Last week, Nintendo updated Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack in order to bring Banjo-Kazooie to the service. As data miners soon discovered though, this wasn’t the only change the update made to the service. It turns out that Nintendo made some subtle changes to Ocarina of Time, improving its emulation and bringing it closer to previous versions.
It’s no secret that Nintendo has been having a somewhat difficult time properly emulating N64 games on their online service, something that has been somewhat baffling considering they managed pretty well in the past. Even as far back as 2007, the Wii/Virtual Console had no issues emulating everything from TurboGrafx 16 games to Nintendo 64 titles. One wonders why a much more modern and powerful system can’t do the same. At any rate, according to NintendoEverything, Nintendo tweaked the online version of Ocarina of Time to improve things like fog, draw distance and water textures.
This has apparently improved the game’s visual appearance on the platform, but it’s still not at the level of previous attempts. As these games get older and older, emulation is going to become more and more important to retaining access to these sorts of classics. Hopefully, Nintendo won’t give up and will keep working on getting their emulation technology back into a good state.
What do you think of N64 games on NSO? Think Nintendo will ever improve on the old Virtual Console?
Image is official Zelda Ocarina of Time Artwork
Honestly, I love the idea of N64 games coming to the Switch! Ocarina of Time is one of my favorite Zelda games and I really hope they also try to emulate Donkey Kong 64.
LikeLiked by 1 person
DK64 would be amazing! Imagine online functionality for the multiplayer! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I totally forgot that game had a multiplayer mode!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hopefully it’ll come back! Four player arena was crazy!
LikeLiked by 1 person