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Perfect Dark and Banjo-Kazooie could be the next N64 PC ports

IbizaPocholo

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
www.videogameschronicle.com

Perfect Dark and Banjo-Kazooie could be the next N64 PC ports | VGC

More than 25 fan-made decompilation projects are currently in development…
www.videogameschronicle.com www.videogameschronicle.com

More than 20 such projects are currently being worked on by fan groups, following the high profile completion of two major N64 endeavours.

An unofficial PC port of Nintendo 64 classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was completed and released online on Tuesday, following Super Mario 64 in 2019, following the completion of similar fan reverse-engineering projects.

Now developers are working on projects for a host of other N64 games, with Perfect Dark seemingly being one closest to completion.

Much like the Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, these decompilation projects involve the painstaking work of reverse-engineering the original games into compilable C code – which can take years – after which teams can quickly port them to playable PC versions with new features and full mod support.

Players often have to provide their own legally-sourced N64 ROM for these games to work – the software then takes those assets (such as character models, audio and textures) and combines them with the code to create a native PC version.

The belief is that this helps shield the projects somewhat from legal ramifications. Reverse engineering projects such as these are technically made legal because the fans involved do not use any leaked content or copyrighted assets.

Because the more than 20 decompilation projects currently ongoing are all being handled by different developers, not all have a clear indication of how much progress is being made. Some developers have been more forthcoming with this information, however.

For example, a decompilation of Perfect Dark being worked on by Ryan Dwyer is currently claimed to be just under 70% complete, with ports planned for not only the final PAL, NTSC and Japanese releases of the game, but also the NTSC and PAL beta versions.

Meanwhile, a project focusing on Paper Mario claims to be around 60% complete, while a Banjo-Kazooie decompilation currently sits at around 55% progress, a Mario Kart 64 project is at a little over 25% and a Space Station Silicon valley one lies at around 30%.

Some of the other decompilation projects currently ongoing include:

 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Conker's Bad Fur Day seems the most beneficial. It's stuck forever on the N64, with no other ports except for the XBOX Remaster, which isn't really the same. It looks amazing but it's censored and Conker himself looks like a lifeless stuffed animal. N64 version is also one of the most demanding games to emulate on a LLE plugin so it's even harder to make it run at a faster frame rate like you can with Goldeneye/PD.
 
D

Drew1440

Member
Interesting, I hope Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is one of the titles considered, it has certain graphical effects that are superior to the Windows PC port.
 
K

KellyNole

Member
nkarafo said:
Conker's Bad Fur Day seems the most beneficial. It's stuck forever on the N64, with no other ports except for the XBOX Remaster, which isn't really the same. It looks amazing but it's censored and Conker himself looks like a lifeless stuffed animal. N64 version is also one of the most demanding games to emulate on a LLE plugin so it's even harder to make it run at a faster frame rate like you can with Goldeneye/PD.
Click to expand...

Isn’t there a port in Rare Replay collection of Conker on the 64?

Edit: replied before reading the next comment. kanjobazooie already answered it. It is yes.
 
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Porcile

Porcile

Member
Yes, please. I much prefer the look of the N64 version compared to the HD remaster, especially the original character models.
 
00_Zer0

00_Zer0

Member
Notabueno said:
Hi, I'd like to introduce you to something called emulators.

Can someone explain to me the point of these?
Click to expand...
Emulators introduce lag and roms require an emulators to run. Roms can introduce imperfect gameplay and imperfect glitchy graphics/music based on how accurate the emulator is.

A native PC port based on this decompilation method forgoes emulators and runs on today's computers with many improvements that emulators can't handle without breaking the game(hd textures, arbitrary framerate, arbitrary resolution)

Game inmrovements using an emulator/rom method takes rom/iso hacks and can break the game depending on what kind of improvements or changes you add to the game.

Take a look at this video. This is a native Mario 64 PC Port with 60 FPS Raytracing improved resolution textures and models. Emulators can't achieve this method. Apparently Nintendo can't either.
 
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