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Last week, Nintendo launched the ‘Expansion Pack’ tier for its Switch Online service. As you may have noticed, it hasn’t gone down well with some players. Apart from the trailer becoming the most disliked Nintendo YouTube video ever, the N64 emulation has been criticised for not even matching the standards set by community efforts.
Game developer and YouTuber, Modern Vintage Gamer, has now taken a look at the history of the Nintendo’s N64 emulation, which technically dates back to the GameCube era – with the release of the Wind Waker pre-order bonus disc.
As generations have passed, Nintendo’s emulation has taken a turn for the worse. Apart from a key figure moving on in 2011, the Wii era of N64 emulation is still considered to be “the best” because each game ran its own version of the existing emulator – offering again “the best” experience, short of playing on the actual hardware.
In 2012, during the Wii U generation, Nintendo decided to introduce an “overarching emulator” it had built that would power all 21 N64 games available on the platform. This supposedly resulted in all sorts of issues such as input lag, rendering issues and more. In addition to this was a darker filter – washing out all of the games. The Switch generation is now also using an “overarching emulator”, which explains what’s happened here.
MVG’s final thoughts, then?
“Yes, Nintendo does care about emulation – they have for many, many years, but unfortunately in the last 10 years or so, they’ve kind of lost their way, and they’ve made some interesting design choices that have really just kind of impacted the user experience of some of these games, and hopefully they can rectify some of these things, I don’t know if they will.”
Check out the video above for the full history of Nintendo’s N64 emulation, and tell us how you’ve found Nintendo’s Switch Online ‘Expansion Pack’ so far down in the comments below.
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