Right now is a good time to be a gamer looking for a little nostalgia in their life. From remakes of old games, to demakes of new ones that make them look retro, to modders creating a PC port of Ocarina of Time, this modern gaming era is awash with releases that turn the clocks back a few years or even decades. With the classic Nintendo 64 The Legend of Zelda game being reverse-engineered, it seems that there are plenty of other people out there who are taking it upon themselves to actualize unofficial PC versions of classic releases.
According to a recent report from VGC, there are more than 20 Nintendo 64 games that modders are working to bring to PC. Currently, a host of retro titles are being worked on, including a host of well-known games from this bygone era. Such games include Bomberman 64, Mario Party 3, Pokémon Stadium, Paper Mario, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Turok 3, and Perfect Dark, which, for those who don't know, is the spiritual successor to Rare's highly-praised GoldenEye 64.
With the Perfect Dark reboot losing its game director, the chance to see the original N64 release make its way to PC will no doubt be exciting for fans, especially older gamers who fondly remember the 22-year-old antics of Joanna Dark. Similar to the Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64 ports, these current ones are said to be getting developed through reverse-engineering, which means the teams working on them will be building the games up from scratch, essentially. As a result, the projects could take a long time, but it looks as though some of them are coming along well, with Perfect Dark said to be just under 70% done.
With Super Mario 64 now playable on PC, having been released last year, it seems to have set a precedent and given other modders the inspiration to try their hand at porting other games from the classic Nintendo console. Quite why the N64 has been chosen for these projects remains to be seen, but it will be interesting to see how they look and play once they're made public, whenever that will be.
As part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, the Nintendo 64 is a contemporary of the largely forgotten Sega Saturn and the extremely successful PlayStation. Although it had an odd controller and was still using game cartridges when the world was moving onto discs, the quarter of a century old system had some of the best games of its era that many would love to see make a return.
Source: VGC, Ryan Dwyer (Perfect Dark)