Switch Online's Latest "Mature" N64 App Update Appears To Fix Some Perfect Dark Emulation Issues

I really hate how people assume Nintendo only does its gradual NSO releases because of marketing reasons and not because it takes actual effort to emulate a game correctly.

It especially annoyed me as someone who has reliably ran into issues emulating N64 games in the past, across several different games. I literally had to replay hours of Paper Mario because of them.

It's still not quite "Perfect" Dark is it?

MS should've just released the Xbox 360 version as a paid game, alongside Goldeneye and the Banjo games.

@kkslider5552000 I could not disagree more. They charge for the NSO service (albeit a very, very reasonable amount). A paid service should be serviced appropriately - I'm not super fussed about the amount of games (most people crying foul about it don't even play the games any longer than an initial boot up) but I do expect the games to run properly.

I think it's embarrassing that in 2024 Nintendo still can't get an N64 game to run exactly as intended.

Fortunately Analogue have come to the rescue and done Nintendo's job for them. As of Q1 next year I can finally play Perfect Dark and GoldenEye with the exact same precision as the original release.

Nintendo used to have extremely high standards. Switch has been a huge success, but those standards have dropped everywhere - poor service, poor build quality (joy cons) a d shockingly bad eShop (navigating and the quality of content / Nintendo's approval process).

@kkslider5552000 Nintendo really can't be bothered. They despise putting money into giving fans a high quality service. Even Pilotwings 64 still isn't fixed.

@PKDuckman Nintendo won't let them, it's Nintendo's way or the highway. Nintendo are the sole reason for GoldenEye not receiving the remaster treatment it deserved sadly. MS wanted to deliver a Nightdive level of remaster - Nintendo said no.

@liveswired P.O.V it's 2024 and people still blame Nintendo for the whole Goldeneye thing.
While in actuality Goldeneye was a huge legal mess.

@nocdaes Not to forget Nintendo charges -extra- for N64 emulation!

The input lag in Turok 2 is absolutely horrendous though

@nocdaes

Analogue products have bugs just like everything else, FPGA isn't perfect either.

@AlexOlney The library isn’t that great when you consider how many years it’s been out.
Also most of it has been padded out heavily by ports of older games.

Still no new Mario kart, fzero, starfox.or DK

64 and GC have stronger library’s in half the timeframe.

Last time I played perfect dark I got motion sickness. Hopefully this time I won’t.

@AlexOlney Honestly, I'd consider the pro controller the finest controller made to date if it weren't for the d-pad. Otherwise, I'd agree that switch's library and NSO is, about, as good as could be asked for these days.

@Djreisat
Same here. It's awesome except for the dpad which made me buy an 8bitdo snes controller. I mean the dpad being wrong out of all things is really surprising coming from Nintendo though and I really hope the switch pro 2 or whatever it's called fixes that. And also brings back a couple ideas from the WiiU pro which is the most underrated controller ever (well maybe the DC also but you get the point).

Anyway great controller and that's coming from an absolute controller nerd.

@kkslider5552000 Unofficial N64 emulation got really better if you look for it so I don't really agree with that. Most issues that plagued N64 software emulation are gone thanks to better hardware GPU standards that even the Switch makes use of, especially the N64 emulator, but clearly isn't used to the fullest.

Also I saw the comment about Analogue and I'm like this isn't the same thing. Compare what's comparable, software emulation.

@mlt The Wii u pro controller.... Nintendo knocked it out of the park with that one! Hands down, the perfect d-pad. The 8bitdo ultimate controller has been my all purpose 'go to' controller for a while now. From what I can tell, their controllers are as close as it's going to get to a legit Nintendo d-pad.

I'm still annoyed I have to pay a subscription to play the games I bought on the Wii U...

Has the dark been perfected yet, or is it yet Hopefully Passable Dark?

Not to get too churchie on a video game website, but it reminds me of the parable of the laborers in the vineyard where people who worked all day were paid the same as those who only worked an hour and those that worked all day were upset about it.

I didn't get it right away because I didn't see the value in it. I think in both situations early adopters and people that worked at the beginning of the day are reasonably upset, but that's what those early birds signed up for.

I'm grateful as a late adopter of the NSO+Expansion pack I don't have to pay more than those who paid day 1. For me it's been worth it, library was great when I came in and I still pay the same as those first people when the library wasn't as flushed out. I'm also grateful that there's no penalty for being a late adopter.

@nocdaes Funny thing is I actually agree with a lot of this. Nintendo should be doing better at these things, and I was furious at how poor the N64 NSO launch was from the "a delayed game is eventually good" company (see also: Pokemon Scarlet and Violet). It feels like they have the smallest team they could get away with working on these sometimes.

But that makes people's complaints more infuriating, because obviously if it was so easy, they would've be released in a better state. Like yeah, fan emulation is good...now! It took a long time to get there, and N64 emulation was already a thing for years and years when I ran into those issues because it took a ridiculous amount of time and effort to get there.

@LuigiBlood yes NSO emulation is worse after 3 years than fan lead PC emulation is after 20. But at the same time, the issues I ran into for Paper Mario was merely 10 years ago (which btw, even when I figured out how to fix that still had graphical glitches), while the issues the NSO release of Paper Mario had was fixed in months. That doesn't justify other aspects of how N64 NSO has gone, in the sense that they could presumably pay more people to fix things quicker and still make a solid profit from this, but it is also not the same thing.

@kkslider5552000 The problem is that the N64 NSO emulator is the same one from Wii U... and it's been almost 10 years, the improvements are genuinely abysmal

@LuigiBlood Even if its the same emulator, the quality difference is obvious. The color isn't darkened for no reason, they run better on average (at least after they're fixed, big caveat) and I don't have to pay 10 bucks for every single one. (I'm paying 11 for the whole thing for a year)

I'm not arguing against fan emulation being good or superior in some notable ways, I am saying the issue begins and ends with "if they paid enough people" from what it seems like to me and that complaints often understate the difficulties of emulation, which is annoying and also understates fan efforts. This isn't "eh fans did it, Nintendo bad and lazy" its "Nintendo isn't paying enough to compete with 20+ years of fan efforts"

@kkslider5552000 the problem is that people thinks it's difficult, they ignore that there were two key problems that plagued N64 unofficial emulation quality:

• A complete lack of active developers for a significant period of time, almost all of the improvements were done by people who weren't in the scene until more recently, so in the meantime, there wasn't very much progress
• The GPU standards at the time did not easily allow good N64 graphics emulation. Now Vulkan API exists, and it provided us Parallel-RDP and RT64, both of which essentially revolutions the way we emulate N64 graphics without it being a hacky mess. The first one allows very accurate N64 graphics in a playable speed using very unconventional methods that weren't possible until Vulkan, the other is a highly optimized graphics plugin that can run on a potato with optional and significant improvements, using novel ways to do it that works best in Vulkan and DirectX 12.

I want Nintendo to attempt something like RT64, but instead they're using Vulkan in a way that isn't even really making use of it, and RT64 was made by a single guy in his free time for a few years, in fact, so is Parallel-RDP I believe (though that one is based off the work of someone else). Now imagine having it done by a person or two full time, and that's just not what I'm seeing.

80 dollars for 8 systems to be online for a year is almost nothing. I can't stand that they don't add an option to select "pro controller" for the games and it will change your inputs but it is 8 dollars a year. Or an individual nso is like 30 bucks a year. The switch is so far and above the wii u and the games have been great.
34.99 divided by 12 is about 3 dollars a month or 9 cents a day. Just buy one less candy bar and it'll be ok.

@JohnnyMind It's why I was over the moon with Banjo Tooie! They managed to get the jiggy minigame to work and it all has LESS framerate issues, awesome!

@Arkay Nintendo stipulated parity as they wanted to use it specifically for their online subscription - they accepted a Microsoft edition running in 4K widescreen by default , however it was not allowed any further graphical enhancements. To balance out superior performance and control on Xbox, the Switch edition was the only one allowed to have basic online functionality.

Rare already had a GoldenEye remaster in house from over 10 years ago, a near final version was leaked. Had Nintendo been more flexible and didn't insist on the game exclusively on their pityful wreck of an online service, MS would have released the remaster on both consoles with superior online functionality.

@liveswired Rare worked on it without any approval. They just winged it and then when all parties involved couldn't come to an agreement, it got canned.