Harbour Masters--the team behind porting decompilation projects such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Star Fox 64, and others to PC--has done it again. The recently completed decompilation for Mario Kart 64 has now been ported over to PC, allowing you to play the game natively, instead of having to imperfectly emulate it. Of course, in order to build the port, you'll have to have your own copy of Mario Kart 64 backed up. A Nintendo Switch build and Steam Deck/Linux build are also available. The project is available to download from GitHub, linked in the source.

Source
Discussion thread

 

[raxadian]

This is great news, but I would prefer playing it on my Vita, hope someone ports the game to it.

 

[LightBeam]

That game is insanely impressive visually considering it's running in a fork of the Doom 2 engine. There's animated textures and moving environment set pieces all over the place.

I love these so much lol
The best is probably Total Chaos, it looks like black magic at this point

 

[Odyssey64]

Nice

Post automatically merged: Jun 23, 2025

Nice

 

[Empu1]

Just finished a cup and it crashed in the end.

Can confirm, same thing happened to me. Beat Mushroom Cup and crashed on the Congratulations screen

 

[xtrem2k]

I hope someone can port it to 3ds, it would be a blast to play on it

 

[LightBeam]

Can confirm, same thing happened to me. Beat Mushroom Cup and crashed on the Congratulations screen

Maybe it's because of the cup ? Anyway at least I know it's not just me lol

But this made me realize there's no huge incentive to play this ... yet. I'll wait for mod support

 

[MPRTwice]

I just spoke with them about how I liked star fox 64 and the zelda 64 games, and hated mario kart 64 on a voice channel, then I discover a day later why they didn't like that; this came about. I didn't mean to insult them and had no idea this was being released; if they can provide an option to be rid of the rubber band AI, it could be one of my favorite mario kart games.

Edit: Just spoke with the developers: yes, you can disable rubber band AI.

Toad: "Yeah, hahaha! Yahoo! Here we go! Okay!"

 

[Localhorst86]

Already exist on emulators and it looks great https://github.com/GhostlyDark/MK64-HD

Just finished a cup and it crashed in the end. But I can't wait for the mods, and hopefully some online functionality eventually

Finished mushroom cup on 50cc on linux, no crash here.

 

[LoggerMan]

Mario Kart 64 should be an Olympic sport.

 

[omega59]

it runs smooth on my potato laptop lol.
i had to use my game dump as z64 file.

 

[CameronCataclysm]

Tested and working wonderfully! Mario Kart in 240FPS feels illegal!

 

[MPRTwice]

Tested and working wonderfully! Mario Kart in 240FPS feels illegal!

Have you tried 1000 cc as one of the available options?

 

[Stealphie]

I really don't know why some people like to praise Mario Kart 64. It didn't age well at all, the competition that came not long after made it look and feel primitive in comparison. Driving in that game is so slippery, every single item feels awkward to use, it has really poorly designed cpu oponents, and on top of that, questionable mechanics that (thank god) never came back, like that stupid tripping when you play 150cc.

I say this as someone who has played every single Mario Kart made by Nintendo for at least 100 hours each, this is definitely the worst of them all, and I've playing Mario Kart 64 since I was 8, so not even nostalgia value saves it for me.

Talking about this port, hopefully it can fix most of these issues in the future, but from what I've been testing it, the item balancing seems to be completely busted.

64 is slippery, janky and unbalanced; that's what makes it fun. It feels like the most pure Mario Kart experience, even if it's far from the best.

 

[console]

I always love Mario Kart 64 a lot when I was kid to teen play this game all of times. Also play Mario Kart 64 with my best friends and cousin had blast fun time! I still own this Mario Kart 64 and two of Nintendo 64 systems. Still working so far.

Please never let Nintendo take this Mario Kart 64 decomp away! Backup and backup files often! I would love to build servers to give huge support to everyone can enjoy for lifetime in the future when Nintendo company is going out of business! I love Nintendo to death.

 

[fernandoalonso]

Thanks to all, I'm very happy! Years waiting this moment!
It's one of my favorites karting games and the more funniest of all.

PD: Jairo ya tenemos el juego, acabaron de decopilarlo al 100%!

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I really don't know why some people like to praise Mario Kart 64. It didn't age well at all, the competition that came not long after made it look and feel primitive in comparison. Driving in that game is so slippery, every single item feels awkward to use, it has really poorly designed cpu oponents, and on top of that, questionable mechanics that (thank god) never came back, like that stupid tripping when you play 150cc.

I say this as someone who has played every single Mario Kart made by Nintendo for at least 100 hours each, this is definitely the worst of them all, and I've playing Mario Kart 64 since I was 8, so not even nostalgia value saves it for me.

Talking about this port, hopefully it can fix most of these issues in the future, but from what I've been testing it, the item balancing seems to be completely busted.

True. I played the hell out of Mario Kart 64 but Diddy Kong Racing is just a better game. Mario Kart has come a long way since the N64. It's not so easy to go back to nowadays, the mechanics have really aged poorly.
I feel the same way about Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart Super Circuit though. Those games are even more slippery to control than MK64. Which is understandable given that they're faking 3D but it makes them difficult to play.

 

[retrospect]

I really don't know why some people like to praise Mario Kart 64. It didn't age well at all, the competition that came not long after made it look and feel primitive in comparison.

I disagree. It does look old cos of the sprites, but in multiplayer mode I think it's hard to beat. And given that DS had its powerslide issue, I might give the crown to 64... or 8. Probably 8. Both are excellent versions of the game (though 64 greatly benefits from a few mods).

 

[NinStar]

I disagree. It does look old cos of the sprites, but in multiplayer mode I think it's hard to beat. And given that DS had its powerslide issue, I might give the crown to 64... or 8. Probably 8. Both are excellent versions of the game (though 64 greatly benefits from a few mods).

I don't think a game having a very specific exploitable mechanic (Mario Kart DS) somehow making it worse than a game being janky overall (Mario Kart 64). If we used that as a criteria, then by extension Mario Kart 8 (at least on Wii U) would also be a lesser game because it had both fire hopping and demon sliding, yes they are all technically flaws in the gameplay, but they require some level of skill to perform and doesn't realistically hinders the experience when you are playing against the cpu or someone that plays the game casually.

 

[Localhorst86]

I don't think a game having a very specific exploitable mechanic (Mario Kart DS) somehow making it worse than a game being janky overall (Mario Kart 64). If we used that as a criteria, then by extension Mario Kart 8 (at least on Wii U) would also be a lesser game because it had both fire hopping and demon sliding, yes they are all technically flaws in the gameplay, but they require some level of skill to perform and doesn't realistically hinders the experience when you are playing against the cpu or someone that plays the game casually.

Mk64 has the best battle mode of the series. So good, that every single year I get back together with old school friends, dedicating an entire evening to Mario Kart 64 battle mode.

 

[PatrickD85]

Ow neat, hope we get something nice out of this that can be ported to various platforms.