Brief guide about the Super Mario 64 PC ports
(This is basically something I wrote for a comment and I thought it could be more useful as a post)
Ok, so first of all: all the Mario 64 ports are decomp based.
Now, I may be mistaken, but this is the original pc port, based on the decomp. Quite basic.
Later came a fork of it: sm64ex. This is the port that got some juicy QoL features. Compiling this manually was tricky for most users, so a GUI builder was created. Nowadays, it's known as the sm64pcbuilder2.
The PcBuilder was useful, and allowed you to install not just EX, but other forks like "Ex Coop" (multiplayer focused) and Render96 (a project that aims to replace every texture and model, to make the game closer to the promotional art. While for the most part you can just install the textures and models by themselves, the Render96-ex fork has some gameplay unique features, like playing as Luigi and Wario). PcBuilder2 also allowed you to add some optional patches, like 60 fps or No exit when collecting a Star; and you could install custom models and textures in the builder.
Now, the problem with PcBuilder2 is that is was very tricky to use. You needed to install MSYS2 so the builder could compile everything. And it was prone to fail in many ocassions. It was the best we had, but even then a few of the forks that were part of the builder decided to be independent.
SM64Plus is part of the builder, but eventually it decided to make a launcher of it's own. This fork aimed to create the best single player experience. It has a lot of optional QoL improvements and while it still depends on MSYS2 to compile, it's actually reliable. It doesn't have much mod support aside from simple texture replacement in the files. I'd say it's the best one for a single player experience.
Ex Coop got independent from the PCBuilder and became SM64 Coop Deluxe. As I said, it aims to bring a multiplayer experience to sm64. Players can create and customize servers to play the entire campaign of sm64 with online multiplayer. While that on it self was a big reason for it's popularity, it was also the easiest port to install. You only needed to open .exe and select the rom. No need for an external terminal. The mod community of this particular port is the most robust imo with extra characters, texture packs and even game modes.
And finally we have Ghostship. You know the drill. Much like all the other Harbor Masters ports, you just need to place the rom on the folder and that's it. It's still quite new, and imo lacks many features available in other ports like Plus, but it's an adequate option to just plug-and-play sm64 on pc.
I hope this text is useful. Thanks for reading.