Video: Nintendo Fixed* The Water Emulation In Ocarina Of Time On Switch

Such progress! On a 20+ year old game...

I mean hey, progress is progress I guess.

Have they allowed for controller remapping

Did they fix the camera? Because early 3D polygon games be early 3D polygon gaming.

Why is nintenedo of all people having trouble emulating their own games? It's just strange the roms you pay for are the ones with weird quirks like this

When the "premium" emulation is still significantly worse than the free emulation everyone has access to.

Nothing to be happy about here. They shouldn’t have had problems like this on a $30 add on to an already bad service.

Still not getting NSO

Good step, at least

Only suckers pay for NSO Premium anyway. I understand paying for the standard tier of Nintendo Switch Online because it's the only way to play online with others if you're someone who enjoys multiplayer games but NSO Premium is just a straight up rip off.

How the heck do you mess up the emulation of your own game.

@UglyCasanova The game might be over 23 years old, but the emulator on Switch is brand new.

@Troll_Decimator
It also makes zero sense to screw up emulation after having previous experience with emulators for roughly 15 years, and on weaker hardware.

@Troll_Decimator [Enter someone doesn't get the joke.EXE here]

@Snatcher There wasn't a joke, it was just a genuinely ignorant comment, judging by their comment history.

This service really isn't acceptable, Not only did they have issue's with the emulator of there own game, but how long did it take to fix it? Waaay to long for a service that cost this much.

@Troll_Decimator Well then can you tell me how it makes sense that free emulators not only make the game run better, but some how not have these problems? unlike this paid service?

Again, it was a joke making fun of the fact that they somehow screwed up an emulator for a 20 year old game. Ever heard of Sarcasm?

Honestly, I just want an upscaled release of the 3DS version on Switch. There's some nostalgia to the N64 version but I think the graphical improvements to the 3DS version make it nearer definitive.

@Snatcher Because free emulators are worked on by thousands of people in the community while this is the work of a dozen people at most. What makes you think that Nintendo has a more experienced or better team developing their emulators? It's pretty much impossible to compete against people working for free as a passion project. Nintendo obviously isn't gonna allocate hundreds of people on such a niche product. And again, it isn't like the games were unplayable by any means, most people wouldn't even notice the difference. The water in Zelda was the biggest offender and it's fixed.

@Troll_Decimator Now this, is an ignorant comment.

Now lets say what you said is true, they don;t have many people working on it, How the heck is that acceptable, for like a 60$ service?

They finally sprung for the N64 Expansion Pak and the games have more RAM now.

But I thought it was supposed to come with DK64, not Banjo Kazooie.

@UglyCasanova yet we still get glitches and bugs on brand new games on “much more powerful hardware”. Especially on the same exact game year after year, like ea sport games for example.

Thought the emulation would be left as is. Glad to see em fixing this issue. Will be revisiting OOT once things are ironed out here.

Watching the video was painful, just use bombchus to stop the goron from rolling in Goron City, much easier ^^ ! (it explodes on impact so you don't have to "time" it, only to aim it straight at the goron instead)

@Snatcher A month is a very short period of time.

@Snatcher Seems to me they plan on continuing to add to it and don’t want to raise the price a second time. Like what Microsoft did. Only time will tell how far they’ll take it tho. There are very few 1st party games on the N64, so we’ll see. There’s also the Sega side. Personally, I’m hoping for Master System and My Card games down the line.

@Snatcher What emulators play all N64 games perfectly? I've been messing with them recently, and most of them don't actually play all games perfectly. Most of the time you can't leave Link's house in Ocarina of Time without immediately running into a graphical glitch.

As for Nintendo's previous virtual console releases, they bundled each rom with a tailored emulator. This meant that they could include a completely different emulator for each game, depending on what works better. A general purpose emulator for N64 games that plays everything perfectly doesn't exist on PC, let alone console.

Finally, the N64 was released at a time where there were a bunch of different ideas that people had on how to make 3D games work with hardware. The methods employed with the N64 ended up being a dead end, much like the Sega Saturn. Neither console is particularly easy to emulate because of this.

@Snatcher Before calling me ignorant, at least have the decency to disclose which part of my comment is incorrect. Rest assured, none of it is. Nintendo can charge $60 because it's their own property and games. Who are they competing against, exactly? People that are downloading games for free illegally? Even if they were offering their service for $20, free is still cheaper.

@NinjaGuy69 Next they'll add Dreamcast with 3 games, Game Boy with 8 games, and GameCube with 3 games, and called it NSO Deluxe and you will pay for it.

@faint A month isn't bad at all, I see what you mean. As for the service, I just don't think its worth it for the price (Opinion)

@ballistic90 this is true.

@Troll_Decimator "Nintendo can charge $60 because it's their own property and games" like any company does for any thing they sell, tell me how its acceptable, and we have to remember this is an add on for NSO, the online is crap and doesn't even work have the time, and you want to charge me 60$ for games that came out 20 years ago, on a service that can't even work right, not saying it needs to be perfect, no game is, but its still pretty overpriced.

For me at least, Buy whatever makes you happy.

As for what you got wrong,

Nintendo has emulated games before, and guess what? its not pure crap? so its not like they have never done it before, or even put time into it, the last guy was just being sarcastic about the 20 years ago thing, idk why they had to be called ignorant for that.

Oh and if they were selling there service for 20$ I can tell you right now, Most people that said they wasn't going to buy it, was because it was overpriced, so people would just spend that money to play it on the switch, and if it was 20$? man I would be just fine with that, still a little up there but no one was thinking 60$.

And none of this is said out of anger, and have a nice day.

@Specter_of-the_OLED I mean, I would pay 60$ if it came with all that, could you even resist?

@Snatcher I have a wife and kids that play Animal Crossing and I still don't think it's worth it.

You’re still better off emulating
No excuse for this

@ballistic90 Hey I to think its overpriced, and if it was priced at 15 bucks extra I would have no problem handing them money.
does your family like it at least?

@Troll_Decimator I thought the emulator was the same one as on Wii U. Did they change it?

@Fizza I assumed so too LOL.

Why are free emulators better than this paid-for emulator from Nintendo? Because the people who made the free emulator also work for free. They do it because they enjoy it. Maybe they want to help people play retro games? Maybe they just want to see if they can do it? So they work hard.

The Nintendo has to pay their employees to make this and they'll only pay as much as they have to. They aren't lazy or incompetent. The profit motive giveth and the profit motive taketh away.

Funny, because other than a few levels & races here and there in Lylat Wars and Mario Kart 64, this evening was the first time I actually sat down for a few hours with a game on the service - that game being Super Mario 64. I got 50 stars in that time, so I definitely gave it a fair shake, but the emulation is shoddy - the border suffers odd, distracting visual effects constantly, and the frame rate is all over the place. You only need to play the 3D All-Stars version to see how bad the emulation (still) is on this one in comparison.

@NinjaGuy69 I see your point, but I recently opened a family plan for it where everyone’s paying £7.50 each, and 6 of those 8 members are also getting the benefit of the ACNH DLC. Despite the emulator issues, it’s definitely more than worth it at that price (if you can find that many people that are willing to join).

It's helluva lot better for sure, but the missing fog just makes it look wrong, drains the water temple (no pun intended) of its atmosphere.

Judging by the constant negative comments here , you will never please these people.
Gonna make a bingo card with all the buzzwords: trash, emulate, pirate, drip,still not getting it, nintendo is evil, etc.
I swear y'all are way too predictable.
God forbid I'm fine with paying for the expansion pack and enjoy the games, right?

@Arkay Hey I have no problem with you paying for it, or anybody for that matter, but what you like and all that, I just don't think its worth it. yet

@RudyC3
My jaw just dropped!
I have NEVER thought to do this!

Then again, I'm not bad timing the bombs...

My next playthrough, I'll give it a whirl!

@Snatcher you've made that abundantly clear.
I am fine with it if you're not going to get it(to each their own), what annoys me is the constant complaining about it. Not specifically you, just in general.
Like I get it, I truly do, just tone it down.

@Markiemania95 I can't get behind that justification. If Nintendo is going to be so protective of their IPs (which they have every right to be), then it's on them to provide a service that is at least as good as what unpaid programmers are doing in their free time with emulation. From a value perspective, it might make sense to some people if they can split the cost several ways but it's not just about the quantity of the product that Nintendo is offering, it's about the quality. That's true for any manufacturer of goods/services.

Nintendo is one of the wealthiest companies in the world and they have no excuse when it comes to releasing subpar products/services like NSO Premium. It hurts their brand, but more importantly, it's a disservice to their fans.

@Funneefox I agree with you there. I have no issue with people enjoying the service but I really dislike how there were a lot of people (especially on Twitter) who lash out on other people who've expressed their disappointed of the service, and that those people should just "be happy with what Nintendo have given them" but I disagree and I too feel the expansion service is a big letdown and a disappointment. Ocarina of Time has been hit the hardest, most definitely. I know the original look and feeling of the Dark Link room was pretty much gone until today (well according to this page) but there's a lot of things still needing to be fixed with the nso emulation for this game (like for example the very noticeable lag and the input lag too. I know unofficial n64 emulation like with Project64 and Mupen64plus is not perfect and is definitely complicated, but official n64 emulation from Nintendo has always felt years behind those unofficial emulators and for a company like Nintendo, this is unacceptable. While still not perfect and still had it's issues, the Wii had the best n64 emulator Nintendo has ever made from what I can remember (and I've used n64 emulation for both the Nintendo Wii and the Wii U) at least when we're talking Official N64 Emulation for Ocarina of Time and I think Majora Mask, the emulation was best on the Wii compared to the Wii U and NSO. I can't comment on other games since I don't remember a whole lot of n64 emulated games I had on the Nintendo Wii.

I feel if Nintendo truly cared about the official emulation, they could do better than they have, however I feel they mostly care about actually putting the games onto the service and making a profit rather than the actual quality and stability of the games Nintendo have added to their service.

These are really just my thoughts, but I feel people are going to disagree with me.

I only just noticed after replying, I've said like so much and I have created a very long wall of text . It's a habit of mine, and I apologize.

@Arkay I totally understand, you have something you love, and wile not everyone share's your opinion, all you hear is people complaining about it, completely understandable from your side.

@RudyC3 holy crap. That's the best comment here. I've been doing it the hard way all my life.

@Snatcher My wife liked the DLC for Animal Crossing. I may eventually play it too, but I mostly wanted to play some N64 games on my Switch. Its... fine. But not really worth the extra money.

@NinjaGuy69 As stated, I see your point. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said - in fact, I’d say I agree with almost all of it. I concur that for its base solo price (£35 here), the current state of the service is unacceptable, but in my eyes, it’s not bad enough that I wouldn’t pay as little as £7.50 for a year of it, especially when bundled with a year’s worth of a normally £22.50 DLC that I’ll personally be done with before the year’s up anyway. I completely understand if, in anyone else’s view, what is provided is still not up to par, even for a price shared multiple ways. More power to you for sticking to your guns.

Amazing how judgemental some people can be. I'm paying for the expansion upgrade. I'm loving it. Is the emulation perfect? I don't know because I'm not looking for every flaw possible in order to spout my fury at the price.

@boxyguy my guess is that to transfer n64-sourced data onto anything else exhibits a bit of bastardization that changes the original incantation. like, how could a master sword exist on the n64 OoT and another master sword exist on a nintendo switch OoT? Kinda cheapens it.

Did they fix any of the glitches in Paper Mario, like the tree that crashes the game when you hit it, or how dying with Watt in your party closes the whole app and potentially ruin your save data?

@FaroreAbhorsen doubtful that would happen, but I wish. We probably wont get a new HD remaster because it will be pointless with OOT & MM is now on NSO.

@Troll_Decimator
If you are looking at someone’s comment history when you reply to them it says more about you then it does them.

@Troll_Decimator
The problem is they already made a great emulator on the Wii virtual console.

@Uska
I mean Mario 64 was already on switch. Yes I know that you can no longer buy it but it is still technically on switch. Honestly we will probably just get the Wii U remasters due to it being easy to port.

I can only hear "A bit" in Eric Idle's voice (Monty Python)

@Jayesbe You know, it's never too late to press edit and add some paragraphs 😉

Embarrassing that they can not make this work better! And I would have liked some more love pour into this. A digital replica manual is one way to give that extra to your customers.

That's good, but will hold off getting the service until they've made it even better.

@Sveakungen https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Support/Nintendo-64/Nintendo-64-manual-and-additional-documents/Nintendo-64-games-manuals/Nintendo-64-games-manuals-990819.html

@JJtheTexan she has got a wart!

Still have the 3DS version so will play that instead. One thing I don't like about the 3DS version is you can't use the hookshot to climb ladders like you could on the N64.

I'm playing OoT right now on the N64 app, and I've never seen the game looked better! Fog was annoying back then, and now you can see everything, that's great!

@Andy_Witmyer yeahh I really should've done that rather than making two separate comments yesterday

Mildly depressing that a free emulator can run these files better than Nintendo's official one

@Bustacap Thx No manual for this game but anyway!

@Savino I'm sure it's your own backup too, and not an illegally acquired ROM.

@Coalescence @Spider-Kev In all fairness I only ever thought to try it with bombchus instead of bombs because of the OoT randomizer, because I found myself in a situation where I had bombchus but no bombs and no goron bracelet to pull out bomb flowers. Before the randomizer, I always did it with bombs too, like most people would, but had a facepalm moment when I realised I should have used Bombchus all along XD.

@Snatcher
To be fair if someone is enjoying it despite the issues then what other people say shouldn't really affect their own enjoyment, the same way its fine to like a piece of media with a general negative critical/player reception.

You often see comments acting like they physically arent allowed to enjoy something that others do, and while i could understand when people say something along the lines of "anyone who buys this is stupid" (or something to that effect) you often see people just dismissing concerns with something which is an objective error.

this isnt saying that something being a problem doesn't mean that someone cant enjoy it, its similar with the input lag comments, if someone enjoys the game and either doesn't notice the input lag or notices it but are okay regardless then that is fine, however you also got people who dismissed those who did take issue as "whiners" or in some occasions accuse people of "lying" about said issues its similar with things like framerate or other issues which can be measured.

another thing which often comes up in online discussion is how different takes are often lumped together, usually when you see people saying about how a fanbase will "never be happy" or when you see those comments where they give 2 contradicting points as some kind of 'gotcha' moment over peoples hypocrisy when even assuming said quotes were something people said (often they are unsourced) that they are often said by 2 different people, its similar to when tropical freeze came out for switch and you saw this image going around showing the gamespot reviews for both the wiiu and switch versions of the game, with the switch version being scored quite a bit higher, this was intended to point out some kind of bias since the switch version didnt have too many differences to the wiiu version but was rated higher, however in said image you could also see that both versions were reviewed by different people, so it was simply a case of one person not liking the game and another loving it.

apologies for the rambling message.

@Mgalens Not at all, you made great points!

I played through Sin and Punishment recently and had almost no graphical glitches (at least ones the Wii version did not have) and zero lag. Have yet to play through Zelda, but have had a great time with the service.

Why would I watch a 10 minute video in YouTube about the water graphics just so you can make money?

Nintendo Switch Online is a very poor "upgrade" of the Virtual Console... geez... I never understood why they killed VC over this.

@Edu23XWiiU You were never supposed to see everything, though. Unlike the OG Silent Hill, Ocarina's fog was very much an aesthetic choice. Even on original hardware, you could see far off into the distance in Hyrule Field, so it wasn't a matter of hardware limitation in that game.

Breaking the fog breaks the intended atmosphere.

@Troll_Decimator If only nintendo could contact the company that made the N64 so they can get exact specifications to make the emulation accurate.

@PoeTheLizard No, it was always to cover the lack of distance draw the console had. Like on the Fire Temple, when Navi told you you could "see" the room below, where Darunia was, you couldn't see NOTHING. Now, that has been corrected. And textures look so much better now, everything has details. Amazing to watch and play now.

@Edu23XWiiU And yet in Hyrule Field, you could see the whole area from Lon Lon Ranch. Dungeons and certain rooms have specifications for how close or far the fog is from you, but it's never there to mask draw distance. Believe me, having played OOT on original N64 hardware for 20 years, the pop-in is there, and it's not covered up whatsoever.

It's one thing to like the look, but don't mistake it for a correction. It's very much an error in reproducing the game's atmosphere.

@PoeTheLizard I also played OoT back in 1998, it's my favorite game, well it was, until BotW, and it has never looked better. Some areas were just too dark, they told you to watch something at distance, and there was the fog, that didn't let you see a damn thing, and the fog was there to cover mistakes, it was never used for atmosphere purposes. Fog was always annoying back then, and now I'm glad it's gone. There's been so much improvements with the current emulation, like the textures and character models. And people complain about the most annoying "feature" the games had back then. It's just complaining for the sake of complaining.

@Jayesbe Hahaha. It's okay. You got your post count up +1, tho. So at least there's that.

@Edu23XWiiU Just here to inform you Nintendo fixed the fog in the NSO emulation, so even they seem to disagree with you.

@PoeTheLizard No, they had to please the dumb request from people that don't know how to differenciate between nostalgia and optimization.