The Console Your N64 Games Deserve

Behind the Nintendo Switch 2, the $250 Analogue 3D has become my favorite console I’ve played with all year. It plays venerable Nintendo 64 games that came out close to 30 years ago. Yes, you still need to clean out every cartridge before you can get it working. And still, I’ve had more fun with this console than I have on most novel, high-end hardware that costs two to four times as much. The Analogue 3D a small console that does what you need it to do, no more, no less, and still has such panache I can’t imagine removing it from the TV stand to make room for whatever PlayStation or Xbox is coming down the pike.

The endless search for “purity” for retro gamers has led us to strange places. After all, the undiluted way to enjoy an old console is just to buy an old CRT TV, snag a retro console and some games to match, and retire to a corner of the room where you can bask in the classic cathode ray tube glow. What we’re actually talking about is convenience. There are any number of legal and dubiously legal ways to jump back to the ancient regime of gaming’s past. But even if you try to use software emulation for Nintendo 64, the 29-year-old console’s unique hardware makes recreating the system as software more difficult. It leads to a range of issues in certain games, from glitchy textures and odd frame rate issues.

There are modern consoles like the Atari 2600+ and more-refined 7800+ that can play original cartridges on a modern TV up to 4K resolution, though it’s through an open source emulator that won’t help recapture the true look of the retro aeshetic. If before I had the choice of software emulation or playing Nintendo’s pre-2000 era classics on a Switch or Switch 2, the new third option—a device like the Analogue 3D—is easily the peak of what’s available.

The Analogue 3D uses FPGA, or field-programmable gate array, which is a chip that mimics the chip logic of the original hardware but boosts it so that games can run on either a 1080p or 4K TV. Specifically, the Analogue 3D uses a 220K LE Altera Cyclone 10GX chip. Unlike the company’s Analogue Pocket, which uses a much smaller chip, trying to re-engineer a console focused on 3D gaming proved to be much more difficult.

But more than anything, the Analogue 3D plays the original cartridges you have hiding up in your attic and it does so without any fluff. It will still work with your ancient three-pronged N64 controllers as well, but if you want something with a slightly more modern feel, the console can also connect to a $40 8BitDo 64 controller (sold separately as the console comes with no controllers whatsoever). Purity is overrated, but for the sake of a nostalgia trip, I can’t think of much more I would want than the Analogue 3D provides.

More than a plug and play console

Analogue delayed its retro recreation console multiple times after its initial announcement in October 2024. A whole year later, I can tell you that the Analogue 3D works exactly as described, but you can’t comprehend the console’s real benefits until you have it in front of you. After you plug in a cartridge and turn on the Analogue 3D, each game receives its own settings options. You can adjust various different settings that mimick the the look of old-school screen types and even modify the performance of each game. That latter option does a lot to make up for the N64’s notorious performance woes.

For every game you insert, includes you get several “Analogue Original Display Modes,” which the company claims is not a simple shader but a “recreation” of older displays. CRT, which stands for cathode ray tube, used small phosphor dots on a pane of glass that’s struck with a phospbor beam, creating the image you see on the other side of the screen. There’s an option for that, plus the broadcast or professional video monitor style—BVM or PVM for short. These options will introduce a subtle glow around the image that appears on your TV as well as the classic scanlines, which were an effect generated by old-school monitors which helped smooth pixel edges and mix colors more effectively. If you wonder why games actually look better on older TVs than a modern flatscreen, you can blame today’s screen technology.

The Analogue 3D only comes with a bare few ports (USB-C for power, two USB-A ports, HDMI, and an SD card slot) in the back alongside the four slots on the front for original N64 controllers. The system will connect to 8BitDo 64 controllers as well as the same company’s Bluetooth mod kits for OG Nintendo 64 gamepads. I tried multiple different Switch and PC controllers from various manufacturers, and none of them connected with the N64 recreation. At least you don’t have to worry about getting a separate Rumble Pak for any supporting games, like you needed to for Nintendo 64. Vibration is built into the system and it works seamlessly with an 8BitDo 64 controller.

There’s one other element to take note of. The Analogue 3D does not include any internet connectivity by itself. If you want to update the device, you need to take the included 16GB SD card out and plug it into a PC to install the latest firmware. You can also do the same by connecting the console directly to a PC.

How N64 games look and play on modern TVs

The Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2’s Classics collection includes the option for a scanline filter that doesn’t do much but scratch the edge of a nostalgic itch. Compared to what you can get on Switch, Analogue’s recreation feels much, much closer to the original. Each ODM, or original display mode, setting accessible through the 3DOS interface includes options to impact the “Edge Hardness” or set horizontal and vertical beam convergence to either consumer or “Professional” type, which will make each game look more or less clean when presented on your modern TV. I tested the Analogue 3D using Sony’s flagship mini LED TV, the Bravia 9, and the image quality felt like it had just the right amount of grit without dissolving the old-school charm of these near 30-year-old titles.

All that being said, games won’t look nearly as pixel perfect as an actual high-quality CRT TV. And you shouldn’t expect any digital recreation will ever match that look. On a 4K TV, the image won’t fill up the screen edge to edge, either. The original Nintendo 64 could output at a max 640 x 480, though the majority of games would only output at 320 x 240. That square aspect ratio won’t fit every TV perfectly.

The Analogue 3D has several other settings that make games look closer to what you would get on the original N64 hardware. There’s a de-blur option for reducing visual noise and an option for disabling anti-aliasing if you want to keep the old jaggies around the edges of every polygon-shaped character. There’s also an option to force the system to use 32-bit color, despite the original N64 being technically limited to 16-bit in video output.

Finally, there’s hardware-level overclocking to make games run better than they used to. While most games are set to Auto, which should adjust games based on “compatibility,” the Enhanced, Enhanced+, and Unleashed modes provide more memory, overclocks video, and overclocks CPU performance, respectively. That means all those games that used to run as slow as 20 fps on the original hardware can start to feel more manageable at 30 fps or more.

All the N64 games you can’t play anywhere else

For testing, Analogue sent Gizmodo four games to test: Super Smash Bros., Goldeneye 007, Mario Kart 64, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Thanks to the help of Tristan Whitworth, who operates several arcades and the Game On retro game shop in Long Island, New York (if you’re ever in the area, stop by and support a small local business), I also tested several more titles including Wave Race 64, Yoshi’s Story, Star Wars Shadow of the Empire, Banjo-Tooie, and the eternally maligned Superman 64.

The Analogue 3D really wants you to play the system on a 4K TV or monitor. The console also supports 1080p at 60 fps, but it’s not the premiere experience that Analogue wants to provide. However, I wasn’t too perturbed by the image quality when I plugged the Analogue 3D into a 1440p monitor or played at 1080p on a TV. The image merely appears smaller. You can trick your brain into imagining that less pixel density means something for a system that used to play games at a fraction of the resolution of this modern system. In reality, the 4K image looks great, but depending on the size of your screen you won’t get an edge-to-edge picture, especially considering the original console output for a 4:3 aspect ratio and not the modern 16:9 widescreen.

If the Analogue 3D were merely a plug and play console, it wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is. But the ability to set performance on a per game basis also has its drawbacks, mainly that it requires some tinkering to achieve the experience you want. Goldeneye 007 was one of those games that pushed the limit of what the N64 could achieve. The game ran notoriously poorly on the console, so much so there are entire speedrunning techniques to mitigate the poor frame rates. When I first plugged the game into the Analogue 3D, I found the game to be nearly unplayable on the default Auto performance setting. It seemed to run so poorly in the opening level that I could barely line up a single shot.

As soon as I overclocked the game, it felt like the experience the developers originally intended. Save for some occasional slowdowns, the experience was buttery smooth. This is not the exact same experience as the game was when played on the original console. If you want that same exact feel, then you should just buy an original N64.

Other games didn’t require nearly as much fiddling. I could plug in Yoshi’s Story or Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire and feel like I had when I played those games as a youngster (and the Yoshi’s Story menu theme is as much as an earworm as it ever was). But then, there are some games that benefit greatly from the FPGA model. Superman 64 was a notoriously buggy, laggy, and all around terrible experience. It’s not any better of a game with the Analogue 3D, but its infinitely more playable with overclocked console performance. The difference is remarkable. Suddenly, I was able to control Supe to fly through those endless series of rings without cursing at the laggy controls. No, of course, picking up a car is still as pointlessly difficult as it ever was.

The fact some of these games play well at all is remarkable for anybody who tried software emulation. Banjo-Tooie is a particularly difficult game to run without buggy textures on various N64 emulators. On the Analogue 3D, I didn’t have any problems, and I could get the game to run at a relatively speedy clip.

This is what you want for retro vibes

Nintendo has been very lax of supporting some of its best titles of its previous generation consoles. Case in point, the virtual Nintendo 64 games available through the $50/year Switch Online + Expansion Pack don’t include classics like Super Smash Bros., Castlevania 64, Mickey’s Speedway USA, or Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

Which all made me regret selling my original Nintendo 64 only a few years ago. I was moving from my old home on Long Island to Brooklyn, and I didn’t have the heart to take so many old consoles and the old CRT TV with me. The N64 was the console I grew up with. I vividly remember retrying the first level of Superman 64 over and over again, cursing every missed ring I couldn’t pilot Supe through. I didn’t know at the time I was playing one of the worst games ever made. I was so young, I wouldn’t be able to complete any of the more difficult objectives in Goldeneye 007 on my first or fifteenth try.

I don’t feel nearly as bad now as I did back in the day with the Analogue 3D in hand. In fact, I have such minimal reason to move back to the original console. Analogue’s FPGA console actually makes games more playable, not less.

But the real joys of the Analogue 3D come out when you have multiple people huddled around the same TV at once. I played several rounds of the original Super Smash Bros. with four colleagues, and everybody was laughing and sniping and commenting on the game. Only the Nintendo Switch 2 today emphasizes local multiplayer. That missing slice of gaming’s past shouldn’t be so easily thrown aside, and neither should your old cartridges. Just remember to clean and dust them out before slotting them in.