I can’t really be all that arsed about texture packs… they can be kind of nice but I don’t regard them as essential. I love Twilight Princess HD (in fact I got a Wii U specifically so that I could play that version of the game, having already loved the original), but the Gamecube/Wii era lends itself to that sort of thing much better, because the 3D models are more sophisticated. With N64 stuff, it takes you into a weird franken-zone of having detailed textures pasted on top of blocky and simplistic 3D models. And running the whole thing at 1080p or whatever makes the popups and switches between hi- and low-res stuff extremely obvious, when they should not be. To me that looks much more bizarre than simply running the game at its original resolution.
Yes, playing it from the real system with only 320 x 240 resolution does look soft and not very detailed, but it also doesn’t present any of the weirdness that results from running in ways it was not designed for. And using scanlines really does break up the pixelation and render it almost unnoticeable. The Framemeister’s image can be made very close to how it appears on a CRT… and the thing is, playing them that way 20 years ago was just fine. I wasn’t sitting around fretting about how crappy and soft things looked in 1997, I was enjoying playing the games. If I enjoyed it then, I can enjoy it now the same way. I don’t require massive upgrades in the picture to think something can continue to be relevant.
One game I do run with hi-res textures is Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. But the reason that works is because all of the 3D models can be replaced with versions that have a much higher polygon count, as well. You can’t do that with 64 stuff.
Another thing with emulation is that the timing of events in the games is often not right due to it running at the wrong speed. People tend to complain about frame rates and such, and when seeing a version that runs without slowdown will pronounce it superior, but I’m starting to believe that this is not always a good thing. If a game ran at a certain speed, then eliminating the slowdown completely makes it feel ‘off’, in an almost indescribable but significant way. The first time I noticed this was in GoldenEye: at the end of the Runway level, a brief fanfare plays as Bond flies off in the airplane. When emulated, this scene happens much faster than it does on the actual N64, with the result that the fanfare is always cut off before it is heard to completion. I’m becoming increasingly convinced, too, that the speed of the gameplay was designed around the amount of slowdown that the N64 produces, because many levels just don’t ‘feel’ the same in their pacing as they do on the console, and the slower version ironically seems more natural. It’s definitely easier to keep Natalya alive in the Control Center on the real N64 than on the computer, because the enemies aren’t shooting as quickly or as often.
And to point out a very dramatic and obvious example in Zelda, when firing a Light Arrow at Ganondorf, the huge flash of light that results from hitting him causes the system to slow down by a huge amount for a several seconds until the flash has dissipated. The visual effect of this is rather stunning, because it causes the impact of the Light Arrow to remain onscreen for far longer than it otherwise would, turning it into an awe-inspiring moment. When emulated, the flash runs at full speed without any slowdown at all, with the result that it is over and done with before it can really call any special attention to itself. It’s still a nice-looking effect, but it lacks the majestic grandeur of the slower version. (Apparently in the 3DS re-release they actually intentionally added the slowdown back in for this scene, though I’ve never played that one.) I’d actually forgotten about this for a while, having been so used to playing it emulated on the faster Gamecube version, that going back to the real thing was kind of shocking, in the best sense of the word.
I can hardly even begin to talk about my frustrations with the sound problems of N64 emulation. Crackling and dropouts abound, and the audio often visibly lags behind the image by quite a bit. Not good.
I seem to have spent quite some time complaining about these things on here… I didn’t really mean to come in here ranting and raving about how emulation sucks or whatever. I don’t mind emulators when they actually work properly–all of my SNES playing for the past few years has been emulated, mostly on the Wii Virtual Console but sometimes on homebrew, since my sister has the SNES we grew up with and hasn’t sent it back to me yet. The few N64 games they they have on the VC tend to work pretty well for the most part. A few years ago I was trying to convince myself that I could set the real system aside and just emulate, since my controller joystick was busted and I thought my cartridges didn’t work anymore (I didn’t realize that cleaning them with rubbing alcohol could work such wonders in getting them going again!), but after running into so many problems with games not running right, graphics glitches and sound problems and crashes and the constant grind of changing settings, I got sick of it and made the effort to start using the real thing again. Once I got a suitable replacement joystick (I currently use the Gamecube-style stick with a custom-made replacement circuit board, which calibrates the sensitivity to accurately replicate the original stick), it was like a reunion with long-lost friends. I tend to divide my time equally between playing on a CRT and using the Framemeister, and it looks great on both through S-video cables. Really it depends whether I feel like sitting in a chair and playing on a larger screen, or sitting on the floor and using a smaller screen, like we did back then. I’m just happy to be able to keep using my N64, rather than having to give it up and get rid of it like I thought I would.
In a few days my new Everdrive should arrive in the mail, and I suspect that I’m going to enjoy the hell out of that thing. I’m okay with using the Wii VC for SNES games for now (it can be set to output 240p, meaning they look really good over component cables on the Framemeister and CRT both), but someday I do want to get back my real SNES too, because I’ve been missing it lately.