Fabulous Super Mario 64 PC Port Shines In 4K Ray Traced Glory, And You Can Play It Now

Of all the video game characters in the world, one of the most iconic is no doubt Nintendo's Mario. In recent years, Nintendo has begun to bring its iconic characters to mobile platforms such as Android and iOS, but the games haven't yet been offered on PC or game consoles outside the Nintendo realm. However, a fan-made port brings Super Mario 64 to the PC in a new and exciting way.

The Mario 64 PC port circulated for the first over the weekend, and was made possible by a project from last year where fans reversed engineered the game's source code. The most notable feature of this project is that it's not a PC emulator designed to be a virtual copy of the original Nintendo 64 hardware. Instead, this Mario 64 port is powered by DirectX 12, allowing players to run Mario 64 at higher resolutions, including native 4K and ultra-widescreen modes.

Another significant improvement is that players can use modern peripherals and controllers, including Microsoft's Xbox One controller. Players wanting even better graphics for the Super Mario 64 port can use a third-party program called Reshade to add real-time ray tracing. However, the ability to add ray tracing effects to Super Mario 64 with Reshade is described as primitive at best.

Interestingly, the Super Mario 64 PC port turned up over the weekend, coming on the heels of a significant Nintendo source code leak that saw over 2TB of data make its way onto 4chan. The leak included source code for the Nintendo 64, GameCube, and Wii. It's unclear if the leaked source code contributed at all to the Super Mario 64 PC port.

As protective as Nintendo is regarding its intellectual property, it would come as no surprise if Nintendo's legal team tries to kill the PC port as soon as possible. With that being said, it has been revealed that remasters of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario 64 are coming to the Nintendo Switch in 2020.