This open-source N64 cart allows you to play games loaded off of flash storage

The Nintendo 64 played a big part in bringing 3D video games to the mainstream, and it did so while using what was thought to be old and soon to be deprecated technology. Game cartridges were the standard for many years in console gaming’s infancy out of necessity. There was simply nothing better available at the time, but when the N64 launched in 1996, CDs were quickly becoming the preferred storage method for games.

This move to stick with cartridges for one final generation helped keep piracy on the N64 relatively low compared to its competitors. Now, in 2025, the console enthusiast world has reverse-engineered the inner workings of the N64’s anti-piracy measures, developing devices known as flash carts, which enable users to load homebrew off of flash storage, straight onto original hardware. No emulation required. One such cartridge is the EverDrive64, which has been the gold standard for many years, until now.

How do the N64’s anti-piracy measures work?

Nintendo needed to change things up with this console generation

While the N64 took a similar approach to that of the NES and SNES for anti-piracy, it still wasn’t fool-proof. Nintendo created two chips, known as the CIC and PIF, with the former being on every game cartridge and the latter being located on the console’s main board. To put it very simply, these chips would communicate with each other to verify the authenticity of the inserted game, and if the correct information wasn’t transmitted, the game would fail to boot. To make matters even more complicated, there were different types of CIC chip depending on the region and game. For example, Star Fox 64 used a specific CIC that wasn’t commonly available in North America, making it a very difficult game to copy.

Early attempts to create homebrew and game copies were done by simply taking a CIC chip off of a donor cartridge to essentially spoof the check done by the PIF. This is how some of the earliest flash carts were made, such as the original EverDrive64. It wasn’t until the 2010s that security researchers were able to reverse engineer the entire process and create their own CIC. These flash carts work by replicating the CIC-PIF check that is done between the cartridge and the console, and it can replicate any given CIC that exists.

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A new challenger appears

Open-source and inexpensive

The SummerCart64 is the latest Nintendo 64 flash cart to hit the market, but instead of being a proprietary design, Polish hardware tinkerer Mateusz Faderewskiand the rest of the contributors behind it have made the thing completely open-source, so anyone with the knowhow can create one for themselves. If you’re not handy with a soldering iron and programming your own devices, don’t worry, you can find them up for retail sale in a variety of places.

While it does provide the ability to load ROMs onto original hardware, it doesn’t stop there. You can connect the cartridge directly to your PC via USB-C, enabling developers to take full control over what’s happening on the console. This is extraordinarily useful for debugging and creating new homebrew. There’s also a battery on-board, allowing for a real time clock.

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Why don’t you just use an emulator?

Sounds like a much simpler method of enjoying N64 games, right?

You’d be right in asking why to bother at all with playing games on the original hardware. Besides the nostalgia factor, there isn’t much on the surface that would indicate why a project like this is worthwhile.

The Nintendo 64 is a notoriously difficult console to emulate. Emulators like Project64 certainly do their best, and compatibility is decent across some of the more popular titles, but there are still games that don’t quite work on hardware that should have more than enough juice. When Nintendo developed the N64, they gave developers the ability to control minute aspects of how their game interfaced with the hardware with microcode. This microcode is difficult to replicate on modern hardware using emulation, and that’s the crux of why N64 emulation is so far behind its successors such as the GameCube and Wii.

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Reducing the cost of the original experience is good

Being able to play these classic titles as they were originally intended is a form of preservation, and we’re all better for it. We’re far beyond the era of physical media, so actually owning the games that we play and love is getting more difficult, and preserving them is another challenge. Everything is tied to an online service, and if that service eventually dies, so will your games. In the same vein, had attempts not been made to copy and reverse engineer the N64’s copy protection, we would eventually lose these classic titles to Father Time.