Two years ago, I was Porting my JavaScript Game Engine to C for No Reason. I have since found a reason: making a new N64 game!
The result is Xibalba 64 – a Wolfenstein 3D-like FPS. Modretro agreed to publish the game as a physical launch title for their M64 (a modern N64 clone), complete with cartridge, packaging and manual!
↫ Dominic Szablewski
The article details the development process, from setting up the correct tooling to actually getting the game to play on a real Nintendo 64, and everything in between – including optimising the game to get it to run at a steady 60fps. The biggest issue is that the Nintendo 64 is quite a complex and quirky console, and in order to develop for it, you needed access to Nintendo’s officially sanctioned platform library, libultra. These days, though, there’s an open source alternative, libdragon, enabling homebrew development.
It’s awesome that, thanks to the hard work of volunteers, people can still develop top-notch games for something like the Nintendo 64. If we had left it up to Nintendo, we’d be seeing nothing of the sort today.
