Who among us (and by “us” I mean elder millennials) does not remember the glory days of Goldeneye deathmatches after school? It’s one experience that has been difficult to reproduce despite the march of technology — but retro gaming hardware outfit Analogue’s latest, a ground-up recreation of the N64 called the 3D, will likely be the best possible way to do so. Hey, don’t pick Oddjob!
Analogue has previously taken on the 16-bit era with FPGA-based recreations of the SNES, Sega Genesis, PC Engine, and Gameboy Advance; the N64, however, represents a new level of complexity and power, especially when the goal is not just to replicate but exceed its capabilities.
As one of the first 3D-focused consoles, the N64 was powerful for its time, but also, of course, quite limited. And while there have been a number of ways to play these games via emulators, the system has been plagued by compatibility issues and other quirks. Even Nintendo’s first-party emulation of N64 games has fallen short in various ways.
Analogue, as is its habit, spent years meticulously re-engineering the N64 in FPGA form — basically, this means that the new 3D console is, in several important ways, indistinguishable from the original hardware. 100% compatibility with the console’s game library is the most obvious one, meaning every single N64 cartridge works with this thing.
Perhaps the bigger challenge with the N64, as with many other consoles of that era, is how it produces an image. The N64 put out an analog video signal intended for display on interlaced CRT displays — something that directly influenced the gameplay and art styles of countless games for the platform. Many retro games simply look bad on modern high-resolution displays not because they are dated or the art is insufficient, but because the display techs are fundamentally different.
To that end Analogue has built in a native upscaler that, rather than cleaning up and digitizing the analog video output of the original system (as some upscalers do, with varying degrees of success), produces a natively digital, 4K signal with imitation CRT artifacts and scanlines. This is something they pioneered early on, and produced several versions of to reproduce accurate phosphors and display modes for the multi-system Analogue Pocket. I’ve asked for more details on this, and will update the post if I hear back from the company.
The result is simply that games ought to look how you remembered them, which is to say probably a sight better than they actually looked. Still, temper your expectations: the Analogue 3D doesn’t improve the N64’s low framerate (20-30 FPS usually, or less) or the “true” resolution of the game, it just renders it better than it probably ever has been rendered outside someone’s enthusiast retro-gaming setup. (The MiSTer/PVM community goes crazy on this stuff.)
To further improve the original N64 experience, the Analogue 3D supports up to four new wireless 8bitdo controllers after the style of the original, but without their familiar but, let us admit, ridiculous three-pronged nature. Those controllers did not age well — the official remakes are better, but still clunky. (You’ll have to buy these separately.)
The 3D does not support OpenFPGA, the multi-system platform found on the Pocket (and darling of the emulation crowd), but it does have an SD card slot, so you will likely be able to play ROMs if such is your choice.
Though I haven’t yet tried it, I feel sure that the Analogue 3D will prove to be one of the best, if not the best, way to play N64 games the way they were intended to be played. Anyone seeking deeper improvements, like better framerates and high-quality texture maps, can of course stick to the quite advanced emulation scene.
You can pre-order the Analogue 3D in black or white for $250 starting on the morning of October 21. I’ll see you in Facility — License to Kill, pistols only, and no Oddjob.