by Don Hildenbrand

Created on: January 18, 2009   Last Updated: June 10, 2011

Even with all the latest and greatest games available today for the PC, sometimes there is nothing more fun than a little retro gaming. A great way of getting your retro fix can be to play Nintendo 64 games on your PC! An emulator can help you do this.

What is an emulator? An emulator is a piece of software which "emulates", or duplicates the function of a different piece of hardware. Obviously, the Nintendo 64 is not a PC, and your PC is not a Nintendo 64. But with the help of an emulator, you can fool your PC into thinking it's a Nintendo 64!

Before even thinking about this, however, be sure your PC is up to the task. Emulators can be a little tricky, because they must run on top of the already running operating system on your PC. It can be like running your PC AND the N64 at the same time, so you must be sure you have the processing power.

You don't need the latest bleeding edge technology, however. And relatively modern PC with a reasonable processor and a reasonable graphics card can usually run a N64 emulator. By means of defining" reasonable", if your PC can play PC games that were made within the last three or four years, you should have no problem running a Nintendo 64 emulator.

Having determined that your PC has the horsepower to emulate the N64, you must then install a piece of software called the emulator, which will fool N64 games into thinking they are running on the original hardware. The best and currently most stable Nintendo 64 emulator is called Project 64. There are other N64 emulators available, but most others still have serious bugs that prevent them from being reliably used. Project 64 can be downloaded from a variety of sources, which can be found with a simple Google search. It is freeware, meaning you won't have to pay a penny for the software.

Once you've downloaded Project 64, install it like you would any other piece of software. After the installation completes, find the start menu entry, and run the emulator. It's now time to set some simple options.

The first step is to configure which plugins will be used. Click on "options", then on "settings."

Make sure that all of the plugins used are the "1.6" version. This will ensure maximum compatibility. On the "options" tab, you can decide whether you want the game to pause when it loses focus, that is, when you're in another program, and whether you want the game to go full screen when you begin to play. The recommended settings for both is to check the check boxes.

Now, click on

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