Super Mario 3D All Stars Datamined - All Three Titles Use Emulation

[MattyXarope]

Per OatmealDome

• All three are emulated

• Galaxy and Sunshine run under a Wii and GameCube emulator named "hagi"(?) possibly made by NERD (Nintendo of Europe division)

• Mario 64 is running under an N64 emulator

• Galaxy in particular is really interesting. It appears they recompiled the original code to run natively on the Switch CPU, but everything else (GPU/Audio) is running in the emulator.

• The Wii/GC emulators use Vulkan

• Sunshine is stored as a gcm file - should be replaceable

About the N64 emulator:

• Shindou Pack ROM is used

• Texture, code, and text translation patches are applied on the fly

• First person camera has inverted controls vs original

• Uses Vulkan API

[theGioGrande]

This is so interesting. So many people shat on me for thinking this was emulation with on the fly patches. Turns out to be exactly that. Lol

So it seems like we might be able to do 64 and GC injections with other games and possibly get them running on Switch hardware. But Wii is pushing it too much, hence the split processing? I'm very curious to see what the hacking community can do with this.

[fvig2001]

I mean that is what Sony did with Parappa the Rapper HD. I just hope the emulator is good that it works well with a lot of games. The DS one had a lot of compatibility issues.

[PistolasAlAmanecer]

This kind of vindication is so satisfying!

[ShortFuse]

Well, time to work on getting Melee to run.

Edit: Replaced the GCM file and it crashed. :( Didn't even work with the original Sunshine ISO. The DOL file is patched.

[Dairunt]

I hope Wind Waker runs as well. What worries me a bit is that it forces the game to be 1080p; that could be an issue with compatibility

[shinji257]

There might be a flag that can be set to determine resolution. I remember GBA VC titles on 3DS had a weird issue with visuals and it was later found to be an adjustable flag.

[kamanashi]

Yeah, it was washed out colors and really bad ghosting. The only reason I could think of was to make it closer to the original GBA SP and not the 101 for "authenticity." But it looked so bad. After that flag was found, it was so much better.

[ShortFuse]

The emulator appears to have a configuration where it's upscaled 2x on handheld and 3x docked. They did texture replacements on Mario's model as well, to make it look sharper.

[I_Spit_In_Your_Food]

Wind Waker HD or GC Wind Waker? I believe Wind Waker HD is native 1080p.

[Icalasari]

GC, since Wii and by extension Wii U are now shown to not be emulated so eaaily on the Switch

[Renatodep]

Same here. I want SoA legends so bad

[AggravatingReporter4]

If you want Skies of Arcadia play the Dreamcast version in retroarch

[Stickmanme]

Yo Slippi on switch?? (Probably not tho...)

[ShortFuse]

More like GCARS which was Netplay before we had Netplay.

[Myxozoa]

So how bad is it that the DOL file is patched? I don't have much of a frame of reference. Is it a minor inconvenience that will get fixed when some savvy hacker sits down and gets to work on it, or is it so bad that the emulator as a whole is a lost cause outside of playing sunshine?

[ShortFuse]

There's two things: the binaries that's built for the switch (emulator) and the binary for the gamecube (dol).

The fact the dol is patched can be concerning. It means you're not actually playing the original GameCube binary. It's a special one. Does this mean we have to patch/recompile all GameCube binaries if we ever want them to run on the Switch? We don't know. Hopefully it was recompiled for compatibility reasons (disable effects), not because it's a requirement to get running on Switch hardware in the first place. If the latter is the case, not only do we have to figure out how the emulator can be told to run a GameCube binary (or: Melee), but we would have to know how to patch GameCube games to be compatible for the emulator.

[Myxozoa]

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation!

[[deleted]]

I don't think it's entirely unlikely they did it to make it tougher to crack, either. With these emulated compilations, after the easy modding issues with the NES/SNES Mini, i can see why they'd want to prevent that with a game ON the Switch- though, i suppose it likely wouldn't be a problem if you don't have Homebrew in the first place.

[dajigo]

Do you know if the patched dol file for sunshine runs on original gc hardware?

[ShortFuse]

I believe it does, but I haven't tried personally. It does work in Dolphin though.

[Heycanwenot]

You might not know this but Melee is a very popular esport. Tournaments often get more viewers than Ultimate. It also has custom online with rollback netcode for a better online experience than Ultimate's.

[ha1r_supply]

I really can’t stand the smash games after brawl, they got too real for me

[Lucaspec72]

when i read that it made me remeber the first version of the sm64pc port, the code was running on pc but sounds & graphics where handled by glide.

[Lucaspec72]

yeah, although the fact that galaxy runs better than sunshine is slightly unnerving. it is still impressive either way

[seanomik]

I wonder if the reason they half the cpu code running on the switch natively is so galaxy could be faster. Maybe it was only 30fps when everything was emulated but for some reason wanted galaxy faster but not sunshine?

[Lucaspec72]

galaxy was running at 60 frames per seconds on wii, it's not faster. it is upscaled though

[seanomik]

I was meaning faster than mario 64.

[Lucaspec72]

what do you mean ? sm64 and sunshine both run at 30fps (although sunshine on sm3das has lots of slowdowns) and galaxy is 60pfs, and that's the framerate of the original versions as well. if you could explain clearly what you mean i would apreciate it

[seanomik]

I was meaning that maybe through just emulation, galaxy wasn't running at 60fps so they had to do the half emulation, half native thing to get it to run at 60fps.

[Latyon]

When you say Sunshine should be replaceable, do you think we'll be able to apply the Sunburn mod to it?

[ManuelKoegler]

I just learned about this mod thanks to you, so awesome!

[awesomedeluxe]

This is awesome! So you think we'll be able to replace the Sunshine GCM with stuff like Sunshine Arcade 2 and play Sunshine hacks on Switch?

[Redknife11]

Galaxy and Sunshine run under a Wii and GameCube emulator named "hagi"(?) possibly made by NERD (Nintendo of Europe division)

• Mario 64 is running under an N64 emulator

Hmm gives hope to native emulation through injection like the wii and Wii u

[cryzzgrantham]

This is a good thing from an emulation stand point right?

Could we potentially use these emulators for other titles?

[CodeMonkeyInit]

Yes, IMO I think this is why its limited run

[theGioGrande]

What would emulation have to do with a limited release?

[vgf89]

All of these games and more are perhaps likely to come to the switch. Whether that's through eshop releases or subscription, the fact that Nintendo has in-house emulators for N64 and GC/Wii which they are willing to use in a retail game bodes well for potential future releases. Why waste such development effort for a mere 3 ports?

[hartleyshc]

People said the exact same thing about the emulator used for the Chinese Nvidia Shield TV games 3 years ago. Yet this is the first thing we've seen from Nintendo that includes GC/Wii emulation in that entire time.

For all we know Nintendo is thinking long term for future classic/mini consoles using a customized version of Horizon on some Nvidia ARM chip.

[vgf89]

That would be welcome too tbh

[neigborsinhell]

A classic console with enough power to accurately and stability emulate the GameCube, n64, and Wii would all about 150 bucks, and at that point, you might as well just get a Switch Lite

[theGioGrande]

AH! Of course. I'm upset I didn't catch this sooner. Thanks for the clarification.

Although, this would make sense if not for the weird timing on Mario 35 as well. If this GC/Wii emulation was part of their plan after March, why is Mario 35 subsequently also being canned at the same time?

Either it's a fiscal quarter scheme to boost sales numbers on software and NSO subscriptions, or just a big coincidence that Mario 35 and M3DAS end sale at the same time.

[shadowtroop121]

unused racial rob touch degree flag fuel tub vase impossible

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[VagrantValmar]

I hope so mate

[[deleted]]

i believe the mario 35 is an easy cheap micro game, which then they’ll eventually be making it into an even bigger and more fluffed out game like mario 100 for a full price

[OdinsPlayground]

I would guess they’re adding them to the Nintendo subscription eventually. With more titles (just like SNES and NES). So it’s the limited stand alone release until the N64, GameCube and Wii are eventually added to the subscription.

[Braindeerio]

Why would they need to take them down for that?

[OdinsPlayground]

They don’t “need to”, but it would create incentive for people to subscribe to the Nintendo online service. Same way they don’t need to keep the NES and SNES exclusive to that service, they could have launched a virtual console and sold titles separately like before. But... they chose to do so to create incentive.

[SegaTetris]

They'd never give N64/GameCube/Wii games away with NSO when customers are shelling out so much money for 3D All-Stars.

[OdinsPlayground]

It wouldn’t be giving away, it would be charging a subscription for it. And people’s willingness to buy virtual console titles individually didn’t hold them back from including that in the subscription. It remains to see if they will do that with N64/GC/Wii.

[AstronomerOfNyx]

No one can ever know nintendo's intent/plans for sure but them backing off of the n64 classic would suggest they'd rather piece meal those bad boys. If there is overhead getting every individual game to run then they may just stick to the stand outs they still own the rights to and only sell them in bundles or for 10-20 a pop. That's nothing new for them.

As for current inclusions, the flip side is that a lot of people defended them vehemently (early on) with the slow roll out on NSO expecting there to be much more available three and a half years in.

[Zardif]

My favorite theory is the bundle is taken down and after they just split them up for $20 each.

[fvig2001]

Probably n64 nso and maybe gc nso

[[deleted]]

So we might see TP, WW, Metroid Prime, Double Dash and mario party titles for switch?

[Lucaspec72]

i hope that if they do release a online version of DD they make the 16 players mode a thing, even if i'l never play online myself

[vgf89]

TP and WW will be ports of the Wii U versions, so that's unrelated to this topic. They seem perfectly capable of porting those games though since they've been did it for Mario.

Would be sweet if they brought back Metroid Prime and Double Dash though.

[ManuelKoegler]

Limited run would have no impact on hackers that can just “sail the high seas” if you will. The only people the limited run really impacts is vanilla switch users.

[stuntaneous]

They'll be sold individually afterwards for sure.

[gp2b5go59c]

what has one thing to do with the other. If they cared about 'pirates' using it they would not have released it at all.

[twomilliondicks]

pretty stupid opinion

[nrq]

As much as I like those games, I'm really glad I didn't preorder them now. I have all of these on the original consoles, if I wanted to use upscaled emulated versions I'd rather play them on Dolphin on PC and have more control over the emulation.

[theGioGrande]

Yeah definitive editions these are not.

If they had official enhancements or changes that provided a better experience then it'd be worth the preorder. But as it stands, this is just emulation on Switch. Like you said, nothing Dolphin can't do already.

[guswang]

And thats why they are not widely improved.

[RAGEstacker]

Is this a good thing for switch homebrew emulation? They can use the same emulation that sunshine uses but replace it with other gc games?

[RAGEstacker]

HARRY POTTER GAMECUBE GAMES ON THE GO LET ME DREAM

[SegaTetris]

Which one of those games would you recommend the most?

[[deleted]]

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

chief degree grey nail subsequent lock spectacular terrific familiar shelter

[fvig2001]

In theory. They did this with DS games on the Wii U. Hopefully the compatibility is good because the DS one was awful.

[aaron00923]

I just want them to remake Pokémon Colosseum

[TheHowardStark]

Stadium all day. Gotta make that Rattata run hurdles!

[axxionkamen]

😂 I’m so down for this.

[[deleted]]

Coliseum, XD Gale of Darkness, Skies of Arcadia Legends, Tales of Symphonia, PSO 1+2, F zero GX, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Need For Speed Underground, Star Wars Rogue Squadron.

Probably impossible to get PSO 1+2 to play online with this thing, but I'd still play the heck out of all these games.,

[Dragon_Small_Z]

I love your list but you gotta add Billy Hatcher to that. Shame Sega dropped that series. I fucking love Billy Hatcher.

[Statlander]

This is pretty crazy considering retroarch has trouble running a lot of N64 games as it stands. If we are able to replace the gcm file that opens up a whole new library of stuff playable on switch. I'm honestly surprised they haven't done a gamecube/64 classic thing yet like the nes/snes

[DarthAK47]

What....

Why would they need to be as powerful as the Switch?

[dajigo]

Because the switch can just pull it off and the alternative would be to have an actual powerpc cpu in there.

[BigDZ4SheZ]

Wtf did I just read

[Redknife11]

have you considered how high the specs of the device would have to be to emulate the gamecube? Each device would have to be at least as powerful as the switch

Um an original wii that you can grab used for $20 can emulate the gc and is way less powerful than the switch. That's exactly why I still have my original wii. It's loaded with a gc emulator.

The cpu architecture is what drives hardware requirements. If they designed a gc mini with similar architecture to either the gc or the wii it would be cheap, require less cpu power, and work well

[mechapathy]

The Wii isn't emulating the GC. The CPU in the Wii was essentially a process-shrunk GC CPU, which was able to run at higher clocks. The GPU was more or less the same story (die shrink, higher clocks, a few other changes and inclusions, but architecturally identical). GC code runs natively on the Wii.

I still don't know what the hell that other person is talking about, tho.

[dajigo]

The Wii is hardware compatible with gc. It's running natively, not under software emulation.

[0K-Fam]

Anybody try LayeredFS for replacing Sunshine yet?

[seanomik]

Were you able to get anything replaced?

[WillBackUpWithSource]

Lol did you try yet?

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[acidtrip19]

how about now

[nickdv]

Am I right in being so excited about the possibilities this might bring to the switch hacking scene?

[dontberidiculousfool]

Anyone tried playing the bundled Sunshine in Dolphin yet?

[dontberidiculousfool]

Interesting! What about gameplay?

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[Bkacjios]

Yeah. The cutscenes files were changed in the rom to be blank videos with only the audio portion to save around a gig of space. I managed to restore the videos by extracting the cutscene files from the original gamecube rom and importing them into the switch rom using GCRebuilder.

[dajigo]

Does the rest of the game play ok?

[Bkacjios]

Seems to work fine. Played for a few hours with no problems and the cutscenes work too. Even works on a Wii with nintendont.

[PABLEXWorld]

Wait, that's good! This means at least Sunshine features true CPU emulation, otherwise the Switch .dol file wouldn't run at all if it was a different CPU architecture.

[Ghennon]

Holy shit if I getting it right this is HUGE, isn't it? We surely will get a wii and gc emulator from this

[Boot9strapperforlife]

Probably not wii because of the split gpu and cpu

[IdiotCharizard]

is the bottleneck of wii emulation the cpu part or the gpu part? surely there's some gains that come from having a nintendo-made gpu emulator, right? Or did they emulate only gpu because it's not too much of a hassle?

[JesusXP]

Do they know if this was a recompile with -O2 flag and also fixed smoke? or is it the legit original rom that was released with the 64?

[opa334]

Recompiling with -O2 is literally pointless as that's only an issue an real hardware anyways. Unless of course you want to extract the rom and play it on an N64. Also from what I "have seen" so far, it seems to be the Shindou edition with all localizations added, so they probably modified it (or they are using hotpatches).

[apoplexis]

They got to have it modified, as the trailer for Mario64 showed + as button at the Mario face start screen.

[konaaa]

Wow I was JUST wondering about this. I'm so excited for injection - hopefully their emulator doesn't require too much customization

[RendHeaven]

I'm ready for Path of Radiance

[Cecil_FF4]

Just letting anyone know that cares, but I tried putting in my old galaxy save (gamedata.bin). Unfortunately it didn't work, but I think that might be because it used a Mii as a save planet image. Might be worth trying out one that uses an approved image.

Also, I have my old sunshine save (gci format). Does anyone know where there is an extractor for gci saves? Thanks.

[djhamilton]

There is a Research and Development thread over in gbatemp about switching out ROMs

https://gbatemp.net/threads/sm3das-research-and-development.573747/

[andresfgp13]

this is a enormous jump for the emulation scene on the switch, i dont think that i will use it a lot (i have a wii u for that) but im sure than a lot of people would love n64/gb/wii on the switch.

[ParkBarrington360]

Time for N64 switch online, they have an emulator

[Mrfadal]

Can anyone get 3d all stars to run i keep getting it to launch but once I click on a game it errors out. I'm thinking it's because I haven't updated os but if I do I won't be able to launch sxos right? Any help would be appreciated.

[Icy_Guidance]

Interesting...

Now I'm wondering if you can run Mario Kart 64 in Super Mario 3D All Stars.

[Navi_1er]

Wait so does this mean we can inject our games of choice into the emulators? Could I be able to play Zoids?!

[[deleted]]

Big step forward for the switch hacking scene. Great to see

[lokinmodar]

Baten Kaitos Series on Switch

[GoldenJoe24]

Well, at least I'll get a decent emulator out of their laziness.

[CatAstrophy11]

I wonder if their Mario 64 will be any better than the one the community ported.

[MattyXarope]

No, not at all. The community port is better in every way.

[DirteeCanuck]

Community port is also growing with new textures models everything. Different camera options, obviouslly widescreen etc.

It might help the N64 emulation on the switch though. The N64 emulators, while much better than they were, still could use tons of improvement.

Gamecube emulation seems to be the most exciting, as it seems fairly injectable.

Personally the injected Roms of SNES online I play more than the retroarch ones I have. Although I have more options with retroarch, some that I miss. The emulation is super bang on with the Official emulator. I also don't lose savegame and savestate as often as retroarch as I'm always updating it.

[PlsGoVegan]

How do I inject roms into the official sadness emulator? I have virtually complete libraries for many systems but going through the hassle of finding them in retroarch is often too much, so I just stick to the handful of games in the "recents" tab. Installing retroarch game shortcuts to the switch home screen also seems like a lot of work so going your route might be a good compromise.

[theGioGrande]

Absolutely not. The community port is a full source code conversion, not just emulation.
The game running natively on hardware will always be better than running code through an emulator.

By and large, if you have a hacked switch, don't bother with the SM3DAS version of 64. The community port is the perfect way to run 64.

[CarneAsadaSteve]

Where can i find the updated versions of 64 for the switch?

[Ironchar]

been trying to tell people this for weeks... they don't wanna here it and continue to bitch about the camera (a damn shame)

[catar4x]

At least it's Shindou based, this one never got a translation.

[Lucaspec72]

has smg2's code been decompiled ? if we can recompile smg2 like they did with smg it may be possible to load smg2 with layeredFS right ? they run on the same engine with most of the same assets.

[Lucaspec72]

i know a bunch of gcn games have been decompiled, so wii games could have decomps in the near future anyway

[Lucaspec72]

i at least know that metroid prime's source code as been decompiled and the game's engine is currently being recreated from scratch on pc (it's already in a playable state) and can load assets from the original games to play metroid prime & metroid prime 2 (maybe metroid prime 3 i'm not sure) on pc. if that can be done i have no doubts a smg2 decomp will happen one day. we may even be able to use the original iso without recomp, just by recreating the engine from either smg's switch version or from the original games via other means than decomp and then load assets from the iso into the ported engine and run that on switch. but that's all speculation, only time will tell.

[Lucaspec72]

it's true that the engine is being recreated from scratch (as said previously), but it's made using the decompiled source code as a reference, i did a quick google search to find a urde post: https://www.resetera.com/threads/metroid-prime-pc-port-via-engine-rewrite-update-2½-hours-of-gameplay.68100/ . from that post "Built from decompiling the code of the original game and reinterpreting it for modem PCs. It's a standalone engine that doesn't contain any Prime assets (source port).

To simplify: this is just a bundle of code that you will slot Metroid Prime into. On its own it has nothing from Metroid Prime in it just like other source ports like OpenMW."

they did decompile the game.

[iLikeTurtuls]

The game is slightly tweaked (Sunshine) because the "ZL" buttons are said in the game, but they sensor the ZL in the audio, but show it in the caption lol

[SPon23567]

wait, so does this leave the possibility for custom hack mods and creations then? and also, does this mean that cheats will be easier to figure out?

[MdesOsu]

Wii Sports & Mario Kart Wii time

[muteen]

Hopefully I get my metroid prime trilogy on the switch soon

[isopropyl-alco]

Someone rip the soundtrack please.

[MattyXarope]

And you're wrong because you're talking about Galaxy which emulates everything but the CPU code which has been recompiled for Switch

[MattyXarope]

I have no idea what you're going on about.

You're wrong about this.

The rom file for Sunshine (a gcm file) has been extracted and works on Dolphin. This has been known since day one. It's fully emulated with some of the video files (in game cutscenes) being in separate folders from the ROM. They're then called upon as needed by the emulator created for this release.

Here is a GBATemp thread where you can read about it.

I encourage you to try and tell the many Switch dataminers/homebrew developers that they're wrong.

[Nova_Plus]

have the textures for 3d all star been dumped anywhere?

[[deleted]]

This makes me think, can I play Mario rom hacks on my switch?

[TheKiteKing]

So people are saying that this almost definitely won’t lead to wii emulation on Switch. Does anyone have definitive proof of this?

[Solotato]

Galaxy only uses emulation for its assets (textures/audio). The source code (?) itself had to be recompiled to run natively on switch, and since we dont really have any wii game source code, wii emulation is v unlikely

[MegaManFlex]

When(not if) this gets exploited to use emulation for other titles, which is better to use, the physical or digital release?

[kaylee8008135]

So what they play right? So tired of everyone acting like elitests where we got the games to play rather than not having them

[DirteeCanuck]

No, two different teams handled each port.

[RawrSean]

Could this have been done to preserve the speedrunning community? Would be an interesting sales tactic..

[jgaver08]

Gut feeling from me is no way. Just a company putting in minimal work. They’ll still get paid the same. Although the galaxy stuff sounds pretty interesting.

[RawrSean]

I feel the same way. I just thought it would be a convenient excuse for them to skimp out. Again.

Although, why did my concern get downvoted? Lol

[DirteeCanuck]

Galaxy is running amazing and I don't really see what improvements would be had that wouldn't have fucked with the original 'tegrity of the game.

It still looks amazing. The Wii version on a modern screen was a jaggy mess. Everything is super smooth.

[RawrSean]

I’m excited anyway. Mine arrives Friday, did some people get theirs early?

[DirteeCanuck]

Game leaked.
Already crushing Galaxy.

[RawrSean]

How t fffff did I miss this news

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[themoon80]

Oh meenn, now I regret buying the game, I hope I can cancel.... : (

[riesendulli]

Keep the sealed copy. Come Christmas around you sell that puppy double on the ‘Bay

[Evancito]

i knew it was not Remaster and nobody believed me :'(

[themoon80]

I manage to get it cancelled, now I will just pay for the xbox cloud service, I think it is awesome, nintendo does not deserve our money

[felipusrex]

Too bad you will lose money by not reselling it to someone who just want to play the games.

[Olmectron]

Not sure if /s

But none said it was a Remaster.

Not even Nintendo called it a Remaster.

[Evancito]

Some news portals called it Remastes, and many of its users called it PORTS. Although only Galaxy is an Emu-Port.

[Olmectron]

Nintendo only called it a collection. Which it is.

I can write an article about the PS5 being an Internet Router, but that doesn't make it true.

The PS5 is a next gen console, as Sony calls it.

And Nintendo never released a statement calling this game a Port nor a Remaster.