Nintendo 64 Etc.

[ottbry420]

Okay, so I decided to look into this retropie thing because it seemed like the bitchinest thing around, and admittedly, it’s pretty bitchin. The thing is though, my absolute favorite system is the N64, and while it does support N64, it won’t run the games.
So, question #1: Will it run any N64 games at all?
Question #1.1: Which, if any have you been successful with?
Question #1.2: Is there any way I can make it work better with the N64?
Question #2: Can you put thumbnails and descriptions on the games, like what Doom and Duke Nukem have?
Question #2.1: How?
Question #3: What controllers are you using? I’ve got an N64 controller with a USB adapter, but since that isn’t 100%, I’d like input on what works best.

So there’s my first bit of questions. Keep in mind, I’m pretty much a complete beginner, so go easy on me. Thanks for any help!

[RetroMarine]

Many of us share the same frustrations…no, the N64 emulator sucks. I have Mario 64 and Mariokart running at a barely playable level. There’s lots of things to tweak within mupen64plus.cfg, but if you change something, it might fix one game and jack up another. You’re better off using project64 on your PC for an N64 emulator.

[ottbry420]

What is this “mupen64plus.cfg” that you speak of? Admittedly, I’d call it a victory if I got one N64 game to play well, or even at all.

[trimmtrabb]

Not worth messing about with N64 on the Pi, it’s very frustrating! Playstation emulation can run fairly decently though :-)

[proxycell]

@trimmtrabb
which PS1 games have you gotten playable?

@ottbry420
1 – yes but just barely for only a few games that I have noticed
1.1 – mario64 actually works pretty well, I also tested an army men game that worked. maybe one of the banjo kazooie games loaded but was too slow to play really… its not the emulator, I believe its just the limitations of the Pi’s hardware
1.2 – not really… i’ve got my Pi overclocked to the max at 1000mhz, I will be trying higher settings later on but really, its probably not going to provide any noticeable difference. most games just don’t load, the ones that do are VERY LAGGY

2 – yes
2.1 – the same way you do it with other games, use the built-in scraper or add them yourself or use sselph’s scraper tool

3 – i’ve successfully used (with n64 and others) the xbox 360 wired controller and Tomee SNES-style USB controllers

[ottbry420]

Okay, so before i put the final nail in the n64 coffin, I’ve heard of combining multiple pis together for certain applications. Would this be a possible fix for the problem? I don’t know exactly how I would go about it, but it seems like if the hardware isn’t capable, adding more hardware could help.

[proxycell]

probably not… i wrote an enormous reply with links and large explanations and then it was lost somehow…

while its true that this is pushing the limits of the raspberry pi, there are also emulator limitation that you should be aware of… the n64 is much harder to emulate than most games
PS1 games are 32bit right? N64 is 64bit. it’s CPU is harder to emulate, it has a lot of internal components on the board that need to be emulated and it wasn’t a very well documented system for people to hack up, bootleg and emulate lol…

long story, short: most n64 emulators over the years have sacrificed compatibility/accuracy of the hardware for performance in a few select games (Mario, Zelda, Goldeneye, etc…)
Likely owing to the difficulty in emulating the complex system, most devs decided to give into the community pressure to get the most popular games working as perfectly as possible
this meant that most other games were left with extremely serious problems, including complete incompatibility, graphical glitches, soundless-ness and horrible performance. you could play many of these games on a $20000 gaming rig and they still would have the same problems

on top of this, for some reason most n64 emulators support “plugins” which drastically alters the entire thing and VASTLY INCREASES CPU/GPU REQUIREMENTS

so what i’m saying is… don’t give up… give it another… 10 or 20 years and you’ll see more improvements over the current state of things…

but hey! its better than sega saturn’s emulation state! lol…
just go for the few games on the N64 that do work well, load up a large collection of ROMs and test them all one by one like I do

[ottbry420]

Okay, i guess I’ll put my dream to bed for now. At least I’ve got a kickass emulator otherwise. I might look into building a custom computer specifically for for n64. So, before I mark this as resolved, are there any tricks of the trade that could be useful to me in the future? Also, what exactly is the scrape feature?

[proxycell]

scraping is downloading the game’s info and box art for displaying in emulation station

[ottbry420]

Cool. And i just plug in the ethernet cable and click on it and it does its thing?

[proxycell]

it should yes, you have the option to do it manually (you see each one, and confirm the data)

[ottbry420]

Awesome. You guys rock.

[ottbry420]

[Author]

Posts