Weeks after we reviewed the Analogue 3D system and its impressive ability to run N64 games on modern TVs, we're taking an opportunity to refresh our impressions based on updates in the wild. You can catch up with the core sales pitch of Analogue's latest FPGA system by reading our feature-length review, then check out additional findings - including video footage of frame-rate analysis - by watching this week's special "EX1" episode of the DF Retro Super Show.

The biggest news beyond this week's video comes in the form of the system's first firmware update, which went live after this video was recorded. It includes a few features we had hoped to see in the review window - though it is missing others.

The most striking one is an additional, previously promised visual toggle: texture filtering. Nintendo 64 stood out from its console-generation peers by broadly applying a three-sample bilinear texture filter - whose treatment of textures differs from the kind bilinear filtering more commonly seen on PCs and post-N64 consoles. Textures as applied in N64 games were designed with this filter in mind, and the ability to disable it, seen in software emulators and alternative FPGA options like the MiSTer, radically changes the resulting visual makeup.

So we're excited to see this toggle now available for Analogue 3D, so that original cartridge owners can look behind the curtain at how their favourite games were authored around the N64's combination of features and limitations.

On the console's 3D-centric games, the resulting texture splotchiness sometimes just makes geometric surfaces look more like the kinds found in PlayStation 1 games - albeit with the N64's inherent perspective-correction pass that the PS1 lacks. Depending on how textures were originally applied, the removal of their filter can bring out surprising block patterns, enough so that flipping the filter on and off is almost educational, as far as revealing how N64 game devs leaned into the texture filter to smooth over the N64's meagre texture cache.

In the above gallery, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's expansive Hyrule Field expands its limited pixel fidelity by smearing the filter over wide expanses, turning large chunks of individual colour into a muddier grass-like appearance. And semi-transparent textures in Wave Race 64 and Banjo-Kazooie have their visual effect broken by the filter's removal, thus nullifying the singular look of those games' respective waves and ghosts.

Like with any other visual toggles on Analogue 3D, texture filtering can be disabled on a game-by-game basis, in case you have a game or two that you prefer being radically changed this way. And in the case of the console's very small selection of 2D-centric games, it may or may not make a marked improvement. The best use case for removing N64 texture filtering is in the wholly 2D Mischief Makers from Treasure, which removes the smear effect from the game's library of sprites. This pairs well with the Analogue 3D's built-in CRT-resembling filters, combining rawer pixels with an era-appropriate scanline and grid effect over the screen.

Firmware 1.1.9 additionally includes tweaks to its "Unleashed" overclocking mode to further improve CPU-based gains in games like Perfect Dark and Goldeneye 007; in the latter game's case, we can confirm its performance has jumped in particular in four-player split-screen mode, which had been a review-window complaint. However, this tweak to the console's Unleashed setting may have broken the A3D's management of music playback, as songs have either stopped abruptly or failed to loop in tests of both Rare shooters on 1.1.9.

And if you prefer to force your favourite NTSC cartridge to run in a PAL container, or vice versa, this week's new firmware includes a forced-region toggle. We have yet to extensively test whether this makes it easy for PAL carts to leap past a 50Hz refresh limit, but for compatible games, it's likely a welcome A3D addition.

Outside of official updates, the popular line of Everdrive N64 flash carts have received a formal update from their Ukraine-based creator Krikkz, now making more models compatible with the Analogue 3D. As of press time, affected Everdrive carts must be plugged into original N64 hardware to access the updated firmware, and after an initial firmware went live, Krikzz posted a follow-up that offered fixes for A3D's Unleashed setting.

This week's last and arguably most eyebrow-raising news comes from Kaze Emanuar, a homebrew N64 developer who has spearheaded modern research into how the N64 works - and how modern-day devs can optimise N64 code based on his learnings. Kaze has now tested his in-development fan-mod to Super Mario 64, titled Return to Yoshi's Island 64, as his in-development build has been optimised based on his own learnings, and he's confirmed that his game runs slower on A3D hardware at default settings than on a real N64.

In an email interview with DF, Kaze suggests he is preparing a video to discuss the "three or four hardware features that were simply not emulated on the Analogue 3D." In the meantime, he is willing to discuss at least one finding: the A3D does not emulate the real N64's "secret" additional 1MB of system RAM. Admittedly, Nintendo never offered official guidance to contemporary N64 developers about how to access this RAM for any real-time rendering, which is likely why A3D does not account for it: retail games are largely unaffected.

And by default, Kaze's project only lightly taps into this additional, function-limited 1MB, even though he hypothesises that it could be exposed more widely in his game and others for functions like save data and other "rare" in-game events. Still, he's able to test its availability on A3D, and its current inability to emulate this console quirk runs counter to Kaze's specific perspective as a developer. "Really, it only matters whether they can run the games accurate to the real N64 to me," he tells DF via email.

We look forward to Kaze discussing his findings on his YouTube channel at some point in the future - along with future Analogue firmware updates that CEO Christopher Taber has assured us will arrive at some point, including filter customisations and a retuned HDR implementation.