Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
| Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Electronic Arts |
| Publisher(s) | Electronic Arts |
| Series | Harry Potter |
| Platform(s) | GameCube |
| Release date(s) | EU May 29, 2004 NA June 2, 2004 JP June 26, 2004 |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Input methods | GameCube Controller, Game Boy Advance |
| Compatibility | 3  Starts |
| GameIDs | |
| See also... |
Dolphin Forum thread |
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a 2004 video game that was released concurrently with the film release of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Both the game and the film were based on J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third novel in the Harry Potter series.
Problems
VP6 Videos
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban uses the VP6 video codec, common in Electronic Arts' titles, causing its videos to have vertical line artifacts and other glitches on many graphics cards. The Software Render will display VP6 video correctly, but is typically too slow. VP6 rendering also reacts poorly to the Force Texture Filtering enhancements (and Anisotropic Filtering on NVIDIA), causing further scrambling. See issue 7193. In 5.0-15515 or newer, this can be fixed with "Manual Texture Sampling" in the Graphics Settings -> Advanced menu.
Transitions
Since at least 4.0-271 transitions between cutscenes/menus and gameplay will cause Dolphin to hang at 0FPS for 5-10 seconds before resuming normally. See issue 11220.
Slowdown
There is slowdown with the default clock, overclocking makes it worse and if you underclock it the FPS goes up and the sound no longer lags however the rest of the game slows down and voices are desynched. Tested on 4.0-5809. Fix is unknown.
FMV Issue
The Warner Bros intro FMV skips frames if Accurate Texture Cache is not set to Safe.
Enhancements
60 FPS
The following AR code will make the game run at 60FPS instead of 30.
NTSC-U
$60FPS 0445EFBC 00000001
Configuration
Only configuration options for the best compatibility where they deviate from defaults are listed.
Graphics
| Config | Setting | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Texture Cache Accuracy | Position 1 (Safe) | Correct Warner Bros FMV |
| Manual Texture Sampling | On | Render VP6 video |
Version Compatibility
The graph below charts the compatibility with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban since Dolphin's 2.0 release, listing revisions only where a compatibility change occurred.
Testing
This title has been tested on the environments listed below:
| Test Entries | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revision | OS | CPU | GPU | Result | Tester |
| 3.0-811 | Mac OS X 10.7.5 | Intel Core i7 @ 2.2 GHz | AMD Radeon HD 6750M | Barely playable. Intro videos are played incorrectly (random shapes mostly in blue, red and gray). Framerate is pretty low (15-18FPS). Voices (and maybe other sounds) are missing from cutscenes. However, the game seemed to work for the 5 min I spent on it and would probably be playable if it had a better framerate. Tested with default settings and DSP HLE. | Nolendil |
| 4.0 | Windows | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 @ 3.4 GHz | AMD Radeon HD 6950 | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban HD Widescreen Hack | Spartacus |
| 4.0-271 | Windows 7 | Intel Core i5-3270 @ 3.2 GHz | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 | Playable if you turn sound off, because sound laggy even at DSP LLE. FPS ~23. After cutscenes FPS goes to 0 for some time. VP6 video still messed. IR-4x, AF-16x, EFB - Virtual, EFB Copies - Texture, Fast Texture Cache (IT doesn't matter how low settings are, FPS still will be the same) | Moneyvova |
| 4.0-595 | Windows 7 | AMD Athlon II x3 455 @ 3.3 GHz | AMD Radeon HD 7770 | Barely functioning. Sound was turned completely off. FPS barely held 12. As stated, VP6 video is patched, though still glitchy. OpenGL Backend, IR native, AA none, Filtering 1x, disabled scaled EFB copy, copies to RAM with cache, fast TCA, virtual external frame buffer. | TheUltimaXtreme |
| 4.0-1340 | Windows 7 | Intel Core i5-4570 @ 3.6 GHz | AMD Radeon HD 4870 | FPS ~ 30. Major bugs in game logic and physics, glitchy video, random in-game hangups and stutters, vanishing music | Unruval |
| 4.0-5308 | Ubuntu 14.10 | Intel Core i3-3220 @ 3.3 GHz | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 | Starts, but unplayable. Drops to 60% speed and then will pop back to 100% for no discernible reason. Long hangs during transitions such as opening/closing the menus or coming out of cutscenes. VP6 videos play, but often stutter or repeat segments of the cutscene. These glitches combined make for a very frustrating experience trying to play the game. | Xerxes |
| 4.0-7840 | Windows 7 | Intel Core i5-4590 @ 3.5 GHz | AMD Radeon R9 390 | Playable and completable. Game speed slows down to ~50% briefly while outside, then goes back to 100%. Opening/closing menus and transitioning between room instances results in some hangs lasting 2-5 seconds. VP6 videos play when Anistropic Filtering is off with some minor glitches.Some crashes when entering rooms whilst having Dual Core enabled. Had no problems with audio or physics. Tested with default settings with Dual Core off, DSP HLE, Direct3D, Skip EFB Access, and Anistropic Filtering at x1. | Simon62821 |
| 4.0-8329 | Windows 7 | Intel Core i7 @ 4 GHz | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 | Playable and completeable with minor problems. VP6 videos are glitchy, game suffers with pretty frequent slowdowns and buggy physics. Tested with default settings. | unruval |
| 5.0-9795 | Windows 10 | Intel Core i3-3220 @ 3.3 GHz | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 | Tested the first train section with default settings. Slows down to 65% all the way through the menus and train except when a demontor tries to suck Ron while saving Harry, where the game mysteriously jumps to 100% speed. Locks up at 0% between transitions for a moment too. Videos have flickering/skipping but the few I saw were watchable. Stopped playing when the main castle exhibited the same slowdown. | Xerxes |
Gameplay Videos
- Dolphin Emulator 4.0-1192 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1080p HD) - Nintendo GameCube
- Dolphin - Harry Potter 3: Prisoners of Azkaban (GameCube) (720p60)
| ||||||||
- Electronic Arts (Developer)
- Electronic Arts (Publisher)
- Harry Potter (Series)
- Europe (Release region)
- North America (Release region)
- Japan (Release region)
- 2004 (Initial release year)
- Action-adventure (Genre)
- Single-player (Game mode)
- Single-player only (Game mode)
- 1 (Players supported)
- GameCube Controller (Input supported)
- Game Boy Advance (Input supported)
- 3 stars (Rating)
- Texture Cache Accuracy (Config Required)
- Manual Texture Sampling (Config Required)
- Tested On (Release): 3.0
- Tested On (OS): macOS
- Tested On (CPU): Intel
- Tested On (GPU): AMD
- Tested
- Tested On (Release): 4.0
- Tested On (OS): Windows
- Tested On (GPU): NVIDIA
- Tested On (CPU): AMD
- Tested On (OS): Linux
- Tested On (Release): 5.0
- Untested for 10000+ revisions
- GameCube games