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?
There isn’t actually a ton of translating going on with the Switch, as it’s basically just a computer (an ARM computer, but still). The N64 had a very different architecture that doesn’t work like modern computers do. On top of that, games on it relied on low level graphics code that makes it very difficult to cheat like other emulators do.