MiSTer FPGA Forum

FPGA devs, uh, find a way.

This is awesome. Even if it isn't perfect 1 - 1 recreation of the hardware, I still feel like it should be possible to create something that can run the games. I think the N64 was kind of a bloated turd hardware wise. I love the system, but spec wise it should have been more powerful than it was. Good luck Robert.

Actually the N64 was pretty powerful, the problem was for cost reasons Nintendo saved on ram (a mistake they admitted later)
and for paranoia they went with modules.
The hardware itself was awesome and the gpu the strongest of that generation by miles it was just basically entirely castrated by the cost cutting measures and piracy paranoia.
I wonder what games would have been possible with a decent amount of dedicated GPU and texture cache ram and an optical disc drive. The PS1 would have looked old and probably would not have been able to get a foothold into the market!
The GPU was so much better than what the PS1 had!

werpu wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:24 pm

Actually the N64 was pretty powerful, the problem was for cost reasons Nintendo saved on ram (a mistake they admitted later)
and for paranoia they went with modules.
The hardware itself was awesome and the gpu the strongest of that generation by miles it was just basically entirely castrated by the cost cutting measures and piracy paranoia.
I wonder what games would have been possible with a decent amount of dedicated GPU and texture cache ram and an optical disc drive. The PS1 would have looked old and probably would not have been able to get a foothold into the market!
The GPU was so much better than what the PS1 had!

Indeed... the Silicon Graphics designed GPU was practically next-gen compared to PS1 and Saturn.

And the decision to stick with cartridges was what kept many developers away... if Nintendo went with CD-ROM, Final Fantasy VII would've been an N64 exclusive instead of being on PS1.

And who knows what others like Capcom, Konami, and Eidos could've done as well.

werpu wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:24 pm

Actually the N64 was pretty powerful, the problem was for cost reasons Nintendo saved on ram (a mistake they admitted later)

they had to save on it because they insisted on RAMBUS ram, which was 4xmore expensive than SDRAM, had high licence fee ( though nintendo probably cut a deal on that, i would hope... ) limiting the amount nintendo put in the machine,
it had impressive bandwidth, but apalling latency, which could make it a good thing once simulated into the DE10 tho, but imagine what it could have been

Nickie wrote: ↑Mon Apr 24, 2023 8:53 pm

werpu wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 12:24 pm

Actually the N64 was pretty powerful, the problem was for cost reasons Nintendo saved on ram (a mistake they admitted later)

they had to save on it because they insisted on RAMBUS ram, which was 4xmore expensive than SDRAM, had high licence fee ( though nintendo probably cut a deal on that, i would hope... ) limiting the amount nintendo put in the machine,
it had impressive bandwidth, but apalling latency, which could make it a good thing once simulated into the DE10 tho, but imagine what it could have been

Nintendo also had to make sure they put out a console that was more powerful than the PS1. Sony designed the amazing audio system in the SNES and the two were working together on the SNES "PlayStation" CD-ROM add-on until Nintendo pulled the plug because it felt it had given up too much control over licensing and the lackluster market performance of the Sega CD and other CD-based consoles (which may have been partly Nintendo's fault having announced the SNES CD in 1991). Sony decided to put the development they had already done into their own console and turned it into the Sony PlayStation. Had Nintendo not pulled out of the venture, console gaming would probably still be Nintendo vs. Sega, with Sony on Team Nintendo and Microsoft sticking to PC.

mcf81 wrote: ↑Mon Feb 06, 2023 4:42 pm

I’m sure nobody wants to say it because “it’s impossible”, but this could be the N64 core that everyone is dreaming of … Robert has expressed significant interest in creating an N64 core in the past. If it is in any way possible, Robert would be the man to pull it off.

It's so funny reading this now as the latest update (currently Discord exclusive but soon to be available on update_all) rendered every single (remaining) commercial game completely playable which is unbelievable.