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Can’t wait to not be able to buy one of these for the next five years.
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?
Dolphin doesn’t emulate N64…
Huh. I remember playing perfect dark at high res on my PC. Guess I forgot which emu that was. Thanks for the heads up.
Now get off my lawn! Lol
Probably Project 64 since that’s the most popular one
Yes. That is it. It’s been since before I had kids… Everything before that is a little bit fuzzy.
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)
Yeah, it was probably project64 I was using. I get th FPGA is fantastic and allows for, basically reprogrammable hardware (think re-flashing all your firmware at the rate of a few KHz) but isn’t this a solution seeking a problem? I never had any real issues emulating N64, and it didn’t cost anything.
I’m not really seeing where the benefit of this product is. I hope the sell the crap out of it because it sounds cool, but I would never invest in the idea.
Hope I’m wrong for their sake. If I can’t remember the name of an emulator I used 13 years ago, hopefully that means I’m wrong about this too.
I wonder what they’re selling it for. FPGAs are about 150-300 off the shelf. Looks like the pocket is selling at 500-800 by scalpers, and I can see the demand for that. Maybe if the 3d plays all PS1, N64 and PS2 games, all in Super sharp 4k?
Regardless, this will be interesting to watch for further developments.
These are for retro collection junkies. Most people who buy analogue products are only planning on using physical carts to play. This will likely not have openFPGA so don’t expect it to run anything but N64 games, it will probably get a custom firmware eventually that allows rom play but that functionality will not be out of the box.
Rom play would be good. That would make sense, but I think it would definitely be a mistake to not fully leverage the FPGA and make it do other things. If you have the ability to change your processor into a different processor on the fly, and don’t, you should be using custom chip design instead of FPGA. In the long haul, that should be cheaper.
No, if they’re using FPGA, and advertising it, the consumer should expect this box to be a chameleon. Anything else would be a disappointment, just looking at their earlier work.
Still, it’ll be interesting to see what they do with it but I already know I can’t afford it.
I get where you are coming from but once again this is a niche product for one use only. Just because they use an FPGA doesn’t mean it should be capable of running other cores. If a consumer is looking for that type of use then they should be investing in a Mister. Analogue builds retro consoles with cartridge use in mind, they use FPGA because it gives the most accurate experience. It’s a boutique product, so yes it’s expensive and doesn’t make sense to someone who just wants an all in one device like a mister.
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.
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 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?
Even on a CRT a lot of N64 games looked blurry as hell back in the day.
I was that one guy who hated 4 player Goldeneye. That game played like crap and looked like crap.
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.
The hardware they run is different, but the approach is the same in that FPGA and low level emulators both aim to accurately emulate the console hardware itself. You could theoretically reach 100% accuracy with either method. My problem with Analogue’s “no emulation” claims, is that they mislead people into believing their products are perfect recreations and that software emulation is inherently inaccurate. Due to being reverse engineered reproductions, Analogue’s core still encounter similar bugs that are seen in software emulators and need to be patched.
Won’t be buying one but this is a VERY idea.
I’m feeling VERY about this as well!
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.
Me over here with my old N64 I bought in 1997 with a crusty Chinese retrotink knockoff…
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.
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.
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…
Analogue released multiple FPGA based machines dedicated to running Nintendo games already.
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.
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.
Sold on the store front is a no no, but emulators run great in Valve land (Steam Deck).
I just booted Tears of The Kingdom on my Steam Deck the other day and that’s probably a much juicier target for a lawsuit / cease and desist.They’re not even losing money though, I bought it on Switch.
But there’s such poor drawing distance and so much stuttering that I kinda gave up on it.
I haven’t played it much on the deck yet because I didn’t really feel like starting over, so I don’t know how glitchy it is or not.Own a Steam Deck myself, can vouch for that. Haven’t messed with yuzu, though Dolphin and Yuzu are on Flathub anyway so it wasn’t like Steam Deck users are missing out from it not being on Steam.
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.
What do you mean by instruction set? As far as I remember, Analogue physically looks at the chips under microscopes and recreates that physical design via FPGA (This is because the patents have expired, which is different from copywrite). You could be talking about bios (which I know of the Pocket, for example, they used their own, which included skipping the “Gameboy” animation when you first power on.), Analogue can just write their own BIOS that gets around it. (BIOS would be software, and thus classified under copywrite, instead of patent.)
I’m being loose with terminology, I apologize. I mean the specific microarchitecture, as in the specific implementation of the instruction set. Just like photocopying an entire book goes beyond fair use, so could duplicating the microarchitecture verbatim.
I don’t know the case law here (not a lawyer), but I think ISAs can’t be copyrighted because they’re an API (which is similar to Google vs Oracle), but I could see Nintendo having a case if they’re duplicating the microarchitecture directly. Emulators are fine because they’re doing a clean room implementation of the ISA, but directly pulling the gates from the chips could go a step too far and constitute a derivative work.
If Nintendo was going to do something they would of done it years ago when analogue released a Nes, Snes, and Gameboy FPGA console.
If you look at Nintendo’s lawsuits, they’re mostly centered around their video game IPs. They’ll target ROM sites, streamers playing their games, and modders. Sometimes they’ll go after emulators of modern consoles, but only if it’s an open and shut case.
That doesn’t mean Nintendo can’t or won’t go after them, it just means they haven’t. I wouldn’t feel comfortable running or investing in a company like this without Nintendo approval in writing.
Zero use case. Nostalgia is reliving youth, not re-engineering it to be modern variant.
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.
Yeah that’s why their other products sell out in hours, no one wants them 🙃
They sell out in minutes! The last batch of analogue pockets were gone in less than 5 minutes of going on sale.
