In the shadow of the Switch 2's launch, Switch 1 emulation lives on
Plus: How's that GameCube emulation on the new console, anyway?
Life tip: If you're ever trying to finish up a newsletter after 11 pm, only put on Meiko Kaji's 1973 revenge thriller Lady Snowblood if:
A) You actually don't want to finish your newsletter
B) You wanna have a real good time
I love the six Lone Wolf and Cub films from the same era and always knew Lady Snowblood was a classic but had never gotten around to watching it. I put it on a whim last night and all semblance of productivity ground to a halt by the end of her first assassination scene in that stark white snow. Damn, what a picture!! I wasn't prepared for how much more stylish and moody it is even compared to the best of the Lone Wolf and Cub flicks. So it's entirely Meiko Kaji's fault, and in no way my own lack of self control or weakness for that ruby slipper shade of arterial spray, that this issue's coming in a wee bit late.
No big interview this week, as I've gone for a bit of a temperature check on the new hotness: what's going on in Switch land. Quite a bit, it turns out! And it's less of a downer than usual when Nintendo and emulation are in the same sentence.
Also this issue we've got more patch notes than usual, a couple really fun new FPGA arcade cores, and another choice SnowyAria fan translation project. If you don't follow SnowyAria on Bluesky, by the way, you're missing out on a very fun feed full of oddball games played in exchange for those who gave Square Enix's Left Alive an honest shake. Where else are you going to find someone playing Beowulf for the Xbox 360?
One quick highlight before jumping into the main event: writer and developer Shonumi, who's done invaluable emulation work preserving some of the strangest and most obscure gaming hardware ever made, has released a book all about Nintendo's Pokémon Mini.
You can get a paperback or very affordable ebook on Amazon. Give it a look and maybe throw Shonumi a few bucks for his years of effort reverse-engineering obscure tech like the Glucoboy, the Multi Plust On, and the Pocket Sonar! Or just because you wanna read the book!
The Big Two
1. Original Switch emulation is hardly as dead as it once seemed
Nintendo's continuing habit of DMCAing Switch emulators on Github, as I wrote about a few months ago, has made it harder for developers to band together to continue the work started by Yuzu and Ryujinx. But it's hardly been enough to stop them. In the time since those two projects shut down, multiple forks attempting to succeed them have spun up and just as quickly petered out. It's been messy. I think, though, that we may finally be seeing the ones that will actually stick.
In recent months I've been keeping an eye on Ryubing, which bills itself as a "QoL uplift" for Ryujinx but is nevertheless chipping away at more than just UI updates and bugfixes. The maintainers have recently added a "Turbo Mode" feature, for example: "This adds a hotkey that enables "turbo mode" that multiplies elapsed CPU ticks, which speeds up any games that use delta time between frames for physics calculations."
Another fork, Kenji-NX, has some development crossover with Ryubing, but with one major difference: it's available on Android in addition to Mac/Linux/Windows.
Then there's Yuzu's lineage. While Sudachi is still around and infrequently updated, most of the others that arrived right after Nintendo's scorched earth takedown have long evaporated. The new project on the block is Eden, which "is based on Yuzu but introduces numerous experimental improvements and optimizations targeted at both desktop and Android platforms." It has a healthy group of contributors already and looks to have a good deal of momentum despite being early in its quest to carry the torch for Yuzu. It already supports newer version of Switch firmware, has improved Vulkan support, and changes to how it handles memory that "increase emulator stability, reduce frame spikes, and ensure more efficient memory handling during runtime."
None of these emulators are trying to stay hidden; Nintendo surely knows about them, or could find them with a cursory Google or 30 seconds on YouTube if the lawyers needed to rack up some billable hours. The obvious question is: will it try to do anything about them? Sue, threaten, or just make life hard with DMCA threats?
On that point I can only speculate, but I think a few things are different this time. For one, Nintendo's focus is surely shifting to the Switch 2 and the potential threat of hacking/piracy on the new console. Whether it's a matter of months or years, those problems will rear their head eventually. And two, the developers are being much more circumspect in how they present themselves. They're not using screenshots of Nintendo's games or operating Patreons. And they're also steering well clear of the Switch 2: Ryubing has the bold, underlined declaration "Do not discuss Switch 2 emulation or exploits" in its Discord server.
Does that stuff ultimately matter in how Nintendo views the homebrew scene? We'll see! Obviously I hope so. Because we know from experience that long-term, the way these games will remain accessible to practical play and study will be through emulation.
The Switch 2's backwards compatibility is great! It's a real strength of the new system, offering the kinds of performance enhancements that many players turned to emulation for years ago. I absolutely wanna play Tears of the Kingdom on one of those things. But in time, the Switch library will become harder and harder to play. Licensing deals will expire and remove some games from circulation; the eshop will eventually shut down for Switch 1, leaving every game without a cartridge release in limbo.
That problem will only be exacerbated with the Switch 2 library as it moves further into digital-only territory. So I guess we can look forward to the same uphill battle playing out again in another few years. But if the folks who care about fully reverse-engineering the Switch 1 and making its whole library play great for decades to come finally get to just do their thing, I'll consider that a W.
2. So how is that GameCube emulation on the Switch 2, then?
I think it's fair to call Nintendo's initial efforts to emulate its 64-bit console on the Switch in 2021 embarrassing. It's practically inevitable that fan emulation will outdo official projects in the long run; even without the benefit of access to proprietary information, they win out because they aren't beholden to the budget and time constraints that companies like Nintendo will put on their emulation work. But even then, Nintendo's first stab at emulating its own console on its own console was worse than the emulation it had done on its other console, the Wii, some 15 years years ago!
But I'm beating a dead Epona here, and to Nintendo's credit most of the egregious issues with the N64 library were fixed up. The emulation remains close to a barebones experience without the kinds of rendering, filtering, and control options that homebrew emulation will grant you, but embarrassing, these days, it is not.
And the good news is its GameCube emulation on the Switch 2 vaults over that lowest of bars right from the start. Is it amazing? No! But at least it isn't embarassing.
I don't have a Switch 2 myself yet, but I've been reading/watching up on the new NSO GameCube emulation to get a sense for how well Nintendo has done here. In addition to MVG's video above, here's an in-depth look from Retro Game Corps. The gist as I see it:
- Input lag is the biggest issue, with multiple frames of latency
- Games are being scaled to 2x resolution (960p) which is decent
- Old Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound options have been removed
- Remappable controls, good!
- Analog stick calibration is off
- Network play is, as always with Nintendo, subpar
The input latency issue is probably also being exacerbated by the slow response time of the Switch 2's LCD, which sure has people hot and bothered on both attack and defense, as well as their controller of choice (wired vs. wireless). In the grand scheme of things, these are thankfully fairly minor issues.
Yes, there will be people who find that input lag a dealbreaker, and the controller sensitivity/calibration will be a nuisance if you have a good sense for how those games should play. But these are both pretty clear problems for Nintendo to tackle and improve compared to some of the more esoteric challenges inherent to emulation. I think it's likely that stuff gets a little better before too long.
Will the Switch 2's GameCube emulation ever come close to the quality and flexibility of Dolphin, which has now banked some 20 years of improvements? Nooooope. And I personally remain uninterested in Nintendo's chosen subscription service model occasionally trotting out a few old games from the archives as "freebies;" I continue to mourn the Virtual Console as a way to actually own virtual copies of classic games and show which ones I care about. But that Nintendo seemingly ain't ever coming back, so I'm at least happy to see the GameCube get its due without performing an immediate faceplant.
Patching In
3dSen hits 1.0 – There's not much in the world of emulation like 3dSen. Maybe there's nothing else quite like it? This NES emulator effectively turns old 8-bit games into 3D dioramas, dramatically changing how they look without altering how they actually play. After a decade of development, it's left early access on Steam with support for more than 100 games in the NES library with customized per-game profiles. A lot of the obvious faves are there (your Marios and Mega Mans and Dragon Quests) but some recent additions include Tiny Toon Adventures and Jackal. Here's a nice little trailer showcasing some highlights.
New emulator Snow tackles classic Macs – Written in the language Rust, Snow is a new emulator for Motorola 68000-based Macs including the original model, the 512K successor, Mac Plus, SE, Classic and Macintosh II. "It features a graphical user interface to operate the emulated machine and provides extensive debugging capabilities," writes creator Thomas W. "The aim of this project is to emulate the Macintosh on a hardware-level as much as possible, as opposed to emulators that patch the ROM or intercept system calls." There are some thorough docs to peruse here that I recommend clicking through if only for the excellent Mac pixel art.
Azahar trots out performance and compatibility buffs – This update to the 3DS emulator dropped shortly after last issue. Highlights include:
- "Reducing GPU processing time for all applications"
- 'Significant performance improvements for several games, including but not limited to Luigi's Mansion 2, Star Fox 64 3D, and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth"
- "Greatly reduces stuttering in some games. Games known to be affected by this include Luigi's Mansion 2 and Resident Evil: Revelations"
- "Fixed the start index parameter for the geometry shader config being set incorrectly... this fixes an issue in Kid Icarus: Uprising where grind rails would appear to be invisible"
PCSX2 fixes bugs for Xenosaga III, allows memcard imports for Armored Core – Recent updates to the PS2 emulator have fixed a graphical issue in Xenosaga Episode III, but more interesting is that in Armored Core: Last Raven you can now import saves from Armored Core: Nexus and Nine Breaker.
Getting Scummy with The Last Express – Okay, ScummVM is not technically emulation, but I absolutely love Jordan Mechner's adventure game The Last Express, so I wanted to throw in a little mention here for it being available for testing in the latest daily builds. Some of the puzzle solving can be tedious given the nature time passes in The Last Express, but it's a true work of art and so far ahead of its time I think it can still wow today.
Core Report
Is that Mercs? No, it's Desert Breaker – It's the Jotego show this issue, as the busiest team in FPGA development has had multiple releases in the last couple weeks. First up, it's Sega's Desert Breaker, which HG101 pegs as the company's clone of Capcom's Mercs. Which confused the hell out of me at first, because the version of Mercs I played was the version that Sega published for the Genesis before making this game. A weird thing to clone, then, but here we are with another top down run-and-gunner in the world, and I'm okay with that.
What's shmup? Lightning Fighters, that's shmup – Scrolling right along, Jotego's latest MiSTer and Pocket core is a 1990 shoot 'em up known as Trigon in Japan. Trigon is a much cooler name, eh? Though I feel like they should've gone with Duogon since it's two-player!
Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon transforms – Finally, a "pretty" exciting release from Coin-Op Collection for the MiSTer: a '90s Sailor Moon beat 'em up with some great spritework from Gazelle, probably best known for working on the shmup Batsugun. I took this Buzzfeed quiz to determine which Sailor Scout I am and was like ha ha, sure, Saturn and then it said "People might think you're quiet, but really, you're just taking in the world around you so you can understand it better" and uh maybe I am Sailor Saturn.
Translation Station
Belzerion – ROM interviewee SnowyAria, who this time last year released a translation of delightfully terrible PS1 RPG Ancient Roman, is back with a unique cyberpunk adventure game for the 3DO. Here's a great write-up from Kimimi if you want to learn more about it, but let's keep it brief with the translation team's description:
"In a world devastated by war, only a highly-advanced AI can keep mankind safe in an artificial utopia, Shangri-la. But what secrets does the mother computer Vishnu hold, and can they be trusted? Punch your way through robot crime in this cyberpunk adventure game, blending both adventure exploration and real-time combat with flips and fists!"
Operation: Jump Out – This BlackPaladin release of a 1987 Square game better known in the west as 3-D World Runner, translates the original Famicom Disk System version of a game mostly notable for being the first collaboration between Hironobu Sakaguchi and programmer Nasir Gebelli. It was an effective warm up for Final Fantasy, which they'd release less than a year later.
Good pixels
Last night's Lady Snowblood diversion got me wondering if there's some great ninja pixel art out there that I'm not familiar with — something a bit different from the classic Shinobis, Striders and Ninja Gaiden. And, duh, of course there is.
Kaze Kiri: Ninja Action via TwentiethCenturyGamer
Hagane: The Final Conflict via Mobygames
Kurumi-chan Ninja // Janis // PC-98 // #pc98 #Janis pic.twitter.com/eSOvCiZ9b4
— PC-98 Bot (@PC98_bot) August 5, 2020
