How We Got Here: A History of Nintendo's Official Emulators | Tech Rules 

It's finally done!! This video has been in the works since before the expansion pack was even announced; it just gave me a reason to finally finish it. I put SO much effort into this, learning and double-checking everything I can, trying to ensure I'm giving a good explanation for the variety of things I talk about here. With the sheer scope of it, I'm sure I still got stuff wrong. If you caught anything incorrect, please let me know! With how big this video is, I'll frankly be surprised if there aren't some big things I need to correct. Thankfully, LuigiBlood has already pointed out a lot of these very shortly after the video's release: -N64 WiiVC doesn't seem to have specialized builds for each game. It was merely constantly updated over time, and the progress was shown in new VC releases. It still used game-specific fixes, but they all exist within the emulator by default. -That random shot at I took at DK64 at the beginning of the video didn't actually have any basis, it seems. While it was just used as a small joke, I still don't want to spread that misinformation. However, I still assure you that it definitely didn't use the expansion pack to avoid a bug. In addition to these, LuigiBlood also added a LOT of extra information I had missed and gave a different (although admittedly much more educated) outlook on the future of the Switch's N64 emulation. I highly recommend you take a look at it! If we're being honest, I probably could've dialed it back on taking shots at Nintendo in this video. While a lot of the things they've done recently have given me a bad impression of them, I'll be the first to admit that I made a lot of assumptions here, especially at the end. I still find my criticisms reasonable, but I'd like to remind everyone (myself included) that we don't know what goes on internally and, while speculation is one thing, taking action based on assumptions is another. This might be a needless clarification, but I just wanna make sure I'm not misconstrued here. Please be nice to other human beings! With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy today's video!

Don't worry guys, he's pretty active on twt. Just said he's working through personal stuff and to give him time.

The worst part about Nintendo is not that they CAN'T do incredible things... It's that they CAN, but choose not to.

random note: I don't have the issue anymore but I can personally confirm there was a letter to Nintendo Power asking of Warioware: Twisted was compatable with the Gamecube GBA player. The response was something along the lines of: "There's technically nothing stopping you but if you do attempt to do this, PLEASE send us a video."

A friend of mine and I were playing Kirby’s Dream Course online and we saw the rollback netcode and we were both just absolutely in awe about the fact that it has rollback at all!

I used to basically share a copy of animal crossing with a friend of mine growing up until I got my own copy. Any time he would come over we would boot it up on my gamecube and I would just leave it on (sometimes for days at a time) until I wanted to play something else.

bro dropped 18 bangers of videos then dipped

For those saying he died: he's alive and well. He uses his twitter regularly, he also said back then that he's going through some irl stuff and we should give him time. So please don't despair thinking he left the channel to rot or something happened to him.

The rollback in the SNES Online emulator... is that why sometimes, when playing DKC with my friend online, I would see one of us yeet off a cliff only to end up safe on the platform we were aiming for? That's honestly pretty interesting and so cool

9:50 you mention those tilting-cartridge games being "incompatible" with the GameBoy Player because you'd have to tilt your whole console around, but _Fun Fact:_ in speedruns for _Kirby Tilt n' Tumble_ for the Gameboy Color, most runners play the game on the GameBoy Player and tilt the console around in their hands. The run was even showed off at AGDQ 2017

The mini consoles had almost no protection. IIRC the SNES mini even had a welcome message from NERD when you connected a shell :)

As a speedrunner for Secret of Mana for quite a long time, the SNES Mini is my absolute favorite system for running that game in particular. The SNES Mini controllers are so good, that I bought an adapter to play on my regular SNES, as I think they are strictly better than original controllers especially in regards to START/SELECT-buttons. The SNES Mini also has a (great) built-in flashing reduction, while not noticeably impacting the brightness of the game overall. The only time I notice the game being a bit dimmer, is specifically in the menu-borders not being as bright. But considering the rather severe flashing Secret of Mana has at times, I'll happily play this over the original anytime. The only downside is, that it does not support 3 controllers to my knowledge, which makes certain tricks unavailable compared to original console + multitap (although, no one speedruns these categories anyways) Biggest downside of being a fan of the SNES Mini: Replacement controllers are not being sold. One of my controllers is starting to give up by now, so... That's unfortunate

Can't believe this vid is 2 years old already. One of the best youtube channels out there with interesting video ideas and funny commentary with solid editing. Man's never missed with a video, they all slap.

I was not expecting the Switch's SNES emulator having rollback, that's a big suprise to me.

Hi, I'm volvagia224 mentioned in the video... - Someone linked me this video. Thanks for referencing my tweet. Cool video. Saw a few comments about people being tempted to message Stephen, please dont bother just to say thanks lol. Hes a busy guy and graciously previously responded to our very technical questions when we found him long before i mentioned him in that tweet. We in speedrunning have known who he was for about 5 or so years now. Seems like a great guy and would hate to see him bothered by journalists and fans because of a tweet that was never meant to blow up. Also never knew DS emulator was made by NERD but that makes sense given their other work being good. I think theres some inaccuracies with what was said about SM3DAS - I believe this was also ique for n64, you should talk to someone more informed than me like Luigiblood on it though to confirm. Notice, n64 is missing on NERD's public facing blog regarding sm3das! Enjoyed the video - wish you showed the n64 gc emus running under Wii environment through nintendont (using the Wii hardware, not the gc sandbox mode) to see what could've been also. Re: disc eject for animal crossing, you can also do this for zelda collectors edition until next scene load. P.s. I'm not a speedrunner, just someone who has been involved in that community for over a decade now and used to be an admin on the speedrun leaderboard website and mod in the oot speedrunning discord. Cant type the website... RU-vid will purge lol

Fun fact: Latency issues on Switch tend to be around 3 in-game frames, regardless of the game. That's why OOT is so much worse than other games on the service, as 3 frames of latency is much worse in a 20 FPS game rather than a 30 FPS or 60 FPS one.

It’s been 2 years, I miss your content dude! Hope you’re doing alright wherever you are 🗿

I took serious issue when playing Paper Mario on NSO when I was in the Lava Piranha fight. There was very noticeable lag that happened when I’d fight, and if I jumped on him, I had to time the action command much earlier that what was normal, which was really annoying when I was wearing All or Nothing. His animation also had bad stutters in it that I haven’t noticed in any other fight or location(do note I haven’t played past this fight yet). I don’t ever remember having any real issues with this in WiiVC so it’s upsetting on NSO.

I would like to say that I disagree with a lot of this research. I have done some reverse engineering of my own on some of these emulators, and I have an idea who developed pretty much each of them. For the sake of research and sharing information, I would like to do bulletpoints correcting, AND adding with what I know: - First things first: No, Donkey Kong 64 didn't use the Expansion Pak just to delay a crash bug. While it is true, they still continued development to make use of the extra RAM, else you would have seen a hack that would make the game work without it in this golden age of N64 hacking. It doe really use the Expansion Pak. - Nintendo in the late 90s hired a japanese developer who worked on iNES, an early NES emulator. This developer, Tomohiro Kawase was involved in Nintendo's NES emulator for N64 and GC, as well as the GB/C emulator for Pokémon Stadium's GB Tower. To this day he is still at Nintendo doing archiving and preservation work for them. - I believe the N64 emulator for GC and Wii isn't necessarily different versions finetuned for specific games, but rather the latest version of the emulator they had which contains all finetuning for every game it supported. In fact the GC N64 emulator supports quite a bunch of games, including unreleased Panel de Pon 64, Dr. Mario 64, and Slicradic (also known as Mini Racers), all those game specific hacks are included in the emulator, and it can easily be found since their emulator executable also includes development information that eases the reverse engineering process. All those games are of course supported on Wii VC's emulator. - Nintendo originally had a single person developing the SNES emulator for Wii, but was transferred to Intelligent Systems who were already in charge of the new NES emulator for Wii, this information comes from the gigaleak. Intelligent Systems then improved those emulators for the Wii U... and were also used in the official localization of Fire Emblem on NES for Switch, dark filter included, and 3D World's Luigi Bros... without the filter. - iQue Studio did indeed develop the new N64 emulator for Wii U, but in reality iQue had developed their own set of emulator called "TRL", which you have mentioned, which included NES, GBC and GBA (unused). It was used for 3DS, but the GBC emulator was ported to Wii as WTRL for Kirby's Dream Collection. The N64 emulator explicitly refers to TRL, meaning it is the 4th emulator of the set. As far as I know, iQue was entirely responsible for Super Mario 64 in 3D All-Stars because it still heavily refers to TRL-NX. - NERD has taken over Intelligent Systems's NES and SNES emulators from Wii U to the Mini consoles and Switch, and used their own set of codenames. However I do suspect they took over the N64 emulator from 3D All-Stars possibly later as they pretty much made sure to remove every reference to TRL and instead has a new codename. The N64 emulator for Switch is definitely based on the Wii U's, as it contains very similar configuration files, and very similar code as well. For exemple, I found that the Wii U emulator had unfinished emulation code for the Japan only 64DD expansion. This code is still on the Switch versions, untouched since the Wii U in the exact same way. - The difference in emulation between 3D All-Stars and Switch Online is staggering, and as far as I know, seems to be a regression which resulted of an attempt to externalize graphical rendering configuration in an attempt to make an emulator that can work for any game if properly set up. However I personally believe the emulator is in every way worse than on Wii U even since 3D All-Stars due to many hints of serious issues that wouldn't really be noticed because they did everything in their power to avoid them for 3D All-Stars. A lot of games on Switch Online rely on serious game hacks just to avoid to emulate specific things that slows down the game. But as far as I know... these things were emulated just fine on Wii U. In fact, adding games to the Switch emulator already require serious reverse engineering work and hacking just to make sure they even boot up. I'm usually fine with game specific hacks, but here, it is done to **an obscene extent** that makes me doubt that the emulator, as it is currently is, to be competent. And it cannot be just a matter of optimization, because emulators like mupen64plus-next, which does not rely on a lot of these hacks, work just fine on the Switch console itself. I personally think the emulator is victim of years of changes that were considered "good enough" from iQue, and no one really had the time to sit down and think that the emulator had only gotten worse through those changes. It's very probable that Nintendo simply didn't allow them to do this, but I personally think if you give a bad emulator to a competent engineering team, that team wouldn't necessarily be able to do anything of value. And clearly NERD is capable of great things like their DS and GameCube emulators. I do not believe in the emulator's future unless they do massive changes to it, or simply rewriting the emulator itself. ...Hopefully this comment is of good enough value :)

One interesting note - I heard the releases of Earthbound 0 and Fire Emblem 1 use LUA Scripts or something similar to translate ROMs in real time. Which is how, like you mentioned, the original roms are still intact if you extract the files. In the case of FE this seems to have lead to some odd glitches. The new scripts can't tell which dialog should play in situations where 2 could (ex, an enemy talks to you on top of an interactable house tile) resulting in enemies giving you tips on how to fight themselves. But I have no explanation for why the game sometimes simply seems to read / write to the wrong addresses and instead displays the OG JPN letters while glitching out game graphics, presumably trying to translate them. It's fascinating stuff and I don't think anyone's ever bothered to fully understand it.

This guy was putting up numbers on his channel.. would like to see him return.

You should cover the emulators that PlayStation uses. I’d really like to see how the PS3’s PS1 emulation compares to its backwards compatibility.

I wonder what a security breach coding breakdown would look like. I mean we all know the game is broken but why it is so could be interesting.

"You are safe to engage Ridley... however crudely you want" got me good.

Am I the only one who wonders where tech rules went? Loved his content ❤

Code injection of a DS VC title is the main method for modding a Wii U. The specific game doesn't matter, there's a quirk specific to the DS VC that means it pretty much doesn't check what the software actually is, although for various reasons, Brain Age is the game almost always selected for this purpose, hence why you see it at the top of the Wii U eShop's best selling page.

God, two years. Love all the videos, and whatever personal stuff you have going on, it’s more important then these videos.

Man hope things are going well for you. I missed this channel quite a bit recently. Mr Tech Rules hope you see this and know that your content is loved and you are missed these past few years.

Funnily enough, I actually was in contact with the person who put custom roms in Animal Crossing! (We were both in the TCRF discord, and they put mega man 2 in the game and demonstrated it simply because i bugged them about it)

I remember watching my older brother play through Majora’s Mask from that GameCube collection. I now realize how impressive it was for him to 100% percent that version.

I can honestly say that I have never had any issues with any of Nintendo's official emulators. To be fair, I don't actually own any of the official emulators, so that is the main contributing factor.

9:38 - "It was obviously an anti-piracy measure ... But... you were worried about us watching _this_ on our TVs?" IMAGINE the world where VHS recordings of GBA Video movies played with the Game Boy Player became a popular form of bootlegging! You could just buy Shrek on the street and what you'd get is... _that_

12:40 omg!!! I had that special collection disk as a kid and I always thought there was something wrong with the disk because it kept crashing

When tech rules uploads a new video I drop everything. They’re so rewatchable!

I consider the dark filter a huge thing, as there are games where it makes it so dark you have to turn up your screen brightness/contrast. I notice it big time on Wii U's Donkey Kong 64. It seems like a dumb anti-seizure filter, too. They already did the ROM patches to fix effects, and added in filters that would add the filter only when there was a lot of flashing. There's no need to have a dark filter for every game. I honestly had no idea that was the reason for it. I actually had assumed it was a messed up attempt at a scanline filter as an attempt to make the lower resolution textures look better. I didn't even know it was on the 2D systems.

While you mentioned that speedrunners often consider WiiVC to be the definitive version of many N64 games, most NES game speedrun communities have long abandoned WiiVC because of the minor framerate difference causing runs on WiiVC to be slower than original hardware.

we miss you tech rules !!!!!!!!!!!!come backkkk

This is a good video, which is why Nintendo sent the assassins.

I like how you make a 40min video of Nintendo's Official Emulators highly enjoyable the whole way through.

"You're not here for my opinion, you're here for information" Bold of your to assume I'm not here for both.

30:17 'In this case, I imagine it's some rollback/delay hybrid implementation' That's what all rollback is. Rollback is built on top of delay based netcode, using a minimal amount of input delay to mitigate potential rollbacks. As a famous rollback developer once said 'Rollback netcode is delay-based netcode, it just has more features.' You can choose to have no delay, but the netcode would still be built on top of a delay-based framework. If you set it to have no delay though whatsoever, you'll end up with a LOT of rollbacks in most scenarios, which is one of the problems SFV's netcode has. Of course, if you want SNES games with rollback, you're better off using fightcade, which is free for Linux and PCs, but as you said, official solutions will never trump fanmade passion projects that have been worked on tirelessly for years.

Thank you for all your content, and I hope to see you upload more soon. It’s all been really enjoyed by myself and I’m sure there have been hundreds to millions of others!

As a kid my family including my now dead grandma played Mario Kart 64 together and we had so much fun. I bought this thing so my family could play MK64 together again and it was a shit experience thanks Nintendo

Personally I find the Gameboy Tower in Pokemon Stadium 1/2 the most interesting. It’s one of the earliest official Nintendo emulators, it’s designed for a current system rather than a previous console, and is the only one I can think of that allows speed up. It’s also very game specific; trying to load any other game in it breaks it down entirely. Outside how unreliable the Transfer Paks are, it’s probably the best way to play your original carts on official hardware.

"We should make fun of this until they fix this." I like how you think.

Legend has it the fnaf 2 AI video gets pushed back another year every time someone brings it up. ...So like- sorry about that.

33:18 - Just as he hit the wall I was waiting to hear the vibration from the controller, only to have my phone give me a notification at the EXACT same time and spook me the hell out 🤣

Clarification on Donkey Kong 64, it actually DID require the expansion pack. It being just used to handle a memory leak in the code isn't true; one youtuber showed that when one looks at the n64 memory in real time, the expansion Pak is being used regularly.

0:40 Hello, person from 2 years into the future here, absolutely nothing has been added since and the value isn't good enough for me to want to get it.

Nintendo killed him for this…

Considering the amount of people online who think emulation is just as simple as putting a rom file in a program it magically works, I would not be surprised if Nintendo's higher ups also think its that simple and rushed NERD into making N64 NSO

I admire the optimism in thinking the NSO expansion will have added value going forward, but Nintendo has a habit of barely touching the service beyond adding a console occasionally. Bugfixes and new games for existing emulators don't bring in subscribers. It's kind of a problem with a subscription model in general. It's one of the reasons movies constantly disappear from Netflix but are always on the iTunes store. The added revenue of outright selling each title makes it worth the cost of licensing, porting, and hosting it. Conversely though, Nintendo isn't going to invest the resources into doing another Virtual Console eShop because the idea of buying a ROM isn't valuable to consumers like it was in 2006. NSO's emulation is a novelty, and an expensive one at that. At least the novelty of playing Zelda inside your copy of Animal Crossing wasn't a recurring annual subscription.

I played through Wario Ware Twisted on my GameCube like a mad lad.

the issue with the water in the dark link room is because the rock texture is re-used as a transparent overlay over the texture that makes up the water, as the water was made up of two textures moving at different rates, and in different directions, with the added transparency affect, it makes a more realistic seeming water like water... the issue with the emulator is that its not doing the transparency pass over the rock texture.... some of the traditionally classic issues with making 3d games going back to their origins, are z fighting and seam stitching, but also transparency is hard to do apparently. nintendo's emulator seems to suffer from all three. nintendo will later use a similar method to the water I mentioned previously, in their mario galaxy game, but on a grander scale.

As a speedrunner of Donkey Kong 64, I'd like to point out that although the lag in that game creates cool tricks that save time, the game is so broken that for essentially every trick created using lag, they can be replicated in some way or another without the need of the speed gained from lag. The time save from having no lag easily makes the Wii U the fastest console to run on for all categories, saving nearly 20 minutes on the 101% category alone, and is clear when looking at the leaderboards. I thought it was a weird mistake so I'd like to point it out, great video nonetheless!

Thank you for all your content, it’s super enjoyable and I hope to see you put out more soon.

Thank you for mentioning the Control Stick problem. Most people don't realize it's even a problem and just assume that the games are old and bad.

Could you imagine if Ninendo just actually sold ROMs. Like you buy the ROMs, then you can provide your on emulator on your choice of platform like you would for MP3 files.

Miss you dude! Still looking forward to your next video whenever that may be. Just let us know you're alive somehow :)

i literally JUST started rewatching the baldi's basics video wondering when there would be a new upload. great timing

As someone who already knew (basically) everything you said in this video, I was worried going in, but I am thrilled to see the level of detail you went into. You know your stuff on this subject! I've been a part of the OOT speedrunning community for over ten years now, and I love that this information is becoming more and more public knowledge! Great video! Good job!

I literally just rewatched your FNAF, Anti Piracy, and Doki Doki videos and out of no where you uploaded. Now that is amazing!

I love everytime you upload a video. They're always well worth the wait with how much detail you can go into things without making them confusing. Keep up the amazing work!

I really miss his videos. I hope he is okay and that he comes back eventually. Even if I have to switch from RU-vid to watch it.

Emulators running inside of emulators is something we call emuception I really recommend you to take a look at it its some interesting stuff

I can't believe TechRules out of all people forgot his RU-vid password!! Dang it :(

Good research, good editing, good script. Superb video! It really makes me look forward to your videos every time.

Minor quibble with comment at 14:15 onwards: Input latency does not do a damn thing to disturb a frame perfect sequence of inputs. If you need to press some sequence of buttons in some fast, pre-determined sequence so that each input falls on a specific frame, you're already mentally "queueing" the inputs and doing them before you can react to anything happening onscreen. You can't 'react' to the first frame of a sequence of frame perfect inputs and do the rest of the inputs on reaction, so it doesn't matter if they come out 1ms later or 1 year later. It's actually the general gameplay itself, where you interact with anything that moves or time inputs based on onscreen animations, where input latency becomes impactful.

Hi! I introduced you to my brother. He's super into technology and emulatation! Thank you for being such a good channel. We learn so much, and it's presented very nicely. Thank you sir, we love your videos.

Is dad coming back with the milk?

Fantastic Video! I love the in-dept analysis and history. Mad Props.

I just finished binging all your videos and you finally uploaded again,,, I love you-

And he was never seen again

Great video! Really love the care you put into the research

holy your channel is so good. Very informative and fun to watch, I started the video just to see few minutes and I watched it all the way

I appreciate the deep dive into each emulator Nintendo made and seeing the problems with each one. A good majority of the issues the Switch emulator had were on the Wii and/or WiiU Virtual Console versions too, so they aren’t new issues.

I am still immeasurably disappointed that the VC release of Kirby and the Amazing Mirror on the 3DS doesn't support multiplayer

Always excited to see one of your videos in my box. They are always a deep dive and interesting. I never realized that animal crossing was so small you could effect take the game out and still play it! I guess I was to scared to try it or something. Had this wierd bug with smash bros melee where I would have to constantly pop the disc in and out on the hyland temple stage

Oooh, been looking forward a new Tech Rules video! Looks like it'll be a great one :o

You never mentioned the crashing issue where it reverts the save files to the point when you last opened the N64 emulator when it crashes. I'm not gonna lie and say I'd never get these emulators because they DO look appealing it's just that with all these issues and the lack of button remapping (no the switch system button mapping doesn't count because it doesn't support remapping buttons to the sticks) I won't.

RIP Tech Rules 🙏

Damn every video its worth the wait, amazing work.

Thanks for the video. One thing I'd like to note is what you refer to as a rollback/delay hybrid is just how rollback implementations usually work, combining rollback frames with (sometimes variable) input delay, making the game both look and feel as good as possible.

Underrated channel, great videos, I forgot to take my meds, currently seeing Will Smith in the corner of my room

We patiently await your return. We will be here when it happens

Incredible video TR! Very informative and interesting.

I gotta say, your channel is a delight. I'm so glad it was recommended to me.

This is brilliant; I knew about some of the emulators but never in this much depth.

A quick correction about the NES/SNES Classic operating system: It probably isn't Linux based due to license issues. Linux is licensed under the GNU GPL, which is an awful license that plagues most open source software, which requires that the source code for any forks of GNU GPL licensed software be public, which Nintendo is definitely not going to do. It's more likely based on a real *nix system such as FreeBSD or POSIX where the licensing permits using the code without sharing any modifications to it. In fact, Unix-like operating systems were also used in the Wii and Wii U.

I haven't watched the video yet, because i want to say thank you! I enjoy your videos. also happy new year!

6:00 love how you casually call Doubutsu no Mori “Animal Forest”

"It's really that bad; it's not a joke." Tech Rules: It's funny, actually! "...DID I STUTTER?"

damn i miss this channel so much

Great video man! Can’t wait for the FNAF 2 video (if you were serious about it), I loved the first vid. Keep up the great work!

hes getting milk

16:15 Small correction, this happens in the original version as well. It's just that the platform goes _faster_ on the emulator. Edit: no I'm dumb

Oh my god this is SPECTACULARLY well researched, it took me years of trawling niche places to learn some of these facts. Thank you!!

when you upload, it's always a treat

just earlier today i was thinking “man, i hope tech rules uploads soon”. i wasn’t expecting it to be this soon! lets goo!

An addendum (that others might have pointed out as well): The Super Game Boy isn't even virtualization, it's just a Game Boy jammed into a SNES cartridge with some software to deal with translating audio/video to the SNES and passing input back to the Game Boy hardware. It's sorta like if you could build a new computer and attach it to your old computer instead of having to reinstall Windows and transfer your files over. EDIT: Cool, the video just pointed it out. I'm a dumbass. Still, does it fall under virtualization? It's all physical, there's little to no virtual context.