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?
The only reason we still have this plugin paradigm is because that’s how N64 emulator culture evolved over time. That’s deliberate though, there’s no “mess” here.
I can easily download a cycle-accurate N64 emulator that depends on zero plugins. However, being the N64, it obviously takes a lot of power to emulate in such an accurate way.