And testing all of this requires emulating the system behaviour of the original Silicon Graphics development units: the SGI Visual Workstation, given this is what would have been used by developers building games for the Nintendo 64. To decompile a game like this one, you need to have an idea of which version of the Silicon Graphics IDO compiler was used to generate the original ROM file. But it’s made all the more difficult by having to figure out just what development tools were being used when the game was built back in 1996. Decompiling source code like this isn’t an easy task at the best of times. For many of the developers involved, being able to piece together the puzzle, one function at a time is the real reward. Rather, it was a mechanism to help speedrunners find new exploits. This decompilation isn’t driven by a desire to steal Mario assets or make new ports of the game. So what I’m covering is based not on the original source by Nintendo themselves, but the reversed engineered code that is publically accessible and designed to be as close to the original as possible. This project was first published back in 2019 and is just one of a number of works from a community of hobbyist decompilers who take it upon themselves to reverse engineer the raw binary of the ROM file into parsable, legible code in the C programming language. To make this happen, I downloaded the Mario 64 decompilation hosted on GitHub. While the AI is undoubtedly rudimentary, it’s worth analysing to see how Nintendo went about structuring and designing behaviour. While areas such as camera controls would merit further iteration, aspects of visual design, character animation, player movement, level and mission construction set the template for many other games to follow. While it wasn’t the first 3D platformer, nor even the first 3D title made by Nintendo, Super Mario 64‘s legacy cannot be understated, with designers such as Tim Schaeffer and Michael John outright stating the huge influence it had on projects of their own such as Psychonauts and Spyro the Dragon respectively. It had a huge influence on how three-dimensional games were designed. It is the top-selling title of the Nintendo 64 and is reflective of a time when game development was migrating to 3D. It’s a pivotal point in the history of game development. Super Mario 64 is now over 25 years old, and while the AI may be quite simple, it’s important to recognise what this game represents.
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