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Video game decompilations have been all the rage these past couple of years, and out of all the retro consoles, the Nintendo 64 has seen its fair share of titles getting decompilation projects, like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Perfect Dark, with the first two having proper PC ports alongside a wide variety of Quality of Life improvements, as well as unofficial ports to other systems thanks to the decompilation project. Today, another popular title from the Nintendo 64's library joins the list of fully completed decompiled projects.

Paper Mario (N64) has reached a full 1:1 decompilation, matching with each and every one of its functions 100% with those from the original game. While the developers themselves might not be interested in a PC port for the title, other people might take on the endeavour and attempt porting it to other systems, so a PC port might be in the upcoming future.

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Certainly, the amount of titles getting decompilations is increasing day by day, and for the Nintendo 64, the list of titles that are nearing completion is getting bigger and bigger, with other popular titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (70+%), Banjo Kazooie (90+), Goldeneye 007 (50+%), and many others, currently being worked on extensively to get them up to 100% matching functions between the decompilation and the original game. Not only that, but games from other consoles have also seen some decompilation projects, like the Super Nintendo with titles like Super Metroid and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

The future for decompilation projects is looking brighter and brighter each day, with more titles appearing as time goes on.
Which title would you like to see getting a proper decompilation project?

Source

 

[Kioku]

Wonder what craziness will come from this…

 

[SylverReZ]

Time to make more PC ports of Nintendo titles.

 

[Moon164]

Can't wait for the HD Wii U port and Dreamcast port like what happened with Sonic Mania, Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Time to make more PC ports of Nintendo titles.

Nintendo must be fuming their asses out, much more so because they cannot even scratch the surface on the level of Quality of Life improvements the fans can do to their so called beloved and "protected IPs".
And better yet, the fact that they cannot do jackshit to stop these from a legal standpoint is what adds the cherry on top.

 

[Kioku]

much more so because they cannot even scratch the surface on the level of Quality of Life improvements the fans can do to their so called beloved and "protected IPs".

I don’t think they “can’t” so much as they willingly “won’t”. It’s more cost effective to hastily emulate the games in such a shoddy manner than doing what these decomps are.

Also, given how they can skirt the legal system with things like videos, there’s probably something they could do about these. Even if they’re “clean”, the IPs are still under Nintendo’s thumb and we all know how shaky the legal system can be for consumers.

I applaud the people who archive these projects as a just-in-case. Much like with AM2R, the project is seemingly dead but can still be found in various locations.

 

[KeeperCP1]

Can't wait for the HD Wii U port and Dreamcast port like what happened with Sonic Mania, Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time.

Wait, the Sonic Mania decompilation got ported to Dreamcast?!?

 

[ShadowOne333]

I don’t think they “can’t” so much as they willingly “won’t”. It’s more cost effective to hastily emulate the games in such a shoddy manner than doing what these decomps are.

Also, given how they can skirt the legal system with things like videos, there’s probably something they could do about these. Even if they’re “clean”, the IPs are still under Nintendo’s thumb and we all know how shaky the legal system can be for consumers.

I applaud the people who archive these projects as a just-in-case. Much like with AM2R, the project is seemingly dead but can still be found in various locations.

Believe me, if Nintendo was able to, they would have shut down each and every decompilation project for each of their IPs.

They did DMCA the Super Mario 64 decompilation, but they only DMCA'd the final compiled executable of the project, not the project's source code in GitHub.
This is due to the fact that all of the decompilation projects (or most of them) follow a clean room strategy to reverse engineering the original game's code in other languages, or attempt to recreate them without relying in the official source code, this is protected by law, and Nintendo knows damn well that attempting an attack on these projects might fire back.

 

[JuanMena]

Hope the community fixes that annoying bug that crashes the game for hitting the same block for 420 years!

x2

 

[Kioku]

Believe me, if Nintendo was able to, they would have shut down each and every decompilation project for each of their IPs.

They did DMCA the Super Mario 64 decompilation, but they only DMCA'd the final compiled executable of the project, not the project's source code in GitHub.
This is due to the fact that all of the decompilation projects (or most of them) follow a clean room strategy to reverse engineering the original game's code in other languages, or attempt to recreate them without relying in the official source code, this is protected by law, and Nintendo knows damn well that attempting an attack on these projects might fire back.

Again, the law is so frail that I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re choosing not to target because it’s not cost effective. Or because it doesn’t pose an immediate threat. Been reading a bunch of stuff regarding cases that should have been in favor of the defendants but the big corpo bullies get their way. Not going to assume they can’t…

 

[|<roni&g]

Now time to put every resource into Goldeneye

 

[EpikJimmer]

Now THAT'S amazing. Paper mario is one of my favourite N64 games (if not one of my favourite rpgs ever)

 

[lordelan]

From a legal standpoint it's no difference to Nintendo as to emulating the rom since you need it anyway to pull out the assets. So the best they can do is to kill off all rom sources (like they did with emuparadise) but then again this is the freakin' internet and they just can't. At the very least, the internet archive will be there for us.
Then again, the harder they would try to remove all roms from the web, the more likely it will become, that the community gets pissed and starts to share these PC ports even with all the copyrighted asset files out of the box. Its illegal and they will get DMCA'd but they won't give a sh*t.
Conclusion: Nintendo can't do anything except delivering nice remasters or remakes on their own (haha). SM64 was the best example. I didn't even bother with playing it out of the All Stars collection (only got that for Galaxy). At that point playing V8 of the open source port of SM64 on the Switch was already 10x better experience.

 

[Ampersound]

Vita port, Vita port, Vita port!!
It would be such an amazing game to play on it

 

[HarveyHouston]

From a legal standpoint it's no difference to Nintendo as to emulating the rom since you need it anyway to pull out the assets. So the best they can do is to kill off all rom sources (like they did with emuparadise) but then again this is the freakin' internet and they just can't. At the very least, the internet archive will be there for us.
Then again, the harder they would try to remove all roms from the web, the more likely it will become, that the community gets pissed and starts to share these PC ports even with all the copyrighted asset files out of the box. Its illegal and they will get DMCA'd but they won't give a sh*t.
Conclusion: Nintendo can't do anything except delivering nice remasters or remakes on their own (haha). SM64 was the best example. I didn't even bother with playing it out of the All Stars collection (only got that for Galaxy). At that point playing V8 of the open source port of SM64 on the Switch was already 10x better experience.

You pretty much said what I was going to say, except better. Well done!

 

[MariArch]

View attachment 366098
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Video game decompilations have been all the rage these past couple of years, and out of all the retro consoles, the Nintendo 64 has seen its fair share of titles getting decompilation projects, like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Perfect Dark, with the first two having proper PC ports alongside a wide variety of Quality of Life improvements, as well as unofficial ports to other systems thanks to the decompilation project. Today, another popular title from the Nintendo 64's library joins the list of fully completed decompiled projects.

Paper Mario (N64) has reached a full 1:1 decompilation, matching with each and every one of its functions 100% with those from the original game. While the developers themselves might not be interested in a PC port for the title, other people might take on the endeavour and attempt porting it to other systems, so a PC port might be in the upcoming future.

​

Certainly, the amount of titles getting decompilations is increasing day by day, and for the Nintendo 64, the list of titles that are nearing completion is getting bigger and bigger, with other popular titles such as The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (70+%), Banjo Kazooie (90+), Goldeneye 007 (50+%), and many others, currently being worked on extensively to get them up to 100% matching functions between the decompilation and the original game. Not only that, but games from other consoles have also seen some decompilation projects, like the Super Nintendo with titles like Super Metroid and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

The future for decompilation projects is looking brighter and brighter each day, with more titles appearing as time goes on.
Which title would you like to see getting a proper decompilation project?

Source

Banjo will be a godsend

 

[Desconocido90]

I hope MasterKillua's HD texture pack for the n64 game can be ported to this recompiled version.

 

[Kitocco]

I don’t think they “can’t” so much as they willingly “won’t”. It’s more cost effective to hastily emulate the games in such a shoddy manner than doing what these decomps are.

Also, given how they can skirt the legal system with things like videos, there’s probably something they could do about these. Even if they’re “clean”, the IPs are still under Nintendo’s thumb and we all know how shaky the legal system can be for consumers.

I applaud the people who archive these projects as a just-in-case. Much like with AM2R, the project is seemingly dead but can still be found in various locations.

To a certain extent, it may be unreasonable to expect commercial products with deadlines & budgets to community efforts running on passion & the odd donation.
But it's reasonable to expect they at least try. And y'know, not be outdone by a mess of plugins or an emulator from the Clinton presidency.

While the law is certainly fragile & an inconsistent mess, especially when it comes to personal backups, Nintendo's not exactly known for their honesty when it comes to copyright, either. Console Classix had threats sent their way & lived to tell the tale.

 

[Wolfy]

For the console with a history of rough emulation, this certainly brings a smile to my face.

 

[Viri]

Majora's Mask is at 75% and Banjo is forever stuck at 98%. I am still waiting for a Perfect Dark PC port.

https://zelda64.dev/games/mm
https://github.com/n64decomp/banjo-kazooie