Soon you’ll be able to play Diddy Kong Racing natively on your PC
The Diddy Kong Racing Decompilation project is around 80% complete.
The Trend of Decompilation
This process allows the homebrew community to recompile native versions of classic games like Star Fox, Super Mario 64, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Diddy Kong Racing’s Place in N64 History
Released in 1997, Diddy Kong Racing is one of the best examples of a kart-based racer on the N64. Fans even claim it trumps Nintendo’s own offering on the same console.
Creating motion capture and being in control of a set of fighting characters was like a dream for me. But after taking a break from two ‘pretty gory’ and dark games, Diddy Kong Racing was like a breath of fresh air and happiness.
– Kev Bayliss, former Rare staffer (2023)
The Road Ahead
The project is 80% complete. It should be noted that, in these projects, the final percentage points often take the longest to complete.
Potential enhancements include
- 4K resolution
- Ultra-wide screen support
- Improved frame rate
- Support for mods like new characters and tracks.
How do you think Diddy Kong Racing compares with Mario Kart?
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
So the solution to N64 emulation was to decompile the games to run them natively instead…
towerful@programming.dev 4 days ago
Pretty much, yes.
Developers for the older consoles employed all sorts of hacks and used all sorts of undocumented features.
Emulators of N64 would develop the emulator for something like 80% of the features of 80% of the games, then put in specific workarounds for the oddities of each game.
Which is why some games are better on specific emulators.
Also, decompilation lead to a greater understanding of the various glitches. DK64 and Mario 64 speedruns benefitted massively from this.
And also fun hack/mods like randomisers and hardcore modes, massively extending the games playability.
But yeh, the things devs did back in the day is bonkers
SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I’m surprised no one ever tried to compile all the hacks into a single open source plugin or emulator. There are only around 400 retail games for the N64 which seems pretty manageable to have some sort of game detection ruleset for various hacks.
It seems like in recent years N64 emulation is finally improving somewhat with lower level emulation like the parallel64 core in retroarch.
Long term decompilation is the better solution regardless but it’s going to take a good amount of time to decompile all the games of significance for the N64.