Is it possible to play nintendo 64 games on pc

For the next few years I was a passionate gamer, spending most of my spare time playing either my brother or my friends in the multiplayer modes of GoldenEye or Mario Kart 64 , as well as playing one of the many adventure games such as Super Mario 64 , Banjo-Kazooie or the memorable Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. At the beginning of the COVID pandemic I made the decision to get a Nintendo Switch before they were in high demand and this made me realize… I wish I could still play all of those classic N64 games!

Regrettably, I sold my original console years ago on eBay , probably to buy a new game console at the time. Nintendo made the N64; surely it should be able to whip up a way to run those old games on a new console in a snap.

But this week's messy launch of the new Switch Online Expansion Pack and its heavily criticized N64 emulation is a reminder that Nintendo isn't the best steward of its own games, and never will be. Even with its advantages, Nintendo will never be able to do in months—on a realistic time and development budget—what fans working for free can do in years, or even decades.

For him, the online play in particular stands out. It's easy to find videos online right now of Mario Kart 64's netplay implementation lagging badly on the Switch though who knows if these people are on solid connections or using GoGo wifi a mile above the Atlantic. Regardless, it is cool that Nintendo built online play into games like Mario Kart 64 that obviously didn't have it on the original console.

But as JMC pointed out to me, it's especially frustrating to see those performance issues when other emulators can already do this, and do it better.

I know every little thing that I need to do and every little thing that I need to avoid. For Nintendo Switch Online, no one has to be familiar with emulation.

Anyone who owns the service can invite a friend to play online. It opens up N64 netplay to a lot more people. It does matter that something like this exists. It's just disappointing that it's so bad at launch.

On PC, multiple Nintendo 64 emulators have supported netplay for many years—heck, some of the earliest emulation software built for online play dates back to With popular emulator Project 64, for example, many players use a plugin called AQZ and game-specific hacks to get netplay working.

It's not simple to set up, so Nintendo had an opportunity for an easy win—this is absolutely an area where it can improve upon fan-made emulators. And while it technically has, its implementation really just highlights how much better its emulator should be. Programmer OatmealDome, who also contributes to Dolphin, has datamined the Switch Online's emulator and learned a few things about it, including its "lockstep" netcode that requires every player be in perfect sync at all times.

The Expansion Pack service which officially launched last night has been divisive from the start. Simply put, the nine N64 games Nintendo ported to Switch Online as part of the Expansion Pack service are a bit of a mess. Some fans are even arguing that the Switch versions of these titles look worse than every previous version of these games including the N64 originals. Ad — content continues below. Oh god they filled up the back pic. That brings us to emulation. However, concerns about emulation go beyond potential legal consequences.

In the minds of some fans, emulating retro games is only a couple of steps removed from pirating modern games.