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?
I thought Kaze pretty much reverse engineered the whole thing? Or is that just for Mario 64?
Just Mario 64. However there is a very good implementation of the N64 in the Mister FPGA project. The downside is there aren’t many emulation features that you’d expect out of a software emulator (e.g. save states)
I didn’t have time to watch the video at the moment. What’s wrong with Dolphin?
Or is this about things people that had a n64 back in the day don’t even recognize as wrong?
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?
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.
can you explain how?
I boot up Dolphin, and then choose the game I want to play.
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?? 🤷♂️
Back in 2015 I used the emulator “1964” to play some MarioKart64 and it ran well on a very weak computer, fwiw.
Do you remember if you had the black screen in this track?
It’s a classical issue in n64 emulators.
It looks different than I remember. Usually it was just a black screen.
The core if it boils down to, when emulating older machines, is the consoles processor speaks language A, and our computers all speak language B
The emulator has to translate back and forth between A<->B faster than the speed the original processors would’ve just spoken A
So translating A<->B is a way tougher task than just reciting A. So you need a tremendously better CPU than what the console had to emulate it.
It’s kinda like, Dropping a rock in a pile of sand is easy. Simulating dropping that rock into the pile of sand in real time accurately is really challenging.
Not only that. Emulators must often ”cheat” to achieve high speeds. This means emulators doesn’t try to achieve a 1:1 replication of what’s happening inside the hardware, but something that’s gives close enough results and better tailored for modern hardware.
The reason why N64 is particularly difficult is because each game must be optimized individually (due to the heavy reliance on microcode). The emulator must replicate the hardware at a much lower level for an accurate emulation of all games. Emulator developers can apply optimizations on each individual game, but it’s incredibly time consuming to do so for every game in the N64 library.
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I respect MVG a lot but this is honestly clickbait. All you have to do is:
- Download RetroArch
- Install Mupen64Plus-Next core
- Enable ParaLLEl RDP and RSP plugins in core settings
and you can play every game without issues. Not a broken mess by any means.
If you have resources leftover, you can even go into the core settings and turn internal resolution to 4x for better 3D graphics
Feel free to commit a pull request. Don’t talk about it. Be about it.
The creator of this video is an emulator developer.
And?
that means they are about it.
Lol this is the best interaction. Props.
