I Want to Play N64 Again. What's the Best Way to Do It in 2026?

I think the Nintendo 64 might be the console I’m most nostalgic for. I remember sitting in front of the television with one of the strangest controllers ever designed in my hands. Super Mario 64. Mario Kart 64. GoldenEye 007. Super Smash Bros. Four people could squeeze around the same TV, controllers stretching across the room, and somehow four tiny split-screen windows felt like the future.

Because at the time, a lot of it really did feel like the future. Games were moving into 3D. The analog stick changed how we controlled them. Four controller ports were built straight into the front of the console. Games weren’t merely becoming prettier versions of what came before; they were introducing entirely new ways to play.

Now I want some of that feeling back. The strange thing is that there are more ways to play an N64 game today than there were when the Nintendo 64 was actually current. I could emulate one on a PC, put an emulator on a handheld, subscribe to Nintendo’s N64 library on Switch, find an original console, add an EverDrive, or buy one of the new FPGA-based N64 consoles designed to behave like the original while connecting neatly to a modern television.

So which one should I choose? That depends on a more important question: which parts of playing an N64 do I actually want back?

Playing an N64 game isn’t the same as playing an N64

It’s easy to reduce retro gaming to software. If Super Mario 64 is running correctly, I’m playing Super Mario 64. Technically, that’s true. But it isn’t quite the whole memory.

The N64 experience was a chain of things: game → cartridge → console → controller → television → couch → friends. And somewhere around that chain was another ingredient we can’t buy back: discovery.

Seeing Mario run around a three-dimensional castle didn’t feel like another graphical upgrade. It felt different. Analog movement felt different. Four controller ports sitting on the front of the console told you something about what Nintendo expected you to do with the machine.

Then there was all the friction. The controller was weird. Its cable was never quite long enough. If four people were playing, everyone had to arrange themselves around the console and TV like the hardware was setting the seating plan. You had to own the game you wanted to play. You picked a cartridge, pushed it into the machine and pressed Power.

That was basically the entire user interface. There was no emulator frontend, renderer or controller profile. No library containing 600 games you would spend twenty minutes scrolling through before deciding not to play anything.

We’ve solved most of those inconveniences since then. Wireless controllers reach the couch. Digital libraries hold hundreds of games. Emulators can make old games sharper, wider and easier to save. Those are real improvements, but they also change the thing we're trying to remember.

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Your options for playing N64 games in 2026

There are more specialized ways to do this, but for most people the meaningful choices fall into seven setups.

These aren’t scores. “Maximum nostalgia” isn’t something we measured with laboratory equipment. They’re shorthand for the trade-offs: every setup keeps some pieces of the N64 experience and replaces others.

PC emulation — The cheapest route can involve the most fiddling

If you already own a reasonably capable computer, PC emulation has one enormous advantage: you may not need to buy another machine at all. N64 software emulation is mature, and modern emulators can do things the original console never dreamed of. Higher rendering resolutions, save states, controller remapping, graphical enhancements, patches and plenty more are possible depending on the emulator and game.

You can also connect almost whatever controller you like, including modern N64-style controllers if you want the original button layout without a cable running across the room. Once everything is configured, the experience can be excellent.

Getting there is the problem. You turn on the PC, choose an emulator, install it, legally obtain or dump the game image you want to use, connect a controller, map its buttons and perhaps discover that the game you want prefers different settings. Then you adjust those and launch it.

Compare that with the original N64: insert cartridge, press Power. There’s something amusing about a machine from 1996 having the simpler user experience.

None of this makes PC emulation a bad choice. If the games matter more to you than the ritual surrounding them, it may be one of the most sensible options here. It just means that all that flexibility comes with settings—and usually some tinkering to get those settings the way you want them.

We’re deliberately not turning this into an emulator shootout. Projects such as Ares, Mupen64Plus-derived emulators and other current options approach N64 emulation in different ways, but choosing between them is another article. For our purposes, the PC makes one fundamental change: it turns the N64 from a console into software.

Handheld emulation — Great for N64 games, not particularly N64-like

Handhelds take that transformation even further. A growing range of dedicated retro handhelds and handheld PCs can emulate Nintendo 64 games to varying degrees. But before worrying about processors, look at the controls.

The N64 expects an analog stick, A and B buttons, four C-buttons, shoulder buttons, a Z trigger and Start. A handheld needs enough physical inputs to map those controls without turning GoldenEye into finger gymnastics.

Then there’s setup. Buying a handheld doesn’t magically produce an N64 library. You still need to configure the software, legally obtain or dump games, arrange the controls and potentially tweak individual titles. Once that's done, though, the appeal is obvious: you can play Ocarina of Time in bed, put Mario 64 in your bag, continue a game on a train, then suspend it and come back five minutes later.

None of that feels much like owning an N64, and that’s fine. A good way to play an N64 game is not necessarily a good recreation of playing an N64. A handheld strips away the console, cartridge, television and couch ritual and leaves you with something much simpler: you and the game. That can be exactly what you want.

Handheld N64 emulation is also a rabbit hole deep enough to swallow this entire article. NeonGrade’s retro handheld guide covers the broader hardware landscape, so we’re stopping here.

Nintendo Switch — The easiest nostalgia button

Nintendo’s own solution sits in an interesting place. With Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, selected N64 games are available on modern Switch hardware without configuring an emulator or building a retro setup yourself. If you already own the hardware and subscribe to the appropriate service, there isn’t much standing between deciding to play Mario Kart 64 and actually playing it.

But the controller changes things. Play an N64 game with standard modern controls and it feels like an old game running on a new Nintendo system. Connect Nintendo’s wireless N64-style controller, put the Switch on the television and suddenly your hands are back in that peculiar three-pronged layout. The C-buttons are where you expect them, you’re playing on a TV again and multiplayer is part of the proposition.

The controller is wireless now, so nobody has to drag their chair suspiciously close to the television. Some inconveniences are probably fine to leave in 1997.

The big limitation is the library. Nintendo decides which N64 games are available through the service. You can’t insert an old cartridge or decide that some obscure childhood favorite should appear because you happen to own it. If the games you care about are there, that may not matter. If they aren't, no amount of convenience fixes it.

Original N64 — The only option that isn’t pretending

Then there’s the obvious answer: use an N64. No FPGA-based N64 remake recreating one, no emulator interpreting one and no modern interface presenting its library. The actual console.

If your childhood N64 is still sitting in a box somewhere, this is where I would start before spending money on anything else. Find the console, power supply, controller and a cartridge. Plug it in.

There’s a decent chance the first thing you’ll notice is how little there is to do. No account, firmware update or graphics menu. Put the cartridge in and press Power. For nostalgia, nothing else can quite compete because nothing else needs to recreate the experience. It simply is the experience.

That includes the awkward bits: wired controllers, original video output, a real cartridge slot and hardware that is now around three decades old. And that last part is where nostalgia starts sending invoices.

If your old N64 disappeared somewhere between childhood bedrooms, university and moving house, you have to rebuild the setup. A usable European N64 setup is realistically around €100 or more as a starting point, depending on condition and what’s included. Add extra controllers and games and the number climbs quickly. Some cartridges remain affordable; others have become collectibles.

Then there’s the television. The N64 was designed for the displays of its time, and connecting original analog hardware to a modern flat-panel can range from simple to irritating depending on the display and the result you expect.

Put an original N64 on a CRT and you’re no longer just recreating the console. You’re starting to recreate the room. That deserves an article of its own.

N64 + EverDrive — Maybe the sweet spot

What if you want the actual N64 but don’t want to rebuild an entire cartridge collection? This is where a flash cartridge such as a Krikzz EverDrive becomes interesting.

From the outside, very little changes. You still walk over to an N64, plug the controllers into the front and use the original hardware with its original video output. Four friends can still sit around one television and argue about Mario Kart.

What changes is the cartridge. Instead of swapping between a shelf full of individual games, an EverDrive can load compatible game images from storage through a cartridge running on the original console. That removes one of the biggest practical headaches of returning to N64 today: rebuilding a physical library game by game.

It also opens the door to homebrew and fan-made patches. We're deliberately leaving that door mostly closed here, because playing a familiar game with new levels, fixes or features deserves its own story.

The obvious thing you lose is the cartridge ritual. Choosing GoldenEye from a menu isn't quite the same as finding the cartridge on a shelf, blowing dust off it out of habit—even though you know you shouldn't—and pushing it into the console. But once the game starts, almost everything else is still there.

That's why this setup is so interesting. It modernizes the library without modernizing the console. If your original N64 still works, this may be the option to beat.

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Analogue 3D and ModRetro M64 — What if someone built a new N64?

Original hardware has one unavoidable problem: it keeps getting older. Controllers wear, power supplies fail and hardware ages. Meanwhile, televisions keep moving further away from the analog world the N64 was designed for.

So what if somebody built a new one?

That's broadly what modern FPGA-based N64 consoles such as the Analogue 3D and ModRetro M64 are trying to do. From the outside, the idea is refreshingly simple: newly manufactured hardware that accepts N64 cartridges, connects to a modern television and preserves much of the physical experience of using the original console.

Insert cartridge. Connect controller. Play.

Inside the box, things get more complicated. These systems use FPGA technology to recreate the behavior of original hardware rather than running a conventional N64 software emulator on a general-purpose computer. There are plenty of technical arguments we could have about how that works and how accurately each machine does it. We’re not going to have all of them.

For this article, what happens outside the box matters more. You can still use cartridges, play on a television and retain original-style controls and four-player local multiplayer. But you get a machine built for modern displays instead of figuring out how to connect an almost thirty-year-old console to one.

The grey box itself is gone. Much of the ritual isn't.

These FPGA-based N64 consoles cost considerably more than running an emulator on a PC you already own, and cartridges and controllers can push the total higher. But they're not really trying to compete with free emulation. They're for the person looking at an aging original N64, a modern television and a box of cartridges and thinking: I want this, just without relying on almost thirty-year-old hardware.

Then add an EverDrive...

Pair a compatible EverDrive with an FPGA-based N64 console and the setup starts borrowing advantages from almost every approach we've covered: new hardware, modern HDMI output, original-style controllers, four-player television gaming and a large compatible library through one flash cartridge.

Current Krikzz EverDrive hardware can work with Analogue 3D, although older EverDrive revisions may require firmware or bootloader updates and compatibility should be checked for the specific combination.

It isn't cheap, but if money isn't the problem, this may be the closest thing to rebuilding an N64 for 2026 without turning it into something completely different. You lose the original console itself and the ritual of swapping individual cartridges. A surprising amount of everything else can stay.

Other ways down the N64 rabbit hole

Of course, these aren’t the only options. MiSTer FPGA gives enthusiasts another route into hardware recreation. Raspberry Pi and RetroPie-style systems can turn inexpensive small computers into dedicated emulation boxes. Modified or jailbroken consoles provide still more ways to get old games onto a television.

All three are legitimate approaches. All three can also turn this article into another 5,000 words, so we’re stopping here.

Original experience versus modern features

Trying to rank these setups from best to worst misses the point. There are really two questions: how much of the original N64 experience do you want to keep, and how much tinkering are you willing to do for modern features?

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An original N64 with cartridges sits heavily toward the original-experience side and, once you have a complete working setup, remarkably close to “turn it on and play.” PC emulation moves toward modern features and toward tinkering.

Handheld emulation belongs there too. Once configured it's wonderfully convenient, but getting the software, games and N64 controls behaving the way you want takes work—and almost all of the physical N64 ritual is gone. Switch with Nintendo’s N64 controller adds plenty of modern features while remaining unusually easy to use.

An original N64 with an EverDrive barely moves away from the original-experience side but adds a major modern convenience: the library. An FPGA-based N64 console with an EverDrive lands somewhere particularly interesting. It's modern hardware, modern video output and modern library convenience, arranged around the idea that once you start playing, it should still behave a lot like an N64.

There isn't a winning corner of the chart. That's the point.

So, how should you play N64 games in 2026?

Start by figuring out what you actually miss.

If your childhood N64 is still somewhere in storage, dig it out before buying anything. You already own the only solution capable of being an actual N64.

If you want the experience as you remember it, original hardware and cartridges remain the obvious route. Add the right television and controllers and you're reconstructing much more than the software.

If you want original hardware without collecting every cartridge again, an N64 with an EverDrive may be the best practical compromise. Most of the physical experience survives while the library becomes dramatically easier to manage.

If you want that philosophy in newly manufactured hardware, Analogue 3D and ModRetro M64 are the interesting alternatives. Add a compatible flash cartridge and, budget permitting, you can keep much of the original ritual while gaining modern display and library conveniences.

If you already own a Switch, try Nintendo’s N64 library—ideally with the N64 controller—before building an elaborate retro setup. If the games you want are available, it may already solve the problem.

If you mostly care about the games themselves, PC emulation gives you enormous flexibility and potentially costs almost nothing beyond a controller.

If you want N64 games in your pocket, use a capable handheld and don't worry that it doesn't feel much like an N64. It doesn't have to.

Maybe the console isn’t the thing I miss most

I started this wondering which machine I should buy if I wanted to play N64 again. I'm not sure that's quite the right question anymore.

Maybe what I remember isn't the N64 as an isolated piece of hardware. It's pushing a cartridge into it. It's that ridiculous controller and a cable that doesn't quite reach where you want to sit. It's four people looking at four tiny pieces of the same television. It's someone insisting they weren't looking at your part of the screen in GoldenEye. And it's the feeling that games suddenly worked differently from anything we'd played before.

No FPGA-based N64 console, emulator or restored original machine can make Super Mario 64 feel revolutionary for the first time again. But they can bring back different pieces of everything that surrounded it.

So the best way to play N64 games today probably isn't the machine with the cleanest image, highest resolution or longest feature list. It's the setup that brings back the parts you remember.