A little backstory. A group of people went to far as to decompile and reverse engineer Mario 64 to the point where the code they have compiles into an exact copy of the N64 ROM. This code is available now minus things like models, textures, sounds, etc. So if you have the ROM you can extract those things and then compile it...uh...back into the ROM.
Though now you can do something more interesting with it, namely compile it so it runs natively on PC! Repo is
here and theres guides on how to compile it which of course I did. It is quite amazing having the game run so smoothly in full 1080p, no weird UI stretching, etc. They are adding new features that you can enable with some compiler flags, such as full right stick analog control of the camera and even mouselook.
Anyway its neat and for me the first time I spent actual time playing Mario 64. I didn't have an N64 growing up and while I have one now and a copy of the game I just havent felt the need to hook it up and actually play. But now thats all solved and I can just boot it instantly on my PC! Hooray!
If you dont want to compile it yourself there are versions floating around but of course Nintendo is coming down hard on that.
