Analogue Is Making A New Nintendo 64 Console
Nintendo 64 controller
Analogue has been making FPGA-powered consoles for years, with devices like the Super Nt for Super Nintendo games, the Mega Sg for Genesis games, and the Pocket for Game Boy games all delivering fantastic, modern experiences using old cartridges. Now, the company has its eyes set on the Nintendo 64.
Announced today by Analogue was the Analogue 3D, a brand-new FPGA-based console that will allow you to play your original Nintendo 64 cartridges in 4K. Analogue says on its website that, like most of its consoles, it will support cartridges from any region, and will offer a host of display modes and “reference quality recreations” of fan favorite CRT displays.
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For those out of the loop, FPGA stands for ‘field-programmable gate array,’ which is a type of chip that can be programmed to precisely match the specific needs of the programmer. In this case, it’s matching the hardware of the Nintendo 64, effectively ‘emulating’ the input and output of a Nintendo 64’s CPU and GPU down to the transistor level. It’s a little more complex than that, but I am not a computer scientist.
The Analogue 64 is designed to only play official cartridges, not ROMs or anything of the sort, though previous Analogue consoles show us that people will always find a way around that. It has four original-style controller ports for use with original N64 controllers, and support for Bluetooth controllers.
It looks like Analogue will be offering a redesigned N64 controller, like it did with previous consoles, and it will seemingly be made by 8bitdo, again like previous console controllers it’s released.
Analogue
We don’t know exactly what the console looks like, or when it will be released outside of a vague 2024 release window, but we imagine it won’t be too long before we find out.
