Donkey Kong 64 Was Almost Derailed by Game Crashing Bug

[CrystalShadow]

are there any other N64 games on VC that required the expansion pack?

i remember Majora's Mask, DK64, Perfect Dark (but of course now M$ owns it), and Rogue Squadron used it but didn't require it. now that i've looked on wikipedia, i don't think any game that needed it has come out on VC, probably for that very reason.

Majora's Mask is on the Wii VC, and required the Expansion Pak.

Emulation is a tricky thing though, and the existence of this bug could easily prevent it working properly even if everything else was optimal.

I wonder if a pirated version has been successfully emulated on PC?

As far as I know, every single game that required or used the expansion pack (except Resident Evil 2 and Rogue Squadron) works flawlessly on an emulator, you name it, Turok 2/3, DK64, Majora's Mask, Perfect Dark, Hybrid Heaven, Duke Nukem Zero Hour and some more.

Although Majora's Mask VC version runs much better than the GameCube version (had some loading and sound skipping issues due to it being loaded from a disc) and I think that the VC version is much better than the original N64 version overall, but it's pretty much the only expansion pack game available for VC right now.

It doesn't seem very likely that an emulator, even one running on a console, would struggle much with emulating a game just because it uses a memory expansion.

All the RAM pack changes is that there's now 8 mb or RAM instead of 4... To an emulator, that's a change involving only a handful of minor changes. - As long as the system running the emulation has enough RAM to cope with it (and any emulation related overhead), it's hardly a major change. (The Wii has 96 mb of RAM, so it's unlikely to be a problem in that regard.)

In terms of emulation, Star Fox on the Snes, (or Megaman X-2 for instance) represent a much bigger challenge, because they had game cartridges with added processors. - The SuperFX chip that allows Star Fox to even run for instance is a 20 mhz cpu optimised for running vector calculations that has to do some complicated things just to run alongside the main system CPU.


Compared to that, increasing the amount of RAM in an emulated system is fairly trivial.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Reading this amazes me at how far technology has grown.

 

[aba1]

Dk64 remains to this day, my favourite platformer ever. The variety in the levels, the characters, boss fights and abilities are exemplary. I wish I still had an N64... And an expansion pack of course.

It is one of my favorites of all time as well such a great game. I really wish rare would make a come back I would be gitty as a school girl.

 

[afroebob]

Holy shit this is scary. I mean seriously, imagine if they just said 'FUCK IT!' and canceled the game... I literally spent a vast amount of my young life playing this game, its one of my favorite games of all time... I think its time to go play some Donkey Kong 64...