Ocarina of Time was made available on the Gamecube through a weird emulator Nintendo never reused for the rest of the console generation, what's up with that? Can we use it for other stuff?
I still haven't got far in those two games. It's frustrating because when I look stuff up I either am in a completely wrong spot or I missed stuff like keys that get me in where I need to go. Now I know why people fan the Oracle games so much, they're die hard Zelda.
This comment has negative brain cell energy. Do you have any idea how many remasters have come out in the past 12 months alone? Smh you must live under one big fucking rock if you actually made this 'observation'
As a heads up, the OoT Decomp guys confirmed that the Mario 64 engine is completely different from the OoT one despite what Miyamoto said. There are maybe 2 lines of code that are similar to Mario 64 code, but aside from that it's totally different. It's possible that they started with the Mario 64 engine and modified it until it was unrecognisable, or perhaps they used it in the prototype phase and eventually made a more specialised engine
I wasn't aware of this, I would imagine the fact that the emulator runs SM64 and none of the other games I tested kind of shows that the skeleton of the engine is at least similar enough, but that would explain it's inconsistencies a lot more, thanks for your comment!
@@oglostingaming Urgh RU-vid deleted my reply AGAIN. Happening constantly these days. Miyamoto is a designer/producer, it's not his job to know code, he's the ideas guy. Not to mention that misinformation comes out all the time, especially during the N64 era, possibly due to translation mistakes. But hey, if you don't believe me you can go check OoT Decomp and SM64 Decomp for similarities yourself, it's all public and the evidence is all there. Not to mention that I did bring up the possibility that they used the same engine, but modified it so much that it's unrecognisable. If you're going to accuse me of writing a brainless comment, please comprehend everything I've written first. In fact after my reply got deleted I did a little search for you and people mentioned that the audio side of the engine is similar but not the same, and there are 2 unused camera functions in OoT that are identical to SM64, but basically nothing else is the same
They were scamming you and Nintendo for extra money. GameStop has always been shady and constantly breaks consumer protection law, so I'm not surprised they also broke contractual law. My local Walmart didn't take pre-orders and simply gave Ocarina of Time away to everyone who bought Wind Waker up until they ran out of them. It was illegal to sell Ocarina of Time separately or charge extra for both. That was the deal every participating retail store had with Nintendo, no matter which country they were in. Nintendo could have sued GameStop for this.
Yep, which is why it still bugs the every loving hell out of my that people think it was some big overarching emulator when it was just branding for a storefront
technically it was one overarching emulator, but it was tuned and games had patches applied to make sure it worked well for each release, you can inject any N64 game into the WiiVC emulator to varying degrees of success.
Well, I had a much more informed comment here, but RU-vid decided to completely destroy it when I was almost done. So just a note as for why this looks like information is being given in pieces. If I get a curious reply, will consider adding all the exposition that got lost. Only Nintendo can add code to their own emulators, but fan INI tweaks have come a long way. Wii U is king for most things homebrew on emulation regarding Nintendo platforms, but Switch is a strong contender. Especially with the portability at its disposal. But the Wii U having controller remapping (counting *Nintendo* emulators) per game and even allowing multiple controllers to be included in the same config is an insane advantage. And the dark filter can be removed from NES and N64 manually. But if you really want the best experience, forgo all of that and grab an AYN Odin 2 MAX. You will have a far higher reach of games at your disposal, alongside much better compatibility and can still hook it up to your TV with ease if you buy their dock. So long as you're okay with the hurdles of Android, you will be fine.
you know the machine that turns ghosts into portraits in Luigi's Mansion? they had one of those but for turning Charles Martinet into N64 cartridges, a piece of his soul is in every one!
truly my greatest failing was not having a ten minute introduction starting from the invention of the semi-conductor, with flashy title cards and transitions, and a part where I say "pause" while showing stock footage of somebody pausing a tapedeck, then my next line has a lo-fi filter on it... maybe next time I can be a *real* Video Essay RU-vidr
I still have this disc for Nintendo GameCube. And yes I got it when I had gotten Wind Waker as a kid. But before that I had the cartridge (1.1) for the Nintendo 64. Still have the case too somewhere It's surprising how they completely ported animal crossing to the system when that in itself was built off of the Majora's Mask engine.
That’s kinda cool to see that your first day played of Ocarina of Time 3D was Christmas 2011. Also, I have just over 300 hours in that game, so I can relate 😆
haha yea, I remember getting it alongside my 3DS for Christmas that year and being so excited, I think it's lovely that I've never stopped loving this game
Years ago, I was downloading gamecube roms and came accross Duke Nukem 3D. It had N64 button icons on the hud and a completely unusable control scheme. I've always suspected that it was an injection into masterquest but never knew how they did it. It's still in my ROMs folder because it remains an interesting curiosity.
I got the Zelda collection on the gamecube, but the Majora's Mask would ALWAYS freeze... Lost so much progress time and time again. However, the n64 is still going strong.
haha yea I think pretty much everybody who's played MM on their GameCube agrees that it's the single worst way to play it unfortunately. At least it's gotten better re-releases since!
My GameStop growing up had a used copy of just the OOT/MM collection that also had the first two Zelda games on it. That’s how I first played those games even though I had an N64 I just never had OOT or MM
I guess they built the entire emulator around ocarina of times code/engine, and doesn't run well on any other game with different engines or versions of the same engine
The Wii VC version uses the same emulator but updated some. We call him homeboy Stevens in the speedrunning discord. Majora's Mask's emulation is the more puzzling, as it's thought to just use the emulator for OoT on GC therefore isn't emulating the extra 4MB required
I found an ISO online of this game but with SM64 injected into it. It runs perfectly but has issues with fog sometimes and doesn't display HUD elements such as star and coin counts. I believe it was in the MarioCube repository.
I like this style of video, and you could pair it with an unabridged version for people like me who are fascinated. Maybe the lesson is to go deeper into emulators and machine code? I hope not, but it just feels that way.
earlier drafts of the video were supposed to go a little deeper, showing the actual process of injecting the ROM file into the ISO and repacking it so I could load it on my GC using Swiss + SD2SP2, however I realized it just wasn't that interesting to show a bunch of A-F getting copy pasted around in a hex editor, there is a lot more to be discussed on this topic but it either goes over my head or just wouldn't make for the kind of video I am interested in making right now. Thank you for your support though!
@@Malphasura I like the small format. I’m working on some unrelated videos, and I’m going to split each single video up into 4 versions: 30 second, 3 minute, 15 minute, and hour & a half. And post all four. That’s what I’m suggesting you do too, post a followup video to this one that’s longer, this is like the teaser
Yea it was given out for a lot of different promotional offers to try and help the Gamecube's poor sales numbers, it's surprisingly not skyrocketed in price too much in the retro scalping bubble and remains within reach for a lot of collectors thanks to it's heavy distribution though
@@Malphasura yea if you think about it, this should still be a rare item since the gamecube did indeed sell poorly and well alot bundles had different games with it. Still a neat game to have though.
i always thought about how these ports to gamecube were kind of like a predecessor to the vc games they later ported to the wii, One thing i remember seeing on tcrf on the collectors edition was a string of text of a couple n64 games listed that (maybe) was used for testing the emulation
Me, not paying attention to the length of the video suddenly hearing "What's the lesson here?" : "ohhhh here we go a rabbit hole!" - "I don't know" Oh...
haha, for me that was where it ended, I got my answer, it wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be and it was over! but there is certainly more to be discussed and looked into here
I'm not surprised it is specialized and can't run more roms. Going from a 93mhz RISC machine to 486mhz PowerPC doesn't leave a lot of headroom for emulation ( at least back then ). The fact that it runs as good as it does still is pretty technically impressive. I'm sure emulation COULD be done at least with most titles, but it would require every optimization you could think of to get smooth gameplay.
yea knowing what I know about the hardware, this is immensely impressive on a ridiculous amount of levels, I went into this expecting other games to not work and the fact that every one I tried only black-screened shows to me just how much work was done to optimize for OoT's specifics, it is incredible how far technology has come that your smartphone can now play these games with ease
i played OOT for the first time on gamecube, when i replayed it i did gamecube emulation on dolphin. If i replay it or want to do randomizer id do SOH though, but the gamecube edition has a special special place in my heart
SoH is good but the randomizer is really outdated at this point iirc, it's serviceable but there are way more features + multiplayer support with the N64 version
damn, you just made me remember that "longest car-ride home, ever" from my childhood-- leaving ToysRUs (RIP) with my OoT-MQ case in my hands, at least i had a way to 'wait' for WindWaker...especially since id sold my N64 at that point, to buy more Gamecube games...i knew i was in for a ride when i GameOver'ed in the Deku Tree lol (to be fair, i didnt expect a Giant Baba that early in the game, and they dealt an entire Heart of damage, so it quickly wiped out my starting health with a 3-piece combo)...but i miss MasterQuest...not MasterMode, not Hero's Quest, none of that "enemies deal/take more damage" BS, i mean the remixed dungeons with totally different paths through them and new ways to push the limits of the game's mechanics (like how JabuJabu had COWS in the fleshy walls, that acted as Switches when hit with a Slingshot)
I was never able to buy the master quest when it came out but a few years after, in middle school, I traded four games for it with a friend of a friend. Still have it, still play it sometimes, best trade I ever made.
I used to wonder if Nintendo could have released an n64 attachment similar to the GBA player so you can play n64 games on the GameCube. It is weird that the oot port is just an emulator but it probably was way easier to do.
I remember talking with this rich kid in my school about how he was having trouble with some puzzle in Wind Waker. I told him that I could probably beat it and that he should let me borrow WW, which he agreed to do. The next day, he lent me WW, but he removed the Ocarina of time disc from the box (it came in the same box as WW in the European version), but I convinced him (can't remember how) that it would probably be useful for me to have it, "just in case". He never lent me his memory card so I could beat the puzzle and I didn't ask for it. And that's how I got my copy of WW and Ocarina of Time for the GC. True story.
You were using the PAL format of SM64 as the Game prompted you to select a language when you initially start it for the first time. PAL format is 50Hz or FPS. Try running NTSC which is 60Hz or FPS and see if the results are fairly similar
I may try this but I don't honestly expect a difference, it'd likely function identically, I used a PAL copy of SM64 to test because I was using the PAL version of the Master Quest release. There may be some differences but stutters aside I noticed no speed related issues from using the PAL version of the game compared to my experiences with 60hz NTSC releases. I was testing on an NTSC console (using Swiss + SD2SP2 to load). the OoT releases on GC in PAL regions start with a warning that they will only work in 60hz mode, so it seems likely that the emulator patched/ignored the intended refresh rate of the game and forced a 60hz mode, and trying the NTSC release would change nothing.
it's entirely possible, but I wouldn't have any good way of accurately testing for that, and I highly doubt it, at best they may have squeezed out a couple more optimizations for the OoT + MQ release but I doubt it. Thanks for the comment!
It has a file that contains the full z64 and the emulator dol next to it. Hence why it can boot sm64, if it was statically compiled, you wouldn't be able to ROM swap
I'm glad that they emulated OoT and MM onto the GameCube, because without the GameCube I probably would have never played those amazing games as a kid.
the problem with PC N64 emulation at the moment is how complex it all is, in theory 99% of the time it works out of the box, but the hardware in an N64 was highly specialized and a lot of games used it in slightly different ways. Game specific optimization is the best way to get accuracy without sacrificing performance, and it's what they did with Ocarina of Time here, but general purpose emulators don't have the ability to make game specific optimizations for the console's entire library. If you're okay with it being outed as malware every few years Project64 is as plug and play as something like Dolphin in most cases though.
The good old days when they actually gave you something cool for preordering, rather than a mediocre cosmetic that they then release a month after the game comes out anyway. This was actually how I played Ocarina of Time for the first time, and I loved it so much that I went as Link for Halloween of that year. Amazing game
I played the rom of master quest on the ISO on an N64 flash cart on a real n64. Had no bugs except the very last cutscene after beating the game crashed the game. The game showed GameCube controls/buttons instead of n64.
Got my copy from a mail in purchase with Nintendo Power! Comparing this title to Animal Crossing is not a good argument though… you have to realize that AC was made during GameCube development, so it was DESIGNED to be played on both systems. OoT was programmed to take advantage of N64 specific hardware (just like Mario 64) so emulation was the more sensible move.
I know there's a lot more context around it but I was just throwing together a little video for fun, the focus was more on the emulator itself, and I padded with some surrounding context that gives the viewer perspective on why this topic interests me. Stuff like AC being fully ported while OoT had a custom emulator is interesting and weird and made me want to learn more about how it worked, so I pursued that, thanks for the comment :D
it was in the N64's native Big Endian .z64 format, Ship of Harkinian has a page detailing how to extract the ROM file from the iso that you can find pretty easily on their website!
How many years before the Switch got N64 emulation and they couldn't even get it right, meanwhile OoT on GC is pretty much a perfect release, it really is unfortunate how far they've fallen.
I did, at the end of the video, I chose not to include much of it because there... isn't much to see, it just works kinda poorly, any things to note about how it performs are on screen text. I can't really *show* how it *feels* to play a laggy and stuttery version of Mario 64 at 480p on a Gamecube, and there weren't any huge glaring visual bugs as far as I had tested.
Im sorry but this was borderline clickbait. The thumbnail hinted at some way they managed to physically connect the cube to an N64 cartridge which made me click it out of curiosity. But in the end it was just talk about the rom/emulator disc which most people already know to exist.
I am very sorry that you thought I was going to show you a revolutionary new peripheral for the Nintendo Gamecube that nobody had ever seen in the entire 23 years that it has been on this planet in a 3 minute video. Next time I will make sure that my thumbnail includes a lengthy disclaimer so nobody is fooled into believing that I alone have figured out how to plug N64 cartridges into a Gamecube, and I hope some day you'll learn to forgive me. :P
I thought it would go into more detail on how the emulator worked, so I was surprised when it ended so early and didn't realise before that that the video was only 3 minutes long.
I like how the Gamecube N64 emulator just sucks full stop. I tried to emulate the emulator to play Master Quest on Dolphin and it crashed like 3 times before the intro was even over, so I had to disable rumble because that is the cause of the largest part of the instability for these games. Then it crashed anyways when I tried to enter the first dungeon. Of course, emulating it in another emu may have made it slightly worse, but man...the Wii VC emulator is just 1000 times more stable than this thing. Playing Majora's Mask on this piece of poo(through the Collector's edition) must be a nightmare because you can't just save every 5 seconds in that game. Also, when it comes to emulators that were weirdly never reused...the gameboy emulator in Kirby's Dream Collection comes to mind. As far as anyone knows, this original iteration of the emulator for the Wii was never used before or after, it was exclusively developed to run Kirby's Dream Land 1 and 2. Of course, it was ported and developed further for other systems for the 3DS and Wiiu-era VC, but it is still a weird thing to see.
@@WitchHunterSiegfried I already got Ship, I just like to test out other options for the heck of it. (For instance, testing this finally let me know after years why you need a cheatcode to access german and french on original N64 hardware/Unofficial N64 emus for MQ. This emulator just does the language selection automatically based on GC-system language.)
I may not have been a 90s kid but this game still holds a special place in my heart it hit different when you lighting up a blunt or smokin wax and getting a munch on to sum N64 and this game is purely the cherry on top
0:21 Hope that wasn't throwing shade at those games. They are goated. Absolutely got a kick out of how long the adventure was. Hoping someone uses the Link's Awakening DX HD source to port those games someday. Preferably with optional co-op. Would really enjoy playing those games again with a new engine.
haha it was just a silly line I thought would be funny, I have no shade to throw at Capcom's Zelda games, I honestly wish Nintendo would do it again, especially since Aonuma seems to believe that Zelda should be a franchise that only gets new entries every 6 years right now, would be nice if they let another studio make new games with the old style while more Wild-style games are in the works.
You're right! I was heavily simplifying a much more complex topic that really would be better in it's own video rather than as a tangent within this one! However, I am still right to have said what I said. In a 1998 Nintendo Power interview (citation 43 on the Ocarina of Time Wikipedia page), Miyamoto stated that OoT was made using SM64's engine as a basis, and that it was modified and expanded so much that it is practically it's own engine now. So I'd consider what I said to have been correct enough for this 3 minute video.
