Anyone who had an N64 will have a soft spot for Pilotwings 64. I can remember looking at the box for my console (which I put back in the box every time after using it for the first couple of weeks and kept out by the TV like a trophy), and seeing the images for Pilotwings 64 on the box. It was an amazing launch title and showed us all just what the N64 could do, bringing us into the 3D era alongside Super Mario 64.
Do these decompiled games have similar requirements as the N64 hardware? I’m sure a modern OpenGL context comes with more bells, whistles, and overhead but, other than a potentially enlarged frame buffer, would this game still require VRAM and RAM around the order of 4 MBs?
Mario 64 runs unoptimized on native hardware. And it’s a mistake that it does. Hackers switched on optimization that was code into the game but never used and the game runs much smoother in emulation even without recompiling.
If that’s anything to go on, I think these games being completely recompiled would inherently run better even on the same specs as the Nintendo 64.
Decompilation is just that - this code hasn’t been ported to new libraries or platforms yet. This means it targets N64 and is still designed within boundaries of that platform.
In terms of performance it’s hard to tell how optimised decompiled code is unless you can compare it with the original using the same compiler Nintendo did. Compilers these days create much more optimised machine code than they did in the 90s so you’d likely get significant boost from compiler alone.
You should be able to compile the decompiled code to run on the original hardware so it’d be basically 1:1 performance even if the code itself isn’t. It’s just kinda pointless to do. A real world example…Kaze sort of is? But at this point the Mario 64 game engine is more his code than Nintendo since he’s modified it so extensively for his upcoming game.
With emulation you’re emulating the entire console’s hardware first at full speed ideally. Not just the game. Normally that will always be more demanding to run than native code.
Similar spec hardware to the N64 kind of depends. It’s more about what’s done for each port that uses the decompiled code. Like for desktop people will use desktop API of course. If it’s say Vulkan, you’d then require a GPU that supports whatever the developer specifies as the minimum version supported. Certain CPU instructions, whatever.
Mario 64 has decomp ports running on Raspberry Pi 3 and Nintendo DS. There may be weaker hardware ports but those are the ones I knew about as of writing.
There is a build of Mario 64 for the PlayStation. It’s pretty cool lol
N64 is glide. It maps well to opengl…
I like the part where if you shoot Mario he becomes Wario
