Chromebook N64
I hadn’t planned on turning my Chromebook into an N64 over the weekend, but it’s what happened. Turned out working pretty well, so I thought I’d share my victory with everyone!
Prerequisites:
- Chromebook (or any laptop)
- a real operating system (not Chrome OS, but preferrably Linux)
- a controller of gamepad of some sort. I used my brother’s old PS3 controller.
I thought I wrote a post on how I hacked my Chromebook to run GalliumOS, but It may have gotten deleted. If you’re interested, just drop a message in my contact for and I’ll get on it!
Step 1: Find an Emulator
This is how you’re gonna play your favorite games. There’s a bunch of them out there for all different operating systems. I’m running GalliumOS, so I went with Mupen64Plus. You can either build it yourself, or you can find some precompiled versions out there. Once you’ve got an emulator, you’re nearly there!
Step 2: Grab a Controller
Pretty much any controller will work. The only tricky thing will be finding a driver to work with your controller. I dug around and found a driver called QtSixA. After installing it, I realized I didn’t actually need it because GalliumOS just recognized my PS3 controller right out of the box. Awesome!
Step 3: Get some ROMS
A quick internet search for “N64 ROMS” should definitely get you pointed in the right direction. Grab whatever ROM you want, but just keep in mind, if you’ve set up a N64 emulator on your laptop, you’re gonna want to use N64 roms with that.
Yo, that’s pretty much it. It took me about 3 hours to set everything up, but it’s mostly because I started off trying to install Emulation Station and RetroArch with no luck. Those emulator front ends pretty much launched and immediately froze for whatever reason. Eventually I just decided to download just an N64 emulator and a GUI launcher (Mupen64Plus-QT found in synaptic package manager, I think). Once I launched it and pointed it to my ROM library, I was off and running.
Step 4: Profit
Happy gaming!