Project64 Emulator

Project 64 is a Nintendo 64 emulator that is very popular. Both the source code and its own plug ins are used by some of the most widely used emulator third party groups available. For example, RetroArch uses Project 64 as its Nintendo 64 emulator core and allows users to download and use Project 64 within the RetroArch frontend interface.

Project64 is an open source emulator software for Windows PC. It is completely free and allows you to play your favorite N64 games on your PC with upscaled graphics, solid games compatibility, save states, build in cheat codes, and tons of more features. Out of the box, this Nintendo 64 emulator comes with some awesome features pre-installed.

History

The emulator was first released as a highly experimental emulator by two developers known as Zilmar and Jabo. It was pretty revolutionary at the time and Nintendo 64 emulation would never be the same since. It went on to become known as the best Nintendo 64 emulator available, with the Mupen64Plus emulator and 1964 being left in its tracks.

Project 64 also showed up on our list of the best emulators for PC for the Nintendo 64. After many releases and much hard work, Project64 would be known as the most stable of all the N64 emulators.

Issues began to arise post v1.7 when the project was no longer openly available to the public. Players were now being asked to donate $20 in order to obtain access to beta tests builds. The community wasn’t too happy about this at the time and leaks of the beta test versions were released to the public which ended up being buggy and unstable. This in turn led the community to turn even further from the developers who began to be seen in a negative light. Not only were they starting to ask for donations for access to the latest development builds, but the versions they were asking payment for weren’t even running well.

After some time passed, only one core developer of the project remained. Zilmar released v2. and all of the emulator’s source code to the public. Several games compatibility issues were fixed up, the UI was improved, but the default emulator plugin were still pretty janky even in comparison to previous version. Some games however began to run worse as well. Though the code itself was made publicly available, there was no public repository for developers to contribute code, making it difficult to contribute to the project. Because of this, Project64 fell into a state of dormancy.

Fast forward a bit later and Zilmar returned once again and created a public repository on Github for Project64, allowing the public to finally contribute to the project. Development quickly took off and since then, the community activity for Project64 has been great. Most of the issues that originally existed have since been resolved and there has been much work in porting Project64 to platforms outside of Windows PC.

Project 64 Games Compatibility List

Looking online, there’s no official Project 64 games compatibility list available that shows every Nintendo 64 game and its compatibility with Project 64. That being said, it’s not entirely clear if one really needs to even exist. Most N64 games doesn’t have game breaking bugs on Project64.

The worst that you’re likely to experience in terms of issues are some slight graphical error or minor audio problems. Even then, often playing around with the emulator settings and tweaking some things can usually remedy the issue. Games compatibility lists are usually more active for newer emulators that have appears in the last 2 console generations as these are likely to have bugs for newer games that are released and might not be fully compatible with the version of the emulator available at that time.

For emulators like Project64 though, they’ve been around for a very long time and have been actively developed and updated for years. There aren’t really new N64 games being released these days so many of the games that have existed have already had their issues worked through for the most part. This is especially true in regards to popular games on the Nintendo 64 as these are the mostly highly requested by the developers to patch for.

Plug ins

Video Plugin

The GLideN64 N64 Emulator Graphics Plugin

The GLideN64 emulator graphics plugin is one of the plug ins automatically installed in the latest version of Project64 from the official installer. GLideN64 is an open source next gen graphics plugin that gained popularity due to its impressive support of high-resolution textures for most games. This means that your N64 games will look better than ever while running on your computer.

Audio Plugins

Project64 Audio

This is the default audio plugin for Project64. It’s nothing too fancy and doesn’t have many additional configuration options or settings available.

Jabo’s DirectSound

This audio plugin comes pre-installed with Project64 and usually will work well, but some games might not work perfectly audio wise. It is a low-level plugin that has some more options if you’d like to give it a shot instead of the default Project64 audio plugin that is enabled by default.

Input Plugins

Project64 Input

Project64 Input is the default input plugin that comes pre-installed with Project64 in the latest versions available. This is a very simple input plugin that also has XInput support but doesn’t really allow players to implement specific components or use additional controllers.

N-Rage Input Plugin v2

The N-Rage input plugin also comes pre-installed on Project64 in newer versions and allows users to plug in and play with as many controllers as they wish. Full custom controller support including rumble pack support, transfer pack support (for Pokemon Stadium), allows for controller profiles, etc.

The N-Rage input plugin has tons of options available and super controller compatibility. It even has support for XInput and can be used with Xbox 360 controllers. Do note that it is unable to emulate the microphone used in Hey You, Pikachu or the printer used in Pokémon Snap Station.

It is however able to emulate the Controller Pak, Rumble Pak (Star Fox 64), and Transfer Pak functionality quite well. Version 2.3 of Project64 introduced a version of the plug in that can emulate the N64’s mouse accessory designed for the 64DD and can be used with Project64’s ability to emulate the Nintendo 64DD disk drive accessory.

Netplay

PJ64 uses Kaillera or AQZ which allows the emulator to play over the internet with netplay.

• With Kaillera, players can play video games with others from all over the world via the internet. The main tech behind netplay is the use of a client and a server. The client is usually embedded into the emulator and the server is a stand-alone application that needs to be run on a machine connected to the internet. This means that one of the players will host the game for both players to connect to and play together from.
• The AQZ Netplay Plugin works similarly to Kaillera mentioned above, but one very cool notable feature of AQZ is the Golf Mode. Golf Mode allows players to take turns, i.e. Mario Golf style, and allows players to play games with next to zero lag regardless of their connection quality.

Can Project64 Use Multiple Controller Profiles?

Yes, Project64 can use multiple controller profiles quite easily. This allows players to map their controller profiles for specific games if they wish and use those profiles with their corresponding game ROMs.

To do this, players will need to go into the configuration panel of the emulator and change the Input plugin from the default Project64 one to the N-Rage input plugin instead. They will then have the input configuration panel show up with an option to save the profile.

It was recently announced that the Mega N64 emulator was removed from the Google Play Store due to malware, so as a word of caution, it’s very important to always make sure that you download emulation files from official sources. We’ve included a link to the official Project64 download page below.