Nintendo 64 (Experimental)

Warning

The Nintendo 64 (N64) application is currently designated as an experimental application.

This designation has been applied due to the following:

The resource requirements to properly run the emulator are high.
Many games exhibit compatibility issues and defects.

By default, Experimental applications are not displayed in the webЯcade player or feed editor.

To enable the N64 application, refer to the advanced settings sections of the player (player advanced settings) or editor (editor advanced settings).

Overview

The Nintendo 64 (N64) application is an emulator for the Nintendo 64 game console.

Due to its high resource requirements (see warning at top of this page), the following devices are minimally recommended for running this application:

Modern PC or Mac (M1-based Macs must disable the vertex cache, See settings below)
iPhone 11 or iPad 9th Generation (or newer)
Xbox Series X|S gaming consoles

Android-based devices are not currently recommended at this time due to poor performance with this application.

Settings

The N64 Application includes a custom settings dialog.

To access these settings, display the "Pause" screen and select the "N64 Settings" option (See screenshot above).

The N64 Application-specific settings are detailed below:

Field

Description

Vertex buffers

Whether to enable/disable the use of vertex buffers.

Under most circumstances, using vertex buffers will provide a performance increase. However, on certain platforms and/or devices having this option enabled can greatly decrease performance. For example, Apple M1-based Macs perform poorly with this option enabled.

If you are experiencing poor performance, try disabling this option to see if performance improves.

Game Compatibility

Many N64 games currently exhibit compatibility issues and defects with this application (emulator).

If a game is known to have defects, a screen similar to the one shown above will be displayed. If this screen is displayed, selecting "No" (not continuing) is highly recommended.

Controls

The emulator supports up to four controllers. The keyboard and gamepad mappings are listed in the tables below.

Keyboard

Keyboard support is only available for controller one.

Name	Keys	Comments
Analog Stick
Analog -25%		Reduces analog input by 25%. Can be combined with Control Key to reduce by 75%. Useful in situations where the analog stick needs to be gently moved.
Analog -50%		Reduces analog input by 50%. Can be combined with Shift Key to reduce by 75%. Useful in situations where the analog stick needs to be gently moved.
A
B
L
R
Z
D-pad
C Buttons
Start
Show Pause Screen

Gamepad

Gamepad support is available for all controllers.

Name	Gamepad	Comments
D-pad
Analog Stick
A
B
L
R
Z	or
C Buttons (up/down/left/right)
Start		Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate) Press the Menu (Start) Button.
Start (Alternate)	and	Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen	and	Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4) Hold down the Left Trigger and press the Menu (Start) Button.
Show Pause Screen (Alternate)	and	Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4) Hold down the Left Trigger and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen (Alternate 2)	and	Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4) Hold down the X Button and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen (Alternate 3)	and	Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen (Alternate 4)	and	Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.

SRAM, EEPROM, Flash, and Controller Pak Storage

The N64 application supports preserving state from game cartridge-specific chips (SRAM, EEPROMs, Flash) and Controller Paks between sessions. This state is persisted in the browser's local storage or optionally to cloud-based storage. State information will be persisted whenever the pause screen is displayed (or the game is exited). Therefore, the pause screen should be displayed periodically to ensure the state is properly persisted.

Feed

This section details how N64 application instances can be added to feeds.

Type

The type name for the N64 application is parallel-n64.

Note

The alias n64 also currently maps to this application. In the future, the n64 alias may be mapped to another N64 application (different emulator implementation) if it is determined to be a more appropriate default.

Properties

The table below contains the properties that are specific to the N64 application. These properties are specified in the props object of a feed item.

Property	Type	Required	Details
rom	URL	Yes	URL to an N64 ROM file or a zip file containing a ROM file.
zoomLevel	Numeric	No	A numeric value indicating how much the display image should be zoomed in (0-40). This property is typically used to hide the black borders that are present on some N64 games.

Example

The following is an example of a complete feed that consists of a single N64 application instance (type value of n64).

{
  "title": "N64 Feed",
  "longTitle": "Nintendo 64 Example Feed",
  "categories": [
    {
      "title": "N64 Games",
      "longTitle": "Nintendo 64 Games",
      "items": [
        {
          "title": "Dexanoid R1",
          "type": "n64",
          "props": {
            "rom": "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ueukhxqno0jowm6/dexanoid.zip"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

iOS 16 through 16.4 Performance Issues

Warning

iOS versions 16 through 16.4 significantly affected the performance of the N64 application (emulator)

This issue has been resolved in iOS 16.5+. Thus, upgrading is the recommended way to resolve this issue.

iOS operating system versions 16 through 16.4 for iPhones/iPads significantly affected the performance of the N64 application (emulator).

The reduction in performance was caused by a Safari Experimental Feature that was enabled by default in iOS 16 through 16.4.

Performance of the N64 application (emulator) can be restored by disabling the experimental feature or upgrading to iOS version 16.5 or newer (recommended).

To disable the experimental feature, perform the following steps:

Open Settings, and select Safari > (See screenshot above)
On the Safari page, select Advanced > (See screenshot above)
On the Advanced page, select Experimental Features > (See screenshot above)
On the Experimental Features page, disable the GPU Process: WebGL feature (See screenshot above)
After completing these steps, the N64 application (emulator) should perform at a level similar to previous operating system versions

References

Nintendo 64 Application GitHub Repository