Nintendo 64 was the next generation of game consoles back in 1996-97 when it was first released. It is very hard to believe but it already had a 64 bit processor back in those days when 64-bit architecture for personal computers was considered a thing for the future. Just like its predecessor Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), it gained immense popularity. Many still-popular games were designed and released for Nintendo 64 like Super Mario, Mario Cart, Donkey Kong, 1080 Snowboarding, Road Rash, etc. In fact, if you look for Nintendo 64 on ebay.com, you can still find some of the ROM’s and the Nintendo 64 game console itself for only around US$ 100. The cheaper Nintendo 64 available on ebay.com is not really the genuine console which costs around $500, but it is exact duplicate and works very well.
But if you do not want to shell out even $100, then you can use the free Project64 emulator that can emulate Nintendo 64 on your Windows PC. Instead of the game controller, you can use your keyboard and mouse to play these games. But Project64 can also use the regular N64 controller if available. But you may have to arrange for the ROM image files from somewhere else. The only problem is that multi-player games do not work that well with Project64, but you can always try your luck.
We tried some of the very popular games in Project64 like Super Mario 64 and Road Rash 64 and they work great without any problem. But sometimes the keyboard does not work for particular actions – for example, in the Road Rash game the kicking and hitting functions do not seem to work. But they all work if you have a USB gaming controller connected to your PC.
Conclusion: Project64 can bring the ages old joy of playing Nintendo 64 games back once again. It works on all versions of Windows and has a very small memory footprint.
You can download Project64 emulator from http://www.pj64-emu.com/downloads/.