N64 (Nintendo 64) is a classic gaming console that had a great deal of popularity in the past and easily qualifies as the best gaming consoles of its time. The 64-bit architecture and the seamless graphics that this emulator provided made it people’s favorite.
It featured some of the best classic games such as Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Pokemon Stadium, Worms Armageddon, Legend of Zelda, Spiderman, Disney Tarzan, 007 Golden eye, and so on. If you are nostalgic about these games, there’s happy news! You can play these games on Android devices using the N64 Emulator for Android.
There are many emulators available out there in the wild but many of those either lack features, or they not support all games or do not provide smooth gaming experience.
Our team of game lovers has gone through all the N64 emulators available, shortlisted the 10 best and summarized the popularity, features and performance details for every best Nintendo 64 Emulator.
1.MegaN64
MegaN64 is a free emulator available for Android and is presumably one of the most feature rich emulators on the play store as of today. MegaN64 emulator is loved by the gamers and ranks on top with an average rating of 4.5 stars and over 10 million downloads.
To play your favorite games on the N64 Android emulator, you just need to add the game files on the SD card of your mobile phone and run the MegaN64 app.
The best thing about this emulator is that developers regularly make updates and performance enhancements. MegaN64 team recently released update with performance enhancements for smartphone models including Nexus and the Galaxy series, and several UI improvements.
Overall, MegaN64 gives a unique gaming experience and brings back ‘the good old days’. It is slightly poor on the games compatibility side, and for that reason, some of your favorite games may not work. Just download and give it a try.
2.Emulator for N64
The name may sound ‘ordinary’ or ‘typical’, but its functionalities are not! This is the recent entrant in the game and happens to be the most updated one with its latest release in 2017 itself. This emulator is developed by evgeniievgenev and offers high optimizations to run all kinds of Nintendo 64 games.
With a very impressive rating of 4.6 on play store, it has come a long way within this short time to be one among the top N64 emulators for Android.
Google Play Store – Download Android Emulator for N64.
There is another emulator on the play store with the same name – Emulator for N64, and that too is a great option, created by RobertApp.
The later one is much more mature with over 2 years on the app store, and approaching 500K downloads. It supports compressed files such as .zip and .rar. It also offers multiplayer options, good controller layout, option to customize controls and interestingly, it offers support for some cheat codes!
In short, this one works well for most games and provides satisfactory stability and performance.
3.Mupen64Plus FZ
Mupen64Plus FZ emulator is also based on the Mupen64 open source project and offers quite an enchanting gaming experience. It impressively runs most games, seamlessly, and offers a plugin called the Gliden64 that lets you play N64 games smoothly even on devices with lower specifications.
Anther power feature of this Emulator is profile support that lets you try out different video plugins for different games, it is quite handy when a game doesn’t work smoothly with default plugins.
Presently, there are some issues with translations so it’s better to stick with English. You might see some issues while running some specific games, so different video plugins and profiles can be tried out.
Mupen64Plus FZ ranks much higher in this list since developers constantly provide updates to fix issues, add more features, improve performance and support for left off further games.
In short, with a current rating of over 4.4 on play store and around a million downloads, it offers a great gaming experience powered with cool features like Gamepad and Controller Support.
4.SuperN64 – N64 Emulator Android
With an impressive rating of 4.3 on Google Play Store, SuperN64 is yet another N64 emulator based on the open Source project Mupen64+. SuperN64 emulator supports a verity of N64 game files such as. n64, z64, v64, .zip, .rar. It comes with a useful auto save option and makes loading of saved games seamless.
In addition, there are options to resize dpad and it provides buttons for controls. In case any glitch appears while using this emulator, the developers advise to try changing the video plugin and try changing the video frame skip setting for preventing lags.
The varied file formats that this emulator supports is a boon for many gamers, and for sure, if you have files in alternative or different file formats, this emulator is the one you should try out.
5.AweN64
In terms of popularity and rating, the AweN64 Nintendo 64 emulator for android comes next, with an average rating of 4.2 on the Play Store.
It offers high-quality N64 gaming experience on your Android device with some very cool features, including good sound & graphics, almost like the original N64 console.
It supports a wide range of games including support for network gaming and is arguably on the top in terms of games compatibility. Saving and loading games too is seamless using this emulator and it provides a good game controller.
One feature that I like in AweN64 is called Smart file searches, which make the device automatically search for N64 ROM on the phone’s SD card when the application is started initially. Else, you can also manually specify the path to the ROM.
6.ClassicBoy
ClassicBoy is an N64 emulator that comes with a cool gesture controller. It also has an accelerometer sensor although the availability of this feature depends on the hardware of your phone. Gesture controls make it easy to play fighting games and can totally give you a brand-new gaming experience.
Apart from N64 games, it also supports wide range of consoles like Play Station 1, NES, Sega Genesis, and GameBoy consoles.
The support that this emulator offers for the wide range of games makes it quite an emulator to note down. It’s quite a popular emulator with over 1 million downloads.
Download ClassicBoy – N64 Emulator Android
7.Mupen64 Plus AE
Mupen64 Plus AE is another good N64 emulator Android users have and offers you lot of flexibility when it comes to compatibility. It’s a popular emulator with over 1 million downloads and a rating of 4.0 on play store.
It supports a wide verity of formats like. v464, .n64 and .z64. Games compressed as .zip files also work in Mupen64 Plus AE.
Apart from the minor issues you may face with the controller, Mupen64 Plus AE is a decent emulator that you can use to play your favorite games.
8.Tendo64
Tendo64’s rating is 3.9 but that is because of prior versions, the recent update of Tendo64 brings it back in the league of top Nintendo 64 emulators for android.
Some of the key enhancements include auto hiding of touchscreen controls, updated plugins, texture packs, lesser and non-intrusive ads, light up buttons on press and many bug fixes. Other notable features include support for multiplayer games, cheat codes customizable buttons.
Download Nintendo 64 Emulator – Tendo64
9.N64Oid –
The second last Nintendo 64 emulator in this list is N64oid, it was pulled from Google play store for violating some policy. The developer of this emulator, however, is keeping this emulator alive and upgrading it continuously with new features, bug fixes and games support.
You can download n64oid from many websites out there, just do a Google search, side loading is the way to run this emulator on your android phone.
10.Project64
This one stems from the best N64 emulator for windows. The project is recently being upgraded to be supported on Android and is work in progress as of writing this article.
The emulators don’t come with any games, you can play free homebrew games available online or dump the real N64 games on SD card or USB storage.
The emulator is new and getting continuous upgrades, since it is backed by solid developers who created project64 for windows, it is worth keeping an eye on.
Final Notes
Looking back, N64 had a special place in the hearts of gamers. Arguably, it was simply a legendary machine which featured some absolute classic games. Passionate gamers won’t forget the good times they had spending hours playing on this console.
But unfortunately, it was lagging in sales as the times changed and people were after new media such as CD. This made Nintendo sell N64. But the good times are back as N64 games relive on Android devices using emulators.
The N64 emulators listed above can certainly provide you with a gaming experience that you have been missing. Try out these emulators to feel the ultimate nostalgia!
