I’ve been so envious of the projects that make Super Mario 64 look closer to the renders for the PC port. They look so cool, but I haven’t got a PC capable of running it. Well, I saw this, and was curious to see if it runs on a real N64 via an Everdrive 64, as most Mario 64 hacks don’t seem to. Well, I’m pleased to say that this does work! I encountered no crashes of framerate dips either!

This isn’t quite the same as those PC mods. Mario, Toad, Peach, and Bowser are the only ones to get their models upgraded, but they look fantastic. It’s almost hard to believe that it’s running on an N64.

Bowser actually seems a little less detailed than his older counterpart, due to the textures on his skin and shell being turned into a flat color, removing the illusion of scales and grooves in the shell, but the trade off is that his proportions are now a whole lot more accurate to his game model, and in my opinion, it looks much better.

It would be great to see this project updated in the future so that other enemies better match their renders too. But this is a fantastic start. I’m just impressed that it runs perfectly on real N64 hardware. Great work!