The Analogue 3D Plays Your N64 Carts In 4K

• Lee Murray
• Nov 18, 2025
• 4 min read
• News

There's no getting away from it: the N64 was a special console. It's funny how you remember random things. I was temping at Trafford Park Bakery in the 90s, having lunch in the canteen, when two lads came and sat at my table, going on about how they were going to play the most powerful console in the world later that evening: the N64.

A couple of weeks later I was working again in Trafford Park, this time doing nights at a delivery company. Someone had brought an N64 in to play on our break. I played the N64 for the first time here, and GoldenEye, and it blew my mind.

So N64 enthusiasts, like me, will be pleased to hear the Analogue 3D has finally started shipping, having gone out to the first buyers on the 18th of November. It's a modern console that plays your original Nintendo 64 cartridges, and the best bit: it's region-free.

No dodgy import cartridge, no region converter, no emulator that is "good enough". You blow the dust off a boxed PAL or NTSC-U/J N64 game, slot it in, and it just works, in 4K.

FPGA, not emulation

The heart of it is an FPGA, a field-programmable gate array, which rebuilds the N64 in actual hardware rather than pretending to be one in software. That distinction is the whole point for Analogue: the founder and CEO of Analogue, Christopher Taber, reckons software emulation "feels unjustly and wrongly aged".

Whether you buy the philosophy or not, the results have gone down very well: Time Extension gave the Analogue 3D 9 out of 10 and called it "the ultimate way to play Nintendo 64", and Digital Foundry called it the most impressive machine Analogue has made.

There are four proper controller ports on the front that take real N64 pads and accessories, the Rumble Pak and Transfer Pak included. Output is 4K over HDMI with variable refresh and HDR, upscaling most games about ten times over, and there is a set of CRT and PVM display filters if you want that old glow. It runs a 4K version of Analogue's own operating system. Worth flagging for the tinkerers: unlike the Analogue Pocket, this one does not support openFPGA, so it is not a homebrew-cores machine.

Gorgeous design

A special mention for the design of the Analogue 3D. It really is gorgeous, simplicity is the order of the day here. Moulded to the iconic silhouette of the N64 but stripping away the toy-like plastic feel, it is top-notch and something Dieter Rams himself would be proud of.

The catch

Here is where I have to be the mate who tells you the truth. This is a US, dollars-only, product that sells out in minutes. It launched at $249.99, and a restock a week later nudged it to $269.99, which Analogue blamed on tariffs. There is no UK price, so that $250 converts to roughly £190 to £200, but by the time you have added the 20 per cent VAT and duty for importing one, you are nearer £230 to £260. Resellers over here were asking for around £400. (Update: you can now get the Analogue 3D quite commonly second hand from CEX, and they tend to go from £325 to £380 boxed, so get trading for credit!)

A couple more things to know before you buy: there is no controller in the box, so you either plug in your old N64 pads or buy the matching 8BitDo 64 pad separately for about $40. And the "SD card" is a 16GB microSD that comes pre-installed.

You can read the full spec on the official Analogue page, and TechRadar's review is a fair account of what you are getting.

Import faff and all, this is a superb product and the perfect way to play your old N64 games in today's world.

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