N64 HDMI adapter bring it into the 1080p age

The HD revolution hasn’t been kind to retro gamers. Fire up your old N64 and you get a washed out mess of blurry and stretched out graphics. These games were never meant to be played on big, high resolution TVs. At this point, most retro fans will either jump on their favourite emulator, or bust out grandma’s old CRT TV. One electronics designer hopes to change that, by giving the N64 the HDMI port it never knew it needed.

“I think video games and electronics of all sorts are cool … pretty much everything I do seems to revolve around the dream of the ’90s,” designer Marshall H told Venturebeat. 

“Since a few years ago when LCD and flatscreen televisions became popular, folks have been finding out (me included) that the poor N64 just generally looks awful when used on one. There’s a number of reasons why, but the bottom line is that with HDMI, Displayport, etc. you will always get a better picture, even when you’re displaying a low-res pixel soup from the N64.”

The prototype N64 HDMI adaptor still needs some fine tuning.

So far, the adapter isn’t available for sale. Marshall is still trying to hash out a few details, such as making the port easy for gamers to install into their console. Not to mention making sure it works with both NTSC and PAL video formats. “A lot of N64 fans are Down Under!”, he says.

It’s not his first N64 related project either. He’s already built a portable console, and sells a developers cartridge for the system. You can check out his website, Retroactive, for more info.