A PC port of the classic Nintendo 64 launch title Super Mario 64 has appeared online and is downloadable. The game runs in DirectX 12 and supports native 4K and widescreen support. Video Games Chronicle reports that this fan made port was made possible by a 2019 recompilation project as fans were able to reverse engineer the game’s source code. You can also play the game with an Xbox One controller and presumably other compatible controllers. Take a watch of the video published down below.
Nintendo’s Ninjas are coming…
Simply not possible. Nintendo can’t do this because not only was the entire recomp already completed and distributed, but the nintendo SDK had also been leaked which means that this is now a 24 MB file that is impossible to remove from circulation. Nintendo has lost this game.
Umm, that doesn’t prevent them from sueing the creator.
@lucky bunny Still doesnt change the fact tht anyone can play this fan-made “remaster” of the game now. Majority aint gonna care if the creator is sued. lol
Yes ok we know this but we are talking about Super Mario 64 a game by Nintendo and now we have the 4K 16:9 version of the game made by someone or some people where you can find it, if you can because I didn’t find the file online for now, and play it on your PC for free.
The problem isn’t that the game is out there where people can play it the problem is the game is a “modern port” of a classic Nintendo game not made by Nintendo.
But who ever is distributing this game, and I think on a website, Nintendo can actually do something. Remember that website full of rom games of Nintendo? Nintendo basically came and shuted down the website.
Of course if you have this game locally on your computer they can’t do nothing.
Am I a simpleton for questioning why someone would want an n64 game in 4k?
Seriously what’s the point in upscaling a older game that still won’t look good even if you put in 4k, I seen people do this thing with snes/nes and it makes no sense to me it be more better if they just remade it using a different engine or made the models hd
Depending on what you’re doing with it, it makes a lot of sense.
If you’re just running it in an emulator on your PC? No. You’re right. It makes no sense.
If you’re outputting to your tv, a signal that already runs on your tv’s native resolution will produce less input lag than if the TV had to process and upscale the image first. This is why you get FPGA consoles that run NES and SNES games and output 1080p, modern televisions have a hell of a time processing a 240p image. Games that were designed to be run on CRT tv’s that have zero inherent lag because they have no processing at all, having to be upscaled first (usually being misinterpreted as 480i on top of it), then being drawn on a comparatively slower screen *wildly* changes the experience. If we set together and I watched you play the original NES Mega Man spit out in 240p and upscaled by your tv, I could point out every time you died that wasn’t your fault but a side effect of the hardware you’re playing on. This is why speedrunners play on a CRT on original equipment. Losing 4-6 frames of input lag makes the game borderline unplayable at any serious level of execution.
Thank you for filling me in on the info now I understand it better
I think the models are fine, but some of the textures don’t work. The Bob-omb boss looks like a 3D sphere on original hardware, but stretched to a high resolution the illusion is broken.
“The Bob-omb boss looks like a 3D sphere on original hardware, but stretched to a high resolution the illusion is broken.”
An inherent problem of important old programs to new formats. If you are young enough to have never played a lot of these older games as they were played at the time, on CRT tv’s with low quality analog signals, that’s low quality even for analog signals, then you aren’t very aware of what these games actually looked like as modern emulation and releases are nothing like how these gamees were originally presented.
The sharp, hard, crude square pixel look we know from emulators today and retro styled games like Shovel Knight is not at all what these games were designed to look like. Both the way CRT’s scanned the imagine onto the screen, and the fuzziness of composite video signals textured and softened the image in ways that many designers intentionally used to alter the visuals of the game, hide flaws, and create new effects not inherent to the console hardware. Most famously, transparency effects on the sega genesis/mega drive were a trick of composite video. Outputting a higher quality cideo signal destroys the effect and water starts to look like plain white lines on a plain blue background.
https://www.retrorgb.com/hd-retrovison-shows-transparency-color-depth-restoration-algorithm-to-minimize-dithering.html
I wonder if Nintendo is too pandemic-overwhelmed to take this away (considering how they can withhold game announcements).
At least let people have this much….
Nintendo can’t take this away. It’s not possible. It’s a single executable <25 megabyte file that is already complete. This isn't a rom, this isn't an emulator, this isn't in development, this is done, floating around, and finalized. There's no amount of legal pressure in the world over capable of stopping this from happening further. It's not a fan project that they can just snip late development, it's not a single source distribution cycle, this article fails to cover what I sent to them in email in that not only has the source code for the game been compiled completely, but the nintendo64 SDK its self had been leaked resulting in not only this being able to be ported to PC, but the fact is that now in this circumstance SM64 is open source regardless of Nintendo's might. There's nothing they can do. And because of this you could potentially see SM64 ported to ANY device with enough hardware specifications to run the game, much like the original doom. It is absolutely cracked open that hard. That is the state of the situation. It's too late.
These points you make gives the legal team reason to sue for hundred of thousands of dollars instead of just thousands. C&D letters is just a warning so creators don’t get sued, applying that it’s to late and it’ll never be taken down will just lead to the next legal step from Nintendo.
@lucky bunny
More reasons to increase the price isnt gonna do anything or going to the “next step”, will never stop anything.
Ppl will continue to hack, leak, make out of original, etc. as long as technology and the internet exists. Sure they can sue and quell something from getting out of control, but tht is all it can do. It can still be made available in “back alleys” of the internet.
You can find almost any game from Steam, Origin, Epic, etc. in some pirate site somewhere.
Sue or “next step” only slows down.
But there is one thing you forgot and that is the name of the game.
Super Mario 64
This is a Nintendo game that has been developed back in 1996 (I think) and has Mario on it.
Nintendo can always do anything when their IPs are involved.
If it is open sourced then there must be a GitHub, GitLab or whatever site that let’s you see the code of the game. If you have it then why don’t you share with us this open source software. I’m curious to see how they manage to do it.
@Nintendo First Order Reaver
https://github.com/n64decomp/sm64
Nintendo should hire these guys to port N64 games to Switch.
I dont think Nintendo needs them. They dont put N64 games out because they choose not todo so, not because they are incapable of doing it.
I think this might be a good idea but is Nintendo gonna take a project made by someone else and use it for their hardware? I hardly believe they gonna do it, besides the fact that Nintendo actually uses some of the open source software when their work on the OS of their consoles.
I can’t wait to see the nodding opportunities for this.
Modding*
There is a video about the Ray-Tracing version of this “unofficial” port.