Or is that just for Mario 64?

9tr6gyp3,

Feel free to commit a pull request

SomethingBurger,

The creator of this video is an emulator developer.

9tr6gyp3,

And?

lime,

that means they are about it.

TachyonTele,

Lol this is the best interaction. Props.

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