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NINTENDO 64 EMULATION<br />
Linux Gaming: Nintendo 64<br />
Emulation - Part 2<br />
embark on the ultimate 90s gaming journey<br />
by Tobias Schaaf<br />
Part 1 of this article introduced the latest version of the Nintendo 64 emulator<br />
for Linux and compared its performance on all of the current <strong>ODROID</strong><br />
boards. This second part presents an overview of some of the more popular<br />
Nintendo 64 games, including Mario Kart, Mario Party, Paper Mario, Star Fox, Star<br />
Wars, Starcraft, Super Mario, Super Smash Bros, and Legend of Zelda.<br />
Mario Kart 64<br />
Mario Kart is very well-known franchise from Nintendo as<br />
a racing game, starring the most famous characters from Nintendo<br />
like Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Bowser<br />
and others. One of the big benefits of this game is that you can<br />
play it with up to 4 players at the same time.<br />
I’m not really a fan of the series, especially the Nintendo 64<br />
version, which is graphically poor in my opinion. Although the<br />
N64 is known for its 3D capabilities, Mario Kart 64 uses mostly<br />
2D sprites, which don’t look good. The only 3D elements of the<br />
game are the ground that you are driving on, and some obstacles<br />
and bridges, which makes the game very unattractive to play.<br />
U3<br />
When I first ran the game without frameskip, it was rather laggy. Since the game<br />
mostly uses old 2D sprites, it really made me wonder why this game needs so much<br />
CPU power. However, once I activated frame skipping, it worked fine on the U3.<br />
There is some small delay in the sound while using the menu, but nothing that’s really<br />
troublesome. In-game racing works fine without lags or slowdowns, and<br />
multiplayer with several controllers is working perfectly as well.<br />
C1<br />
While the menu is slow, the in-game experience is good and seems to<br />
work at full speed using the Rice plugin. It’s definitely playable, although<br />
you get a much better experience on the U3 or XU3 rather than the C1.<br />
When I re-tested it using glide64mk2, the game ran fine, although it had<br />
some glitches with the shadows and ground textures.<br />
XU3<br />
Mario Kart 64 had no issues on the XU3. It ran at full speed and<br />
could easily be controlled with an the XBox 360 controller.<br />
<strong>ODROID</strong> MAGAZINE 17<br />
<strong>ODROID</strong> MAGAZINE 17
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