N64 games not loading

nick81

Hi all,

New to all this so please go easy on me.

I have some n64 roms that i'm trying to play but when i try to load one up (using mupen64plus-next) - the screen flickers once and then it brings me back to the gameslist in retropie.

I'm using a raspberry pi 5, 8gb.

I've tried different emulators, they don't load the rom at all, so i think mupen64plus-next is the correct one to use but i can't figure out why i'm getting the screen flicker.

I did run the game with verbose logging, i see this error in the logs.

26544 Segmentation fault

Any ideas please?

Thanks
Nick

retropieuser555

There's a few solutions to this for the pi 5, easiest is to change the kernel in the /boot/config.txt to

kernel=kernel8.img

Also with the extra power of a pi 5 you can use lr-paralell or lr-mupen64plus-next with some higher resolution rather than the standalone emulator. But the standalone should still work fine

nick81

@retropieuser555 hey, thanks very much for the help! however, there is no line in the boot.cfg file that mentions kernel. Do I just add that line in? if so, where? :)

Thanks again!

here is my boot.cfg file:

# For more options and information see
# http://rptl.io/configtxt
# Some settings may impact device functionality. See link above for details

# Uncomment some or all of these to enable the optional hardware interfaces
#dtparam=i2c_arm=on
#dtparam=i2s=on
#dtparam=spi=on

# Enable audio (loads snd_bcm2835)
dtparam=audio=on

# Additional overlays and parameters are documented
# /boot/firmware/overlays/README

# Automatically load overlays for detected cameras
camera_auto_detect=1

# Automatically load overlays for detected DSI displays
display_auto_detect=1

# Automatically load initramfs files, if found
auto_initramfs=1

# Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
max_framebuffers=2

# Don't have the firmware create an initial video= setting in cmdline.txt.
# Use the kernel's default instead.
disable_fw_kms_setup=1

# Run in 64-bit mode
arm_64bit=1

# Disable compensation for displays with overscan
disable_overscan=1

# Run as fast as firmware / board allows
arm_boost=1

[cm4]
# Enable host mode on the 2711 built-in XHCI USB controller.
# This line should be removed if the legacy DWC2 controller is required
# (e.g. for USB device mode) or if USB support is not required.
otg_mode=1

[all]

retropieuser555

@nick81 ah yeah, I thought it's in there by default but commented out, just pop it near the top and it should work

nick81

@retropieuser555 amazing! worked perfectly! thanks so much!

mikev

Making this change fixed my issue but my Xbox Wireless Controller stopped working. Any way to still use my Xbox controller with this change?

uthabrutha

@retropieuser555 This fixed my issue too sweet!

hayawi

Had the same problem but the kernel8 thing just broke all my games (black screen whenever I tried to load any game).

The solution that worked for me was to add these lines to my retroarch config file:

parallel-n64-cpucore = "cached_interpreter"
mupen64plus-next-cpucore = "cached_interpreter"

as per this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/18pus3g/raspberry_pi5_retropie_n64_how/

For context, I just got my Pi 5 8GB and running full Raspberry PI OS. Installed retropie and all the emulators from source.