Kaze Emanuar – a modder who has spent the past few years learning the complexities of N64 development in order to push it to its limits – has just shown off footage of Super Mario Sunshine running via his powerful SM64 engine on the 64-bit console.
Yes, you read that correctly.
"The fact that Mario Sunshine would be able to run on an N64 is pretty crazy... this is a real hardware recording and I did not optimize this level at all," says the modder. "This is based on a Delfino Plaza model made by quasmok btw, he turned all the textures into N64 res ones while leaving most of the overall visual intact. This is something that was done for the old sunshine64 mod that was supposed to be emulator-only."
The footage shows the Delfino Plaza level replicated on N64. As Kaze Emanuar points out, it's not a literally one-for-one translation of the stage from the GameCube version but a revised model with N64-standard textures. However, the basic design is the same, and it's pretty impressive that it runs on real hardware and not via emulation.
Excitingly, Kaze Emanuar says performance here will improve thanks to developments within the N64 community. "Once sauraen's F3DEX3 is finished, the FPS here will likely increase even further as it would greatly boost triangle rendering capacity."