I can’t help but laud the myopic vision of ModRetro, a retro video game console maker that aims to create products that exist in the rose-tinted vestiges of our nostalgia. Despite how fondly gamers might remember saving princesses or throwing banana peels out of go-karts, those video game systems were products of their time and were made to best fit within those technological limitations.
For early 3D systems, images were soft and blurry, with rough polygons that could barely construct a believable face. Frame rates were poor but were tolerated because it was the first step into the third dimension. Even with these deficiencies, fondness for that time period remains ever-present, as it came before the heavy pressures of adulthood.
ModRetro’s first system, the Chromatic, a restomod-style take on the Nintendo Game Boy, spectacularly accomplished its goal: recreating a system not as it was, but as we chose to remember it. As for the M64, a modern interpretation of the Nintendo 64, it falls short of meeting that standard.
It’s not that the M64 does a bad job of taking N64 titles and blowing them up on a large 4K display. It’s just that it doesn’t feel like it does much beyond that. This comes from experience with the Analogue 3D, another modern N64 console that uses some upscaling and image-cleaning algorithms to help render a more palatable presentation.
While it seems that ModRetro put a lot of care and attention into the M64, that alone shouldn’t be the reason gamers hand over $230. For the M64 to be competitive not only against the Analogue 3D, but also the small-but-growing library of N64 titles available to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, it should have been more feature-complete and bug-free. Unfortunately, it misses the mark.
ModRetro M64 review: Cheat sheet
- What is it? The ModRetro M64 is an FPGA-based Nintendo 64 clone console that aims to capture the original’s game compatibility and accuracy.
- Who is it for? The ModRetro M64 is for hardcore N64 fans with large cartridge libraries and those who prefer the timing and accuracy of playing on original hardware.
- What does it cost? At $230, the ModRetro M64 costs about twice as much as a used Nintendo 64 on eBay. The wireless M64 Pro Controller is an additional $90 (a wired controller by Hyperkin is also available at $30).
- What do we like? We like the retro design, fantastic controller, and overclocking capabilities
- What don’t we like? We don’t like that it produces blurry images (even by N64 standards), has mediocre scanline filters, and has questionable flash cart support.
ModRetro M64 review: The ups
The M64 might be imperfect, but it gets some things right — particularly in its design.
Unpretentious design ethos
Kudos to the designers over at ModRetro. Opening the M64 for the first time is delightful, with brightly colored packaging and a premium-feeling box inside. After prying apart the tightly packed box, a transparent M64 emerges in a “funtastic”- inspired purple colorway.
Adding to that design vibe, ModRetro says it developed new manufacturing methods to integrate two types of transparency with its console. It features frosted transparency on the front of the system that shifts to clearer transparency so gamers can see the internal componentry.
Inserting a game and turning on the system, there’s a classy light bar that illuminates right in front of the cartridge, treating copies of GoldenEye 007 as if they were a piece of art in a gallery. Behind the cartridge is an eject button that allows for easy and satisfying egress of game carts, with little mechanical strain on the pins
A trident controller worthy of Neptune
Moving on to the M64 Pro Controller, it feels thoroughly substantial and of high quality. The front is made of thick, rigid plastic, while the back is metal. The controller’s weight feels wonderfully premium, which might be why it demands a $90 price tag. At the very least, a wired M64 controller by Hyperkin is also available for $30. ModRetro didn’t provide a Hyperkin variant with our review unit.
Unlike the Analogue 3D, the M64 Pro Controller keeps the N64’s original trident design. It feels like a bold choice, especially since gamers have been accustomed to two-prong, dual-analog controllers for nearly three decades. I, personally, appreciate it.
While the M64’s design fills the senses with a Christmas morning twinkle, its software experience is where the system falls short.
ModRetro M64 review: The downs
Unfortunately, the M64 gets more wrong than it gets right.
Cumbersome settings
When popping in a copy of Mario Kart 64 into the ModRetro M64, the game loads immediately, just as it did on the N64. As in, there’s no top menu like the ones found on the Analogue 3D and the Nintendo Switch. It’s pure N64 orthodoxy.
That adherence to the N64’s original experience makes tweaking settings a bit more cumbersome once the game is running. Changing settings is easy, however. To load system settings, just press Start and Z at the same time. An 8-bit style overlay appears, allowing changes to resolution, CRT filters, software updates, and other settings.
Blurry images
When comparing output between the ModRetro M64 and its competition, it’s best to start with clean image output, without any additional filters.
Comparing the output between the Switch 2, Analogue 3D, and the ModRetro M64, the Analogue 3D pulls away in brightness and color saturation. The higher contrast on the Analogue 3D better sells texture detail.
It’s a surprising result given that the Nintendo Switch is using software emulation, meaning it’s using internal image upscaling. By comparison, the M64’s image looks a bit dull and muddy.
Regardless, it’s unlikely that anyone would want to play N64 games on clean settings as titles look very pixelated. The real fight happens when CRT filters come into play.
Filter frustration
I played the ModRetro M64 on a 77-inch LG OLED G3 television. Given that the N64 rendered games at a paltry 320×240 resolution, it ultimately creates a blurry and pixelated image when blown up to 4K. It also makes one wonder if N64 titles really looked this bad back in 1996.
The reality is that N64 games looked great in the mid-to-late 90s due to the display technology of the time. Many gamers experienced the N64 on CRT televisions, which used electron beams to draw scanlines onto phosphor dots. This technology created an analog softness and glow, blending the adjacent pixels and hiding the jaggedness in the process. The N64 also used aggressive anti-aliasing to help low-resolution assets look cleaner on-screen.
I’d personally forgotten about how games looked on older displays until I attended the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo earlier this month in Garden City, NY. There, I was watching people play all sorts of retro consoles, from the Atari 2600 to the Sega Dreamcast, on big old-school CRT televisions.
The images were surprisingly sharp and clear. Many older systems, especially early 3D consoles, were developed with these kinds of displays in mind. Game makers used techniques like dithering to smooth over color gradients. Unfortunately, on modern displays, these techniques only highlight image disparities.
To combat the mismatch between CRT and modern displays, both ModRetro and Analogue have included some CRT and scanline filters. These filters attempt to output an image that’s more reminiscent of a CRT or other old-school displays. ModRetro’s default CRT and scanline filters, unfortunately, don’t do the best job.
Both the CRT and scanline filters do seem to clean up the image somewhat, hiding the jagged pixels and adding some bloom to create a more cohesive blend. At the same time, these don’t look like any of the CRTs I saw at the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo. Often, I found the image to be dark and grimy, and in bright scenes, highlights were overblown. Thankfully, ModRetro does have a custom menu that lets pixel-peeping gamers tune things like the aperture grille, sharpness, horizontal bloom, and scanline width, among other settings.
My knowledge on this front is a bit limited. Luckily, folks on Reddit have been sharing various custom settings to better replicate a CRT display. After trying the settings recommended by Reddit user fpsdabs, I found the image to be more like what I saw out in Garden City.
Annoyingly, the M64 currently has a bug that doesn’t save custom settings across titles. This meant that if I turned off the system or swapped games, I had to re-enter all of fpsdabs’ settings. ModRetro said that this will be fixed with the next update.
The Analogue 3D really should have a custom settings option so that gamers can tune the CRT filter to their liking. At the same time, the M64 lacks other display filters, like those for production and broadcast video monitors, both of which are considered the gold standard for CRT displays. The ModRetro team really needs to go back and retune the default CRT and scanline filters. I can imagine casual gamers won’t go through the hassle of tuning scanline settings in the custom menu.
At the very least, sound output by the M64 is excellent, and playing Mario Kart 64 with turtle shells zooming behind me was the best way to experience this classic.
Horizontal activities
Recently, Analogue issued an update for horizontal upscaling that doubles a game’s horizontal resolution. This internal upscaling technique allows for twice as many horizontal pixels “without affecting 2D graphics” and with “no impact to timing authenticity or performance,”
For a certain subset of very hardcore N64 fans, any type of internal upscaling might be seen as sacrilege. But for those that want to use their dusty N64 library on a modern display in a decently presentable manner, it’s a welcome upgrade. It’s also a feature not available on the M64.
Horizontal upscaling’s impact does differ from game to game. Of the games that I own, the title that benefited most from horizontal upscaling was Star Wars Episode I: Racer. Without horizontal upscaling, the image is incredibly blurry, with interlaced lines weaving from left to right. With horizontal upscaling, it looks more like a game made with modern displays in mind. It honestly felt like it was being software-emulated.
Unlike the Analogue 3D, the M64 doesn’t support HDR out of the box. Normally, that should be okay considering the N64 itself didn’t support HDR. But Analogue has a clever HDR10 implementation that takes advantage of HDR’s much brighter highlights against dark scanline gaps to better mimic a CRT, BVM, or PVM display. This works better on OLED televisions.
Cumbersome gaming experience
Once updated and ready to go, the ModRetro M64 is, overall, a hassle-free experience. When playing Mario Kart 64, inputs were fast and responsive. It’s certainly refreshing when jumping from the Nintendo Switch Online version, which is noticeably laggy.
According to ModRetro’s game compatibility list, a large majority of titles shouldn’t run into any issues during play. As of this writing, 20 titles have issues, and ModRetro is working to update them. For example, vine swinging in Donkey Kong 64 will fail, or Hydro Thunder might crash.
In my case, I had issues creating a save file for Perfect Dark. Granted, this is a known issue with the original game and can be fixed by putting my cartridge into an original N64 system. So, this issue might not be ModRetro’s fault.
ModRetro includes some overclocking modes that let more graphically intensive games run at smoother framerates. When I tested it on Goldeneye 007, I found that overclocking helped fix framerate dips. I wanted to test this feature on Perfect Dark, which is known to struggle on original hardware, but wasn’t able to.
I also own an Everdrive-64 X7. It’s a flash cartridge by Krikzz that can play ROM backups off of an SD card. While some on Reddit have been able to use their flash cartridges without issue, mine would load on an Analogue 3D but wouldn’t on an M64. According to ModRetro, this could be because my cartridge doesn’t have the latest bootloader fix, which is separate from the standard firmware update. I’ve yet to resolve this but will update this review if/when I get things working.
Palmer Luckey’s ownership hasbecome a point of contentionin the retro gaming community, andsome outlets refuse to review the company’s products. This review evaluates the M64 on its technical merits and performance, but readers should have the context needed before deciding whether to buy.
ModRetro M64 review: Verdict
The ModRetro M64 is a competent Nintendo 64 FPGA-based clone console that does what it advertises but doesn’t reach the heights of its primary competition. Even with its flashy colorways and excellent trident-style controller, the M64 lacks features and ships with a few bugs. ModRetro has a list of features planned for the M64 in the coming months, however.
At the moment, the Analogue 3D at $270 is the better buy, despite being $40 more expensive. It’s more feature-complete and has some internal upscaling trickery that’s sorely lacking on the M64. I do like the custom settings menu for scanlines on the M64 and would love a similar implementation on the 3D. The M64 also doesn’t have perfect game compatibility yet, although I suspect that it’ll get better as more updates come in.
It’s also worth noting that ModRetro itself is publishing N64 games. At launch, these $50 titles include Extreme-G Turbo Fusion, a compilation of the first two Extreme-G racing games, Buck Bumble, Xibalba64, and Xeno Crisis. Buck Bumble is a somewhat rare game that now sells for over $100. Being able to buy a new copy for $50 is a great pro-consumer move.
There’s certainly a lot to appreciate with the M64. Unfortunately for ModRetro, there’s just as much to appreciate, if not more, with the Analogue 3D. So, unless you really dig the colorful aesthetic of the M64, or are a Palmer Luckey fanboy, the Analogue 3D is the N64 clone console worth buying.
