The Analogue 3D, an FPGA-based Nintendo 64 , is set to open for pre-orders on October 21st, priced at $249.99. This console aims to provide a highly accurate emulation of the original N64 hardware using a powerful Altera Cyclone 10GX FPGA chip, which is the most advanced FPGA used by Analogue to date.https://Twitter.com/analogue/status/1846567706910142548Key FeaturesCompatibility: The Analogue 3D supports all official N64 cartridges from any region, promising no slowdown or inaccuracies. It features four controller ports for original N64 controllers and also supports wireless controllers via Bluetooth.Resolution and Display: It includes a bespoke 4K upscaler designed to faithfully recreate the look
Cycle accurate just means the FPGA runs the same cycles as the reference hardware of whatever it’s programmed to be doing. In this case, an N64.
But the point of software emulation is to skip all of that noise and be more portable in the first place. The only real reason I can think to go with FPGA in this case is 1) to sidestep lawsuits, and 2) to possibly expand functionality in the future.
It might seem like an overkill but cycle accurate emulation is in many ways easier, just way less performant. Back in the day devs wrote software in a way that would leverage different timings between different pieces of hardware to achieve things that wouldn’t be possible otherwise like full screen parallax scrolling on Gameboy. Software emulators have to identify those cases and implement workarounds for them. Some edge cases are unresolved for years leading to bugs of varying severity. You can see a rundown of such cases on Analogue Pocket in this video.