Super Mario 64 for the PS1

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Videos, screenshots, and current status

  • Multiple YouTube links are shared since the repo has no media.
  • Some footage is clearly emulator-enhanced: higher resolution and filtering make it look “too crisp” compared to what a real PS1 would output.
  • Commenters note it reportedly didn’t run reliably on stock hardware at first (RAM-related crashes), though the author says a tessellation bug was found and fixed and that it should work on real PS1s after upcoming changes.
  • Known issues include a broken pause menu and incomplete tessellation.

PS1 vs N64 graphics and hardware

  • Viewers recognize classic PS1 artifacts: warped textures, triangle clipping, and lack of perspective-correct texturing and depth testing.
  • Some see this as charming, “distinctive PS1 jank”; others are reminded why they preferred N64 visuals.
  • Discussion dives into N64 design trade‑offs: small texture cache, RDRAM’s high latency, overpowered CPU that often idles, anti‑aliasing and blur filters, and the cartridge vs CD decision (with piracy considerations and regional anecdotes where piracy boosted PS1’s success).
  • PS1’s GPU is described as fundamentally 2D, with 3D work done via the CPU and Geometry Transformation Engine (GTE), and no support for perspective‑correct textures or subpixel vertex precision.

Tessellation and rendering techniques

  • The port uses tessellation to mitigate affine texture warping, but 2× tessellation is not enough to fix large polygons, and further preprocessing/splitting is planned.
  • Commenters explain that PS1 hardware constrains vertex coordinates and texture ranges per polygon, making large, flat surfaces especially problematic.
  • There’s technical discussion of PS1 bucket-sorting, GTE ops, and examples like the DOOM port’s “strip-based” hack for perspective correctness.

Other ports, demakes, and experiments

  • People reference recent Dreamcast ports (SM64, Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 64) and an “awesome game decompilations” list.
  • A GBA SM64 recreation written in Rust is highlighted; it uses a custom 3D renderer and dynamic polygon splitting but has very harsh affine warping and low resolution, which some find visually painful.
  • Related projects: GBA Tomb Raider, N64 and PS1 Minecraft‑style clones, and an Atari Falcon voxel Minecraft variant.

Decompilation boom and tooling

  • A question about the recent surge in ports leads to mention of:
    • Shared tooling like decomp.me that supports byte-for-byte matching.
    • Growing decomp communities and “porting layers” that mimic console SDKs.
    • Trade‑offs: matching original binaries often requires ugly compiler‑artifact hacks; some argue effort would be better spent on cleaner, non-matching reimplementations.
  • Others simply note that more people are using tools like Ghidra; “AI” is mentioned jokingly but not substantiated.

Nostalgia, aesthetics, and media culture

  • Several commenters express amazement that SM64 runs on PS1 at all and see it as a vivid comparison of mid‑90s console design.
  • There’s reflection on CRT smoothing, smaller screens, and how PS1’s visual flaws have become part of a sought‑after “retro look,” though not everyone shares that nostalgia.
  • One subthread criticizes modern YouTube presentation styles as overacted and aimed at teens; others defend specific creators as just being themselves with on‑camera energy.