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[IbizaPocholo]

Super Mario 64 Modder Showcases Beautiful Level Based On Yoshi's Island

One modder of Super Mario 64 showcases a beautiful level based on Yoshi's Island and breaks down the process of creating it.

gamerant.com

Kaze Emamnuar is best known for his development videos and modding work for the Nintendo 64. Most of his videos posted on his YouTube channel or Twitter account are focused on the console's games, with Super Mario 64 being his primary focus for content. This includes videos about a randomizer for the game, smoothing out Mario's model, and even rewriting the game's source code to have the game run at 60 FPS. His latest video focuses on a new level that will be a part of his "Return to Yoshi's Island" mod, Wingcap Mast.

This clip was first posted to Twitter, which wears the inspiration from Yoshi's Island on its sleeve. This includes the nighttime setting with the spinning moon, the Goonie enemies being rendered in 3D, along with the level's platform aesthetics. This clip shocked a lot of fans on how this entire modded level was designed, some in disbelief in the claims that the game could be run on the original hardware when it's been optimized to an incredible degree.

A follow-up video was posted on Emanuar's channel, where he broke down all the tricks of this Super Mario 64 mod, including portions of the video that show the differences between the game being played on an emulator as opposed to the original hardware. It's incredible to see how the level was designed in a way that the original N64 could handle it, despite the downgrade in visuals and framerate when compared to its optimized version on an emulator.

This "Return to Yoshi's Island" mod is currently 70%, done according to Emanuar, with the planned content including fifteen main courses to run through. This includes four levels that utilize Super Mario 64's Wing Cap power-up, three Bowser world levels, two side levels, and three overworlds. If players want to listen to the custom track made for this mod, it's also available to listen in the description of Emanuar's video.

 

[6502]

Fantastic achievement. I have been watching his stuff this last week. I stumbled upon a purple thread... you can guess where that went within a few pages

It would be interesting to know how much of this type of optimisation went on in later games. Would love to see similar optimisations, but it seems it requires a hufe amount of work.

 

[touchfuzzy]

Mmm, did he break the golden rule of "never show off a fan game before it's done and released" or is he safe from C&D machine on this one?

 

[Xdrive05]

If we had a time machine we could take his completed code on cartridge back to 1997 and blow everyone’s mind. Apparently the retail hardware was capable of this all along but no professionals ever managed it. Would have made the console wars even more insane.

 

[Holammer]

Mmm, did he break the golden rule of "never show off a fan game before it's done and released" or is he safe from C&D machine on this one?

Unlike fan games built from the ground up, Game mods seem to get a pass? Romhacking.net got plenty of projects that haven't been taken down. Also, he's been doing this publicly for a year now, if they wait till the last second it would be a total dick move.
Instead they should loosen the purse strings and pay him to use his optimized Mario 64 code.

 

[SpiceRacz]

Super impressive and also diggin' the music.