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So the solution to N64 emulation was to decompile the games to run them natively instead...
Pretty much, yes.
Developers for the older consoles employed all sorts of hacks and used all sorts of undocumented features.
Emulators of N64 would develop the emulator for something like 80% of the features of 80% of the games, then put in specific workarounds for the oddities of each game.
Which is why some games are better on specific emulators.
Also, decompilation lead to a greater understanding of the various glitches. DK64 and Mario 64 speedruns benefitted massively from this.
And also fun hack/mods like randomisers and hardcore modes, massively extending the games playability.
But yeh, the things devs did back in the day is bonkers
I’m surprised no one ever tried to compile all the hacks into a single open source plugin or emulator. There are only around 400 retail games for the N64 which seems pretty manageable to have some sort of game detection ruleset for various hacks.
It seems like in recent years N64 emulation is finally improving somewhat with lower level emulation like the parallel64 core in retroarch.
Long term decompilation is the better solution regardless but it’s going to take a good amount of time to decompile all the games of significance for the N64.
no one ever tried to compile all the hacks into a single open source plugin or emulator
Because the hacks of one game might destroy another one.
Starcraft64 decomp when?
DKR was so awesome. I've always waited for another game like this with exploration and boss battles and stuff, but I haven't seen anything else.
Yeah, Mario Kart needs a story mode
DKR was awesome. I always wanted to play that one on the N64, even though the others at the time just wanted to play 007.
I just 100% the game a few months ago. It actually holds up really well and it’s still really fun. There were a few annoying silver coin races, but it wasn’t too bad. Plus that stuff isn’t really necessary to enjoy the game.
That's awesome, and good to hear it still holds up. It will always hold a special place for me.
At some point, I'd like to do a deep dive into all these awesome decompilation projects that are being developed. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.
Same! I played that game a bunch and some of the decompiled stuff is really awesome.
Which ones have you played so far?
Perfect dark, ocarina of time.
I feel like I’ve played others but I can’t think of it off the top of my head. Star Fox has one, but the people who did Zelda, but last I checked it didn’t work on Linux yet.
I setup the sonic one, but haven’t played it yet.
Awesome, both of those are great. I've never actually played perfect dark so that one's definitely on the list. I also saw that there's one for majora's mask as well.
I'm sure they're probably working on getting the star fox to work on linux. That will be cool getting back into that one too.
I never got into the sonic games too much.
Same, the only one I ever enjoyed was sonic adventure 1. Perfect dark is really amazing, but some of the level objectives on the hardest difficulty can be annoying because of escort mission type stuff where the person you need to keep alive keeps tanking enemy fire and then dying.