Around a month or so ago, Super Mario 64 finally got a proper PC port thanks to some dedicated fans of the beloved game. It doesn't use emulators to run it and it actually has proper DirectX 12 support and apparently even supports ray tracing.
Not surprisingly, Nintendo has tried to take it down since it came out, but just a quick google search today and I was able to download it and play it with little issue.
Since it runs natively now on PC, it makes it much easier to mod and of course, awesome HD mods are already out for it. I haven't tried out any of the mods yet as the process doesn't seem super user friendly just yet, but I think I'm tech savvy enough to figure it out by following some tutorials. I may just mess with it later on today and try some mods out.
These screenshots that you see in this article I took while playing it today.
I only ran into a few slight issues when trying it out. The first is that I couldn't get the game completely fullscreen. I even changed the boolean variable in the config file and it didn't seem to change much. It'll go fullscreen, but not completely full screen.
The second issue is that to get my wired PS2 controller to work right, I had to add the game to my Steam library and use big picture mode, but once that was done it ran just fine for the most part. I've had to do this in more games that I care to count, but at least the solution was easy!
So what are my thoughts on it?
Well, it's impressive for sure. The PC port of this iconic game is still pretty new having only come out last month. I think with time, it'll get better and the mods will become more user friendly to install. Despite Nintendo trying their best to take it down everywhere, it'll still be around as it's already spread too quickly and on too many peoples' PCs.
It's nice to relive classic games and with mods, they can even get tons of improvements over time.
It's a fun nostalgic experience and I'll probably be playing it a bit more later today. I've managed to put in around half an hour so far and despite my experience not being perfect due to the controller I'm using, it's certainly more than playable and quite a fun nostalgia trip.
It'll be cool to see what comes next for this iconic and beloved game!