This is a full native recompilation of the game for x64 processors, so you don't need an emulation layer. Should also make it easier to make custom texture packs and mods.

This is native code, so you'd expect much better performance, but mostly this is just a really great foundation to build on.

Current features are thin, but you should expect a lot of improvements going forward, compare it to something like Ship of Harkinian (same team) for an idea of what might be to come. Features like high framerates and texture packs, built in randomizer and tracking support, modding support, a ton of features and tweaks for speedrunners, etc, and a metric ton of QoL features.

The other comments pretty much covered it, but a small nice thing that a port of the game can do that an emulator can't do is increase the draw distance and disable the LOD to always draw maximum quality models

Frame rate, wide screen, mouse input... You can pretty much do anything you want with the game. Vs an emulator that runs the official ROM as it was.

Not only requires emulating the game more resources, its also the configuration and imperfect N64 emulation state that muddies just a little bit. Plus a native port to PC can use everything that a normal PC game could too without tricks, such as widescreen, better controller support with new features, higher fps and so on. Emulating a game still uses the same CPU of the original system and other constraints.

Emulators are emulating N64hardware running a game pak, this is a native port of the game to Linux and unlocks several benefits. Off the top of my head:

• Improved performance due to running natively on the hardware (not emulating an N64 with 4MB RAM)
• Ability to set custom resolutions (widescreen), apply aliasing, filtering or other graphical tweaks
• Easier to replace textures, models, audio files and otherwise tweak the codebase
• Native controller support

This can run without an emulator, being the biggest difference/pro, depending on how you feel about that.