Games @lemmy.world Xatolos @reddthat.com 2 wk. ago

How to port any N64 game to the PC in record time

arstechnica.com How to port any N64 game to the PC in record time

"Static recompilation" is "the difference between weeks of work and years of work."

21 comments

Honestly, this article shouldn't be called how to. I'm trying to make heads or tails of this documentation but I would love to see more. I just want to recompile Mystical Ninja starring Goemon as it's my favorite N64 game from my childhood.
- This is - crazy enough - the first time I‘ve ever read someone mentioning Goemon and I couldn‘t agree more
  
  Is that related to Goemon's Great Adventure? I played that a ton but I never really understood if it was a franchise, a one off, etc. I think I was just too young at the time to understand much beyond smacking monsters with a pipe lol
- DASH DASH DASH!
  
  Gimme more IMPACTO
I'm hoping this gets adapted to cross compiling for all the retro handhelds.

I went through crazy hoops to get a native compiled Mario64 running on my Anbernic and the results were amazing compared to emulation.

This could bring a large library of N64 to every low end handheld.
- I hope this technology is carried across all of Nintendo's consoles. Won't even need emulators anymore if we can just run it natively.
  
  Nintendo in particular, just to spite them, but other consoles would be great too.
  
  I bet like the emulator they "stole", they will use this software without even acknowledging the author.
- This is going to be important for maintaining the legacy of old video games.
  
  Like, emulators are fine, but access to recompilation makes it much easier to keep things in a generally useful format.
  
  Honestly one of the reasons I don't play emulated games much is that the extra step of configuring and running the emulator is a hassle, and sometimes it straight up doesn't work.
  
  Edit: Anyone who thinks access to the source code is somehow worse than the original executable code, just ask yourself, what is the legacy of say, Doom, for which we have access to the source, versus literally any other closed source game of that era that requires DOSBox to be run? Doom is a meme that "runs on anything" and has a thriving modding community, and it's hard to think of examples of DOSBox games because you never think about them. Source code is important.
  
  This is the worst format for that?
  
  Binaries will never get bug fixes or improvements like an emulator. The rom is the only relevant archive of a game.
  
  Your complaint is just they have terrible UX, which is true.
- Did you write about how you achieved it? Lots of other people with anbernic devices (new included) would be interested
  
  I followed this guide:
  
  https://retrogamecorps.com/2020/12/28/guide-super-mario-64-port-on-rg351p/
  
  It was tricky both because the website that retrogamecorps linked sometimes didn't work and there are many variations of the SM64 ROM that all play identically but the website that reads your ROM only works with one particular version. I downloaded several before I found one that worked.

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