How to play Pokemon Snap on PC

Pokemon Snap will be available soon (Image via The Pokemon Company)
Pokemon Snap will be available soon (Image via The Pokemon Company)

With the upcoming release of the new and improved version of Pokemon Snap, players who want to get a head start on the game can play the old version on their PC.

The new Pokemon Snap will be coming out on the Nintendo Switch this April. The game puts players into a new perspective than they are used to with Pokemon games. Rather than catching and battling Pocket Monsters, players will be photographing them! The new version of the game will have some additional features that the original doesn't, including the highly anticipated Re-Snap function.

Though the original Pokemon Snap game was introduced for players on the Nintendo 64, there is now a way to play the game in all its old-school glory on one's computer.


How to play Pokemon Snap on PC

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The first step for anyone who wants to play the original version of Pokemon Snap on their PC is to download an emulator. An emulator is essentially a kind of software that imitates a gaming console. In this case, one will need to specifically search and download a Nintendo 64 emulator.

There will be multiple different emulators available upon looking, though most of them are just as good as the rest. Once the Nintendo 64 emulator has been downloaded to the PC, a player will next find the Read-Only Memory or ROM file for the 1999 version of Pokemon Snap. This will also be available on many different sites and can usually be downloaded for free.

While there are some sites that allow people to play the game directly in their browser, using the Pokemon Snap ROM on a Nintendo 64 emulator will have the game running a lot smoother. Often the loadscreen times are especially long in the browser versions, and occasionally key features will get stuck as well.

It's important to keep in mind that when playing Pokemon Snap on one's computer, the game is likely never going to function quite as perfectly as if it were being run on an actual Nintendo 64. However, almost all of the features in the original game should work without many problems and playing the computer version still makes for a very enjoyable time capturing photos of Pokemon.

Also Read: What's the point of Pokemon Snap?