Update [Wed 22nd Jan, 2025 14:00 GMT]: Since we first covered Joshua Barretto's GBA port of Super Mario 64 back in May of last year, the project has made some significant leaps forward, as showcased in a new video from the YouTuber Nathaniel Bandy.
Not only is a Mario model now in the game, but you can also switch between various characters by pressing pause and select, with some of the other playable options including Yoshi, Luigi, and the Koopaling Larry.
Barretto also now seems to be getting help, with the project crediting @larrykoopa64dshacker64, @Smol_bug, and @Pack64 among its recent list of contributors.
Since we last saw the port, the environments have also undergone a pretty sizeable upgrade, with Barretto introducing a ton of additional graphical details, as well as various mechanics from the N64 original, such as swimming, sliding, enemies, and stars.
Inevitably, there's still a lot of work to be done, if Barretto intends for this to be a 1:1 recreation, but it's truly impressive what they've been able to pull so far.
You can subscribe to Barretto's channel here for more frequent updates.
Original Article [Fri 10th May, 2024 16:30 BST]: When Nintendo launched the DS alongside a port of Super Mario 64, it felt like witchcraft to a great many people, even though the game itself was almost a decade old by that point.
Having one of the most seminal and influential video games in the palm of your hand was an incredible feeling (even if the lack of proper analogue control was unfortunate), but modder Joshua Barretto is going one better – he's rewriting the N64 classic for the GBA, the DS' predecessor.
"This is not actually Super Mario 64: it's my attempt at rewriting SM64 for the GBA," explains Barretto.
"I initially considered attempting a port, but the GBA is an order of magnitude slower than the N64 and has no GPU or native support for floating-point numbers. So far, I've implemented a basic physics and collision system, along with a fully 3D camera, rasterization, texture-mapping, transparency support, etc."
As you can see from the footage, it's looking very impressive indeed; sure, it doesn't look as nice as the original game or the aforementioned DS version, but we're talking about much humbler hardware here.
The good news is that Barretto plans to release the code in the future – just don't expect to see Mario and his chums in it. "Because the code is written from scratch, I should be in a position to release the code into the public domain in the future, although I can't distribute it with Nintendo's assets, obviously."
Thanks to Ali Torrington for the tip!