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A while back, the Nintendo Switch Online membership introduced emulated retro console games for the Japanese game developer's handheld system. After Nintendo announced the arrival of Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games, fans were excited.
However, the launch ended up being a disaster as the emulation quality for the N64 titles was quite poor - even more so than on previous Nintendo consoles (via the Virtual Console service).
The Super Mario-developer has released an update that aims to fix these issues. The first of these games to get patched up is Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
The Nintendo Switch Online emulation service finally seems to be improving
The classic games service started off with NES and Super NES games but went on to deliver N64 and Sega Genesis titles as well for an additional fee. Upon debuting, Ocarina of Time had notable issues on the Switch, particularly with regards to rendering graphics.
Certain effects were missing or rendered improperly, like the glitchy water shader in the Water Temple area.
The missing fog and broken water textures as well as reflections are now fixed. The arena where the protagonist Link faces off against his dark doppleganger is back in its authentic state.
In fact, as reported by a Twitter user, fog in general has been fixed across games, so it seems to be a general emulation update.
However, it wasn't the only game suffering from problems. Paper Mario, one of the handful of RPGs released for N64, had a bug that crashed the emulation when Mario died while a party member called Watt was on the combat field.
This has been rectified as well. So it does seem like the Big N is slowly but steadily working their way up to improving their emulation tech for the Switch.
But there's still a long way to go. Several other titles continue to have issues. Dr. Mario's transition problems persist and the Invisio boss fight in Yoshi's Island still shows visual bugs. But as OOT has shown, they should be fixed in due time.
The N64 games are available as part of the Expansion Pack for the Nintendo Switch Online subscription. This also nets users exclusive perks. These include access to Animal Crossing: New Horizon's Happy Home Paradise DLC and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe's upcoming 48-course DLC. It's available for $49.99 for the annual membership.
On a related note, Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is the latest newcomer to the Expansion Pass, which is also a sequel to OOT.
