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Although many Nintendo 64 emulators have been made and many games can be run between them, complete compatibility and/or accuracy still leaves a bit to be desired.
* [[Mupen64Plus]]is a cross-platform, open source emulator based on Hacktarux's Mupen64, is currently the most reliable N64 emulator. It lacks a native GUI, instead being run either from the command line, or by dragging and dropping ROMs onto the executable and editing the config with a text editor such as Notepad++. There are third-party GUIs made for it, but these often suffer from their own issues, though M64Py appears to be the most solid. Mupen64Plus is actively developed and has been ported to a number of different platforms, but upstream development has currently crawled to a near standstill. The [[RetroArch]] core of this emulator is heavily modified and may experience discrepancies or issues that wouldn't occur using the standalone version of it. The core is constantly being worked on and has features and optimizations not present in mainline alongside RetroArch's general features, including Project64-style overclocking for faster framerates and , 3-point texture filtering, and superior A/V sync and latency, making it a better alternative to the standalone version in most cases. [[BizHawk]] and the experimental build of [[OpenEmu]] also uses a port use Mupen64Plus as their N64 core of Mupen64Pluschoice.
* [[Project64]] is still currently the most compatible N64 emulator, and is a decent choice for emulating many of the popular games, seeing various work done on it in recent yearsboth popular and lesser known. It is currently very actively developed, is capable of using a wide variety of plugins, and has a relatively user-friendly interface. However, it remains confined to Windows. It works well in WINE for the most part, but if you're on a different platform, use Mupen64Plus instead. Version 2.2 has various fixes over version 1.6.1 and is overall more accurate, even outclassing Mupen64Plus in some instances. However, audio playback is worse due to lag and crackling. It may be handy to keep a copy of version 1.6.1 alongside it for this reason. Whatever you do, '''DO NOT USE THE OFFICIAL INSTALLER FOR THE LATEST VERSION OF PROJECT64.''' Doing so will prompt you to install various programs, some of which are malware.
* [[CEN64]] is an up-and-coming emulator that aims for cycle accuracy, while at the same time aiming to eventually be usable on modern PC hardware. It currently lacks many features and has spotty compatibility, but it's gradually improving. It can already emulate some well-known edge cases, such as the picture recognition in Pokemon Snap.
* 1964, along with its various versions and forks, was a decent, speedy alternative to Project64 and Mupen64, though it usually lagged behind the two in compatibility. Nowadays, it has completely fallen off the radar. There is little reason to use it nowadays outside of historical purposes, very specific edge cases, or if your device is too slow to run Mupen64Plus or Project64.
* Daedalus is an N64 emulator for the PSP, which has been ported to Windows, but results are even more hit-and-miss than on other emulators due to being made for PSP first and foremost. On PSP, most games are unplayable, but there's a [http://forums.daedalusx64.com/compat.php small amount of them that work really well] with the right settings (Quest 64, for example).
* [[Sixtyforce]] is Mac-only, closed-source, and asks you to pay for full access to its features. It was once one of the only choices for Mac users (particularly those with older Macs, since it's the only emulator with a PPC [[Dynamic recompilation|dynarec]]), but with the switch to x86 and Mupen64Plus improving beyond its peersbeing ported to OSX, it has now become irrelevant.
* Wii64 and Not64 are both based on Mupen64, with Not64 being a fork of Wii64. Not64 claims to be better optimized, as well as having higher compatibility and more frequent updates. N64 emulation on Wii is not very good, and it is recommended to stick with the Virtual Console N64 releases whenever possible.
* [[UltraHLE]] marked a milestone in Nintendo 64 emulation, in that it was the first to play some popular N64 titles at full speed on hardware made at the time of its release through [[High/Low level emulation|high-level emulation]]; it isn't without its drawbacks though - pressure from users combined with legal threats from Nintendo forced them to discontinue development. Besides being for historical value and for users with toasters, there's not much to expect from this emulator anyway due to compatibility issues.
==Emulation issues==
