Posted: 12/18/2025 6:36 PM
Alyosha
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Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (4542)
Location: US
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2962
Location: US
TASer of 2024 GBA TASer of 2024 Homebrew TAS of 2024 GBA TASer of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 Gameboy TASer of 2022 NES TASer of 2015
I started testing N64 verifications with the Ares core. I don't have the hardware yet for ROM hacks and such, so I figured I would just jump in and try something. I ran through the first lap of a Wave Race time trial in emulator and through it into the TAStm32: Link to video It made it into the race which is already a good start! It desyncs basically immediately after that. N64 is the next natural step for console verification work, but based on comments from N64 people it will probably end up being the same situation as SNES. But anyway I will at least document things in this thread.
Posted: 12/19/2025 3:07 AM
CoolKirby
Editor, Experienced player (630)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4188
Exotic platforms TASer of 2014 NES TAS of 2013
I'm happy you've taken an interest in verification on this console. I have nothing technical to add, but I'll be (lurking and) keeping up with your progress. Wave Race would be a challenge to sync with its dynamic wave system, which makes it a good test for Ares timing. I agree that it's heartening that it synced all the way to the race start so far. How do TAStm32 Ares tests differ from the old poll-based SM64 and MK64 verifications?
Posted: 12/19/2025 3:12 AM
SelflessVanity
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🇺🇸 United States
Joined: 5/5/2025
Posts: 192
Location: 🇺🇸 United States
Exciting stuff!
SMB2U is the best NES Mario game.
Posted: 12/19/2025 1:53 PM
Alyosha
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Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (4542)
Location: US
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2962
Location: US
TASer of 2024 GBA TASer of 2024 Homebrew TAS of 2024 GBA TASer of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 Gameboy TASer of 2022 NES TASer of 2015
CoolKirby wrote:
I'm happy you've taken an interest in verification on this console. I have nothing technical to add, but I'll be (lurking and) keeping up with your progress. Wave Race would be a challenge to sync with its dynamic wave system, which makes it a good test for Ares timing. I agree that it's heartening that it synced all the way to the race start so far. How do TAStm32 Ares tests differ from the old poll-based SM64 and MK64 verifications?
There's no real difference yet, as I use basically the same script that is used to dump inputs from the mupen core. So far I'm just making sure my setup works and getting a feel for it. Ares should be significantly more accurate than Mupen, but whether that translates to more syncing games is not clear yet. In fact I already noticed a bug in Ares (timer doesn't increment correctly in Wave Race when RAM expansion is emulated) and opened an issue for it. I'm excited to finally start working on N64 in any case, there are a lot of games I want to see verified for the system.