Analogue is making a 4K Nintendo 64
Analogue is making a 4K Nintendo 64
www.theverge.com
Analogue is making a 4K Nintendo 64
61 comments
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Won’t be buying one but this is a VERY idea.
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I'm feeling VERY about this as well!
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Why purchase this when emulators and mods exist?
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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.
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This is not even out and I'm foreseeing it is going to be very overpriced (for me).
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4K mud, jaggies, and pop-in with shallow draw distances?
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That is what they're promising, yeah.
The jaggies will be a little less pronounced in 4k i guess.
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Me over here with my old N64 I bought in 1997 with a crusty Chinese retrotink knockoff...
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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!
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No openFPGA support? That's sad, but I guess it means more sales for Everdrive and other flash carts.
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I don't see how this is going to end well with Nintendo's infinite litigation money. Even if Analogue is saying they're making a new FPGA to run the games "natively", that still has the same problem as emulators: Nintendo still doesn't want you to run your games on anything other than their own consoles, otherwise people will just keep buying (or pirate) old games and play them on new hardware will all the tweaks that we can do today: antialiasing, upscaling, custom shaders, bluetooth controllers etc...
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Analogue released multiple FPGA based machines dedicated to running Nintendo games already.
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Analogue is doing everything safe though. The products are marketed and intended for you to play your physical cartridges on new hardware. Nintendo isn't even going after emulators, which despite the hoops we try to jump through, are really primarily used for piracy. That is because the emulation developers are avoiding any copywritten work. Even then, the only ROM sites that Nintendo has really gone after are the ones selling the games.
Short of a new law or precedent being set, Analogue is in the clear here.
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The closest they've been in recent times is when Dolphin were announcing their step onto the Steam storefront, to which Valve asked Nintendo about it and all that happened. Dolphin is still free to do whatever, just not on Valve's land.
AFAICT Analogue has been in the clear for their past FPGA consoles that specifically targeted Nintendo's, can't see it having isuses here.
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Surely they have a copyright claim on the instruction set, no? I'm not sure if they will go after it, but surely it's not as safe as you're claiming.
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Zero use case. Nostalgia is reliving youth, not re-engineering it to be modern variant.
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Nostalgia goggles are a thing, though. People have HD memories of what they enjoyed and some people don't like actually facing their low-def reality.
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Yeah that’s why their other products sell out in hours, no one wants them 🙃
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They sell out in minutes! The last batch of analogue pockets were gone in less than 5 minutes of going on sale.
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61 comments
Can't wait to not be able to buy one of these for the next five years.
Right? Like, doesn't dolphin already do this?
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
How fucking stupid are these companies? Tons of demand for their products and they just don't make them... It's like they hate money?
Yeah that's it, they hate money
I'm sure it's just never occurred to them to make more product to meet demand, not everyone can have your obvious genius for business 🤷🏼♂️
Maybe shoot them an email with your proposal, they'll probably hire you as CEO!
They're a relatively small company right, I imagine they have to be incredibly careful about how much they commit to making and thus, don't really have the ability to make large numbers of these things in one go.