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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

 

[pokota]

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.

Welp, guess it's time to make some tutorials on dumping game images from archived Wii VC or from NSO installations (I say as if I knew how to do either)

 

[MyJoyConRunsHot]

How come it's always N64 games we see decompiled? No playstation games? Or Saturn?

I assume if that gen takes 3 years to decompile then PS2/cube/Xbox would be like 5+?

Jak and Daxter was decompiled last year. Even has a launcher.

Jak 2 is on the way as well.

 

[raxadian]

Perfect Dark

In Perfect Dark case that's because only one version of the game has been fully decompiled. To be all 100% all Nintendo 64 versions of the game have to be fully decompilled.

I really want to play this game on my Vita or 3DS, hope someone does the port.

PS Vita port when?

After a bounty is posted of course.

 

[Kioku]

In Perfect Dark case that's because only one version of the game has been fully decompiled. To be all 100% all Nintendo 64 versions of the game have to be fully decompilled.

I really want to play this game on my Vita or 3DS, hope someone does the port.



After a bounty is posted of course.

AFAIK even the one version isn’t 100%… It works, but not perfectly or something like that.

 

[urbanman2004]

Yessir, another win for game preservation.

 

[godreborn]

AFAIK even the one version isn’t 100%… It works, but not perfectly or something like that.

Iirc, the resulting perfect dark rom is byte by byte identical to the original, just like this one. That's how you know it worked.

 

[Kioku]

Iirc, the resulting perfect dark rom is byte by byte identical to the original, just like this one. That's how you know it worked.

“All versions of the game are fully decompiled but a small handful of functions are not yet byte-matching even though they are functionally the same. The status page doesn't show these as 100% because it counts matching functions only.”

Per their gitlab… it works, but they don’t consider it 100%

 

[godreborn]

“All versions of the game are fully decompiled but a small handful of functions are not yet byte-matching even though they are functionally the same. The status page doesn't show these as 100% because it counts matching functions only.”

Per their gitlab… it works, but they don’t consider it 100%

I was able to compile it, but I must've misremembered. I've checked one or two of the decomps based on data comparison in HxD, and they'll be identical once all is set.

 

[Kioku]

I was able to compile it, but I must've misremembered. I've checked one or two of the decomps based on data comparison in HxD, and they'll be identical once all is set.

There’s also the chance that they didn’t update the description and progress; even though the rom is decompiled. I don’t know. Either way, I’m dying to see a proper PC port soon. Emulating is fine, but I want raw KBM.

 

[FAST6191]

Careful what you wish for re perfect dark. Or at least if you spend your youth sidestepping with the c buttons that is not going to map well to keyboard and mouse, was annoying enough for the XBLA port of it.

 

[godreborn]

There’s also the chance that they didn’t update the description and progress; even though the rom is decompiled. I don’t know. Either way, I’m dying to see a proper PC port soon. Emulating is fine, but I want raw KBM.

alright, I just checked. yep, they're identical now.

 

[Jayro]

Now time to put every resource into Goldeneye

I want this so badly... To play a build compiled for Linux on ARM processors like the Pi 4 would be amazing. Goldeneye, full speed. Maybe even 60fps modded. I could walk around conventions as a playable Goldeneye kiosk, and let people play. Did that with Super Mario 64 on my NES Classic, and people LOVED it! (The game played full speed, too!)

 

[novortices]

Holy crap this is my favorite N64 game. Massive nostalgia from playing it as a kid on Wii Virtual Console. Massively hyped for a PC port on the level of SM64's.

 

[Nakamichi]

Has this been ported yet?

 

[novortices]

Has this been ported yet?

Not yet. The decomp is finished but there’s still a lot if effort needed to port it to PC. Hopefully we’ll see some progress in the next few months.

 

[AkiraKurusu]

I felt like elaborating on why I'd like to see the Peach segments, present in both PM64 and TTYD, skipped.

1) They provide no useful information that couldn't just be relayed through Twink or the Mailbox SP. Sure, each segment can have funny little skits, like that 'invisibility potion' bit in TTYD or the random game show in 64, but not all of them do - and some segments are so brief that they may as well just be skippable to begin with. Regardless of any skits, by the end of each segment Peach learns about some nugget of info she has Twink go tell Mario, or sends to him through TEC-XX - which means that the Star Kid/email could've just arrived without the boring segment attached.

2) Peach is slooow and has nothing to break up the tedious monotony. Unlike Mario in 64, she cannot spin-dash, only slowly crawl to her next objective, and I swear her walking speed is slower than Mario's walking speed...regardless, getting to other places takes forever for her, making her segments feel like they drag on and on.
Sure, this is justified as she's trying to sneak past guards, but still - ugh.
Also, Peach rightfully cannot fight, as she is a captive woman, a damsel. Makes sense, but that's yet another thing that's fun whilst playing as Mario, that Peach cannot do. Hence, the tedious monotony.

The Peach segments might be fun during your first play through, when the story and each individual event are new, but in second, third, fourth play throughs...? Yeah, screw 'em - just lemme continue as Gonzales from beginning to end, please.

Super wisely only had like one short Peach segment, before she's booted out and becomes a main character (which means no separate segments after each Pure Heart). Fantastic choice, there, and one major reason why Super's my favourite in this series.
And as for Sticker Star onwards...for all their flaws, Peach segments ain't one of them at all, to my understanding, so in that aspect they're better than the first two games! Ha!

 

[shadow1w2]

Looking forward to seeing some custom campaigns.
Maybe a recreation of Mario RPG in Paper Mario style.

Hoping to see Star Fox and F-zero x/DD expansion get a decompliation.
Love to see some obscure third party games get a revival this way too but maybe it's only best for games that'll have a community to support modding it.

 

[brunoam]

Nintendo is simply disgusting with any fan-made project and is really obnoxious in that regard.

 

[mister_smang_n_watch]

can't wait for Banjo Kazooie, but what I really want is mystical ninja starring goemon... that'd rule so hard

 

[LightspeedAdventurer]

Oh my god, this is so awesome. WIDESCREEN, 60FPS, 1080P, ON MY PC!!! AND MUCH BETTER THAN EMULATION BECAUSE MY PC IS A TOASTER!!!

(but I don't have the game, sadly... gotta get a real N64 cartridge and dumper to feel okay playing this lol )