Mupen64Plus AE

Mupen64Plus, Android Edition (AE) is a Nintendo 64 emulator built on Mupen64Plus, the open-source N64 emulator for desktop computers. Its description is frank: “All necessary cores and plugins are included. There are many caveats though.” Among them: “Not all games work, but most do”, “you may have to try different video plugins”, and some devices won’t run every plugin.

What it does

• Video plugins to choose from, per game: GLideN64, which the project expects to work with most games on a powerful enough device, plus Rice, Glide64mk2 and angrylion-plus, a software renderer.
• Touch controls with skins, and gamepads, including N64 controllers connected through raphnet adapters.
• Android TV support, including a job that adds your games to the TV home screen.
• Transfer Pak and 64DD support, with limits the description spells out: no writing back to the Game Boy save data, and “64DD is supported, but not writing back to disk.”

What you need

The app doesn’t include any games apart from a tiny test ROM that the Mupen64Plus project publishes under the GPL. You load your own N64 game files. The N64 itself needs no BIOS, so ordinary games run without one; only the 64DD add-on needs its IPL file. This site doesn’t provide game files.

What goes online

Only one thing, from the 3.0.246 code: cover art. When you scan for games, the “download cover art” option is on by default, and the app fetches box art from www.zurita.me over unencrypted HTTP, which the app’s network settings allow for that one domain. Untick the box during the scan to avoid it. There is no update check, analytics or crash reporting, and online play was added only in later, untagged builds.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s build of version 3.0.246 (beta), from November 2020, compiled from the source and signed with F-Droid’s key. The project now publishes only automatic test builds, so F-Droid’s is the way to get a tagged version.
• It isn’t on Google Play under this package name.
• The 19.1 MB file runs on Android 5.0 and later, on ARM and x86, 32- and 64-bit. It targets Android 11’s API level, high enough to install on current Android versions. It asks for 8 permissions: internet (for cover art), storage, a foreground service while a game runs, starting at boot and the TV programme guide (both for Android TV), and vibration. Our scan found no trackers.
• Mupen64Plus AE is licensed under the GPL-3.0 or later. The project publishes no screenshots, and we don’t show other people’s game footage, so this page has none.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one.