Portal on the Nintendo 64 is incredible

[@samtepal3892]

Impressive. Very nice. Let's see Paul Allen's port of Half Life on Sega Saturn

[@John-vu5qm]

🤔

[@kingjoe3rd]

You have half of a joke here, but the rest makes no sense.

[@macadaca7038]

The Japanese Saturn controller is pale nimbus.

[@Randomperson462]

​@@kingjoe3rdthat's the point

[@LoganE01]

Honestly a 1:1 port of the new half-life anniversary would be amazing on any classic console.... PS2, 360, PS3 or Xbox original.

[@cjh0751]

This would've been a smash hit if it had been released back in the day. Amazing

[@iHawke]

If Portal had been released back then, it would've pushed gaming standards to new heights...on the flip side, seeing the state gaming is in, it would've been an ever higher fall

[@LuccianoNova]

Portal came out during the golden age of gaming. I swear I’m so grateful I got to play all those valve games as they dropped one after another on steam. I think I spent years on gmod and LfD

[@gamerxt333]

@@iHawke It is simply a puzzle game that uses a portal effect, saying higher standards is a exaggeration. ​ @seannovellino8141 The golden age was before then, unless you where younger or something.

[@divinecomedian2]

​@@gamerxt333It was a very good period for gaming, especially online. When do you think was the golden age?

[@elmzsni]

true... and honestly, i don't think it would have become the BG3 of that era; devs back then were built diffy and loved innovation. this would have pushed existing gaming devs to build some amazing things! nowadays... game devs just stick to safe bets and remakes, sad state of affairs. make game development great again!

[@apolloforabetterfuture4814]

James' work is seriously impressive. I've been following this project for a while and it's just gotten better and better and more mind blowing. Valve should really take notice, the creative problem solving and ingunity is really inspiring

[@elmalloc]

They should hire him

[@neithermanc1]

but valve doesn't make games these days...

[@MostlyPennyCat]

I mean yeah, really, I don't think valve cares about excellent engineers wringing power out of fixed hardware anymore. The closest they'll get anymore is designing the System Deck hardware and they don't actually make software for it themselves. I suppose they could use him on the API team. But Valve as a gaming company is long dead.

[@wayn3h]

@@MostlyPennyCat So Counter Strike and Dota aren't a thing?

[@Tieigo0]

​@@wayn3hThey're shit cash grabs lol.

[@D_YellowMadness]

I always forget Portal was originally just a freebie in the Orange Box. It's weird to think about it considering how it immediately blew up but it's such a good way to drop a tech demo & gain interest. Package it with 4 extremely popular games for the price of one game or less depending on where & when people get it. It helps that it's probably the best tech demo ever made.

[@LucasCunhaRocha]

5 games actually (3 launch titles), the Orange Box was an insane product that we will probably never gonna see it again. I still kept my OB pretty much the original way it came. only used the disc once or twice to install the games.

[@D_YellowMadness]

@@LucasCunhaRocha I meant 4 other games in addition to Portal. But yeah, The Orange Box (back when I still played 360) was one of the best purchases I've ever made.

[@TheBcoolGuy]

I think I've passed up the XBOX 360 copy a few times at various thrift shops. If I find one for cheap I'll probably pick it up. @@LucasCunhaRocha

[@BurritoKingdom]

It was based on a student game at Digipen; Narbacular Drop. For Portal 2, Valve picked up a 2nd student team from Digipen; Tag the Power of Paint. Than Valve stopped making games.

[@webbedshadow2601]

Interesting! wow, I never knew the inspiration behind Portal.@@BurritoKingdom

[@troy1993]

Imagine how mind blowing it would have been for people to play portal in 1996.

[@gamerxt333]

Compared to other games like Zelda and Goldeneye ? It is still mainly a simple puzzle game after all, even if the portal effect is impressive.

[@chaotickreg7024]

​@@gamerxt333The physics in both of those games are very simple. Zelda OoT had Farore's Wind which worked pretty slowly or respawning from void out which also took a moment, but this game is letting you teleport across the room on the fly instantly. It is rather impressive. Look at SM64 and how much trouble they had with building puzzles around the camera back then.

[@Refreshment01]

Perfect Dark achieves more than this portal recreation. Btw, not taking merit from the creator since its very impressive. But i dont agree that recreating portal on the n64 is something that surpasses the top n64 software.

[@wiredrayne]

@@chaotickreg7024 I think it probably would have gone under the radar as an "ahead of its time" sort of game if it released in 1996. The internet was a completely different, disjointed mess, so the average console player wouldn't even understand how impressive the physics engine was, nor were gamers at the time even looking for that type of gameplay. They would probably be more impressed by the voice overs to be honest, though it would never have existed at the time as the cartridges would have never been able to hold all the voice files.

[@chaotickreg7024]

@RaniaIsAwesome "The physics in Zelda and Goldeneye and particularly Mario 64 are some of the most complicated physics in any game ever." What sort of weed are YOOOU smoking, my friend?? OoT is one of my earliest childhood memories and I have a distinct memory of a pause after every warp song. It's slight but it's there. Meanwhile in this video it's been reduced to a single frame. Please pass whatever you're smoking dude.

[@ActionAbe1]

i played some ds portal homebrew game and thought it was impressive but this absolutely insane

[@swagnemite-dl3sz]

Wasn't that a 2d version?

[@ActionAbe1]

@@swagnemite-dl3sz yeah but still kinda impressive for a fan project.

[@TheIrkenEmpire420]

​@@swagnemite-dl3szThere's also a 3D one as well.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

I played that too! (in 2d) A DS should be able to run 3d Portal. It's a bit more powerful than an N64. But nobody's written it.

[@rokko_fable]

@@thewhitefalcon8539 portal on the 3ds would be awesome!

[@SweetBean92]

James's work is legitimately inspiring; we rarely ever see a project like this that not only shows "this concept is possible" but then goes on to be as much as it can be. He really is going the distance

[@davidnoble1477]

What I'd really love to see is people like James and Kaze (Mario 64 optimising genius!) coming together to form a small indie games studio dedicated to releasing new crowd-funded N64 games.

[@natebragg]

Yes 👉 😎 👉

[@linuxstreamer8910]

kaze made mario 64 run at a stable 60fps & return to yoshi's island also runs at 60fps

[@xtr.7662]

​@@linuxstreamer8910no the rom hack hes making runs at around 30fps with superior visuals to mario 64 while with his code the original game can run at 60fps

[@minirop]

And maybe port N64 inspired games on the N64, like Cavern of Dreams.

[@guarapo66]

Or better make an open source engine maybe based on the Mario 64 one that lets you make any type of game, and let everyone make games like Nesmaker

[@ConsoleCombat]

Lambert and Kaze both not only reviving n64 gaming in the modern age, but making it compete with newer offerings.

[@Rob_Enhoud]

There's a lot of really fascinating N64 projects going on today applying modern rendering knowledge to the old hardware. It's kind of crazy seeing just what the old hardware was capable of with an extra quarter century of knowledge.

[@Imgema]

​@@Rob_Enhoud It's especially impressive for the N64 in particular, which was hard to program for and had a bunch of stupid bottlenecks that most developers didn't want to bother overcoming. So there is more untapped potential here compared to something like the PS1, which i believe was already squeezed enough during it's lifetime.

[@zatozatoichi7920]

Tbh, they are already competing with newer offerings.

[@mikafoxx2717]

​@@ImgemaYeah, things like jumping to 3d, C, and things like ram with latency was a massive change from the 2D, assembly, and cycle exact memory accesses from anything.

[@RobertPendell]

I saw tech demos of this and it is damn impressive that they managed all this. I assumed at the time it would end up being just a tech demo but it is clear I was wrong.

[@SoulElement]

Finally. Some good food.

[@KitsuneAlex]

It _was_ incredible. RIP Portal 64.

[@frankieslounge]

Did Valve take it down?

[@KitsuneAlex]

Yes, the developer settled with Valve and discontinued the project sadly@@frankieslounge

[@DemsW]

@@frankieslounge Valve advised him not to continue the project as he was using licensed nitendo code in the project, and Valve didn't want to be involved if legal action was taken

[@GabrielAssis89]

Yep, Nintendo was the problem. Valve usually support mods and remakes. But Nintendo...

[@ThatOneWeeb420]

I'm sure Valve would have loved the demake but since the project used Nintendo's licensed code, they're not keen on the idea, understandably too given after what happened with Dolphin. I doubt Valve had much of a choice on this one.

[@SysOpQueen]

FOR THOSE STILL LOOKING FOR THE FILES: It IS still there, just hidden from the public. The zip file's direct link, not the github page link, still works for wayback machine. You need the *direct link* for the Portal 64 0.14.0-Master file. If you cannot find it, I will upload all the source master zip files from 0.6.0 until 0.14.0. I do not have any source files saved prior to version 0.6.0

[@BatataKarambas]

I followed the porting process on the developer's channel on KZbin and it's absolutely stunning!!! Incredible work

[@necromax13]

it's not porting.

[@R.B.]

It is porting, and it is better than some other ports of other titles. It isn't an exact replica of the source game, but look at a lot of the games that were "ports" of arcade titles. In some of those cases, about the only thing ported was the title of the game. Porting is recreating something within the limitations of the target platform. Sometimes that means scrapping significant portions of the game, dropping some levels, or flat out building an entirely different game and game engine. Tony Hawk was ported to the GBA and it was very different because you didn't have the same graphics capabilities, but it was clearly a "port" of the and title available for consoles.

[@necromax13]

@@R.B. speaking of semantics, it is still not a port, don't put it on quotations lil man. It is a fan made recreation, no single piece of software or code was taken from one property to the next. Same could be said with the fallacious example you mentioned.

[@julianemery718]

​@@R.B. It's not porting. Porting would be taking the actual game and stuffing it into the N64, which would be far too big for the N64 to handle. This is a remake, or a "demake" if you will, with all the graphics, mechanics and code done completely from scratch.

[@R.B.]

@@julianemery718 I'd encourage you to look at other games, including some of those made for the N64 of the era. Cruis'n USA for instance by your definition would have been a demake. In earlier generations, PAC MAN and Donkey Kong are great examples of ports to home consoles of the era, but hardly the same graphics and often times different level design because the hardware the game was being ported to lacked the capabilities of the targeted platform. Then you have other games like Bionic Comando where the PC version of the game might as well have been considered a different game altogether, but it is absolutely considered a port. Doom is perhaps one of the best examples of this, where the game has been ported to practically every platform available, but even some of the officially licensed ports required complete changes to level design just to make it "playable," and sometimes calling it playable was a stretch. Given these examples, this is a WIP port, and it actually does an incredible job capturing the mechanics, sound, and levels of the original game. Portal for the N64 is a better port than several of the others I've mentioned.

[@franzusgutlus54]

I have been following James for quite a while and always look forward to his updates. Glad he gets recognised by MVG!

[@Kyouske_42]

Very nice! I would like to mention Kaze Emanuar's insane mod for Mario 64 where he basically wrote the whole code anew to gain massive performance improvements. Maybe MVG can take a look once he finishes the game he intents to make with this working.

[@kevboard]

I have watched most of the dev videos for this, and it's crazy how well this is coming together... but that default control scheme is horrendous 😂 the default controls should be: D-Pad - Character Movement Stick - Aiming A - Jump B - Interact L - Left Portal Z - Right Portal C Down - Duck Start - Pause

[@ConkerTS]

Hopefully the final, release version of the game will have an option to save the control setup. That way, once you've set up your own preferred control scheme, then saved it, then you won't need to alter it again.

[@kevboard]

@@ConkerTS I still feel it would be good to have a very easy to adapt layout as the default. gives the whole thing a more welcoming vibe.

[@notenoughmonkeys]

Very impressive, though to be fair, I heard someone else managed to get Glados running off of a potato...

[@DaPootisJedi]

They even managed to fit in the slow-clap processor

[@Sam-m1y6d]

Ok, now kiss

[@bipinnambiar]

Yeah, but they couldn’t get emotions in there. Takes more than 1.1 volts, apparently.

[@wile123456]

It's really remarkable how modern invovations in compiler optimizations as well as better code practices give old hardware incredible performance increases

[@_yadokari]

Making games is all about iteration. Compilers, emulators, and massively more powerful PCs running tools (distributed overnight jobs taking minutes on a single machine) improve iteration times no end. There's also more documentation available now that was available to non-first party developers back then.

[@EmeralBookwise]

​@_yadokari : shame the industry has mostly forgotten that, always pushing for new ever more expensive hardware instead of optimizing what we already have. Consol generations could easily be stretched out an extra 5+ years if companies would just put in the effort.

[@RizenAgidyne]

But profit come first unfortunately. And sometimes we don’t have the time to optimize in the office

[@Refreshment01]

The consumers dont want that. As a real world example, there are many times when the old hardware was getting the better games yet people were more interested in playing mediocre games on the new platform. The 5th to 6th gen transition is a showcase of this behaviour.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@EmeralBookwise and we basically saw this with the "halfway bump" in market inertia provided by Kinect and PlayStation Move! The entire generation was extended a few years, and all the games from that period ran better than their predecessors (even their PC ports, so I'm told). Last time we were discussing this one of my ex-game-journalist pals specifically called-out Mass Effect 2 running much better than Mass Effect 1, on the consoles and her magazine-office reviews-PC alike. I'm not sure if that's still true with the various re-releases, but yeah, when they were new.

[@RolyPolyGames]

I heard that Kaze Emanuar and a few other N64 Emulator guys found some ways to bypass a lot of issues with rendering pixels and the zbuffer. Guessing James is probably part of that group that figured this stuff out. Very clever. I think Kaze is working on getting high poly stuff in the n64 engine currently if I recall. E: Either way its great to see how creative people can get with limited resources. Stuff it feels like modern deving takes for granted. A very wise professor of mine used to say, "We got to the moon on 16bits."

[@thinkbrowner]

Because I've been on an absolute curiousmarc binge recently, I know that in fact it took us 15 bits to get to the moon 🤣

[@ilgattoparddo]

Do you believe in Santa Claus also? What a nonsense to believe that really happened.

[@icravedeath.1200]

​@@ilgattoparddowow you sound fun at parties

[@XENON2028]

​@@ilgattoparddo ???

[@RolyPolyGames]

Looks like you're right! I must have misremembered its been a long time.@@thinkbrowner

[@Markimark151]

Portal on the N64 is mind blowing! It looks like a GameCube game that was cancelled! The N64 was actually the most powerful console of its generation, but because of cartridge limitations, the console was hard to fit enough data compared to the PlayStation which used CDs!

[@Crazy_Gamer_OG]

Yep, & you need the expansion pak to run a lot of these fan hacks & homebrews on the actual hardware. And I don't think the N64 can run roms over 64MB in size due to how ED's & the cartridges work. The limitation is built into the hardware, which is why most n64 hacks & homebrews need an emulator.

[@Markimark151]

@@Crazy_Gamer_OG yeah, the system has a bottleneck, the expansion pack was required for Zelda: Majora’s Mask and Perfect Dark. This is why emulators actually improve the potential of the platform without the cartridge limitations! The N64 would’ve been my all time favorite Nintendo console had they used CDs instead of cartridges, we would’ve got really big third party games on the system!

[@mathprodigy]

Man if this came out in the year 1999 it would be the game of the year, that's unbelievable

[@DFGdanger]

It won several Game of the Year awards in 2007-8, so...

[@AtariWow]

game of the decade @@DFGdanger

[@salmon_wine]

if it game out in 99 it wouldve been named "game of the millenium" and there would be no arguement against that

[@zzco]

I've been following James' work on Portal, it's freaking unreal!

[@proCaylak]

no, it's source engine... imitation.

[@zzco]

haha- I meant it's freaking unreal how well it works. Otherwise, I would have qualified it as "Unreal Engine", lol

[@proCaylak]

@@zzco I've already got it, no worries :D I was only having some fun, glad you joined in as well :)

[@zzco]

Ahh! :p and yeah, it's amazing how well he's optimized it for the N64 tho- lol

[@jeremyandrews3292]

@@proCaylak You beat me to the punch. I was about to see if I could twist that into a joke about Valve not using Unreal Engine, or the game being Portal and not Unreal Tournament, but you already did.

[@PikaStu666]

I remember seeing a preview of a Half-life port in an N64 magazine back in the day. It's a real shame nothing came of it, but this Portal port is incredible work!

[@gnomebob]

Actually... there's a rom hack called Block Mesa 64 that plays on console that's pretty good 😂

[@Haffey.z64]

@@gnomebobThat's a joke hack though, it's not really half-life

[@mcbeav]

Been following this for some time and what he has accomplished mostly by himself is incredibly impressive. This game is leaps and bounds ahead of any other homebrew 64 project I've seen, and it's up there with actual first party releases for the N64. I'd argue it's more impressive considering how well it performs.

[@anglo-saxonconnor817]

I love these type of content. Giving older systems demakes and new games on them. I would love to see games that push saturn and dreamcast to their limits too as both of them never got a chance to see bames that pushes thier limits realeae on them back then.

[@dacueba-games]

bames

[@nicolaspaesi2846]

BAMES!

[@kingjoe3rd]

its kind of like how is cool to see people build a house out of legos.

[@anglo-saxonconnor817]

I was eating fried chicken when I was typing a while ago. Hey it's just a small matter. You all can auto correct it yourselves. Have a nice day everyone. 🙂

[@seamusoblainn]

Eating friend chicken but named Anglo Saxon. Interesting

[@ray-sattler]

And now Valve said he should take it down and stop it...

[@Kargoneth]

R.I.P. Get your archived versions while possible!

[@CathodeRayKobold]

I believe he mentioned using the N64's splitscreen mode to render the contents of the portal, which is a really clever way to get that second camera without having to program it yourself.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

That doesn't make a lot of sense. The GPU only needs to know the current camera for whatever it's rendering. you don't have to specially make two cameras.

[@trashtrash2169]

I don't think that's how it works anymore as you can see portals through portals, and if it was using multiple cameras, you'd need more than two.

[@kasuraga]

@@trashtrash2169 n64 could handle 4 split screen multiplayer so multiple cameras could work

[@10p6]

It is cool to see this on the N64. I was playing Alien Vs Predator on the Jaguar, and when you compare graphics, I believe the Jaguar could have done a decent job of a Portal port too. i'll donate a brand new Jaguar to the first person who does a decent Jaguar Portal demo :-)

[@neuroflare]

I always look forward to what wizardry James was going to post next, it's been a fun project to follow. James' and Robert Piep's early in-progress stuff was so cool to watch take shape over time.

[@no-one3795]

Imagine when this came out when Nintendo 64 was released. The world would blown away!

[@Azuris190]

One of the Benefits is that Portal has its clean Clinic like Enviroment, so that you can save Geometry and Objects that would eat up Ressources.

[@evv4198]

i've been following the dev channel since it's early stages and i am happy you covered the topic here. it deserves more popularity!

[@Flappy9]

Wow, imagine if this had come out back in the 90s. It wouldve been one of the best selling games on the N64 no doubt.

[@flameofthephoenix8395]

I don't know about all that, the other games they already had were still a lot better even if this is more technically impressive.

[@skin_lizard]

​@@flameofthephoenix8395Nothing like Portal had even been attempted at the time- As it IS, Portal is often considered revolutionary and one of the greatest games of all time, if it had come out way back in the nineties with all of the same features, like this demake has (or had), it would've still absolutely crushed it- Although it probably wouldn't have been realistically possible for a number of reasons.

[@flameofthephoenix8395]

​@@skin_lizard I do think that there would definitely be a crowd of people interested, but even the original Super Mario Bros is more interesting than Portal in terms of just trying to have fun with a game. I also wouldn't really call Portal revolutionary, as it hasn't changed what games are capable of, if it wasn't them then someone else would have made a game with non-Euclidian geometry. This is certainly a matter of opinion, however I don't think that being able to render something like Portals was relevant to the creation of fun games but is mostly just a neat thing you might find yourself using but probably won't ever need. Of course, what makes the money, a game that's fun and made for enjoyment's sake, or holes that are warping space you can shoot out of a gun! Yeah, the latter definitely takes the cake... If there was one!

[@skin_lizard]

@@flameofthephoenix8395 I mean, to be fair, saying Portal wasn't revolutionary in some sense is also kind of like saying that Super Mario Brothers or Wolfenstein 3D/Doom weren't revolutionary either because something else would've come along and popularized sidescrollers or first person shooters, or, massively exaggerating, something like the wheel or farming using aquifers wasn't revolutionary because we would've found other transportation and agricultural solutions or found the same solution later down the line anyway- Like, I get where you're coming from, but the ideas were popularized from their initial blowout success which is why those ideas are continued to be compounded upon and used in the modern era. Regardless, I partially agree with you, but I still think it would've sold very well augrrhg

[@flameofthephoenix8395]

​@@skin_lizard Well, yes that is all true, what I was saying is more that it wasn't really something people didn't know how to do or was extremely complicated, but there was no reason to use it so nobody did. If somebody wanted to they probably could have made a 2d version of it fairly early on, I don't think the SNES would have been quite enough to do it seeing as I'm fairly sure they used the same sprite rendering techniques as the NES which would make it at the very least extremely hard to make non-euclidian geometry, and a 2d version would also not have the potential of having to render a seemingly infinitely long stretch because 2d games are extremely weird in that they're actually closer to extremely weird 3d graphics as opposed to what actual 2d graphics might look like mainly because rendering 2d graphics from a 2d characters point of view would grant you only a single line of vision instead of the full screen which is not really going to make for a fun game and so instead it makes more sense to render things like an artist's depiction of a 3d scene, which means we are in a sense just making a 3d game without the ability to move forwards or backwards and the view point is fixed and so on. This means that it would admittedly be easier to make a 2d version of this concept, although actually not really given that this poses an even trickier problem where you can see the insides of spaces meaning that if you wanted a place that was bigger on the inside than on the outside you'd have to somehow render both the interior and exterior at once probably having to settle for only rendering the interior of a space when you're in it, this leads to a lot of confusion. So, I think I'll just drop the 2d idea because on second thought that would probably be even harder than doing it in 3d as you'd have to resolve all kinds of odd problems you wouldn't otherwise have. To be perfectly honest I'm not entirely sure what we were previously discussing at this point!

[@Srcsqwrn]

It's so cool to see James' work being covered my MVG!

[@rockstopsthetraffic]

Love that you're featuring this project. Been following it for a while.

[@qlum]

Glad you covered this, it truly is an amazing project from a technical standpoint.

[@bazookasniper5167]

Hehe...GLaD

[@wanggaard]

Thank you for covering this MVG, this is unique stuff that a popular channel like yours can shed some light on.

[@PXAbstraction]

Miased thumbnail opportunity: The Impossible Portal

[@mysticaxolotl8215]

😂😂😂

[@OGaurabless]

I'm more surprised the audio and cutscenes were compressed enough, the rendering only visible area is a smart move! doesnt even need the expansion pack, but Im wondering would it run even better with the expanded ram? edit whoops this was mentioned around 9:38 for rumble support, awesome!

[@technocolossus]

I think James is also working on implementing the Goldeneye-style dual controller mode for smooth analog camera controls. Edit: he also has a video about making his own mouse adapter for the n64. The guy is an amazing developer.

[@jacobyorton]

What's even more fun... I'm playing an originally XBOX 360 game, demade to Nintendo 64, emulated on a hacked PlayStation Vita handheld. I don't think Valve imagined this when they made this game 17+ years ago.

[@butterfinger4393]

Ive been following this project for a while now , its only getting better !!

[@mattynotfatty]

I was really surprised to see how good the graphics were. But now that I think about it, the maps in Nintendo 64 were quite large while portal’s were compact.

[@Ashnurazg]

I'm following James and this project for some time and it's really impressive that he created a demake of Portal for the N64. Sure, it's still rough on some edges, have some bugs, but I guess it only can get better!

[@I.____.....__...__]

I've been watching him developing this for the past few years and amazed with each new video. It's definitely not an 8MB ROM. This is a great example of how future developers are able to make games that blow away the games that came out when a console was current. Thanks to years, or even decades of advancements and knowledge and technology and such, game devs can make games for old console that would've seemed impossible at the time. It's not even just games that come out much later, you can see this effect even during a console's lifetime, like comparing SMB3 to SMB1.

[@dataterminal]

For those wondering. Portal on Steam usually goes for less than a USD $1. Next steam sale should start this coming week.

[@smeezekitty]

If you don't have portal already, what are you doing?

[@EmeralBookwise]

Portal is the entire reason I first signed up for Steam, during a sale when they were giving it away completely free.

[@jr2904]

​​@@smeezekitty I'm living under a rock haha, never played it. Someday I will though lol

[@JohanHultin]

It's funny, I had never heard of James and literally just finished his video about bounding boxes in Portal64 hit the youtube logo and boom, here was your video. Super cool tech!

[@Mr_Pewpy_But-Whole]

I've been following this project for quite some time. He should seriously send Valve a cartridge in box of the final version. It would be quite special.

[@zach.0]

If you aren't going to use the classic "tank controls", make sure you set looking to the analog stick and movement to the c-buttons, then switch the sticks in your emulator settings. Analog aiming is way more important than analog movement.

[@Sly2Cooper]

Hi, MVG! Can you make a video about Kaze Emanuar's Mario 64 total engine conversion that now runs at 60 fps with increased geometry? It's amazing what modders can achieve on N64.

[@eyesofnova]

"Did you see that rtx version of Portal?" "Pfft, amateur hour. Did you see the N64 version of Portal?"

[@PhoticSneezeOne]

And most importantly: There is no fog!

[@AaronMorrisTheSteamFox]

There is fog, actually! It's used the same way as in Portal PC: for when you go into the hazard sludge!

[@PhoticSneezeOne]

@@AaronMorrisTheSteamFox Then let me be more specific: There is no fog for covering up the shortcomings of n64s hardware ;)

[@hellterminator]

I was wondering when you'd cover this. I've been following James' work on this project for over a year now and every update is consistently more impressive than the last. Truly a brilliant man.

[@kortkunig2291]

I can’t help but wonder what would happen if James and Kaze Emanuar teamed up. But it’s probably Half Life 3 on the N 64

[@mysticaxolotl8215]

They'd probably port Starfield to the N64 lmao

[@kortkunig2291]

@@mysticaxolotl8215 if it had to be a Bethesda game I think I’d prefer Skyrim or oblivion or something.

[@j-pastel-yellow]

i’ve been following this project for some time now, and it’s just beyond incredible. the fact that the n64 is actually capable of running something like portal is hard to believe, especially considering the hardware limitations, not to mention the actually functional portal transparency. the “ports” made for things like the 3DS are impressive, but not being able to see through the portals makes the experience a bit underwhelming, so the fact that the N64 can do it at all, ignoring how well it runs, is genuinely amazing. definitely the most impressive thing made for the N64 to date

[@stgigamovement]

This is an example of how people often underestimate certain consoles. The N64 was, in essence, designed around Super Mario 64. Also, it's worth mentioning that SM64's engine got utilized in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask with significant modifications, and said modified engine got modified again for making Doubutusu no Mori (N64 Animal Crossing), which was released in Japan during the last hurrah of the N64. And yet, somehow, Portal is able to run on an N64, complete with physics. For context, not even GoldSrc (Half-Life 1 engine, even on PS2 and Dreamcast) is capable of physics. Yet, the N64 is using its own engine. The N64 is years older than any of the consoles that ran HL1. Yet it's capable of using Source Engine physics. Also, when Portal originally released in 2007, not many computers were able to run it at full speed at best settings. Valve games are very configurable to reduce lag, and one way you can do that is using a command that results in the game looking exactly like this. Also, one can run Valve games at N64 resolutions to further reduce lag. So, Portal on N64 actually resembles running Portal during its inception on computers that were not top-of-the-line. Given this, it's a fairly reasonable experience, and one that may even be nostalgic to people who grew up playing Portal on a computer that couldn't run it on the highest settings. Let's say you ran Portal on 32bit Windows XP on a computer that didn't start out with XP due to its age. This is the Portal experience you likely would have had. Even a 2001 computer that shipped with XP out of the box would have been hard to run Portal on with the best settings. Basically, people who grew up with Portal on the minimum supported specifications would potentially feel nostalgic when playing this version of Portal in all its limits. Also, the fact that it utilizes Portal itself is cool. Also, Valve is very permissive about fan projects. In fact, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, and Day of Defeat (among other non-HL Valve games) all stemmed from mods of Half-Life, and Valve hired the creators to help develop sequels. Counter-Strike and Team Fortress descendants are big money-makers for Valve due to the item economy in those games that in essence sparked Steam's item marketplace, and all the fees Valve charges make them money, certainly enough to offset any server bills for their official servers. All because they hired people who modded their games. Also, Black Mesa and other similar Source games, Garry's Mod, and other things are mods of Half-Life 2 that Valve is totally fine with. And even the mods that aren't on Steam are ones Valve is OK with. Team Fortress 2 Classic is one of these, even though it was based on Orange Box code that became public against Valve's wishes. The only time Valve went after leaked Source code was when they went after the person who leaked Half-Life 2 a year before launch. While they DID strongly condemn the other times their code has leaked (2018 TF2 code from the development of Jungle Inferno that has enough similarities to modern TF2 to make unfair play easier, which is why when the code leaked, TF2 had significant problems with people playing illegitimately. They ended up updating the game after all that.) Anyways, Valve would probably be impressed at this port, especially given that you need to buy Portal to compile it. My guess is that the compiler looks through any GCFs or VPKs of Portal and then extracts the assets and makes them suitable for N64 before putting them into the special engine used. What's also impressive is the size: Portal is in the gigabytes range (not as big as TF2), but official N64 games went to 64 megabytes (technically speaking, if such a game also used a 64DD, the total space would be 128 megabytes. However, Mario no Photopi was special in that it had 2 SmartMedia memory card slots used for interchange of photos. SmartMedia cards went to 128 megabytes, but 256 megabyte cards almost happened. Two of those get you to 512 megabytes, and with 64MB of conventional cartridge space and the 64DD 64MB, that gets you to around CD space, and more if you use SD Card to SmartMedia adapters) So we're talking a massive amount of size reduction.

[@GeorgesChannel]

Very impressive! Feels like an Apollo Mission achievement on a N64. Thank you for sharing!

[@Paradigmfusion]

out of all the "impossible ports" out there, my favorites are The Witcher 3 (with DLC) on Switch, Doom on the SNES (heck not even the 32X version had music) and Virtua Racing on the Genesis (looked just as good as the 32x version) The Resident Evil 2 port for the N64 was pretty amazing too (even if its cinematic were compressed bad enough to sound like they were being played in a toilet)

[@kimjrYT]

32x had music for doom , a different system didn't

[@Paradigmfusion]

@@kimjrYT jaguar. My bad.

[@SeaJay_Oceans]

Amazing ! Portal64 looks good. How about Amiga Portal ? Atari 800XL Portal ? Commodore 64 Portal? Sinclair Spectrum Portal ?

[@ItsHatlolOfficial]

Can't wait to play it on my intellivision!

[@Holammer]

There is a C64 portal. But it's obviously more of a 2D adaption than a straight port. Only so much you can do with a 1mHz CPU. :P

[@proCaylak]

and don't forget the ultimate Magnavox Odyssey port! No CPU at all. There's some processing but it's not centralized at all.

[@caio.cereja9179]

Why don't you port the game "American McGee's Alice" that would be awesome..., as well as port "Street Fighter zero 3". So many good things to be ported to the Nintendo 64.

[@DommoDommo]

Ive been following James' development on this for a while. The dude is a genius.

[@filipfriday]

James really put together an impressive project here. Great video as always. MVG, maybe something you might not have noticed in editing was the high-pitched CRT frequency was pretty loud (at least to my sensitive ears.) Not sure if it can be filtered out, but it made the video hard to watch for me.

[@CoolJosh3k]

I feel like any other company would shut this down, but Valve would encourage it.

[@boreal3255]

Thank you for covering this. I even fixed a typo in the Docs once.

[@pastiesandagstring]

I’ve been watching this guys channel while it’s been developed. So many incredible achievements.

[@vlord47]

what this shows is, we need neither publisher nor tripple A game studios. what we really need is the allowance for people to produce whatever they like. i mean if one person can frighten a company, then maybe that company should just give it up anyways...

[@franciscofarias6385]

This is one of the coolest ports I've ever seen. Brilliant work.

[@Azrael-xl3jl]

How the hell does even the programing behind real time portals actually work. I cannot wrap my brain around that wizardry. Rift Apart blew my mind.

[@mauriciomedeiros4679]

I guess we could say… This was a triumph.

[@mundymundo]

It's incredible what James Lambert and people like Kaze Emanuar have squeezed out of the N64. I can't think of a commercial game that came close to what they've achieved

[@kakalv9152]

This has to be one of your more mind blowing episodes MVG. huge respect to James who made this port. absolutely wild!

[@ZhoRZh37]

I believe it is "Carmack Curse". Which means that every engine that has some of John D. Carmack's code can (and will) be ported to anything with transistors and more than 3 pixels.

[@INRamos13]

Interesting that it requires a copy of Portal to build the ROM. Does it use assets from the original game? I assumed everything had been rebuilt from the ground up with the limitations of the N64 in mind

[@user-fs8rn4cb6c]

Probably stuff like sounds and Glados voiceover

[@davidgiga1993]

At least the audio / voice is from the original game

[@nattila7713]

copyright reasons.

[@Muskelhias]

Everything is sourced from original Portal, check out their readme!

[@KyleNally]

That's all true, and Valve would never have objected except that as I understand it he used libultra, the official N64 SDK. That's it. No original Nintendo character sounds or properties. *This is one reason I'll never buy anything offered by Nintendo.*

[@Oszku]

you can hear the high pitched noise from the CRT at 4:22 please put a frequency limiter next time

[@BalmoraBabe]

James Lambert is damn near a god.

[@Zastrutzki]

Let's file that under "just because he can". That guy spent a lot of time on something nobody will ever use. Kudos to him!

[@jamesalexhowlett]

I love when this channel looks at and breaks down ports like this

[@bes03c]

The Mario 64 rom hacks by Kaze are amazing too. He heavily optimized the decimpiled code to get amazing things out of Mario 64.

[@paladingeorge6098]

Valve needs to hire this guy.

[@ConkerTS]

Shhhh! If he gets hired, then he might not have time to finish Portal 64...

[@thiagovidal6137]

It's so cool. When I see a project like this I always imagine how possible this would have been back in the day. The development tools available today are obviously more convenient and more powerful. Would it have been possible for a developer to actually make this back in 99/2000? What about the cartridge size (when it's done). The N64 started life with only 64Mb cards available.. then 96, 128, 256.. which was the max for years.. then RE2 came out with 512 and DK64 with 560Mb. I don't think it got any bigger than that. I wonder if it will fit in a proper period cart size.

[@haveacigar5291]

@2:21 to skip all the bs and ads he put in

[@philtkaswahl2124]

Man, this is why I love back-porting. Good, polished backports are great examples of just how much you can squeeze out of old hardware with some clever programming.

[@mistamontiel00]

Valve shot this down.. yeh real threat this is w-o-w.

[@TheSillyMan9337]

valve was scared that nintendo would take action against valve for not taking action

[@mistamontiel00]

@@TheSillyMan9337 HOW DARE YOU NOT SUE ME! I SUE YOU

[@akshatshah6806]

Another extremely impressive portal port is portal on the tic 80, genuinely baffled how they were able to manifest this magic.

[@jackonline8173]

This is impressive, wouldn't have thought, that someone would make a port of Portal on the N64. Respect to the guy, who is doing it all on his own, an incredible work! I think i have to buy myself an everdrive 64, just for that and to breathe some fresh air into my dusty N64 😅

[@foxdavion6865]

Four reasons why games like this didn't exist or were released on systems in the late 90s: 1) Most developers had no clue how to min/max the capabilities of the N64 aside from Rare, Midway and Factor 5. 2) The mindset of boomers; It would of never occurred to the minds of game developers at the time to conceptionally make a game like this. 3) The actual portal system algorithm it uses is based on a quirk of the id engine, which at the time barely ran on the N64. Again, would of taken years for those devs to figure out how to make it work, years they couldn't afford. The original Prey developer attempted this very thing and we all know what happened as a result. 4) Cost to development time; 90% of game developers from that era have gone brankrupt, at the end of the day a game like this would of been too risky and ambitious to make in the late 90s. Again... look at Prey, a game which tried to do portals at this time and got stuck in development hell for 6 years while the parent company bled money.

[@DiscGolfLeagueMVP]

Apologies to the original Portal creators but if I ever get access to a time machine im stealing this code and going back to 1996 to blow everyones mind and make a dickload of money

[@burlyzulu]

Every time I’m eating some chips and watching KZbin it seems like you have a new video lol

[@x7heDeviLx]

Valve has now shut him down

[@Nurse_Xochitl]

😭damn it valve!

[@x7heDeviLx]

@@Nurse_Xochitl I was very disappointed

[@Nurse_Xochitl]

@@x7heDeviLx same, but i found an archive.

[@jordanwhite352]

It actually does make sense because if someone was at GDC 2006 if I remember correctly the original game. The indie game that portal was based off of literally had Nintendo 64 quality of graphics as it's visual style. Remember them explaining to me that most of the game had to do with the math in the engine and not with the visuals even though they also had to make sure the visuals lined up. So it does make sense as difficults would be for to run on something like a Nintendo 64 or a PlayStation. I think sometimes we offer forget that code is code so a lot of game mechanics can ride out a lot of different competent pieces of hardware and we offered think that amazing gameplay stuff directly equals the graphics card which both of the time is not even the case because if it was there would be no such thing as a low spec PC gaming.

[@SmashCatRandom]

It's a shame that Nintendo shut this down.

[@Chipmunkboy]

You've been lied to, valve themselves shut it down, the creator himself said so in the very video that announced it.. people just like to lie, I suppose..

[@SmashCatRandom]

@@Chipmunkboy You're lying. I watched the guy's videos about it. Valve could not allow it on the platform because Nintendo would not allow use of the core libraries, even though they're decades old. Get your facts right before "correcting" other people.

[@Chipmunkboy]

@@SmashCatRandom so what youre writing is nintendo didn't shut it down

[@SmashCatRandom]

@@Chipmunkboy No that's not what I'm writing. What are you having trouble with?

[@SmashCatRandom]

@@Chipmunkboy No. I don't think you understand how this works. Goodbye.

[@RobotnikPlays]

I seriously hope Valve acknowledge this in some way. It would be awesome (if unlikely) to see them support James releasing it through Steam, giving users the option to download the ROM as an "additional content" from the Portal store page (for use on an Everdrive).

[@NinjaV12_]

And now it’s gone 😢

[@oxfordeducatedhighschoolhe6989]

Was it ever there to begin with?

[@dicksdiggers]

use internet archive, you can still get it ez pz

[@kveitehitmaker6316]

Why couldn't Nintendo make zelda run faster than 19fps, when this guy made this?? Incredible!

[@jongeo]

Shut down now, thanks for getting this on Valve's radar.

[@Nob1ej0n]

James is a friend of mine. I shared this with him and our small Discord community. He's a good dude, and I'm happy to see his work featured on your channel.

[@H.788]

BABE WAKE UP MVG UPLOADED

[@MrSlowestD16]

That's an absolutely crazy port. Would have done amazing back in the day if it these releases aligned better and this port was done then. Very cool stuff.

[@Heidegaff]

I feel like people who don't have N64 hardware knowledge fail to grasp just how impressive this port is. This is like watching a modern KZbin video on a pregnancy test at a framerate and resolution where you can understand what's going on.

[@DrewMedina]

Nice! I worked on RoadRash64 , I still remember we had to burn a $500 cart to test a build on a handmade devkit. This is amazing, Thanks!