This New Fan Tool Lets You Play the Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask on PC
There are plenty of ways to play Nintendo 64 games in 2024. You can dig up the original console. You can sign up for the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack . You can download an unofficial emulator. And now you can potentially play the recompiled PC port, starting with The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask .
This is very important for a tech-savvy person. For everyone else, this might be a little confusing.
If you’ve already played a Nintendo 64 game on your PC, or even your phone or tablet, you’ve probably used an emulator. Essentially, these programs work by using software that simulates the processes of the Nintendo 64 console itself, making games think they are running on real hardware. This is a legally enforceable workaround – thanks to an old lawsuit between Sony and Bleem! — but it’s not without its drawbacks.
Emulated games can suffer from fidelity in areas such as music and input lag, and because they expect them to run on a home console, they are limited in their ability to take advantage of the more powerful hardware on modern devices, meaning their it’s difficult to add features like ray tracing or ultra-wide support.
Meet decompliation, the holy grail of retro game preservation. Instead of running older games in software that emulates the old console, decompiling takes the source code of the original game, breaks it down, and remakes it from the ground up to run on home computers.
Decompliation greatly improves compatibility with everything from ray tracing to mods to higher frame rates, and overall makes the game smoother and less laggy. This process has previously been applied to several N64 games, including Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , with one catch: you need the game’s original source code (and a lot of development time) to get it to work.
Play any N64 game using just the ROM file.
While the source code for some high-profile games has already been revealed, this is not the case for most games. But with Wiseguy’s new Nintendo 64: Recompiled tool, the entire Nintendo 64 library could potentially make its way to PC in a different way – and one famous game has already done so.
The Wiseguy tool does not technically decompile games since no data is read. Instead, it takes the game’s original ROM and “recompiles” it, meaning it translates the code into C (a programming language) and runs the graphics through modern APIs like Vulkan at startup. Think of it as Proton’s translation layer on Steam, allowing you to play games made for Windows on Linux.
Some things will still have to be cleaned up manually afterwards – games developed in the 90s weren’t designed to be playable at modern hardware speeds – but the process of going from recompilation to port is much faster than decompiling, and may be applied to the entire Nintendo 64 library in the short term.
In a statement to YouTuber Nerrel, Wiseguy revealed that they started with a recompiled port of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask . The port was completed in just two days, as opposed to the two years it took for previous decompilation projects. And because the code is translated directly rather than tweaked to run on modern devices, the results are more faithful to the original game.
This doesn’t mean that decompilation is obsolete – it still helps programmers understand the game’s source code, helping them create mods, patches and fixes. But in cases where decompilation is not possible, recompilation can improve either the original hardware or the emulation, since it does not require emulation and allows more freedom to take advantage of modern upgrades such as high frame rates.
Wiseguy’s port of Majora’s Mask is now available for download via Github , paving the way for future projects. To protect the legal status of the project, the port does not include any assets (ie game code, graphics, sound effects – basically anything that belongs to Nintendo) that must be provided by the user via the ROM file.
But once they’re provided, the port will take those assets, instantly translate them to run on PC, apply Wiseguy’s patches, and then start playing the game on your PC as if it was made for them. You just need to provide the ROM. The port will also provide support for higher frame rates, faster loading times, gyroscopic aiming, and ultra-wide displays.
Additionally, advanced features are in development, including ray tracing, using the RT64 tool , developed by fellow modder DarioSamo.
It’s unlikely we’ll ever get complete decompilations of the entire Nintendo 64 library, but fans of more obscure games like Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls or Blast Corps may soon have a better way to play their favorite games than emulation. Wiseguy’s porting process isn’t entirely automatic, but with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on their roster, it’s clear that we can expect more games from them in the near future.