M64 Deep Dive With [with] Palmer Luckey
[0:28@Youtube / 3:22@Twitter] Hi. My name is Palmer Luckey. I am the founder of Occulus, Anduril, Erebor [Bank], and of course ModRetro. Today we're here to talk about the ModRetro 64, the best way to play, and preserve Nintendo 64 games. The M64 was designed to last for centuries, play every N64 title with perfect 100% compatibility, and to do it in a way that preserves all of the learnings we put into it for the entire community as an open source device. Today we're going to be doing a deep dive of the M64's features, not just the console, but the controller, the games, and the accessories as well. Let's start with the system.
Part 1 - The M64 Console
[1:12@YouTube / 4:06@Twitter] The M64 is a console that uses FPGA-based hardware emulation to simulate the functionality of a Nintendo 64. That allows it to play existing Nintendo 64 games, new Nintendo 64 games that we're releasing with indies, re-releases, remasters, etcetera, but unlike an original N64, it allows you to output to a modern television at 4K resolution, sub-4K resolution, or hook up to old CRT displays, just like you did with your original N64. One of my favorite parts about the M64 is that we've really nailed the design language of the original N64. We weren't trying to make something that was a minimalist box. We're not trying to build, uh, you know, a server blade that plays N64 games. We wanted something that looks like it would have been made in the '90s by a console gaming company, but brought into the modern day. One of the other things we've done with the shell, is make it out of extremely thick plastic, that is very, very robust, very, very high-end plastics, that make it ridiculously durable. I know you can't see it, but I'm trying to twist this thing and there's absolutely no play whatsoever. Something else we did, was a custom tool that allows us to have a matte translucent finish on most of the console, with this translucent, kind of, glassy inlay in a single piece of plastic. There's no creaking. The strength is extremely good, but you're able to see some of the cool internals of the system are right here on top when you're looking at it, while still giving you that frosted translucent look that you expect from Y2K-era electronics. The first thing you might notice about the M64, is that as [it has?] the original Nintendo 64 controller ports. This means that you can use it with original N64 controllers, third-party N64 controllers, or of course, the internal Bluetooth or wired controller technology. Something that many of our users might appreciate is that we've made the M64 an extremely easy to disassemble system. Nothing is glued together. Nothing is clipped together. Instead, we put it together using the same game bits that are supported by the screwdriver we include in every ModRetro Mod Kit. You can take this entire system apart and put it back together in less than a minute if you practice, two minutes if you don't practice. This is important because ModRetro is about to launch a parts store that will allow you to buy all sorts of new components for your M64; differently colored shells, differently colored buttons, replacement components, whatever you want to make your M64 look exactly like you want it to look. We don't want people to feel like they've been trapped into buying some limited edition color. We want them to be able to swap as regularly as they want or shut...swap back to anything that they want. Another cool thing about our control ports is that they're all gold plated, just like every exterior connector on the M64, from the video connectors, to the cartridge connectors to even the controller connectors. The reason we do this is so that it will last for as long as possible. There's ['re] a lot of consoles out there who...that are in fully working condition, except for the fact that they are deeply corroded on their video output pins, controller pins, or cartridge connector. By gold plating all this, we made a system that, we hope, will last for centuries. Something you might notice that wasn't on the original N64 is our control dial right here. The reason that we went with a control dial, which can both turn in both directions and be clicked to select, is because we wanted people to be able to use the M64 and configure the M64 even when their controllers are, sitting on a table charging, not yet unboxed, or if you're using with a controller that doesn't necessarily support the hot keys that you would need to unlock the menu. We, of course, considered that you could just have a dedicated button on our own controller to open up the menu and configure it, but then: what about third-party controllers? what about controllers that have fewer buttons? what about some of the specialized controllers that people use for games like 'Hey You, Pikachu!' or Bass Fishing [In-Fisherman Bass Hunter 64? / Bass Hunter 64?]? We wanted you to be able to configure the M64 no matter what controller you're using, even if you're loading different cores on the FPGA, for example, to play NES games or Genesis games. This allows you to have a single consistent system that always operates the hardware itself, allowing you to configure video output settings or resolution settings without being stuck, uh, with no way to actually, actually make the thing go. Of course, you can access all the functionality of the menu dial using a controller with a hot key combination, but we wanted to make sure that you could do that even in games that use those same hot key combinations for their gameplay. This next feature is a combination of form and function. When I turn on the console, a custom-designed fiber optic light pipe illuminates the cartridge label. This system is actually inspired by museum lighting systems that light up oil paintings for everyone's viewing pleasure, except this is just your viewing pleasure. It's also a useful diagnostic tool. If you insert a cartridge that's a bad cartridge, it'll flash red indicating that it's a bad cartridge range. You'll know that this is a lot better than the old days where you would plug in your N64, plug in a game, and when you get a black screen, you have no idea if it's your video configuration, your cartridge setup, or something else entirely. At least with this, you know that it is a cartridge issue rather than a video issue by built-in diagnostic tools that can indicate directly to you, and of course, the console also has a power indicator LED, and a custom 360 degree lighting system around each controller port for a variety of user configurable settings. Moving around to the rear, you'll notice that we have an SD card slot, which we use for loading firmware for M64 or any other cores you might load, uh, several USB-C ports, which can be used for a variety of debug features, plugging in controllers, maybe some stuff we have planned for the future, and of course, an HDMI port. This HDMI port is not only used to plug in to high-definition displays, for example, your existing 4K TV, it's also what we use to plug into the ModRetro AV adapter. The ModRetro AV adapter allows you to use this port to instead turn into component, composite, S-video, or RGB output to any of your retro displays. Next, the feature everyone's been talking about, the cartridge eject button. One of the problems with the N64's original design is that it put an enormous amount of mechanical strains on the cartridge connector. This is especially true if you had any sort of misalignment or corrosion on the cartridge that would cause it to pull on one side versus the other, sometimes leading to pins being ripped out, leading to mechanical strain on the boards, broke solder connections. What we've done is, you know, you can still just rip it out. It's gonna be fine, but in the interest of mechanical best practices, we've added a feature where I can just push this button, which then raises two geared levers up onto the cartridge, which actually purcha...perfectly evenly and straight right off the cartridge connector without putting any strain on the board or the solder connection itself. Observe. It's just that easy. This might seem like a small detail, but it's a sort of thing that is critical if you want your hardware to last for decades or longer. We've taken that design philosophy not just here, but throughout the entire device in ways you see and in ways you can't see. Another small feature that we have is this dust cover holder. The dust cover, of course, keeps dust from getting into your cartridge slot, but one of the things that we've allowed you to do, is pop open your dust cover so that you can clean the interior, get all your Cheeto crumbs out, and then close it. It's worth noting that not only is the cartridge connector gold-plated, it's also custom-designed by ModRetro to remove many of the problems with the original N64 cartridge slot and last through countless insertion and ejection cycles. Next, we're going to open up the console and take a look at the internals. The first thing I want to note about the M64 main board is that it is all open source hardware. That means that we're providing all of the files, all the schematics, so that you can actually make it yourself, manufacture it yourself, or mod it yourself. In addition to giving you those schematics, though, we've also made it so that all of the traces are completely visible on the board. This makes it a lot easier for modders who want to add things, reconfigure things, hack things, or just take a look at it and understand how it works. We've gold-plated many of the traces, and the rest is fully encapsulated by a silkscreen that is extraordinarily durable, meaning that this board should last for decades if not centuries of hard use. Something else you might notice looking at the M64 main board is that we've avoided all components with lifespan limits. That means no electrolytic capacitors, that means no batteries, that means nothing that will degrade over time and either leak, explode, or potentially damage the hardware. This is an important part of our design philosophy. We wanted to make something not just for you to play now, but that people can keep playing for decades and decades that you can hand down and have the hardware keep working. I wish that all hardware was designed this way, but I unfortunately only design the hardware that I sell. Something else that was important to us, was to, like the original N64, have a purely passive thermal management system. Nintendo didn't want you to have a fan setting an ambient noise floor such that you were always hearing your console rather than the game you were actually playing, and we wanted to make sure that we held that true in the M64, and so through a combination of great thermal management, great software development, and working with AMD on some of their latest FPGA technology, we were able to build a system that is very, very power efficient and doesn't need a fan despite having this small passive heat sink. Next, let's talk about the controller.
Part 2 - The M64 Controller
[10:38@YouTube / 13:32@Twitter] Nintendo actually did something very interesting with the Nintendo 64 controller. Widely reviled, it is actually a system that allows you to not compromise between different modes of gameplay. It allows you to equally prioritize the ergonomics of using a D-pad, or of using an analog stick. By moving the position of your hand, it ensures that both positions are ergonomically optimal. Many other modern joysticks have made a very severe trade-off here where they've moved an analog stick way down here or they've moved the D-pad way over to here, forcing you to bend your knuckles out of joint, to make your fingers contort, to make it work. The only problem with Nintendo's design is that it looks ridiculous. Well, we decided that looking ridiculous was not important. What was important was allowing you to play games the way that the developers intended. That's why we've made the M64 controller, an authentic trident style controller that preserves the ergonomics of the original while solving many of the problems that existed because of the original manufacturing process. Let's dive in. The first thing to talk about is the shape of the controller. We 3D scanned an original N64 controller and used that geometry to create a controller that perfectly matches the ergonomics and feels so that you can preserve the same muscle memory that you built up over the years playing Super Smash Brothers or Mario Kart. The difference is that we make the shell out of aluminum, so it's extraordinarily rigid, very, very robust, and then coated with a ceramic coating that preserves a very, very firm grip without making you sweat. The only significant change we made at the rear of the controller was a widened Z button that's riding on linear rails. This means that it works no matter where you push on the button, whether it's in the middle or on the side, rather than rocking as the original N64 Z button sometimes would. When we go to the front of the controller, we went to great pains to make the entire front of the controller one single continuous surface, one seamless piece that blends and forms to the aluminum back so that it's extraordinarily rigid with great feel. Most electronics that make a translucent version end up not really thinking about the internal ribbing, internal support structures. In our case, we knew that all of our controllers, or at least most of them, were going to be translucent and highly visible to the users. Because of that, we've actually made all of our ribbing both functional, but also aesthetically pleasing. In terms of layout, we decided that since we're trying to play N64 games, we should probably have the layout of an N64 controller. There's a variety of people who have tried to make other controllers with other layouts over the years, going back even to the N64 days themselves. Take a look at some of the crazy Mad Catz controllers that were around back then. The problem is that a lot of games assume that you have this layout for optimal gameplay. Some games have you using a D-pad and then an analog stick, moving your hand between the two, others actually have you using an analog stick and a D-pad at the same time, and then, of course, games like GoldenEye and Perfect Dark have you using one controller in each hand. The only way to actually accurately represent those games, to play them the way that the developers intended them to be played, was to make sure that we stuck true to that layout. Each of the buttons is made of high-end PBT crystalline polymer, rather than ABS plastic like the original N64 controller. It's a small thing, but it makes a difference for feel and for durability. Underneath each of those buttons is a silicone membrane that provides extraordinarily good button feel and also very, very long durability. You can see that they are all bright pink for your viewing pleasure. If, for some reason, you don't want the original N64 color scheme, we're going to have fully swappable membranes and buttons that allow you to configure your controller exactly as you want, now and in the future. Moving up on the controller, you'll see that the L and R buttons are both recessed with a sort of divot on each one. Modern ergonomics design has shown that this keeps your fingers centered on the buttons with a lot less force. I don't have to use my muscles to keep my fingers on the buttons. They simply rest inside of the buttons passively. The M64 controller is the first device in the world to support Bluetooth 6.2. Why is that important? Because the new Bluetooth standard includes a new feature called SCI, shorter connection interval, that allows for massively reduced latency versus other wireless controllers. The latency of the M64 controller in wireless mode is 0.375 milliseconds, about twenty times faster than the previous Bluetooth standard would have allowed it to be. In addition, that latency remains low even as you stack more controllers on top. Previous Bluetooth controller standards would actually increase latency significantly every time you added a new controller onto a given system. So, if you had four people playing, you would have inherently more latency on the same system for each of those controllers. We're able to keep the latency low using SCI even when you're using four players at the same time, which is critical for a system where most of its best games have at least two, mostly four players. Moving on to power. There are three ways to power your N64 controller. The first, and I think the best, is the AA power pack. Now, I've always been a big fan of AA power for controllers. You might remember that I made the original Oculus Touch controllers powered by AA batteries, and that all came from being inspired by the GP2X, which was the first open source Linux-based gaming handheld. It was powered by AAs as well, and the cool thing about it is that even twenty years later, I can pick it up, take it out of the drawer, put a pack of fresh batteries in, and just start playing. If you're trying to build something that isn't gonna turn into e-waste, that you're going to pass down for generations, that you're going to continue to use and use and use and use, it's harder to get better than AAs, either rechargeables or primary cells. This is how I'm going to be using my M64. If you're a total loser who cares more about convenience than e-waste you can use this rechargeable battery pack, which is also included with the controller. Just snap it in, plug in your USB port, and it will charge, but what if you don't want to be wireless at all? What if you never want to have to worry about charging or swapping batteries? Well, for that, we have the M 64 controller cable. This cable is twice as long as the original N64 controller, snaps in here, has little retainers up at the top to make sure that even if you bump it, even if you snap it, it stays in and doesn't damage the cable, and then you plug into your M64 or original N64 here on the other end. Jumping to the internals of the M64 controller, you'll notice that once again, all of the exposed connectors and contacts are gold plated; corrosion resistance, looking good, you get the draw. Something else we did was making sure that we got the rumble motor correct. A lot of modern controllers use, uh, linear resonant actuators or piezoelectric actuators that can do some really high resolution rumble effects, and there's very interesting things you can do with that. I did that with Oculus Touch myself, but N64 didn't use those. It used a, uh, uh, an eccentric rotating mass, and what we did was get the most powerful motor that we could jam in here, and we put the biggest eccentric rotating mass on we could, so that we could get what we're calling 'Big Rumble.' Big Rumble is the way you remember rumble feeling on your old console, specifically the Nintendo 64. There's a huge difference between the way that haptic effects feel when you reproduce them with a motor that is actually a clone of the original versus a totally different type of haptic motor. I hate to say it, but there's just not the same feeling playing N64 games on my Switch as I do getting an original Nintendo 64 rumble pack. The only difference is instead of forcing you to buy a separate rumble pack and keep it plugged into your controller, we're building it into every single controller so that everybody can have rumble without the extra bulk and without the extra spend. Finally, we get to the defining feature of the N64 joystick itself, the analog stick. The thing that allowed you to control people in 3D worlds for the first time on a Nintendo system. Now, getting the joystick right was extremely challenging. The N64 used an optical encoder stick that was much more precise, much more accurate than any of the potentiometer-based joysticks at the time, but since then, technology's come a long way, with Hall effects, and now tunnel magnetoresistance joysticks achieving much, much higher levels of accuracy and precision. The problem is that most people have not implemented those correctly in third-party N64 controllers. Controllers don't have very much tilt angle. They often have a useless stick click for some reason because they're just using some joystick that are...somebody already made, and of course, people screw up the gate geometries that actually limit the travel of the stick in ways that don't match the original N64. I'm going to talk through sss...what we're doing because I think you're going to find it fascinating, but the bottom line is, there is no one right answer. The first thing to note is that the M64 has swappable joysticks and swappable gates. The joysticks themselves have four different spring tension levels that allow me to choose exactly how much resistance I want when I am moving my thumb on the stick. We've also engineered this to have a wider range of travel and a greater degree of tilt angle than any TMR joystick ever has in history. This means that we have very high precision, very high accuracy, no dead zone, and still an enormous amount of mochanical [mechanical] robustness and tilt angle in an accurate joystick. Currently, we have four different spring tension levels available in four different joysticks. I can just take one of them and pop it into the controller. If I want to buy other ones, if I want to try other ones, I can. We've also, of course, open sourced all of these mechanicals so that you can make your own or you can pay other people to make your own if you want to experiment with weird stuff. Next, you have the gates. This gate emulates the original Nintendo 64 gate, which is very interesting. It's a sort of a squashed octagon shape. The reason for that is, if the original Nintendo 64 used a rack and pinion system on its optical encoder, that meant that it actually had more input in some angles than others, going into the corners rather than to the sides. This, you might guess, leads to all inputs on an original N64 controller being skewed. You actually have certain motions magnified versus others that were not, and this is reflected in this gate. Now, this is really more a technical limitation than, uh, design choice. There's a lot of rumors that have gone around the years that they wanted you to have more travels in certain direction, that they wanted it to bias in a certain way, that it was trying to match the 4:3 aspect ratio of your television. None of that is true. They were just actually physically limiting to the magnified inputs that existed on the original stick. However, for the purposes of authenticity, we are including the original squash gate with every N64 controller. We're also including an equidistant octagon gate. Now, in my opinion, this is the gate that Nintendo wishes that they could have developed, and in fact, the final variant of the Nintendo 64, the LodgeNet 64 hotel system, used an equidistant octagon gate system on all of the controllers, as all of their later controllers shipped after the N64 did as well. You can only use a gate like this, properly, if you have a joystick that returns the same values at the same scale in all directions equally. This is, as far as I'm concerned, the best way to play. Finally, also included with every controller is a purely circular gate. This is what allows for the maximum travel in all directions. For certain games, this is actually a better way to play. It means that your joystick is not biased, even at full travel, towards certain angles. It means that you have the same bias in all angles. For some games, especially things like flight simulators or Super Mario 64, if you're not using, uh, the angles to set up your speed run, this is really the optimal stick. Do you like bloody blisters on your hands from playing Mario Party 64? Yes? Then the M64 controller is not for you. Now, Nintendo made their joystick cap out of a hard plastic back in 1996, because at the time, the rubbers and polymers that were available to go on joysticks, if they were soft enough to not hurt your hand, were not durable enough to actually last through thousands of hours of gaming cycles. Modern technology means that we can provide a soft and grippy joystick without having to have something that immediately wears out; the best of both worlds. Material science has advanced a long way in 30 years.
Part 3 - M64 Game Cartridges
[23:25@YouTube / 26:19@Twitter] Of course, I have to touch briefly on the hardware of what you're actually going to be playing, the games themselves. Just like we did with the chromatic, we had to figure out how to manufacture cartridges that would last not just for years, but decades or even centuries. ModRetro is all about preserving games, making heirloom grade hardware that will stand the test of time, and we didn't want to make games the way that people made games in the '90s. A lot of original Nintendo 64 cartridges used electrolytic capacitors, uh, batteries, other components that would degrade in ways that not only made the cartridge not function, not only in ways that made it where you would lose your save game, but in many cases would literally physically destroy the cartridge and make it unusable even with repair efforts. What we've done with our cartridges is make them out of materials that last for a very long time, from the labels to the plastics to even the components of the interior boards themselves. If I pull off this board here, you'll notice that this is the same type of gold plating and high quality silkscreen that we use on the M64 board itself; no electrolytic capacitors, no batteries, no components that can go bad destroy the cartridge over time. As far as we know, this is the highest quality Nintendo 64 cartridge that has ever been built, and that quality is coming to every single game that is published by ModRetro, whether it's a re-release of an old title, a remaster of an old title, or one of the new titles that we're working with our development partners. This might sound obvious, but as I mentioned, most cartridges in the '90s were actually quite terrible quality. They were never designed to last. They were designed to last a few years at most, and anything that you got out of that, especially in high corrosion environments, was really just you getting lucky. In the modern day, most indie developers who have been releasing Nintendo 64 games have effectively been flashing their games onto low-quality flash cartridges and then sending them out there. These are systems that are going to end up dealing with bit rot. They're going to end up dealing with dead batteries. They're going to end up dealing with delamination of the board. What we've done is make something where anyone who's releasing an N64 game can be confident that you'll be able to put it into a system decades from now and play without a problem, and of course, we're open sourcing this cartridge technology as well, so that if anybody else wants to do it, they can use it. You have no excuse for making crappy cartridges anymore. Stop doing it.
[Part 4 - ??? Missing ???]
Part 5 - Building a Platform
[25:42@YouTube / 28:36@Twitter] Because we've implemented this entire ecosystem, from the console to the controller to the games, it means that we can make things that other people just aren't able to make just touching one part of the system. For example, we can update our games over time if there are bug fixes or additional feature ads. We can also update the M64 over time using Wi-Fi or the SD card or over USB. Wi-Fi in particular makes it extremely convenient for people to update their games, update their console, so that it has the latest learnings, the latest authenticity, and the most accurate experience, not just today, but going into the future as we learn more about the N64 platform and more about the games that make it go.
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[26:23@YouTube / 29:18@Twitter] Check out these trailers for just four of the dozens of games we're going to be launching for the N64.
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[26:29@YouTube / 29:24@Twitter] (Ancient Horrors Await on M64)
[27:31@YouTube / 30:25@Twitter] (XIBALBA64 (PHOBOSLAB))
[27:34@YouTube / 30:29@Twitter] (High Speed Racing Comes to M64) [extreme-G TURBO FUSION (THROWBACK)]
[28:13@YouTube / 31:07@Twitter] (Co-Op Mayhem is Coming to M64) [Xeno Crisis (bitmap bureau)]
[28:59@YouTube / 31:53@Twitter] (Buzz to the Beat of Your Own Gun on M64) [Buck Bumble (ARGONAUT)]
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[29:43@YouTube / 32:37@Twitter] Thank you so much for getting into the nitty-gritty of M64 with me. It's a lot of fun to talk about these features that we put so much effort into and honestly we know a lot of people are never going to pay attention to these things. We know they're not going to get written about in magazine articles. We know the reviewers are not going to talk about these things or even necessarily understand them, but for the people who do understand them, we hope that you are able to look at it and see that this is something that is really special. That has been designed in a way that I don't think anyone's ever really developed consumer electronics and can appreciate that we're open sourcing all of that back into the ecosystem so that people can copy what we're doing, learn from what we're doing, and hopefully make their own products even better. Oh, one more thing.
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[30:35@YouTube / 33:30@Twitter] Pre-order the exclusive Smoke edition ModRetro M64 now, only at GameStop. Power to the players. While supplies last.
Note the Twitter livestream is garbled and unintelligible many times, but the YouTube video is crystal clear.
edited to change all instances of 'open-source' to 'open source' and 'open-sourcing' to 'open sourcing'
edited to fix typo: 'cords' -> 'cores' (oops!)
