Obligatory AVGN link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dJXgJ1c4vY

Superman 64 Wide-screen with ray tracing?! Now that’s gaming!

For graphics, the problem to be solved is that the N64 compiled code is expecting that if it puts value X at memory address Y it will draw a particular pixel in a particular way.

Emulators solve this problem by having a virtual CPU execute the game code (kinda difficult), and then emulator code reads the virtual memory space the game code is interacting with (easy), interprets those values (stupid crazy hard), and replicates the graphical effects using custom code/modern graphics API (kinda difficult).

This program is decompiling the N64 code (easy), searches for known function calls that interact with the N64 GPU (easy), swaps them with known valid modern graphics API calls (easy), then compiles for local machine (easy). Knowing what function signatures to look for and what to replace them with in the general case is basically downright impossible, but because a lot of N64 games used common code, if you go through the laborious process for one game, you get a bunch extra for free or way less effort.

As one of my favorite engineering phrases goes: the devil is in the details

So, you’re pretty much spot on with how emulators work. I also like using claymation to demonstrate it, like this. Your computer bends over backwards to give the game the exact environment it expects.

What makes recompilation more than a simple script is the rebuilding aspect. I brought up claymation because it’s a great analogy for this, too. An n64 ROM is a complete set of characters, sets, and a script for a claymation movie. It’s I in one studio right now, and that studio is the N64, but you need this to be in your PC studio.

First, you have to decompile your sets and characters. You take reference photos and rip out every tree in a forest set and roll each tree back into it’s own ball of clay, with its own reference photo each time. Every little clay cobble on a road, characters outfits, hair, limbs, you meticulously separate every piece of clay that Nintendo shaped, ball them up, and pack them. You now have a million little clay balls and reference photos for every one of them. You take these back to your PC studio. Thankfully, with these reference photos, your clay 3D printer (compiler) can return these balls into something very close to their original shapes, except there’s a bunch of little mistakes. One character’s leg is slightly thinner and longer than it should be, which messes up their gait when you re-film this, so you manually tweak the leg to be accurate. The cobbles don’t quite fit the same, they’re a bit smaller, but you have extra clay because of that so you just make more cobblestones. The road doesn’t look exactly like the original, but that’s fine. The trees, again, don’t quite fit right, but you’ve made similar trees in your studio before and you know those will work so you actually just use those as references instead of the originals. You get filming but this one scene just isn’t lit right, and you can’t figure out why, but you eventually figure out the N64 studio opened the blinds on their window to get natural sun in this shot, but your studio doesn’t have a good view of the sun at that angle, so you have to get a good lamp.

You face a million little hurdles decompiling and recompiling. Its almost literally reinventing the wheel. Almost all the work goes into little details that almost seem unnecessary, but there’s so many that it’s absolutely necessary. I was watching a playthrough of a recompiled majoras mask earlier today, and the Dev of this project found his way there, too, and he said it took a few days to get majoras mask to decompile and recompile, and about a year to fix all those little details that in software become lag or new bugs. So the script guy isn’t really wrong when he said he could do it fast, but he definitely wouldn’t do it right.

IIRC, the original cartridge had an extra chip in it that emulation hasn’t been able to use. I’m not sure if any progress has been made on this and a few other games that used these.

Battle for Naboo actually had an official PC version all the way back in 2001. No idea if it works on modern PCs, though.

It won’t help emulation but on pc/steamdeck you can natively compile it so that there no need for it anymore. Not sure about smartphone but I’m sure that it should be possible!

Delta is a great app if you have iPhone and a Backbone controller 👀

That would be awesome. My guess is yes but it would probably take a lot of work. Can you imagine N64 Smash online multiplayer that actually works?

I saw a Ocarina of Time one a while back. There is also some tool that can link randomizers of different games togther.

Idk about this, but the Mario 64 decompile was recompiled to run on my Anbernic 353 at 60fps, runs amazing. So I think it should be at least theoretically possible.

Emulating N64 is particular can be a lot of overhead - it’s possible this could help!

Seriously! To push through in spite of Nintendo’s reputation.

Apple Rosetta 2 technically recompiles code from x86 to arm too in jit and sometimes aot, also there’s box86/64 open source project, only difference between example I’ve said and OP is recompilation actually saves all results and not just cache, another difficulty is in OS difference, he needs not just binary translate but have something akin to WINE too while he recompiles code

Nice try Nintendo lawyer.

Yes you still need the ROMs since these PC ports contain no copywritten code. Like the other person said, you will need to compile the game yourself, but there are tools that automate the process. It’s simply a matter of getting all the files you need in one place, and clicking a few buttons. The hard part is obtaining all the files (well, more tedious than hard, especially if you’re not a programmer or a Linux user).