Analogue, creator of the well-reviewed Analogue Pocket, a high-quality handheld gaming system that can play cartridges from the Game Boy, Sega Game Gear and a handful of other systems at 10 times the resolution, is now putting a 4K twist on the Nintendo 64 with the Analogue 3D, the company said Monday.
Details on the Analogue 3D are slim, with Analogue withholding the console’s looks, price and specific release date. What is known is that it’ll come in 2024 and have 100% compatibility with the Nintendo 64 cartridge library across all regions, along with a 4K resolution output.
The Analogue 3D will also allow players to recreate the look of old CRT televisions, which is common in these types of modern-retro systems. Analogue also says the 3D will be able to recreate the look of PVMs, or production video monitors, high-quality CRTs that were used in television and film production.
Analogue say it’s able to achieve 100% compatibility by using a hardware chip called FPGA, which is short for field-programmable gate array. As opposed to software emulation, FPGA allows Analogue to replicate the hardware of older systems at the transistor level.
As to potentially not run afoul of Nintendo or any other copyright holders, the Analogue 3D won’t support openFPGA, a standard that allows third-party developers to make their own programs. Analogue also went out of its way to say the 3D doesn’t infringe on any copyright or trademarks.
