The Best N64 Emulator of 2024 (2024)

Anyone searching for the best N64 emulator of 2023 knows just how revolutionary the Nintendo 64 was when it was first released back in 1996 in the United States. The change from 2D to 3D was incredible. It seemed like just yesterday the Nintendo Entertainment System had released.

As a child, my mind was completely blown and I became fully immersed into Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Donkey Kong 64, Pokemon Stadium, and so many more of my favorite games. Now as an adult in my 30’s, I look back so fondly at the N64 and even though some of the graphics may not quite hold up to today’s standards, the nostalgia will always be there for me.

There’s nothing quite like playing your N64 games on the original console, but it’s incredible just how far N64 emulation has come. There are N64 emulators for android devices, PC, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, and you can even play your favorite classic games on a Raspberry Pi on a handheld gaming PC like the Aya Neo 2. You can even install an N64 emulator graphics plugin GLideN64 and your games will never have looked so good!

This article is meant to serve as an informative piece of content of the best N64 emulators available today, what platforms they run on, what features they have, and ultimately which is the best for you. All of the other emulators that we share here have multiplayer capabilities and some even offer the ability to play your N64 game file with friends.

As always, remember that in some areas of the world, emulators are perfectly legal, however downloading and pirating games is not. We do not condone illegally downloading emulators or ROM files and recommend you always check the legality of both where you live before you consider trying to download any.

Contents hide

1. 1. Project 64

2. 2. OpenEmu

3. 3. Retro Arch

4. 4. Mupen64Plus

5. 5. Mega N64

6. 6. M64Plus FZ Emulator

7. 7. Sixtyforce

8. 8. Delta

1. Project 64

Price: Free
Platforms: Windows PC and Android devices
License: GPL-2.0
Tech: C++
Official website
Discord

The Project64 emulator has been around for a long time and it’s no secret that it’s seen as one of the best N64 emulators for PC and Android devices. This emulator is easy to navigate and use and typically most games will run right out of the box with no additional configuration or setup required. For those who want, there are a ton of additional options available to further configure your gaming.

The source code for Project64 is hold on their official Github repository here and is regularly maintained and updated by members of the community.

Some additional features of Project64 worth mentioning are:

2. OpenEmu

Price: Free
Platforms: Mac OS
License: Open Source
Tech: Cocoa, Metal, Core Animation, and other third-party libraries. OpenEmu uses a modular architecture, allowing for game-engine plugins, allowing OpenEmu to support a host of different emulation engines and back ends while retaining the familiar macOS native front end.
Official website
Wiki

OpenEmu can play games from many different consoles, including the N64. This is one of the best N64 emulators for Mac OS you can get. Currently, players can load the following game engines as plugins:

Atari 2600
Atari 5200
Atari 7800
Atari Lynx
ColecoVision
Famicom Disk Systems
Game Boy / Game Boy Color
Game Boy Advance
Game Gear
Intellivision
NeoGeo Pocket
Nintendo (NES) / Famicom
Nintendo 64
Nintendo DS
Nintendo GameCube
Odyssey² / Videopac+
PC-FX
SG-1000
Sega 32X
Sega CD / Mega CD
Sega Genesis / Mega Drive
Sega Master System
Sega Saturn
Sony PSP
Sony PlayStation
Super Nintendo (SNES)
TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine
TurboGrafx-CD / PCE-CD
Vectrex
Virtual Boy
WonderSwan

The UI is fantastic, everything is automatically organized for you in alphabetical order, and playing games is as simple as dragging and dropping ROM files in and letting OpenEmu take it from there.

Mapping your own custom USB controllers is also a breeze. Most USB or Bluetooth controllers are supported and are extremely easy to setup by following the instructions – you’ll just need to map the controller’s button to the emulator inputs and you’re all set. OpenEmu gets bonus points for the custom gamepad support.

For Mac users, OpenEmu is the obvious choice here. Not only is it simple to setup, but it’s user friendly and works across many different consoles including the N64.

3. Retro Arch

Price: Free
Platforms: DOS, Emscripten, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Haiku, Solaris, Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, jailbroken iOS devices, Apple tvOS, Raspberry Pi, Playstation2, Playstation3, Playstation4, Playstation Portable, Playstation Vita, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, Gamecube, Wii, Wii U, 3DS/2DS, Nintendo Switch, NES/SNES Classic Edition, Blackberry, OpenDingux, Miyoo, RS90, RetroFW
License: GPLv3
Tech: RetroArch is the reference frontend for the libretro API. Popular examples of implementations for this API includes video game emulators, game engines, etc. These programs are instantiated as dynamic libraries and are referred to as “libretro free retroarch cores”.
Official website
Discord

Retro Arch is a slick well developed frontend interface for video game emulators that offers near the same experience you’d get with a console. Not only does it work on all of the most popular operating systems out there (including Android phones and jailbroken iOS devices and even hacked gaming consoles), it is extremely simple and intuitive to set up and has a great user interface. Similar to OpenEmu, Retro Arch has tons of different consoles available, allowing you to play just about any game you can think of.

This is a go to app for many gamers looking to emulate and out of the box typically works well for each device. You’ll need to download and setup kernels for each console you want to play, but the process isn’t too complicated and the website has a helpful FAQ to steer you in the right direction.

After you’ve gotten your kernels all setup, great news, you’ll then just need to plug in your ROMs and you’re ready to play some games in higher resolution.

Retro Arch also comes with blind accessibility features which is very cool. Making games accessible to more people is always a positive in our book.

Check out our RetroArch N64 core setup guide for more information on using RetroArch for emulating N64 games.

For those who want to get into emulating on the Raspberry Pi, make sure you check out our guide for how to setup RetroPie N64 as well.

4. Mupen64Plus

Price: Free
Platforms: Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, FreeBSD, emulator for Android devices
License: Open Source
Tech: Mupen64Plus is a cross-platform plugin-based N64 emulator which is capable of accurately playing many games. Included are four MIPS R4300 CPU emulators, with dynamic recompilers for 32-bit x86 and 64-bit amd64 systems, and necessary plugins for audio, graphical rendering (RDP), signal co-processor (RSP), and input. There is 1 included OpenGL video plugin, called RiceVideo. There are 3 other excellent plugins being maintained by wahrhaft, called Arachnoid, Glide64, and Z64.
Official website
Documentation

The Mupen64Plus emulator is an OG in the N64 emulation space. Many of the best N64 emulators available use Mupen64Plus as their N64 base core. It also runs on most popular devices and works well with most ROMs out there. It may not be the simplest to setup and get running the first time, but it does have a lot of settings that can be changed and adjusted to your liking.

If you’ve had issues in the past getting C buttons on your controller to work as intended, give Mupen64Plus a test drive and go collect some starts in Super Mario 64.

5. Mega N64

Price: Free version
Platforms: Android
License: N/A
Tech: N/A
There is no longer an install link on the Google Play Store for this emulator and we do not recommend you download it from an external site – please read below for more information on why it was removed

At the time of writing this article, the Mega N64 emulator has been removed from the Google Play Store and is no longer available to install. This Reddit post here explains that back in 2018, Mega N64 was infected with malware and the infected version was installed by millions of users because of the auto update feature on the Play Store.

The malware caused the app to use a ton of data on the user’s device and also caused Chrome to randomly open popups for a website called “livemobilesearch”.

The app was reported to the Google Play Store and was eventually taken down. Because of this, we obviously don’t recommend installing any APKs available online as these might also be infected with malware. Instead, we recommend you use the following Android N64 emulator listed below instead.

6. M64Plus FZ Emulator

Price: Free version available with ads, certain features locked behind pro version
Platforms: Android users rejoice
License: Open Source
Tech: Uses Mupen64Plus as its core and is optimized for Android phones

M64Plus FZ Emulator for Android is one of the best N64 emulators for android devices. The free version has currently been installed over 5 million times and has an average rating of 4.6 stars.

All necessary cores and plugins are included in the app, however there are some things to note as this is not likely to be a perfect experience across all games and devices:

There will likely be issues with specific games or devices
Not all games will work properly, but most do (there is currently no list available of games and their playable states)
For games that do work, you may have to try different video plugins to find an optimal setup
Not all video plugins will work with every device, and there may be glitches and/or bugs

The biggest caveat of all is the fact that the netplay server is only supported in the “pro” app, meaning that in order to play games over the internet with friends, you must purchase the pro version for $3.99. The pro version also adds support for online cloud backups and removes ads. Netplay requires a router with UPnP and being connected to the router. No UPnP is required to play games locally over the same WiFi network. The pro app has currently been installed over 10k times and has an average rating of 4.9 stars.

7. Sixtyforce

Price: Free version available (no save states and “Sixtyforce watermark at bottom of screen) and paid version costs $15
Platforms: MacOS
License: Not Open Source
Tech: Not much information openly available on this
Official website
Documentation

Sixtyforce is an emulator for MacOS that runs Nintendo 64 games pretty well depending on your setup. The website states that nearly every part of the Nintendo 64 was reverse engineered and recreated in software. At the time of writing this, the most recent update to SixtyForce was back in 2020 when v2.0.2 was released.

Now that Apple is working on new ARM-based Macs (Apple Silicon), the developer has started working on rewriting the emulator to be better performant on those machines. They stated that it will take some time to get this task fully completed. They also mentioned that Sixtyforce will run on Rosetta and ARM-based Macs, but it won’t be a great experience.

8. Delta

Price: Free
Platforms: iOS
License: AGPLv3
Tech: Delta was designed from the start to be modular and because of that, each “Delta Core” has its own GitHub repo and is added as a submodule to the main Delta project. This means that Delta uses two of the developer’s own private frameworks to share common functionality between the two apps: Roxas and Harmony.
Official website
Documentation
Patreon

Delta is an iOS app that lets you emulate classic games for several different consoles including the N64.

The game systems currently available are the following:

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)
Nintendo 64 (N64)
Game Boy / GB Color (GBC)
Game Boy Advance (GBA)
Nintendo DS (DS)
Sega Genesis / Mega Drive (GEN) (currently in beta)

Delta has accurate full speed emulation due to its underlying emulator cores. It boasts a nice looking user interface, custom controller support, customizable button layout, custom controller skins, save states, fast forwarding, delta sync, the ability to hold down buttons on your behalf, 3D/haptic touch, cheat codes, gyroscope support, and microphone support.

Installation isn’t too difficult, but keep in mind that Apple disallowed the app on the App Store, causing the developer to create an alternative storefront to install the app from called AltStore.

To install Delta with AltStore:

Download AltServer for Mac or PC from Altstore
Connect your iOS device to your computer using a lightning cable (or using a USB-C cable for iPads)
Follow this FAQ to install AltStore onto your apple device using AltServer
Open AltStore on your device and head to the “Browse” tab
Locate Delta and then install it by pressing the FREE button

After you’ve installed Delta, you can then boot up the emulator and start playing through some legendary games.

9. 1964

Price: Free
Platforms: Windows and Android
License: Unknown

1964 has been around for ages and subsequently still has a number of issues. The worst of these is that many games often times do crash and you’ll end up losing your progress.

While not ideal, it still gets the job done most of the time. Usability issues aside, 1964 has the ability to create cheat codes for your Roms and alter the game files – letting you custom your won ROMs after adding them.

Some folks swear that 1964 is the best N64 emulator for playing Goldeneye and Perfect Dark flawlessly. However, if you are a purist and prefer that Goldeneye and Perfect Dark maintain their original slowdowns at parts, the enhancements of 1964 GEPD might improve performance a bit too much for your taste at times.

10. ClassicBoy Lite/ClassicBoy Pro

Price: Free version available, certain features locked behind pro version
Platforms: Android
License: Not Open Source
Google Play Store

We’ve mentioned a number of N64 emulators for Android so far and we have yet another! Classicboy is another game emulator that let you play many retro video games on your Android devices, including N64 games.

Free Version

The free version comes with eight emulation cores that includes PCSX-ReARMed, Mupen64Plus, VBA-M/mGBA, Snes9x, FCEUmm, Genplus, FBA and Stella. The free version has the following available features:
• Play games from start, no resuming from save states from auto saves
• Resume game states from battery-sram file
• Touchscreen input by on-screen 2D buttons
• Graphic buttons editor for position and size definition – graphic buttons appearance custom settings such as style, scale, animation, opacity etc.
• External gamepad/keyboard input, maximum 4 players are supported
• Switch between digital and analog D-pad at runtime
• Controller profiles.
• Custom setting for game audio/video
• Game data export/import
• Game cheats function

Paid Version

The paid version has the following additional features:
• Resume game states from auto-saves and slots-saves
• Gesture controller
• Sensor controller

It needs to be noted that performance quality can suffer depending on the type of system you’re looking to emulate on ClassicBoy. This can be seen in the app’s current rating score of 3.4 stars. It has been installed by over 1M+ users, so give it a shot if you like!

11. Cen64

Price: Free
Platforms: Windows, Linux, MacOS
License: BSD-3-Clause license
Tech: Cen64 aims for perfect emulation by emulating the actual hardware inside of the Nintendo 64.
Github

Last on our list is Cen64, a fun side project of a talented developer and a passionate community who have worked to reverse engineer the Nintendo 64 hardware. They originally started the project to learn more about what it took to actually create the N64.

Cen64 isn’t the simplest emulator to get up and running on your machine, but if you are a technical minded person who’d like to give it a shot, the emulator’s official Github breaks down the build requirements and usage.

Because the emulator focuses so much on actually emulating the hardware needed to run the games, you will need to have a machine with enough processing power captable of running this beast. Windows and Linux are in a more easily accessible state with Mac working, but requiring the user to build it themselves on their machine.

Best N64 Emulator For PC

If you’re a Windows user, Project64 is the best emulator that play Nintendo 64 games on your PC. It’s easily accessible and not very technical to get started and the performance is very solid. Many N64 games work nearly flawlessly with the emulator because it has been in active development for such a long time.

There are many different plugins that can be used as well. Some example plugins are the GlideN64 graphics plugin, the NRage input plugin that lets you connect multiple controllers, and many more. Project64 even has the ability to set a hot key to fast forward certain parts of games like cutscenes or long drawn out text.

It’s hands down the best N64 emulator that you can use for PC. While it isn’t perfect, it is very good.

Best N64 Emulator For Mac

If you’re a Mac user, OpenEmu is the obvious choice. To clarify, OpenEmu technically isn’t actually an emulator itself, but rather is an emulator frontend application that allows Mac users to install an N64 emulator core to play Nintendo 64 games. This core is the Mupen64Plus emulator.

OpenEmu has a very slick looking user interface and is very intuitive to use. The addition of individual game art and how easy it is to organize games by system and have them show in alphabetical order make finding and playing games a breeze. It also improves the emulation experience a bit and allows it to feel more like an authentic console experience.

OpenEmu is a fantastic option for playing N64 games on Mac devices running MacOS.

Best N64 Emulator For Android

One of the best N64 emulators for Android devices is M64Plus FZ. The app has over 5 million installs and has managed to keep an average rating score of 4.6 stars which is truly a testament to its quality and high performance. The developer actively maintains M64Plus and the app has a surprising amount of customization features available.

The app even has the ability to play classic N64 games online through the use of Netplay. While this is stuck behind a one time paywall fee, it’s relatively cheap and being able to play Nintendo 64 games online with friends on your tablet or phone is a nice touch.

M64Plus is no doubt the best Android N64 emulator that you can install.

Best N64 Emulator For iOS

Delta is by far the best N64 emulator for iOS. Delta is very solid and has a nice user interface, the ability to use custom controllers, allows players to customize their emulator’s button layout, allows for fast forwarding of games, and has tons of additional features. While installation of Delta is a bit more complex than it needs to be, this is ultimately because Apple decided to remove it from the Appstore.

The fact that the developers went out of their way to create an entirely new Appstore called Altstore to circumvent Apple’s ban is incredible. It shows the level of dedication and desire to put a quality emulator on iOS.

Best N64 Emulator For Linux

If you’re on Linux, RetroArch is likely your best bet. It’s been ported to just about every single possible platform that exists. RetroArch has a very nice looking graphical user interface and is intuitive to setup and use.

There’s a reason it’s so widely used and praised by many. While RetroArch technically also isn’t an emulator, it is a frontend that Linux users can use to install the N64 core and play Nintendo 64 games on their Linux device.

Why is N64 So Hard To Emulate?

Emulation is not an easy task. It’s why some devices have such a hard time emulating certain consoles. The way that the N64 was built is complex and even with powerful PCs these days, the software that we are running on our devices is essentially mimicking the Nintendo 64 console’s hardware to run games. It’s not an easy job for software to mimic what consoles do natively to run games.

With all that being said, it’s incredible how far N64 emulation has come in recent years. In years past, N64 emulation was always iffy and most N64 emulators weren’t really known for their reliability. These days, you can literally emulate N64 games on a New Nintendo 3DS handheld and get somewhat decent framerates and performance.

Final Thoughts

If you have an original N64 system lying around and a copy of a game, you can never go wrong getting down on the original hardware. However, sometimes the convenience of playing classic games on other devices trumps having to break out and dust off the old system.

We hope you enjoyed this breakdown of the top 11 N64 emulators. Hopefully you now know which is the best n64 emulator for you.

The best n64 emulator depends on your device type, what games you want to play, and if you want to use one of the available free software options or not. If you’re looking for more emulation related articles, consider checking out our list of the best Nintendo Switch emulators. You might also like this article on the best site for ROMs.