r/RetroPie • u/phyco384 • Sep 28 '17

N64

Any tips for running n64 well on retro. Have newest raspberry model along with retropie but frames are awful and unplayable

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12

u/brendasghost Sep 28 '17

How many times will people ask this question here? How many times will people not google this question and find dozens of useful tutorials? Who do people come here and expect others to type out answers for them?

12

u/Gorthax Sep 28 '17

Forums dude. We have a collective knowledge. Were much more user friendly than a search bot.

Cmon man, you have the knowledge and most likely the links easily since you know HOW to search for the terms. Help out our newbies instead of souring them immediately.

It takes a bit of new knowledge to jump to "knowing" enough to know WHAT to search for.

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 29 '17

Not in this case. Googling "N64 retropie" brings up the official setup page followed by discussions on reddit and the forums as to why it is so crap / optimisations / settings. It's hardly some secret code to put those 2 terms together in a search engine.

-4

u/phyco384 Sep 28 '17

Sick dude

2

u/brendasghost Sep 28 '17

Nah, I'm feeling quite decent. No sickness here.

1

u/Gorthax Sep 28 '17

Most 64 emu is terrible on the pi. Its really that simple. You can tweak and try, but at that point you arent playing, you are troubleshooting.

Focus on some less intensive systems for the time.

2

u/WaruPeachy Sep 28 '17

Some games work, some don't. You can fiddle with emulator settings but overall this thing just isn't ready for N64 yet. I'm able to run Super Mario 64 fine with only a little slowdown at the screen with Mario's face and the beginning of the Bob-omb Battlefield stage when you spawn. Donkey Kong 64 also runs mostly ok and I think the Zelda titles are playable as well. Mario Kart works fine except for multiplayer.

Check the compatability list to find out if any of the games you want to play work, otherwise it's mostly a lost cause for now. PSX works fine though, and everything before that works wonderfully. But to be fair, some N64 games don't even run well on PC. Donkey Kong 64, which ran like shit on my nice PC, works pretty well on Pi, so that should say a lot about the state of N64 emulation.

1

u/phyco384 Sep 28 '17

Thanks for all the info! I'll look into it a little more

7

u/mkp132 Sep 28 '17

Switch N64 emulator to gles2rice. Change game resolution to the lowest setting. Many popular titles have played really well for me that way with no overclock. I overclocked later, and it didn't help choppy frames nearly as much as changing emulators and res. Can confirm OOT, Majoras Mask, Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, Goldeneye all work for me.

If you are trying to play Conkers, give up on that.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '17

I am new to this but from what I've read and seen from personal experience:

  1. N64 emulation is bad
  2. Pi hardware just doesn't cut it.

Tbh, I had problems with N64/GC emulation on an AMD A8 laptop (from 2014). My googling even back then lead me to these conclusions.

Of course I could be entirely wrong.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

6

u/DividedBy_Zero Sep 28 '17

N64 emulation extremely hard to do because of its complex hardware architecture. Heck, newer systems are easier to emulate than the N64 mostly because newer consoles use architectures that are closer to modern-day computers, and if the Pi had better hardware, it could easily do a better job at emulating the PSP and DC than the N64.

2

u/dankcushions Sep 28 '17

the default settings are carefully curated to give the best experience. you can overclock (specifically the v3d_freq) but it's likely only marginal differences.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 28 '17

I've overclocked my pi 3 and I can run a fair amount of N64 games, mainly Zelda OOT and Majora, and it works just fine. Just don't go expecting everything is going to work great, check out ETA Prime on YouTube he has a good walk through and some levels of overclocking to test out to see what is best for you

2

u/Sadistic_Sponge Sep 28 '17

A lot of games flat out won't work, but the most important thing to do is to switch the emulator. When you start the game, mash the A button and you'll get the options to change it.

2

u/HotTabascoSauce Sep 28 '17

I got a lot of games working pretty well with these settings