The Nintendo 64 has always been a difficult machine to emulate correctly. But in 2025 - we should be well and truly past all of it right? Not exactly. Issues with Plugins, performance, graphical glitches, stutters. Unless you have a very powerful machine, these are common things many of us will run into when emulating the Nintendo 64. But why? And Is there any hope for fast, accurate N64 emulation in 2025 and beyond?
Dolphin is not an N64 emulator.
And yet I play all my N64 games on it.
Then you are playing virtual console roms/injections, which typically have more issues than current proper n64 emulators.
If it’s good enough for you, that’s fine but it’s far from perfect.
What issues do you notice while playing the games?
can you explain how?
I boot up Dolphin, and then choose the game I want to play.
Ah, an emulator within an emulator. Yes, I’m sure the results must be just like the original hardware!
The games work just fine. I played them when they were new, and get just as much enjoyment out of them now.
I’m not sorry i don’t care about milliseconds or whatever technical details the programmers care about. I am thankful for their hard work though.
How are you using dolphin to emulate N64?
Dolphin has no native N64 emulation support. Are you using N64 ports from the Wii? Those are running using Nintendo’s Wii-based emulator (which also has known issues) on top of the Wii emulation. That introduced a whole second layer of technical issues.
Not that the N64 roms aren’t playable, but the problem is more technical on why it’s so difficult to emulate the specific N64 hardware perfectly using just modern software
Thanks. Like i said i haven’t been able to check the video out yet.
I am enjoying everyone jumping down my throat about being able to play n64 games with no issues though. It’s giving me a good laugh with my coffee.
Yes, you are correct Dolphin will not play N64 ROMs directly. It will however play SOME Wii virtual console games which includes around 22 N64 games. Soooo, sorta?? 🤷♂️