So who's getting an Analogue 3D?

You all would not believe how many games I've been emulating lately. In the last couple weeks I've 100%'d Porgy, played about 100 rounds of Magic Garden even though I'm absolutely terrible at it, fallen in love with Bug Hunter, thrown a bunch ragers in Party House, and beaten the campaign of Attactics. The Steam Deck, it turns out, is great at emulating the LX, a truly underrated '80s game console.

Honestly don't know why the NES got all the love when the LX had this many good games!

Between some recent hectic travel and a cold that sapped most of my brain power, UFO 50 has been exactly my speed — this collection of modern retro games, some shockingly rich, others charmingly simple, really is a marvel. I've bounced off a few here and there and loved a few others (I really gotta get back to the weird dinosaur strategy game Avianos). I haven't even gotten into the truly complex and lengthy ones yet! Playing UFO 50 is truly like scrolling through a flash cart with a whole system's library on it, except curated to exclusively include good — or at least interesting — games instead of, like, 11 iterations of Ken Griffey Baseball and Earthworm Jim (one is already arguably too many).

The narrative wrapping, that all these games were for a classic console, is a perfect touch — as with "real" games of the era, you can see design ideas and reinterpretations of characters and settings echo through the catalog as you play "chronologically." Highly recommended! But since I've now rambled on about a game that isn't actually emulation in this emulation newsletter, let's get to the news!

The Big Two

1. You can buy an Analogue 3D on Monday. Should you?

Well looky here. A full year after announcing its FPGA Nintendo 64, Analogue's ready to sell it: the system goes on sale Monday, October 21st at 8 am Pacific. If you're reading this on publication day, that means you have some time to set an alarm to spend $250 on a very very nice looking Nu64. If you're reading it anytime after 8:02 am Pacific on Monday, it's probably too late. Those preorders are probably sold out.

Let's say you're there on time, burning with nostalgia for the N64, and teetering on the edge of a purchase. Should you go through with it? Here are a few reasons maybe not:

• If you want an Analogue 3D in a color other than black or white
• If you want an Analogue 3D in a color other than black or white and also translucent
• If you want an Analogue 3D that's made of metal
• If you want an Analogue 3D that supports OpenFPGA
• If you think it's not just dumb, but on principle pretty grating that Analogue insists there is "no emulation" involved in its console
• If you actually don't really like or own any N64 games you're just a sucker for new hardware

Based on the last couple years of Analogue Pocket releases, I'd say it's a reasonably safe bet that at some point in the future Analogue sells multiple colored models of the 64 just like Nintendo did. A metal one seems entirely possible, too, given its history! Do not be that sucker who double dips; if the color is important to you in your heart of hearts, wait for it.

As I wrote a year ago, I think Analogue releasing this system without OpenFPGA support, after hyping it up with the Pocket, is a disappointing step backward. And personally, while I do think this company makes fantastic hardware (and software, thanks to the incredible programming work of Kevin "Kevtris" Horton), the marketing that insists there's no emulation involved feels slimy. Whoever's doing the copyrighting over there needs to take a breath, because phrases like "perfect in every way" and "a milestone in video game preservation" make me roll my eyes. And based on the pretty barebones nature AnalogueOS launched in on the Pocket (and how glacially slow updates were to arrive), I have my doubts about 3D OS being "the ultimate way to play the N64" or including "Every feature you could want, built for people who know that the details matter. No gimmicks—just the best experience possible."

I'm sure it's going to look slick, play the vast majority of the N64 library very welll, but perfectly? No way. There will always be little things around the corners in emulation, and upscaling games built for 480i and CRTs to 4K flatscreens will bring with it endless subjective takes on what works and what doesn't. There is no way Analogue's CRT filters are "virtually indistinguishable recreations of CRT displays" even if they look awesome. They probably will look awesome! But these games certainly weren't built for high resolutions. Some will probably upscale pretty well. Others will look like a blurry bag of dicks. That's just how it goes. And that's fine — when you're not promising perfection.

Overhyped marketing aside, $250 feels pretty reasonable for the high quality hardware Analogue makes, and that new 8bitDo controller looks 👌 too. And while HDMI modding original N64 hardware is possible, it's notoriously difficult to get a clean signal out of. Compared to Analogue's prior FPGA home consoles, this one really feels like a worthy substitute.

I'm looking forward to seeing impressions of the Analogue 3D when it lands next year, particularly digging into how it compares to the MiSTer's N64 core. For my taste, the most exciting thing happening in N64 land right now is recompilation: Native PC code for N64 games that can then be extensively modified and improved. Read all about it in this May issue of ROM!

2. Catching up with Infidelity's NES to SNES ports

In July 2023 I interviewed longtime romhacker Infidelity, who's built a niche for himself in the last couple years by porting quite a few NES games to work on the SNES. These aren't remakes with new art or anything of the sort, but they do come with many advantages: smoother scrolling, no sprite flickering, more controller keybinds, and so on and so forth. Infidelity's worked on quite a few of these ports in the time since we spoke, and the recent outage at the Internet Archive (where he typically uploads) prompted him to create a backup archive on Mega.

I saw that and thought: Good opportunity to share just how many of these dang things he's made! So here's the full rundown of Infidelity's NES - SNES conversions so far, with links to each one.

• Contra SNES
• DuckTales SNES
• Mega Man SNES
• Mega Man II SNES
• Mega Man III SNES
• Mega Man IV SNES
• Metroid SNES
• Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! SNES
• Super Mario Bros. Maker
• Super Mario Bros. SNES
• The Legend of Zelda SNES
• Zelda II - The Adventure of Link SNES

They're all playable via emulation, of course — and if you back Infidelity's Patreon you can play the in-progress version of his next games, Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden II!

Here's a good overview of the kind of care Infidelity takes with his ports – in Metroid, for example, he added a map and saving feature (no more passwords!) on top of cutting out sprite flicker etc.

Patching In

PCSX2 gets improved force feedback wheel support – Rumbly wheel, rumbly wheel, DEAD. At least that's how it used to go, with certain modern force feedback wheels dropping the effect randomly during games. A new workaround in PCSX2 should fix this in the vast majority of games/cases. There've also been some blur fixes for mech games including Armored Core 3, Tetsujin 28-gō, and Robot Alchemic Drive.

Multi-system emulator Ares can now play the N64 version of 40 Winks – This game was unreleased for the console back when, and only saw the light of day thanks to a Kickstarter a couple years ago. You can still buy a physical copy if you need something "exciting" to play on your Analogue 3D!!

Wiimote speaker audio fixed in multiple Dolphin games – Look at all these games that properly play Wiimote sound now: Excite Truck, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, Kororinpa: Marble Mania, Rapala Tournament Fishing, Shrek the Third, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Wing Island

ShadPS4 progresses still – It's been a month, so let's check in on the latest "Bloodborne 8K 120 fps!!!" YouTube vids...

Okay, god it really is looking pretty sick. Bloodborne Christmas here we come!!

Core Report

To me, my X-Men! – There's a new beta of Jotego's X-Men FPGA core. If you're a subscriber... go play X-Men! If you're not... wait impatiently to play X-Men!

Crackle-free Saturn music to my ears – As reported at Sega Saturn Shiro, there've been a few more updates recently to the MiSTer Saturn core, most significantly locking in some accuracy fixes for the sound chip. In that particular domain, developer Sergiy Dvodnenko may now have nothing left to improve. "It now passes every test in the sound chip testing tool developed by Celeriyacon that Dvodnenko has been using for the last couple months," Shiro's Danthrax writes. He also quotes a member of the MiSTer Discord who pointed out that the Saturn core "is the first system after the original hardware to pass all the SCSP tests." That seems pretty good!

Oh god, the Philips CD-i core has sound now – It's not too late for us to stop this. I don't know if I can take an "Excuuuuuuse me" resurgence.

SNES MiSTer core gets save states – Saving the best for last here, the Super Nintendo core now has save state support! It doesn't work for special chip SNES games yet (SuperFX and the like), but should be working for the vast majority. To get it working, you need to use the latest unstable_main MiSTer build (scroll to the bottom). Further instructions from developer paulbnl:

• You will need the attached SNES core and then load the savestates.bin file with "Load SS bin" before loading a game. This only needs to be done once.

Here's a quick vid of the save states in action from a MiSTer forum member!

Translation Station

Sakura Wars 2 is getting polished – Just a small status update here, but the Sakura Wars 2 translation sounds like it's getting pretty dang close! There are a number of small issues and performance blips to fix and some small odds and ends still to translate. "Each of these things usually require hours to fix. Sometime tens of hours," says contributor NoahSteam. "If this was a full time job, it’d probably be done in a matter of weeks. But life is busy and work and family take priority."

Logic Puzzle Rainbow Town is a Patreon away – Try to say that name five times fast, eh? If you're a Picross fiend but always find yourself thinking "What if I could play a game like Picross, but released only in Japan in 1996 for the Sega Saturn?" then boyo, check this out. The fan translation is currently only accessible in beta form to backers of the Sega Shiro Patreon, but it'll be free for all when finished.

Good pixels

A couple of my favorite retro art accounts, CRT Pixels and Devils Blush, are becoming more active on Bluesky recently as the Twitter exodus at last seems to be taking root. Others have been very active there for quite awhile! I like Bluesky a lot, and they're great follows! Here's some art to close us out.

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