It is also less accessible than its forebearer, owing to its lack of a native GUI but it also has RetroArch/Libretro port under active development.

Its modern, currently active successor is Mupen64Plus, which improves upon the original's compatibility, but chose to depart from Zilmar's plugin spec, rendering it incompatible with the plugins discussed in this page. Even though its last update by its original author was in 2005, it is possibly even more compatible than Project64, particularly with more obscure or less discussed titles, though it has incompatibilities of its own.

Mupen64 - An open source, multiplatform N64 emulator.

Overall, it is the least compatible of the big three emulators, only being useful for a handful of games. It is generally recommended to stick to version 1.1 except on certain special cases. The last stable version released by the original team was 1.1, who then went on to remake it as a web emulator written in JavaScript, though some community members kept it going up to version 1.2 r146, with mixed results. Some of its iterations (such as 1964 Ultrafast) have the ability to overclock the N64's CPU, which results in smoother framerate on games that have a lot of slowdown, such as Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day.

1964 - An open source emulator and long-time competitor to Project64.

It is one of the best emulators for general use, with good compatibility with most of the popular games. The interface is slightly clunkier, and switching between RSP plugins is a pain (the desired RSP plugin must be named rsp.dll for the emulator to see it and use it), but timing issues are less severe, it has a more up-to-date RDB at the moment, and many of the later improvements were ported back through Jabo's 1.6.1 patch.

Project64 1.6 - The older but more stable version.

Still, for general use, it might be wise to stick to either Project64 1.6 or Mupen64 for the time being. It also fixed a number of games that were completely broken in 1.6, such as Kirby 64. However, the user interface is quite a bit nicer and easier to use, and switching between RSP plugins is far easier than in 1.6. Some users have also reported problems with BSODs, which apparently may be an issue with outdated Windows system files.

Its RDB is somewhat outdated, and some games have issues with audio and timing regardless of plugin setup unless you mess around with timing settings.

Project64 2.3 - The most recent version of Project64, now public and open source (though the official download asks you to install useless toolbars).

How to install project 64