Zelda 64 Recompiled: A Revolution In N64 Native Ports For PC
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- Опубликовано: 9 июн 2024
- We've seen recompilation projects before - and Nintendo 64 titles have received more than their fair share of them - but Zelda 64 Recompiled takes this to the next level. Alex Battaglia goes in depth on Zelda 64 Recompiled, essentially a new native PC port of Majora's Mask, reveals how it works, how accurate it is, how modern hardware offers so many more options and looks forward to what this project means for N64 games on PC going forward.
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00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:00 Why is Zelda64Recomp revolutionary?
00:06:00 Nintendo 64 vs. Zelda64Recomp
00:09:31 Sound and Performance
00:12:06 Conclusion 
Игры
This is what excites me the most about PC gaming: extremely knowledgeable people unlocking the full potential of old games and preserving them at the same time. Incredible!
Right, that along with mods and the general more flexible backwards compatiblity. Having to rely on developers to update dead games to modern standards with no financial incentives is crazy. Meanwhile PC games scale with your hardware infinitely (at least with resolution and framerate) and there will always be a community to iron out issues as they gradually become less compatible with modern hardware. OpenMW is another brilliant project where fans have built a new engine for the game that brings a 22 year old game up to modern standards. Meanwhile you have a game like Bloodborne that will be forever locked in a cage of blurry aliased 1080p with a bad frame paced 30fps because the devs can't be bothered to do anything about it.
Wait a minute. You talk about "preserving" yet this is just another lame PC hack.
@@jsb0714 i'm not very technically-minded, and even i understood how significant an achievement this is based on Alex's excellent break down. this is far from being "lame".
@@jsb0714 ?
Popular games don't need to be "preserved", there are lots of great niche games which deserve this attention.
F-Zero X 120fps+ on ultrawide Oled is now something I only now just realized that I have wanted all my life!
ooh, could someone give X a GX make over? That'd be fun.
They forgot to speak about model swap. Oot can use models from 3ds and TWP so imagine fzero x with proper graphics and ray tracing.
I think many records would be broken
@@Tailslol ray tracing? whatever you say, eye-candy fanboy.
With the Japan only EXpansion kit too
Alex, I will forever admire your dedication to using old Unreal and UT music in any retro-related videos on DF. Never gets old.
Also, Tiberian Sun soundtrack ))
tracking ftw
MY HOUSE!!
speaking of, what's the song playing at 1:10 if anyone knows it?
@@wileymanful "Link Up," from Tiberian Sun Firestorm
Extreme-G at 120fps? Yes. PLEASE.
Thats a weird way to spell F-Zero.
There's a code to make XG2 run at 60fps on emulators, and it works amazingly. Not sure if there's one for the original game, though. (If there is, someone please share it!)
Extreme G at anything over 30. Iirc that game slowed sometimes down to sub 5 fps if a lot of stuff was going on on the screen.
@@ISSO1407 f-zero x already runs at 60 tho, extreme g barely works lol
@@3dmarth Ironically that would be better than the actual XG2 "re-released" PC version (which is the old 1998 PC release patched up with a Glide wrapper). It runs at 30-35 FPS, it's a shame Nightdive doesn't have the license to do this one.
When I saw Nerrel's video I kept looking at the upload date thinking it was April 1st.
How anyone was able to create a tool to do this is beyond me, but my god they're a wizard. We need it for every old console now. Unlocking arbitrary framerate with 0 issues is absolutely massive.
I've always wondered why we even bother with just-in-time compilation for emulation. Seems to me like pre-compiled emulation would offer massive speed enhancements, just as it has here.
9:43 that thing really whips the llama's ass
Yeah the Winamp usage was great!
Hahahaha
Newer generation of gamers are like ????? 😂😂😂
With a belt!
That definitely took me back. Funny how I downloaded all of these different skins and didn't hardly ever use any of them.
Wave Race 64, Donkey Kong 64, Banjo-Kazooie, the N64 RUSH games, F-Zero X
Add GoldenEye, Perfect Dark
Body Harvest, Jet Force Gemini, Rogue Squadron, etc
Wave Race 64 at 60fps can you imagine. Other games seem pointless to recompile in comparison to that.
@@AquaticMammalOnBicycle ye, F-Zero X is good as is. already 60 FPS
Perfect Dark has already been decompiled and it's completely playable at high resolution and frame rates, I played through it on a crappy surface pro 4 with intel 520 integrated graphics, ran flawlessly.@@MrJeanjean2009
Playing recompiled games on the Steam Deck is going to be huge. Native quality ports of classic games is a game changer.
yeah cause steam deck is so crt
I’m playing the MM recomp right now on my steam deck and it’s perfect
I hope console recompilation like this is the future of "emulation." Imagine all the traditional emulators getting replaced with this and giving us what are essentially native PC ports!
@@Moskeeto I doubt it unless we get a faster process for the de-compilation step. It's similar to how the HLE emulator in the video was done actually, typically aimed towards the popular games.
We might get a Recompilation of Mario Kart, Banjo-Kazooie, and Smash Brothers for example, but it's unlikely we'll get recompilations of games like Goemon's Great Adventure, Custom Robo, or No Mercy, just because they're not nearly as popular so there won't be the eyes needed to handle the de-compilation step.
It also likely won't help for anything past N64, because the code is even more monstrous for later systems, and won't help for games prior to N64, because emulation is usually already pretty good there (SNES is almost fully accurate now)
Basically: This is mostly useful for N64, but i'm skeptical of how effective it will be towards the entire library, or even if it's manageable for games past n64.
@@Wolfwood2057 Eventually with IA help I can see more decompilation happening but yeah, it's gonna take a while, people are going nuts over it but the N64 is almost 30 years old, like decompilation on this level it's more than late at this point, emulators have been enabling using HD textures and other niceties for years and years
Perfect dark with ray tracing 👌
That would be awesome. PD has such a vibe. Sadly the game is absolutely filled with baked textures to represent its lighting, so I hope someone is able to figure out a way to work around that.
Literally what we need, but Xbox is too dumb to deliver.
ray tracing? whatever you say, eye-candy fanboy, whatever you say.
@@IncognitoActivado Good. I'd like ray tracing aswell.
@@DavidPereiraLima123 Casual. XD
will we finally get a competent version of Goldeneye 007?
Yeah its in the N64!!!
since Perfect Dark which is Goldeneye's spiritual sequel has been reverse engineered and ported to PC, I think it's bound to happen.
It's pretty easy to get hold of and emulate the 360 version which is very solid
It really is baffling that neither the Xbox nor Switch version got the most basic stuff right. I liked it on Switch, but would have been great if the controls were modernized in the N64 NSO app.
The 360 remaster is perfect via emulation.
I look forward to when custom texture support arrives. Pairing this port with Nerrel’s texture pack would be a match made in heaven.
That's what I'm super excited for as well. Me and my GF are waiting for that to replay the game together side by side!
if they also give android support then im playing the shit out of this on my odin2
Same but not just for Nerrel's retexture (which is incredibly good don't get me wrong) but I'd also love to use Andrat's Mario Kart 64 retexture that painstakingly remade every 2D character sprite (thousands of them) from scratch to make the characters look like actual 3D models.
Honestly that pack is pretty awful.
I much prefer having someone port over the 3DS textures and models as well as the lighting. That version just looks amazing and truly brings the game to it's own light.
@@Zinkolo Weak bate.
What a time to be alive 🥹
Exactly what I was going to say 😭👍
Need Starfox 64 badly.
DK 64
Castlevania 64
I wanna say I read it’s not too far off from happening
@@CheckmateStallioN DK 64 is needed because emulators can STILL not properly emulate timed sections in the game. Meaning the game is incomplete-able without cheats when emulated.
Pokémon Stadium 1 + 2
Seeing Zelda 64 in 60fps is wilddddd
It's like seeing a Disneyland mascot without the head on, it's just... Wrong.
I wish Jet Force Gemini would get this treatment, but that game also needs a good controller overhaul. Somehow the Rare Xbox One port had worse controller input than the original.
Ocarina of Time has been playable with arbitrary framerates since its decompilation called Ship of Harkinian, so we've seen a Zelda 64 game in 60fps for a while
@@El-Duderino-His-Dudeness Yas! One of my favorites!
@@El-Duderino-His-Dudeness What was wrong with the Xbone version? I thought the dual stick controls (with Advanced mode enabled, so it's LT to aim and RT to shoot) felt pretty good- easily as good as the way I remember the original playing. Is there some kind of sensitivity/lag issue?
800x600 !!! lol. I remember being like 9 and bragging to my friends that the PS2 would do 480p, I barely had any idea of what that even meant
And we were all running at 480i because almost nobody had component cables back then lol.
@@Joostinonlinealso because the tvs were all crt, and they were naturally interlaced
@@aboveaveragebayleaf9216except for PC CRTs
@@fulmarmusic1413Are you seriously lamenting this or is this some /r/ sarcasm?
@@fulmarmusic1413I…. Don’t know what to do with this information. I had those cables. Still have them now
I can't wait to see Wave Race 64 with ray traced waters... omg
You already can, Dario posted a video on his twitter a long time ago
It's always a nice day when df uploads retro game content
The way it looked on your CRT. Oh my 🥲
It looks just like how I remember these older games looking!
God, I miss late 90's PC culture, and the 90's in general! They have a very distinct "taste" when I try to remember the times. Nostalgia is a helluva drug.
There's been a wave of Windows 95 inspired lofi mixes that have been popping off for this reason lately.
Been playing Fallout 2 lately, so I agree. I can't say it's nostalgia when the game is only a year younger than I am.
F@ck smartphones!
Golden era when you started your machine and dug in.
@@cookieface80 why would that rule out nostalgia?
@@mjoe7561 Well I know you can be nostalgic for something recent, technically, but I just mean that most people tend to think that you only like an old game because you played it as a kid.
So I'm fond of the game and I went into it with a modern gamer's perspective.
My personal pick would be the original Paper Mario. This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while, can’t wait for what the future will bring with this.
A No Mercy port with online play would bring about world peace
Dig dig dig, diggity dog
There are a ton of no mercy mods that have updated the roster
@@silkmonkey_Sock-o_
AEW fight forever is basically that.
That needs to be Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 instead. That should be made into the 3D pro wrestling sandbox for PC we should have gotten ages ago but unfortunately WSX still isn't good (and Fire Pro also dropped the ball on it, but that is 2D).
Starfox 64 and Blast Corps are the most appealing out of everything I haven't seen.
Definitely those, plus maybe pilotwings or rogue squadron.
I’m just here for the “Auf wiedersehen” 😂
Blast Corps without gigantic slowdown is goint to be rad.
Can't wait for the RT release
That Deck 16 theme at the start though, One of the bestest Soundtrack tunes to date.
Been playing this to almost completion and it made me fall in love with the game all over again.
Playing it at such smooth 120fps and Hi-Res honestly feels like a fever dream.
I'm excited to revisit many other N64 games this way.
Hi-Res? Whatever you say, eye-candy fanboy.
@@IncognitoActivado huh
We need Wave Race 64 in widescreen, 60fps and RT!!
and remastered on unreal 6 engine
I would love to play Jet Force Gemini in 4k. That would just be such a treat. This project looks amazing and i cant wait to try it. Thanks for taking the time to share it because i doubt id have heard about it otherwise
i wanted JFG in 60fps for about a million years now, please let it come true!
Play the Rare replay version then
@@prodyg I don't think Rare Replay is 60fps. The controls aren't really much better either. It feels terrible to play, really bad input lag and deadzone configuration. Fingers crossed it gets Mario 64/Ocarina of Time style PC port by fans way more diehard than me.
aaand at 120fps, buuut with a nice CRT filter like Slang shaders.
And modern FPS controls, since we have to admit we are already used and spoiled to them.
Now i can play Portal64 on my PC! 🙃
this is the pinnacle
Future N64 games that deserve this treatment:
* Buck Bumble
* Body Harvest
* Super Smash Bros
* Rare era 3D platformers including Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, DK64 and Conkers Bad Fur Day.
* Star Fox 64 with a level select QOL feature
Hopefully we get recompiled Psone and PS2 games, imagine playing native pc ports of the ridge racer games and Gran Turismo 1 & 2 as well
We’ve already got Jak & Daxter and Jak II. Jak III is on the way. I highly recommend playing those gems on PC!
Riiiidge raceeeer! Remember that one?
@@keetiv Those are native, decompiled ports, but yes, they are the definitive ways to play them.
Emulation for those consoles is a lot better so I don't know if anyone will feel it's necessary.
@@BIaziken2 ye, but those consoles had some major issues - ps1: no floating point, ps2: antialiasing (or whatever that blur is). And still many games require a lot of emulator options tweaking. If not all of them (for high res, good quality and speed, widescreen).
I'd like to see some arcade games recompiled. Winning Run still doesn't have decent emulation. How would it look with some path tracing.
Got it running at 90fps on the steamdeck oled. Just made the greatest game of all time even greater. Bliss
oh man, that's ALWAYS my first instinct as well, get it on my steam deck! That's sick that you got it to work.
There a tutorial for this?
@@phos4usredeemer there's a channel called Hi-tech Lo-life he has a guide. It's not the one I used but it's the same process by the looks of it
@@MathOwz thank you!
@@phos4usredeemer no worries pal. Hope you have fun with it. It's genuinely a game changer.
Companies dream of hiring this kind of talent. Imagine Nintendo did this level of effort when it came to running their old N64 games on the Switch. This is the very best this game has every looked, not even at Nintendo head-quarters has this game looked this good.
Didn't they remaster and make it 30fps on the 3ds. Those were pretty good.
I can't wait for someone to port these recompilations for the Switch. I have the Ship of Harkinian Ocarina of Time port, and the Super Mario 64 port on the Switch, and they both play and look great.
Curiously, Nintendo themselves do some static recompilation of their own, but only for certain Wii rereleases. The SMAS version of Super Mario Galaxy is notable for being the first instance of this “hybrid emulation” where the source code runs natively on the CPU but the graphics and sound are handled by their Hagi emulator, similar to how N64Recomp games will leverage RT64 for the graphics rendering and enhancements. The Pikmin 1+2 rereleases also employed this method as they were built off of the New Play Control! versions rather than the GameCube originals.
I believe Nintendo’s main purpose for using static recompilation is for the insane performance saving (I tested out Zelda 64 on my awful free Lenovo laptop and it managed to hit 1080p60fps without a GPU!), but I’m not sure why they aren’t employing it in place of their other standalone emulated rereleases. Super Mario Sunshine and especially Super Mario 64 could have benefited from hybrid emulation rather than full. Even NES games stand to gain unique benefits from static recompilation; for example, the first Mega Man Legacy Collection was able to add a neat extra mode for the games that would be nearly impossible with traditional emulation.
@@richr161 The OOT remaster was great. MM is more of a mixed bag. I didn't have any great issues with it, but it could trip up somebody used to the N64 version.
@@richr161 That was mostly just a texture swap and model upgraded version. The 3DS was also the same resolution as the N64 version. It looked a bit better, but not this much better. Plus those same models and textures could be ported into this version if they want to.
between the game itself, starting the vid with the mario kart block sound, and busting out winamp, you really hit me in the nostalgia today. love it
I can't wait for the GameCube recompilation! It will be a dream to play a native PC port of Twilight Princess, my second favorite Zelda game aside from Majora's Mask!
Are you me?
I hold the exact same opinion!
is dolphine emulation of this bad?
@@ivan4087 no. You can literally play the game 4k 60fps.
@@RvEllorquez why someone need recompilation then?
@@ivan4087 You need a beefy computer to play on dolphin, especially using those settings.
A steamdeck will absolutely not do those settings and not and have lag issues.
The Winamp.... I can't...
I was just thinking wow I hadn't seen Winamp since I used to burn CDs in like 2000 lol.
I have been installing Winamp on every new laptop I buy. And I still use the old school skin. There is no reason you couldn't.
Winamp is going open source later this year apparently.
Oh it is @@japzone
Winamp will always hold a special place in my heart and is absolutely nostalgic. However, Foobar2000 is where it's at!
Nice video and delightful narration from Alex. Keen to see these games with texture packs and ray tracing. Especially Wave Race at high frame rates.
@11:21
I had a similar glitch happen, but it occurred when I was playing a music *.flac file. Totally random and out of nowhere. The song stuttered in the exact manner as the audio in this part of the video. After that incident, I noticed such glitches randomly occuring with increased frequency. It got to the point where my computer froze and then when I rebooted it, the OS failed to load. A lot of troubleshooting narrowed the possibilities down. A faulty SATA cable was the culprit. Luckily simply changing the cable rectified everything. These days with M.2 SSDs this isn't much of a problem, but for those still using SATA connections, keep this in mind. Most SATA cables on the market are of extremely low quality.
Another possibility could be faulty thermals. One of my friends had freezes and crashes that had begun to occur with increasing frequency and he performed all diagnostics such as scan disk and SFC, etc. It was finally found out that his processor was overheating. The thermal compound was completely gone and his CPU fan was working overtime to keep temperatures down (his PC is more than a decade old). Applying thermal paste to the CPU solved his problem (as well as cleaning the dust from the CPU fan). His PC now no longer hangs and the fans are quiet when the computer isn't under intensive CPU load and the computer runs for hours on end without crashing as it previously did.
Or it could have just been a random glitch in this particular instance in this video. I haven't played the recomp so I can't comment, but I have played the original Majora's Mask on PC without encountering that error.
Bomberman Hero and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon would be awesome with this treatment
i already know how much fun alex had making this video
Can't wait to see someone take this and port it to Android to have it run on those handhelds such as Anbernic and Retroid the same way SM64 Port and Ship of Harkinian already have done. As for what games should be done next... I think gettin' Jiggy with it and exploring Spiral Mountain is an inevitable one people will want..
The glitch and audio hiccup you experienced seem related to network adapters on Windows. If you have both a PCI Ethernet adapter and one on your motherboard, disable the latter.
Your demo shots highlight something I've never noticed in the retro resolution discussion: it looks like the LOD of zooming out is used as a kind of camera lens focus shift. Like your eyes are drawn away from the clock tower in the center and to Link on the right when zoomed out and at low resolution, but with high resolution the clock remains the focal point of the frame. I don't think many games used this limitation so carefully, but it is interesting to see.
This is indeed a momentous occasion for the emulation community. Can't wait to see how this develops, platform-wise and catalog-wise.
One thing I hope this project can do soon is support for Slang shaders, because those have some amazing CRT emulation.
As for which game is like to see most: "Silent Hill 1" (if this progresses towards more systems) or Mario Kart 64 and Conker.
You can use ReShade with the Zelda recomp right now. I know it has CRT-Royale, but I'm sure there are others.
As for Silent Hill: Of course, I wish there was a port, but it already works amazingly well in Duckstation - as long as you don't use True Color Rendering, because it disables dithering, which this game heavily relies on, especially during night out on the streets. (Use _scaled dithering_ if you've increased the internal rendering resolution.) PGXP gets rid of most of the wobbling, warping and Z-fighting. Steady 30 fps requires overclocking the emulated Playstation to ca. 150%. Duckstation comes with optional cheats for widescreen and 60 fps (requires further overclocking, I'm using 500% which seems to work well.)
@@rockapartie Commenting so I take into account your recommendations when I get back on Duckstation.
@@rockapartie I saw that, but thanks! 💪🏻
Thing is, for whatever reason I don't like the idea of an external program for doing stuff like this. I prefer standalone, portable things. In this case, the shaders themselves.
@@Myako Reshade is somewhat portable, the DLLs and shaders are copied to the game's folder and the shader settings are configured in the overlay, no extra exe you'd have to start before running a game after the initial install.
I've been playing it in 32:9 at 240fps, and it's glorious!
I'm so happy that the first game to get this treatment is also my favorite game on the N64. I'm already attempting the 3 day challenge. Although I'm a bit rusty, since I haven't attempted it in quite a few years. The QoL improvements for the Ocarina and the transformation masks are fantastic, and make the whole experience that much better. I love it so much 😍
I find it so great that you cover these things on Digital Foundry! This is exactly what people need to know about, thank you.
It's good that stuff like this gets younger people to try out old games.
This is to hard for todays gamers, it doesn't hold your hand at every step of the way.
@@karehaqt It's not really a particularly hard game.
@@Nigel222 Ohh you'd be surprised. Game sites are flooded with people taking a picture of their screen with their phone and asking a vague question with no question mark like "how do I get past this thing"
@@karehaqtcringe
@@hameed Can't you modern gamers come up with better insults than that?
Great timing.
I finished Minish Cap for the first time today and I've never played Majora's Mask.
Oh boy, you are in for a ride, I tell you that!
You’re in for a treat.
I played Majora's Mask yesterday like this. Utter perfection.
I wonder if it is possible to increase polygon counts and add HD textures using AI?
@@matpit5136 No need for AI, both of these things will be done.
ive been watching your crysis videos again recently and your retro videos of old console games on beast pc's at the time.... these videos are stellar when you play a retro game highly modified. Its cool to see an old game we all used to play get an extreme face lift
kudos on mentioning resolution effecting presentation. it's personal taste, per game, but in general i find a *small* bump combined with the right crt filter looks incredible.
We need the banjo games recompiled ASAP
The 32 and 64 bit era is when game programming shifted from Assembly (8 and 16 bit games) to C. 8 bit and some 16 bit hardware was too low on memory to even compile C code so it was all Assembly. What an era. RIP Dennis Ritchie. Most people don't even know who he was or his immense influence from the 90s to modern day software. If you ask the avg Joe and all he knows is Steve Jobs or Gates who are nowhere close to the impact that Dennis Ritchie made in tech not just in games but IoT devices (smartphones, smart fridges, etc), elevator controllers, airplane landing/takeoff software, Mars rovers/space shuttle, car software, etc. Who knows how life today would be like without Ritchie's legendary pioneer work
You don't need to compile directly on the console. Compile elsewhere and ship the binaries.
@@MegaKiri11 Not sure if what OP said is actually true, but it seems right.
If it is, the reason was more likely that C compilers weren't as efficient as a human doing assembly, and back then your code needed to be as efficient as humanly possible given the limited hardware! What developers did in those days were straight up technical miracles!
Original comment is wrong. Source code, either C or an assembly language is not compiled on the console, it's compiled on your work machine into the instructions/binaries and transferred to the console to run. With the Super Nintendo, games could have been made with C (depends on how much register manipulation was used for performance), with high performance areas being replaced with assembly for performance critical cases. However, industry adaption and change is slow, so Nintendo/Sega probably expected everyone to write assembly code out of tradition. Also, using C adds a layer of conversion with how what you write will actually run on the console. So if you don't have the time to learn what the C compiler is writing, and you are easily hitting ROM size and memory limits, C will only help you make your game easier to port to another console with it's added benefit of being a layer of abstraction. C isn't directly hardware specific. Assembly languages are only CPU specific.
@JohnDoe11VII Indeed! I didn't mean to suggest that the "compiling on the console" part was correct, it definitely wasn't!
Awesome coverage of awesome work!
This is amazing. I can't wait for more ports to come out.
OMG I need this for Blast Corps, Wave Race and Pilotwings!!
Wow this is neat.
I woudn't mind having Conker's Bad Fur Day like this as it definitely helps with aiming in game.
Love that game.
Wow, incredible, I have no idea how I haven't heard of this already but thanks for the heads up. I was just literally thinking about replaying this again, and I was very strongly considering finishing my playthrough of the remaster on 3ds that I never finished years ago. Now though, I'll definitely play it this way!
Amazing video, you should do one about Ship of Harkinian, and the consecuent comparison between the 2 efforts!
Perhaps Rogue Squadron or Shadows of the Empire would be an interesting test for this technology. What a wonderful time to be online.
That said, the more reporting I see on this topic, the more scared I am that the ninjas will come in and ruin it for everyone.
Rogue Squadron already has a PC version. Shadows of the Empire though...
Nintendo ninja squad just began circling around Alex's house
Yeah. I'm worried about the project now.
@@BurritoKingdom For what reason, it contains no Nintendo code or assets. You have to dump your legitimately owned cartridge to a ROM and point the software to it. Nintendo hasn't gone after any of the other decomplication projects such as Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time for the same reasons.
@karehaqt you clearly underestimate Nintendo's overly aggressive legal team.
@@karehaqt Nintendo knows they have no legal grounds, but they also know they don't need to be right. They just need to keep harrassing defendants in courts, knowing they can't afford legal costs for much long.
@@offspringfan89 If they were bothered then they would have gone after the Mario 64 decomp which came out in 2019 and is still on Github. Stop making mountains out of molehills.
9:55 Damn aint that a blast from the past! That Winamp Skin / UI definitely brings back memories.
11:48 makes me extremely happy. literally looking the video on a deck right now
I literally played OoT with Ship of Harkanian for the first time on my steam deck last night. Holy cow this is a game changer with higher resolution, texture and frame rate.
I'm not the first to say this but it is pretty funny that N64 emulation has been so bad for so long that the new meta is to just go around emulation and convert the games into native PC ports. It took longer but the result is better overall so it's a win in my book.
this is still pretty similar to emulation. the "recompilation" part is turning the original machine code into just enough portable code to emulate that. the project uses emulators like ares as a reference to make sure it's acting the way a N64 would. performance benefits & some flexibility come from this recompilation being static, as opposed to the dynamic recompilation you'll normally see in emulator JITs.
@@bb010gnot really. It's more like a mix between a port and Wine/Proton. A lot less overhead than an emulator even if the emu is using a dynarec and/or JIT.
@@MechanicaMenace mind the names you're using there though-"dynamic (re)compilation", "just in time compilation". these are translating machine code (most often the artifact of a private compilation phase) for the emulated system and *dynamically* (re)compiling that for the host system to reproduce the emulated system's behavior when interpreted. static recompilation (or "ahead of time compilation", a term you may have heard in reference to Android's recompilation of Dalvik bytecode) is that but at an earlier time. Wine & Proton are support libraries for emulating the original behavior of artifacts while directly interpreting the original artifacts. my point is that "emulation" doesn't require the overhead of naive interpretation of foreign code, or the overhead & bookkeeping of JIT compilation. these are methods to achieve the goal of emulation. static compilation is another method.
@@bb010g there's no emulation in Wine (well unless you're not running on x86 but the emu still isn't part of Wine), the clue is in the name. It's a bunch of translation layers. And whether it's a dynarec or JIT they still have overhead that something like this doesn't. Compiling to efficient machine code isn't computationally cheap and it's a multi pass process so emulators that aren't just interpreting avoid a lot of optimisations too. And they're still occasionally running something like an interpretation step so they can (just in time or dynamically) compile the results.
Don't get me wrong emulators are great, I use many and have written a couple, and they aren't going to get totally replaced by stuff like this even in the long run. Some of us really care about ancient hardware. But they do not work the same as this. Some of the same steps? Yes, but in a different order and at different times. And if you only care about the software? This will let the games run at the intended framerate and resolution on lower end hardware and it will be easier to add patches to improve accuracy or add wide-screen support, higher resolution support, high FPS support, etc, etc.
@@MechanicaMenace Yes, WINE Is Not an Emulator, but it enables emulation of Windows functionality through linking hacks. that's really similar to what traditional high-level emulation does.
my main point is that static recompilation is still a method for emulation. i am not contradicting your performance claims about methods. you're making a host system behave like a guest system to the payload. that's emulation.
I'd hesitate to call all static recompilations ports because "port" implies a higher level of decompilation than what occurs here, in the same way i wouldn't normally call an emulator running a payload a "port", even if the emulator only runs the one payload. Ship of Harkinian is a proper port. sm64-port is a proper port. OpenMW is a proper port. the PC build of Pikmin that Nintendo accidentally shipped is a proper port.
Can't wait for fan full remasters with hires textures + RT
This is incredible, and I can't wait to see where this goes in the future. Also, that Winamp cameo had me reeling. 😱
Majora’s Mask on PC + Nerrel’s HD Texture Pack ❤❤❤❤
Nope.
Whoa winamp. I haven't seen that in over 20 years.
man i've been so in love with this recomp and just can't wait for it to support randomizers so i can play it a ton more
top of my wishlist aside from the zeldas are recomps of paper mario, kirby 64, smash 64, star fox 64, and goldeneye!
The nostalgia overload at the beginning was glorious. I've only ever played this game on an emulator that kept the original framerate albeit at high res. Can't wait to dig into this
Lovely video Alex, cheers sir!
Gimmie Mario Golf, baby!
This fills me with so much joy!
I was playing this at 1440p 165 fps, absolutely unreal!
WinAmp? Wow I haven't seen that in a while!!!
This video whips the llama's ass
I very neat thing that would be possible with this compiling to web assembly and running inside a browser.
I smiled when I saw the very small blue gap in South Clock Town on the ramps heading up and around the Clock Tower towards North. I love its accurate inaccuracy! :D
I can not wait for every n64 game to be recompiled but mostly banjo kazooie, the xbox emu version just doesn't hold up and been waiting on that decompile version but with recomplile I guess I am waiting on that one as well. But the better thing about this is that if someone want to make a game playable that only they like it isn't going to take 40 years as the more famous games get decompiled first, they have a chance too!
I think the Xbox version of banjo is pretty good, but I'd like to see it in 60fps+. What I think we absolutely need though is dk64. It doesn't get re released and it's not emulated well. Plus the native performance sucks. Get this up at 90 frames with a switch kongs anywhere mod and I'll have golden bananas falling out of every orifice
60FPS 'Banjo-Kazooie', 'Conker's BFD', or 'Paper Mario 64' (which recently had its decompilation project finished) would be an AMAZING experience on this recompiler thing.
Also I just recently watched the Mario 64 RTX video again, and it still feels weird hearing Alex, Mr. PC guy himself, sometimes gloat about an N64 title. Or any Nintendo title for that matter. But ya just love to see it.
Unfortunately Banjo kazooie decomp has been sitting at the same percentage for over a year
I'm excited for the possibilities of N64 and PS1 as well. Someone has done a wide-screen and 60 FPS mod of the original CTR, which makes it look like it was on the Dreamcast (Like Frogger 2 Dreamcast vs PS1). It's SO good.
@@MrSnake9419 That's why this is big, you don't need a full decompilation. Majora's Mask isn't fully decompilated yet either and they were able to get this up and running.
@@dhgmrz17 I know it's so exciting
I just tried this out and I absolutely love it! 60FPS is an absolute game changer
Body Harvest at anything above 5fps would be a treat
Nightdive-esk N64 remasters at your fingertips.
Incredible, i'm extremely excited about this development and can't wait to see what else people port, i'm secretly hoping for Operation Winback since there's always been trouble emulating it and running it at a smooth frame rate would be transformative, i played the PS2 version again last year but there's something about the N64 original.
A huge step for preservation.
Sadly, this is not preservation as preservation includes preserving the way the original machine worked. In this case you are basically just compiling a brand new game for the PC without presrving the original game and machine´s limitations.
@@jsr734 I understand, the ultimate form of preservation would be to maintain the original hardware and carts for as long as possible in climate controlled museums, but while that's awesome people are doing that it's not handy for you or me or future generations, keeping a digital library is more important to me so then the next step is how you experience that library. When someone wants to check out Turok in 80 years time maybe the Nightdive remaster will still be available but that's not original and Windows might have broken support by then, so the next most advanced version is a fan made PC port, emulation gets you a bit closer but with drawbacks depending on advancements in 80 years, there are those hardware emulated consoles you can buy but those aren't avaliable to everyone.
Creating a source code like this even if it's not a true 100% decompile allows anyone to get these games working on future hardware, it's not original but it is accessible, and in my eyes the more people who have access the better.
Alex and the N64: the love affair continues 😂
I would give a lot for Wave Race 64 recompilation
Just tested it on the SD Oled, wow, Zelda in fluid 90hz and sharp image is something else, it's like a shocking initial reaction, we're so used of these games at low quality.
Not a Nintendo game I know...But can this be done to the original Silent Hill? That game needs it...BADLY.
There's a PC version of it already afaik, and it runs very well on Duckstation with things like a widescreen patch, 4k and the like
Waiting so hard for the ray tracing version. Already amazing though.
This was so easy to do wow. This is like magic honestly
So amazing, thanks for sharing, Alex. Might have to get back into N64 emulation, seems like we are on the cusp of a new golden age!
it really is flawless. i'd like conkers bad fur day and wave race 64 next
I love how you address this topic with such honesty.
Put a shirt on.
well Alex is a honest man
And I love your modesty.......okay, not funny.
Picked this up last week and played it all afternoon its great
I’ve been playing Majora’s Mask in 144 fps at 21:9 and it’s nuts. Feels so good
Well lucky Zelda fans.
Wish someone would recompile MGS 3 and MGS 4 for PC.
theres no point for mgs 3 cuz have collection version
Maybe master collection vol 2 will have mgs4 but I wouldn't hold my breath when it comes to Konami
@@dusty_reaper96 Collection version sucks though.
@@GVCC1 it does but moders are fixing it
The “real” N64 footage used in this video seems suspect to me, like it was purposefully recorded using composite to a generic av to hdmi adapter. I’m able to get better visuals from my N64 with s-video cables to my Retrotink mini.
Looks better than the emulated crap on the switch. I really wish the Switch Online emulator had better button configurations.
@@BurritoKingdom I only have the standard NSO service, so I haven’t experienced N64 on that for myself. What I find even more disappointing is that Wii U VC for N64 supported full button mapping on a per game basis, while NSO doesn’t.
Trust me when I say, that's exactly how N64 looks. I got the same results using s-video to a Tink 5x. The tink mini can only upscale to 480p, and then your TV will scale that up to its native panel resolution. So it probably looks slightly better to your eye because The TV is receiving a lower resolution source. And honestly, to my eyes it's kind of hard to tell the difference between composite and s video on the N64. Same goes jumping from S-Video to RGB, at the N64 had pretty good video output quality.
@@dustinkinard7431 at around 7:20 in the video Alex says that it was captured on a retro tink 4K with the 4.5 scaling mode engaged. I would assume it was captured by John with an RGB modded N64.
@@chrisfratz I stand corrected, thanks for pointing that out. I missed that detail in my initial viewing.
Wave Race 64 would be a blast!
Looks absolutely fantastic.