Can't wait to not be able to buy one of these for the next five years.
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Even if it ever was in stock, it would be prohibitively expensive. I’ll just stick to emulating.
Right? Like, doesn't dolphin already do this?
There's a difference between emulation and what Analogue does. Analogue's products actually implement the hardware of their respective consoles in FPGAs. (Also, what Kecessa said)
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N64 emulation is notoriously bad though, if this actually works as advertised I'd consider picking one up, even with a relatively high price tag
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4K output alone doesn’t provide much (if any) benefit. The article (and I assume the company as well) says nothing more. For this to mean anything, they need to talk about the console doing something to internally render at a higher resolution or talk about what upscaling techniques it will use to go from whatever internal resolution the N64 runs at (480?) to 4K.
Putting 4K in the title seems clickbaity, considering there is “no there there”.
Edit: not accusing OP of clickbait, just the article.
It will probably just be an upscaler. Remember Analogue makes purists machines that works exactly as the original hardware, warts and all. So no emulation. The upscaler is in there because 4K TVs still have shitty built-in upscalers that can’t scale anything properly that isn’t 1080p
It'll almost certainly render internally at a higher resolution. The Analogue team's past projects have been pretty technically advanced, their Super NT (SNES) does 1080p for comparison.
I may have used the wrong term. When I talk about internal resolution vs upscalers, I’m trying to differentiate between what resolution the games are initially rendered at by the “console” vs post processing what comes out of the console and upscaling there. From what I understand, many PS1 emulators are able to actually render polygons in game at higher resolutions so that you get crisp 3d graphics. I think N64 emulators can do the same (but I’ve never really dug in to those).
Thinking more, since this is not an emulator, it seems unlikely that it could increase the render resolution (but we can hope). That just leaves upscalers to increase output resolution. This is what the Super NT does - which makes sense for sprite-based games/systems anyway.
Yeah the games are still going to be using their original graphics, etc, so you'll have Mario 64's Mario's like 1000 polygons... in glorious 4k resolution.
It will look higher fidelity but it's not gonna be a modern looking game or anything. There are some other disadvantages of using a modern system like this, but tbh unless you have a full 1990s rig (CRT and all) it's gonna look different.
They'll probably have a more faithful reproduction mode, too.
I'm assuming that 4K output will most likely be important for the CRT filters. Particularly once you start recreating the curvature, you quickly start generating very obvious Moiré patterns if the output resolution isn't much higher than the input resolution.
Why purchase this when emulators and mods exist?
This device is FPGA, and not emulation. The chip recreates itself to act exactly as the N64's chips would run. The benefits are that you get less input lag, more accurate gameplay, and you can use your original cartridges/controllers in a plug and play set up.
This doesn't replace emulation, but if you are serious about playing older console games, Analogue's FPGA products are a great premium solution.
Analogue’s marketing really wants to push this idea, but FPGA is emulation. It just uses a low level approach for cycle accuracy. This is similar to software emulators that focus on accuracy, like BSNES.
FPGA is technically emulation but not in the same sense as BSNES. BSNES is software emulation, requires a beefy computer for complete accuracy. The SuperNT gives perfect accuracy on a less than 2GHz ARM processor by using the exact same chip logic as the original Snes, so it theoretically is a SNES. BSNES uses reverse engineering with its own code to emulate snes hardware onto x86 architecture. Analogues marketing is fine the way it is because they are correct in what they advertise, the product is niche and targets retro collectors with physical collections.
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Won’t be buying one but this is a VERY idea.
I'm feeling VERY about this as well!
Why don’t they instead invest the money to make a pro CRT filter in that device? Games from that era look so much better on CRT TVs
Their website seems to mention that it will have this.
A reimagining of the N64. 4K resolution. Original Display Modes. Reference quality recreations of specific model CRT’s and PVM’s.
It looks like it's going to have a number of CRT filter presets based on actual TV sets from the time.
The N64 in particular had the big advancement of hardware-backed anti-aliasing, but also the unfortunate characteristic of forcing it quite strongly on every scene. Games look way less blocky than their PS1 counterparts, but unless you're emulating on a really high resolution or playing on an actual CRT, primitive antialiasing on such a low resolution can make N64 games look like you've covered your TV on Vaseline.
I actually got a CRT just for retro gaming.
Yeah, not much else one can use a CRT for.
I got mine for retro pron viewing. Can't beat it
“That’s right, slap that brown pixel with your sharp pink pixel.”
You can't beat it? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?
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This is not even out and I'm foreseeing it is going to be very overpriced (for me).
4K mud, jaggies, and pop-in with shallow draw distances?
You sonava bitch I’m in.
That is what they're promising, yeah.
The jaggies will be a little less pronounced in 4k i guess.
Fascinating how no inkling of this, then Robert pulls off what was thought impossible on the DE-10nano/MiSTer FPGA, and lo-and-behind, Analogue is here to ~~cash in~~ "save the day".
Just buy a MiSTer and support Robert Peip's Patreon, instead.
I just looked at the GitHub repo for that project. Are there any tutorials or anything out there for it that make the setup easy?
The R community misterfpga or fpgagaming is where you get most info (the official forums are amazing too), but it's really quite simple
Buy a DE10-nano from Mouser or Digikey (stick has stabilized, Yay, but prices have gone WAYYYY up -- they used to be $190USD).
With just the base board, you can use most older Arcade cores.
To do anything console-gaming, you need to purchase a RAM module. Misteraddons is where you go for that if your in North America, EU, go through ultimatemister. Get the 128MB. You'll also need either the official USB hub (works like a daughterboard) or a plain old OTG USB Hub (the official one is more robust). Some people buy a case (there's 3D printed ones, and there's fancy aluminum ones), others (like myself) slap the whole thing in an ITX PC case.
Once you assemble the stack, you simply download the misterfusion script to burn the SD card, and the update_all script to grab the cores, and you're off the races (supply your own console ROMs).
Note that it's not a general purpose emulator. If the core doesn't exist for x, you ain't playing x. This is more an issue with arcade titles; consoles are easy - if the core for the console (e.g., SNES) exists, you can pretty much expect that all games for that console will work. The beauty of it is there is NO (read: imperceptibly) lag (you can get no lag [beyond what was present on original hardware] if you go analog to a CRT and use OG peripherals with a SNAC adapter, but it's not a noticeable difference IMO). It's unbelievable once you try it. For me, the litmus test is the Tyson fight on NES Punch Out. It's just... easier when you're not fighting input delay that exists in almost every software emulator out there.
Check the YouTube channel video game esoterica to see what's out there. I love it. Feels just like being on original hardware.
Me over here with my old N64 I bought in 1997 with a crusty Chinese retrotink knockoff...
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It will also include “Original Display Modes featuring reference quality recreations of specific model CRTs and PVMs” for the purists out there, along with Bluetooth support and four controller ports.
Analogue isn’t even showing the hardware yet — right now, we just have these brief glimpses of what appears to be the console, as well as the wireless 8BitDo controller that’s launching alongside it.
Analogue has a strong history of releasing high-quality recreations of consoles like the NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis, making it possible to play old cartridges on modern televisions.
Most recently, the company turned its attention to portable gaming with the sleek Analogue Pocket.
But Analogue says this shouldn’t be a problem because it uses a solution called field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology that essentially lets it function like the original hardware.
More details on the Analogue 3D are coming, he notes, including not only the hardware, price, and release information but also additional features.
The original article contains 306 words, the summary contains 158 words. Saved 48%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
No openFPGA support? That's sad, but I guess it means more sales for Everdrive and other flash carts.
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