Much to the surprise of fans, it seems like Nintendo has actually been working on its N64 emulators after fans reacted critically to the messy launch of the Switch Online Expansion Pack in October of last year. Earlier this month we reported that Banjo-Kazooie would be joining the classic lineup of titles in the Expansion Pack and it seems like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time got a surprise update on the very same day.
[NSO – Nintendo 64]
It seems the water in the now-infamous Water Temple room has been fixed in the latest update? I think the fog is still missing, though.
Haven’t checked the rest of the game to see if any of the other issues have changed, but this is promising. pic.twitter.com/wcoG3hIxu2
— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) January 21, 2022
The actual result of the update, pictured above, isn’t particularly exciting but what it suggests for the future of Nintendo emulation is a big relief for classic Nintendo fans. Nintendo is currently using the NSO N64 emulator, an emulator based on the one that was used for the Wii U Virtual Console. In an effort to make more games function on the Wii U console, Nintendo decided to remove certain graphics display functions and in the process, some graphics emulation was severely degraded or in some cases totally broken. What we’re seeing now, however, is that Nintendo appears to be actively going back into the original code, cleaning it up and providing genuine fixes to issues with the emulator. According to one source, Nintendo has been
Last week, we reported that The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask would be the next title to launch as a part of the subscription service’s classic vault. With this new information, emulator fans are optimistic that the relatively small adjustments made to Ocarina of Time might suggest future fixes and improvements to the title as well as upcoming releases and notoriously buggy games such as Paper Mario and Yoshi’s Story.
We’ll keep you posted as we see more of these changes over the months coming up, and hopefully Nintendo are indeed working on some improvements across the board.
