At this point in time it can be safely stated that the question ‘Does it run Doom?’ defaults to a resounding ‘Yes’. This raises the question of what next games should be seen as some kind impressive benchmark, with [Game of Tobi] gunning heavily for Nintendo 64 titles. Most recently he ported Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to the Apple Watch, with the port almost ready for release along with Super Mario 64 after a few more issues are fixed.
Although there are a few approaches when it comes to porting Nintendo 64 games to other systems, if the target system is effectively a small PC with all of the amenities such as rendering APIs, then using the Ship of Harkinian project as the basis is a good start. This is what [Toby] did with the Apple Watch, and after some work it runs Ocarina of Time at a solid pace, with as the main flaw being busted text rendering.
Of course, the overwhelming flaw with any small gaming system and touchscreen-only systems is that our meaty paws do not shrink that well, and using telepathy to control game systems still isn’t a feature. Thus the biggest compromise with the Apple Watch port is that you have the controls overlaid on the screen. This could probably be compensated for with a Bluetooth controller or similar, but that poses its own problems when it comes to two-handed playing.
Practical issues aside, it’s pretty amazing that just about any ‘smart’ device that we carry around with us can also be a full-featured retro gaming system, and we appreciate [Toby]’s efforts in making this a reality.
Stasi / KGB would k*ll for ability to make people voluntarily wear such data collection device which is active 24/7. Just shows that 1989 was an illusion and we live in a more totalitarian society than ever before.
Having the choice to trade privacy for cool stuff OR NOT and the choice to revoke that trade at any time of your choosing would not make the Stasi or KGB all that happy.
And you could always buy several and leave the extras at home. I don’t know how this would work with Apple but with Android devices you can set the GPS coordinates by ADB shell in developer mode. With a bit of scripting you could be poisoning the data with any number of false lives being ‘lived’ simultaneously with your real one.
As long as you’re concerned about privacy, you might as well choose the company that does not make money in collecting and selling your data in this duopoly ecosystem.
Take a look at Morrowind running smoothly on a Galaxy Watch 7
The on-screen buttons are untenable. Especially with N64 games that often involve holding down multiple buttons and operating the analog stick at the same time.
Not knowing anything about the apple watch sensors, I bet that someone smart will come up with an almost-viable system of gestures. I imagine tilting the screen instead of joystick, swiping the screen for the sword, lifting the screen suddenly to jump, etc.
I was trying to understand why people are so compelled to port N64 and PSX games to mobile when the controls are so deeply flawed. I think it’s because the dominant mobile game business model (subscriptions, microtransactions, loot boxes, short sessions) will never produce a game like Zelda 64 or FF7 (single player, story-based, big budget, highly polished). So the late 90s games still hold up within their genre.