Nintendo’s latest Switch Online update offers some evidence that the company may be slowly improving its much-criticized N64 games. Switch Online Premium launched in October 2021 but has been criticized by some players for its emulation issues and lack of features like key mapping.
These N64 games on the Switch had noticeable sound lag issues, while others had graphics issues, such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time not displaying fog correctly. Last November, the president of Nintendo of America discussed the issues publicly, saying that the company takes criticism of the Switch Online N64 game very seriously.
Now, with the latest update to Switch Online and the release of Banjo Adventures, NSO users have uncovered some evidence that Nintendo may be slowly improving the N64 gaming experience on Switch. Twitter user OatmealDome discovered that the water texture in front of the water temple in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time appears to have been fixed.
Seems it’s still not 100% better. Here’s a screenshot of the GameCube version (when will Twitter let me add other people’s tweets to a thread?):https://t.co/EpVWbhEjqV
— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) January 21, 2022
And according to data miner LuigiBlood, the latest update for Switch Online doesn’t make any changes to the game Rom itself, which means that it was Nintendo’s improvements to the console’s N64 emulator that led to The Legend of Zelda: Time. Ocarina’s textures have been improved.
However, the problem is not completely solved, there are many other problems such as no fog in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Yoshi’s Story, Paper Mario and Doctor Mario There are still graphics issues. These are all things that Nintendo needs to optimize and improve.