'Super Mario 64 Plus' Is An Unofficial PC Port With 60FPS And A Permadeath Mode

Ehhhh, PC ports are a lot more iffy than mods. This is just plain stupid. I will defend fans’ rights to these sorts of things but modding tools for Super Mario 64 are out there.

Nintendo is currently side-eyeing this port.

Realizes it's just a fangame, puts pitchfork now

Nintendo Lawyers have entered the chat

Unpaid fan does what Nintendon't

I am waiting for Nintendo to take this down eventually

Mama Mia. Looks super

Public domain needs to be a thing again, if public domain worked like it should, by now, Super Mario 64 would be a public domain videogame or pretty close to becoming one, and Nintendo could never take down these mods.

Copyright is supposed to foster creativity, so people and companies can earn money on what they make, but after a while, copyrighted works should be free for everyone so they can be improved and expanded.

So many piracy / hacking articles on Nintendolife lately. I really can't say that I'm happy about that.

Funny thing is, getting 100 coins does not kick you out of a level in Mario 64.

@sanderev Yeah, it's a little nauseating.

@sanderev I agree, plus a lot of irrelevant or barely relevant pop culture/meme stuff I have no interest in. The staff can do what they want, and it seems like traffic is growing, but personally I’ve found myself looking in other directions lately.

@sanderev Well don't forget this isn't an official Nintendo website – so they really do have freedom to talk about whatever interests them. And we have freedom as to which sites and articles we read. I like that they can cover anything generally related to the games I love. That's why I frequent this particular site.

Also you say they have many piracy / hacking articles on NintendoLife lately, but I'm fairly certain they always have. At least for all the years I've visited.

I personally like to hear about fan-games, as many of them are purely done for the shear love of the original game and money is no part of it.

Dear lord !

Cheap Raspberry pi in mom’s basement and now this.
Buy your games, people.

I’m out.

@victordamazio - Making and selling your own public domain alteration of an existing idea using everything existing idea provides isn't something I call, "fostering creativity."

I get what your saying, and sort of torn on it. I think companies who are actively involved in their works should remain to keep it, if they go ignored then I can see a potential of falling out of their clutches by sheer neglect.

However, on the other hand, everyone including Sony and Microsoft would just foster "Mario 64, with our spin!" Games ad nauseum. Why? Cause people en masse are hardly creative when they can just be praised for doing something the owner does not.

Like those Twitter people "fixing" people's art.

@sanderev - Surprised they didn't squeeze in a reminder about how 3D All-Stars is gone.

They can't take it Down since it doesnt contain any copyrighted nintendo assets.
You need to supply M64 ROM with all assets yourself

@victordamazio Copyright expiration has been greatly extended. But I think trademarks don’t usually become public domain so even if the copyright expired on Mario 64, Nintendo would still possess the trademark.

It's projects like these that show that Nintendo likes to do the bare minimum with their legacy content.

@sanderev
hacking ≠ piracy

Edit:
Is this Port based on the earlier PC Port from last Year?
That one really played muuuch better on than an Emulator.
It was much more responsive.

@brunojenso Sure it's an unofficial website. However they do get review copies of games from Nintendo.

They are a semi-official source for Nintendo news. For thousands of readers daily.

@Azuris Hacking of copyrighted goods IS ALWAYS piracy. And games like Super Mario 64, Tetris (GB), Twilight Princess are all copyrighted and owned by Nintendo. So here it's all piracy.

@mariomaster96 because Nintendo does not want to. Nintendo has no incentive to release a PC port of any of their games. Unlike Microsoft they do not own a storefront on PC nor does it promote another part of their business like Microsoft owning Windows and Xbox to even have one.

If you are talking about permadeath I think that is a rather silly feature to put in a Mario game... But, if you wanted to you can just as easily not save your progress while you play or delete your file if you die... it's kinda redundant feature as you don't even need to implement one when you play... you can just hit reset. And if you are talking about 60fps? It was Nintendo's creative choice to not port Mario 64 with 60fps to Switch as it's not like they couldn't they chose not to. As far as implementation it take maybe an hour at most to remove the FPS limiter in the emulator for the game considering that is what they did for Mario Sunshine. So it was a creative decision you can agree or disagree with it as much as you want.

So.... yeah

@Paraka And it is still readily available at MSRP on Amazon with Prime shipping. It is almost as if Nintendo made millions of copies and stores still have a surplus of them even with the arbitrary cut off date... >_> Nintendo cannot erase every unsold copy from stores.

@Wexter I was with you up to not porting Mario 64 with 60fps as a 'creative choice'. Was a lazy port of one of their best games released at a time when other companies are showing what can be done with a remaster.

@BumpkinRich It would have to be. You don't go through the effort of upscaling the textures for Mario 64 and enabling wide-screen and 60FPS on Sunshine if you are not going to do so for Mario 64 without some reason. Laziness I feel is an easy out for people to claim (as enabling 60FPS on an emulator is not hard or long so it had to be a creative decision to not do it). You can like it or you do not have to like it, but it was Nintendo's choice to release their product the way they did.

@Wexter I was neither talking about a PC port nor permadeath, I was talking about 60fps, widescreen and most importantly a better camera

@mariomaster96 Cool. As stated you can like how Nintendo released or you don't. It was their choice and it is kinda petty complaint considering this is still Mario 64. And considering the package still sold millions it was not like Nintendo lost out on that many sales not doing it anyways.

@Wexter It's not an easy out. Nintendo set the standard for re-release packages like this with the original Mario all stars. A good re-release changes the game so someone who played the game at the time won't notice it changes and a new player won't get hampered by archaic design choices.

Mario 64 is one of the greatest games of all time, but it was not the greatest game released last year by a long, long way. However with some love and attention Mario 64 could have been the game of the decade again.

Yes, it was Nintendo's choice. To re-release Mario 64, again instead of making it the best game of the decade.

@AndyC_MK i feel like opinions like these come from people who mainly consumers than creators themselves. its like telling artists to never draw fanart because you have to always be 100% original

nintendo may be in their right to protect their IPs but at the same time i think they should mellow out on fangames that never even make profit to begin with. companies like sega and valve foster goodwill with fans because they actually support fan creators, and i think thats something nintendo has been missing. theyve been feeling more cold and hallow towards fans lately, but i guess when youre on top thats the kinda sacrifice you have to make

@BumpkinRich I say they made the right call. Think of this the Crash and Spyro releases did not sell as well as Mario 3D All-Stars and that is just a fact. That and if they completely remade Mario 64 similar to Crash and Spyro it makes the other two games look older and not show an accurate evolution of the series so they'd have to remake them too. That and All-Stars was so much easier to remake back in the day because of shared assets that and you cannot compare the scope of remaking three 2D games (Lost Levels hardly counts as that was just a remix of Super Mario Bros. 1) with three 3D games the size of Mario 64, Sunshine and Galaxy. That and the Crash and Spyro Trilogy bundles also shared a ton of assets between games between core gameplay mechanics, textures, model compared the completely different game feels between Mario 64, Sunshine and Galaxy (those games also have very different art styles so it be a far larger undertaking than Crash and Spyro) If Nintendo were to remake Mario 64 it should be as it's own package rather than a limited time re-release to make sure it gets the polish and time that kind of remake deserves.

That is my two cents which is why I do not call it a lazy port and rather refer to it as part of a creative decision. Could they have done remakes for all three games? Sure. But, we would not have gotten that package this year and maybe not till the next console cycle at the earliest. That and I highly doubt they would have released the three games in a complete box and rather separately like they did the Zelda games last gen.

I really don't get the logic behind the creators suggestion that Nintendo won't take this down. If they turned a blind eye to this, it would just hamper them in the future, plus the fact that this is ripping off Nintendo's IP.

60 fps should have been on the all stars 3d collection for this game, it's the only thing I get from this.

Have you even played Mario 64 recently? Have you ever actually been “kicked out of a level” for collection 100 coins? No, 100 coins in Mario 64 does not exit the level. It prompts you to save and then you continue playing.

Super Mario 96 imo is cooler. Basically a uniquelly detailed texture mod.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tar5pewVwCE&list=PLcH6MGm8AgkURjSmcuXZEHOqi043ehBEs

@Wexter Well, as the PS3 PS Vita store close situation proofed it's never wrong to be vocal about those complains cause otherwise Nintendo assumes that it's okay to put almost no effort into such things

Getting 100 coins does not kick you out in the original.

@Ooyah
Collecting the red coins makes a star appear. You don’t accidentally get kicked out of Mario 64 unless just touch a star, which would complete the goal you are working on.

@mariomaster96 It's fair to complain and while I find it petty as I found 3D All-Stars to be one of the best bangs for my buck purchases I had made in all of 2020 (I mean Sunshine and Galaxy alone on eBay would set me back over $100USD not including the hardware to play them in HD) if it is not for you.. that's fine. I just don't enjoy the childishness as "fans do what Nintendon't" and stuff like that as it does nothing to help get you what you want. Be specific about what you want and do so in a respectful manner and you are more likely to get what you want in the future. That and the point of the collection was to show the evolution of Mario as a celebration of how far the franchise has come. I've already stated a full remake like what people wanted was a pipedream to begin with and a way larger undertaking than what most assume.

The PSN Store closure for PS3, PSP and PSVita is a different can of worms and I think is a poor comparison.

@AndyC_MK Using and repurposing the culture of the past is an important part of how culture works, this isn't laziness, every year we have hundreds of works based on public domain stories like fairy tales and mythology, many works like Dracula and Sherlock Holmes used to be copyrighted but are now free to use, stuff like music, stories, characters, are just ideas, people should not be able to own ideas like they were physical things like money, land, houses or cars, copyright is just a temporary exclusivity, after you earned enough profit on your creations, other people can use them.

Plus, Nintendo has a trademark on Mario, meaning that even if Mario games start to become public domain, they still have the exclusivity on making new Mario games, it's just that the old games will be free to be shared, and thankfully also be modified.

@sanderev
No, it is not. At least in most european Countries.
Do you have the Paragraph of the Law and the Country you are refairing to?

@sanderev I am. If this makes you unhappy I can't imagine the pain Real life must cause. Lol.

@Shinnos it's not ripping off Nintendo's ip, it is a mod or an enhancement.

If anything Nintendo ripped off their own IP with that disgraceful package.

@Wexter and their reason was laziness and maximising profit as opposed to celebrating their mascot.

Basically they run a few upscaled textures into SM64, time run out and it was shipped, this is also why Galaxy 2 didn't make it. Rush job. Even the presentation is unfinished.

@liveswired Are you friends with someone on the dev team? Can you give me a source of one of the devs or producers who said so? Or are you going on baseless hearsay? Just curious as you sound very authoritative on this.

Nintendo has every right to protect their IP, but if this becomes popular they only have themselves to blame. I would have happily bought 3D All Stars if SM64 was modernized and updated as it should have been. It's shameful that fans care about some Nintendo games more than the developers.

@Wexter You seem to be saying that Nintendo did not remake Mario 64 because they would make more money out of repacking 3 old games with minimal work. That I agree with.

But, you keep pushing that as a 'creative' choice, when it is a business choice.

@Shinnos they take it down, we go for them

The game needs controller support

This is a pretty sick mod, not gonna lie. The options, the movement upgrades, permadeath mode.

@BumpkinRich Something can be collum A and collum B the two never have to be mutually exclusive. But based on the work they did put into Sunshine and Galaxy from re-working the controls to work on Switch, from getting Sunshine to 1080p widescreen and 60fps and having Galaxy reworked to have touch controls... seems odd to not do something similar for Mario 64. We are also talking about Nintendo here so it would not surprise me if a higher-up wanted Mario 64 to remain at 4:3 for a creative reason. Or maybe they want to bring other N64 games to Switch and not all of them can be easily converted to 16:9 and did not want to set a president. Who knows... I just argue against the lazy port argument because it's easy and none of us were in that development team so we cannot comment about the restraints they were facing. Maybe they originally were just going to do Sunshine and Galaxy and had extra time so they included Mario 64 in the package which is why it does not have as many bells and whistles. We just don't know! So yes just calling Nintendo lazy and the devs lazy is just a bad argument.

Also, yeah it is silly that people were expecting a full-from-the-ground-up remake of Mario 64 considering that is not an easy task and Nintendo would never do that for one game and not the others in a collection. That and Nintendo has done these kinds of collections in the past from the Prime Trilogy, the Zelda Collection (GCN), the Kirby Collection... etc so to have an expectation that Nintendo is going to remake just one game in a collection was kinda silly, to begin with. I'm not saying I overly care too much because 3D All-Stars is already an insane bang for your buck package. Go to eBay and get an N64 and a GCN/Wii, the hardware to convert the picture to 1080p, the controllers, and including the games and try to get that under $60USD... you just can't. I've done the pricing and just for the games alone, you will be spending upwards of $160USD.

Would I have liked Mario 64 in 1080p and 16:9... sure. Is it the worst thing that has ever happened to me considering that I already paid the lowest I can for three amazing Mario games in HD with the convenience of switching on the fly without having to lug out another console and setup... I think it was an amazing deal for that alone so it's not a deal-breaker for me! Hence why I find arguments on these forums of people calling Nintendo lazy petty.

@Wexter That you find 3D All Stars amazing value is not a variable in this. The question is did Nintendo put minimal effort into creating the 3D All Stars package and they demonstrably did when you compare to other releases.

It is unfair to use the term lazy, instead I will say that the dev team were not given the opportunity.

There is a lack of polish and finesse about the whole package that doesn't feel like Nintendo.

I remember on the 3DS, if you downloaded a game you it appeared on the menu in a little present which you opened with a little animation. Where is that little bit of magic here?

Last week Sony gave away Horizon Zero Dawn, that came with an 'art of' extra. What came with 3D All Stars, a music player and that's it. No box art, no history, no model viewer, no concept art.

The upgrades that have happened are bare minimum, if they weren't in place the package would simply have been laughed at.

There is nothing about this package that is a celebration of these games and as they pushed it as a celebration of Mario that's pretty poor.

@BumpkinRich That's the thing we don't know how much this package was compromised because of COVID either. Compared to Nintendo's previous offerings like Prime Trilogy, Kirby Collection (Wii) it is a bit lacking. But, compared to the Zelda Collection it is not too bad and a bit meatier. But, I just dislike the general idea of laziness being used or a lack of care. The pack has a lot of care in it from the improvements to Sunshine and Galaxy which they even optimized post-release.

At the same time we will never know how much of this is accurate speculation or way off the mark. And due to Japanese business culture where it is bad face to rag on a previous employer we will probably remain in the dark.

But, in regards to the package itself it does lack that certain magic, but I remain in my stance that $60USD for three of the greatest platformers ever made is a damn fine deal (especially considering how expensive they are to get a hold of for being plentiful in the wild )! But, for people who may have hacked their Wii Us and loaded it with pirated versions it may not be worth it. But, you can tell a lot of love and care was put in the port as it was not a pure emulator running these games and was built with their original source codes so effort was put in.

On a personal level I do prefer packages like this than the Zelda HD treatments. I get tired of spending $60 for an entire Zelda title with generally a basic level re-texturing and smoothing out the visuals. Wind Waker HD was excellent while Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword HD??? Not a huge fan of the cost for those two games... I'd still buy them as it is Zelda portably and HD, but as a consumer with limited funds??? Not a fan and that is the trend the industry is going rather than collections that were common during the 360/PS3 gen.

@victordamazio You’re saying all AAA (and other) video games should be free after a while unofficially. That makes absolutely no sense. Companies put money and work into these games, and people shouldn’t get to play it just by googling it.

@BabyYoda71 It makes perfect sense, that's how copyright laws work, copyright is temporary, many classic books, music and even movies, used to be copyrighted, but then became free for everyone to use and share, and it will happen to videogames someday.

Plus, copyright lasts decades, it's 95 years in USA, by the time it ends, most companies don't even exist anymore.

@Wexter
Sunshine is still 30fps in 3D All Stars.

@JonSpangler I think they were misremembering the mechanics of the reward for collecting 8 coins in a level. The star doesn't get spontaneously dropped on you, you have to go pick it up, at which point you'll get taken out of the zone. This PC port has a tweak to not force you out of the zone when you pickup a star, which is nice if you still had something else you wanted to finish before leaving. This would let you do your 8-coin challenge and spawn the star, then go finish beating Koopa the Quick in a race, and pickup his star and the 8-coin star before leaving the zone which is a nice quality of life improvement.

@semolous I've been playing the game for a few hours today and it supports controllers out of the box. I am using a wireless Xbox One controller and it's been working flawlessly without any configuration.

@Azuris Yes it's forked from the PC port project that was forked from the SM64 decompiled project.

@Darius_Truxton Nintendo doesn't sell a PC version of SM64 so there's nothing to buy here and no losses on their end as a result of it. I owned the original on my N64, so they already got my money for a copy. Nintendo isn't losing a sale if I go download a ROM to get the assets to play this game on my PC now over two decades later. If they made a PC port I'd be like shut up and take my money. Same with Ocarina of Time.

I'm not sure why everyone is jumping on this whole "buy the game/piracy is bad" when this isn't a platform this game is sold on, the game is over two decades old and Nintendo has plenty of lawyers and money to push back on this project if they have a problem with it. They don't need a bunch of online commentators white knighting for them for free.

This 130+ year old corporation with almost 7000 employees and revenues in the trillions of yen will survive a few thousand people playing their 20 year old game on a platform they don't even support. They're not losing on N64 sales of Mario 64 because of this. However, they did lose out on a $59 sale to me today because I went to the Switch eShop to try and buy a digital edition of Mario 64 via the 3D All-Stars game and found that they've pulled it, so I fell back to this PC port as an alternative.