10 ms·

Super Mario 64 has been ported to iOS

241 points by codetrotter 5y ago

jmknoll 5y ago
Reddit has really degraded their mobile web experience over the past year or so. I can’t view this link at all on mobile, it just has a dialog with options to open the app or return to the Reddit homepage.
- sbaildon 5y ago
  The web experience has been reduced to an indexer. Following the HN link, there's an option to open the app store, or navigate to the subreddit's index. Even choosing to navigate to the index and open a post directly displays the same prompt.
- natchy 5y ago
  Same. Couldn’t view the link and won’t be installing an app I have no intention of using.
- frankenst1 5y ago
  Try prefixing "old": https://old.reddit.com/r/SM64PC/comments/q3nm9f/sm64_has_been_ported_to_ios/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SM64PC/comments/q3nm9f/sm64_has_bee...
  - 0des 5y ago
    there is also the i.reddit.com prefix. Sometimes the old.reddit.com interface can make titles very large, and body text (and links) very tiny, on mobile. I can only assume this was intentional, as it happened when the new UI was introduced.
    - anonymousab 5y ago
      This started happening in the past month for me with Firefox on Android. It turned out that it was due to some sort of Accessibility / font resizing setting - disabling that setting caused it to use the correct font sizes again (and apparently, has a large performance and battery life benefit as well).
      - 0des 5y ago
        While this is quite interesting, I've moved on these days. It's clear that my manner of use is not desired, so I'd rather not set myself up for disappointment when I arrive at the inevitable outcome. I do appreciate you commenting though, because I sure wondered what was going on!
- nseggs 5y ago
  For anyone on iOS, Apollo is really essential if you want to use Reddit. Especially now with safari extensions, you can just set Reddit links to automatically open in Apollo.
  - poglet 5y ago
    Do you know of a way that this can be done with Firefox on iOS?
  - MrDunham 5y ago
    Agreed! Apollo is great (but I’m biased, see below.) I lived with Apollo’s dev for 3 months ~a decade ago and can say he was a super friendly, genuine guy and a was great roommate. Best of the ~500 people that came through our hacker house. Seems to really care about his users, too. So for all of Reddit’s dark patterns and anti user behavior it seems that he’ll do right by users. Really happy to see HN sending support for his product.
  - germinalphrase 5y ago
    Happy Apollo user here.
  - dt3ft 5y ago
    Thanks, but no thanks. I am not installing an app just to view a website. I have a browser.
    - nseggs 5y ago
      I am there for 9/10 cases, but needing to have a browser session logged in to Reddit at all times so that it defaults to old.reddit.com is pretty obnoxious on mobile. Apollo also surfaces far more functionality with far more immediacy than I can normally be bothered to interact with in a (mobile especially) browser session. I’m actually using the Hack app by Pranoy Chowdhury for Hacker News for many of the same reasons.
    - salusinarduis 5y ago
      I'm the same way, but I finally gave in and tried Apollo. It's really well made and unrestricting. Would highly recommend it, even though I no longer need it, as I've switched to a freedom respecting distribution of Android.
- toqy 5y ago
  The only way I have found to prevent the behavior is to log in and set a preference not to be prompted
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
vikingcaffiene 5y ago
Not on topic but can I just say fuck Reddit for the way they purposely hobble the mobile experience on web? No I won’t install your shitty app Reddit. Ever. I might have considered it before but it’s personal now.
- mimsee 5y ago
  For this reason I like to use Teddit.net when browsing on mobile
  - 0des 5y ago
    Though Teddit's intentions are great, I feel like using teddit, reddit, baconreader, etc is still giving Reddit my time, focus, and fellowship. As a site, I've noticed I don't feel good after browsing it the last few years, so aside from articles or something that a friend passes along, I don't find myself there as often.
    - rudian 5y ago
      Then… good? Isn’t that a healthy social network?
      - 0des 5y ago
        I'm not sure what criteria I'd use to describe a 'healthy social network' but I would not put "user feels bad after visiting" anywhere on there.
        smoldesu 5y ago
        I love feeling bad after using the internet, it's the surest sign I have that freedom is alive and well online.
        rudian 5y ago
        "I don't feel good" != "I feel bad" Addictive social networks are awful specifically because they're engineered to give you dopamine. If a website lets you check in and out without becoming addictive then… good!
jmole 5y ago
Petition to automatically change “www” to “old” in all Reddit links submitted to HN?
- 0des 5y ago
  Are you asking a question, or is this the petition? (the question mark threw me off) I wouldn't mind it, but I'd be curious what happens when reddit follows the inevitable course and obsoletes that interface along with i.reddit.com
  - jmole 5y ago
    Just starting a discussion. Interestingly there’s another Reddit link on HN that doesn’t exhibit this behavior: https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/q4nltn/ads_are_now_able_to_bypass_google_play_to_install/ https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/q4nltn/ads_are_...
- Taywee 5y ago
  You can get this everywhere. Just track down the "Redirector" extension and put a rule in to redirect ^(https?://)?www.reddit.com(/.*)?$ to $1old.reddit.com$2 You can also use it to automatically redirect all mobile Wikipedia links to the non-mobile site.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Can't do that on iOS at least. With the amount of reddit posts submitted here, we need a hard rule.
- Qahlel 5y ago
  javascript:(function() { window.location.href = window.location.href.replace("www.reddit", "old.reddit"); })()
- aaomidi 5y ago
  Use a browser extension.
frankenst1 5y ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/SM64PC/comments/q3nm9f/sm64_has_been_ported_to_ios/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SM64PC/comments/q3nm9f/sm64_has_bee... for everyone without the Reddit app.
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  Also, here's the GitHub repo: https://github.com/sm64pc/sm64ex https://github.com/sm64pc/sm64ex Where things stand regarding copyright law, I'm not certain.
- staticvar 5y ago
  I use Firefox Mobile and have to turn on "Desktop site" to browse Reddit. Is there a way to view the mobile Reddit site?
  - bobsmooth 5y ago
    rif is fun is the best reddit client
  - Causality1 5y ago
    Interesting. I get the "fuck you, download our app" pop-up on Firefox Mobile but not Chrome mobile.
  - nrb 5y ago
    Does it help if you add /.compact to the end of the URL? The reddit website constantly kicks you back into the desktop version these days but it mostly works
  - ACow_Adonis 5y ago
    i.reddit.com? Is that what you mean/are looking for?
- loudandskittish 5y ago
  Thank you! I followed the link on my phone and WTF is this bullshit? There's a popover that tells me to either download the app or "Return to /r/popular" ...despite not having come from there in the first place. No way to just close it and, you know, read the content. At least, no obvious way.
smoldesu 5y ago
It has also been ported to WASM, Nvidia Jetson dev kits (including Switch hardware), Linux, Windows and ostensibly everything else under the sun. Frankly I'm surprised (not really) that iOS took so long.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  The xbone probably runs it as well since it’s open to homebrew. They stopped people from wanting to hack it that way too.
vmception 5y ago
Can anyone explain the obsession with this game in particular? As a cultural phenomenon or how it stands the test of time or what that particular porting community thinks about anything...
- siva7 5y ago
  It was back then a memorable landmark game which set off the 3D Evolution in Nintendo Games
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Nostalgia and a game that did a lot right when 3D was becoming mainstream. Few if any of its features were firsts but they were polished and combined to make a package that played better than most other 3D platforms of the day.
- Taywee 5y ago
  It's a lot of factors. It was a lot of peoples' first 3D game experience, it's old enough that a lot of people who were enchanted by it in their childhood are old enough to dig into it now, it's an early 3D game with relatively simple and primitive techniques that were state of the art for the time, and it's had a ton of time put into decompilation, and a few major leaks to help understand how everything fits together. It's also a very good game, and the controls and mechanics are more responsive and smooth than you'd expect for such an early 3D game. Mario games have all had a lot of effort put into understanding the way the code works under the hood. The NES Mario games have also been heavily broken down and analyzed, but there's not as much stuff you can do that's as exciting as what you can with Mario 64.
- codetrotter 5y ago
  Nintendo 64 and the original PlayStation were a paradigm shift in home consoles, with their native support for 3D. At the time of the announcement of these platforms, Super Mario 64 became a symbol representing the Nintendo 64. Sony wanted a mascot to represent them, and Naughty Dog convinced Sony to pick Crash Bandicoot as the mascot for the original PlayStation. As such, the marketing material and the press coverage talked a lot not only about N64 vs PS, but also gave a lot of attention to Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot. And in turn this meant that those of us who were kids at the time ended up playing these games a lot on N64 and PS respectively. Is it just nostalgia, or is there something more? Hard to say, but either way I think both these games will forever hold a special place in the hearts of many. Beyond that, porting efforts in general are interesting for their own sake.
muterad_murilax 5y ago
Uhm, so? Please come back when you have successfully ported it to the original Sony PlayStation or the Sega Saturn.
- roywiggins 5y ago
  There's a Dreamcast port apparently.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- motoxpro 5y ago
  Huh? What is the point of porting it to those consoles? Or was this just a troll?
- randomifcpfan 5y ago
  The game has been ported it to the original PlayStation: https://reddit.com/r/PlaystationClassic/comments/pesjua/i_ported_the_sm64_pc_port_to_the_playstation/ https://reddit.com/r/PlaystationClassic/comments/pesjua/i_po...
- dang 5y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We're trying for a different type of discussion here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
siva7 5y ago
I am more shocked by the fact that i can't read the article linked anymore without installing an app. This is pretty shady product development.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
tambourine_man 5y ago
How legal is decompilation? Have we stablished legally accepted ways like in reverse engineering?
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  How legal are derivative works on GitHub with copilot? They can have rules, enforcement is separate.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    They are illegal, but github will leave them up until someone sends a dmca request / enforces their copyright.
- thrownblown 5y ago
  Didn't EU just drop a ruling regarding decompilation?
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Decompilation to fix a bug or otherwise allow the software to be used as intended. Not just decompilation for the fun of it or running it on completely unsupported hardware or software. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28809559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28809559
    - nebula8804 5y ago
      Can you argue that you intended to use the software on your iPad?
      - judge2020 5y ago
        On the surface maybe, but > such an exception to the author’s exclusive rights may not be used in a way which prejudices the legitimate interests of the rightholder or which conflicts with a normal exploitation of the program could be interpreted to mean that, especially for anything still being sold (like the retro games sold on Switch), interop for the sake of interop would very likely conflict with Nintendo's legitimate [business] interest.
tediousdemise 5y ago
I wonder if anyone ported it to a TI calculator yet.
nebula8804 5y ago
I wonder if this game runs exclusively on the Apple processor's low power cores. Is there a way to find out? If so, this project could possibly be one of the best "watt to fun" ratios out there given how efficient the A series processors are! :) A side project I'd like to do one day is to compile this on a raspberry Pi zero and lower the clock rate as much as I can get away with so I could try to achieve the lowest possible power consumption to run this software. Just a silly idea since I love thinking about running things in a hyper efficient manner. Does anyone think this could run on some ARM dev board? I imagine something like the ESP32 is still not powerful enough. Anything in TI's inventory that can run this?
- dcow 5y ago
  Wouldn't the original N64 already achieve this ratio?
  - after_care 5y ago
    Interesting to see that the N64 only used 19watts. I was expecting a much larger number. http://www.tpcdb.com/product.php?id=2602 http://www.tpcdb.com/product.php?id=2602
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    The original N64 uses 19 watts(as printed on its power supply) to run a 93.75 Mhz processor. Actual usage may vary depending on the game. The Raspberry Pi Zero is less than 5 watts I believe? And thats a 1 Ghz processor with accelerated GPU. Plenty of opportunity to bring the clock rate down. Now what if you manage to run the game on bare metal? How low can you take the power consumption then? maybe 1W? Maybe less? I've thought about how to even measure this. I don't think those Cheapo tools on Amazon can go lower than 1 watt. We really benefited in so many ways thanks to the reduction from 350nm to modern nodes. I'm sure many will think its a silly idea but it came from this story I once read about the co-founder/CTO of Tesla: JB Straubel. Whenever he used to go to a hotel he would measure the power efficiency of the lightbulbs and actually replace them with more efficient bulbs. He was obsessed with extreme power efficiency. I also recall during the first Tesla AI talk that when designing their computer they focused on how many pJ each instruction burned. This story just remained in my head and comes up because the idea of optimizing down to this level just wrinkles my brain! :) [1]:https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=5196 https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=5196
BusTrainBus 5y ago
Wow the website is absolute garbage. No way to view the link on mobile. Do people on HackerNews actually work for this company? Any comments?
- lawlorino 5y ago
  I don't, but I can provide a likely explanation - ad revenue
- asdff 5y ago
  Yelp is just like this too on mobile.
toxik 5y ago
So this should be doable on an Apple TV?
flatiron 5y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uYPH-NH3B6k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uYPH-NH3B6k Pretty good video on optimizations to Mario 64 now that it has been decompiled.
- codetrotter 5y ago
  I don’t like that video, guy is very arrogant for calling the guys at Nintendo stupid for some of their mistakes. The Super Mario 64 development team was under immense pressure at the time to build and ship this game no doubt. And they did so while pioneering a lot of new areas and techniques in the world of console games. The kind of comments that dude makes say much more about him as a person than anything else – it shows that he is not able to put himself in other peoples shoes. His video does not deserve any views when he acts that way. And I feel sorry for anyone that would work on a team with someone that has the kind of mentality that the creator of that video is showing.

241 points by codetrotter 5y ago

Reddit has really degraded their mobile web experience over the past year or so. I can’t view this link at all on mobile, it just has a dialog with options to open the app or return to the Reddit homepage.

sbaildon 5y ago
The web experience has been reduced to an indexer. Following the HN link, there's an option to open the app store, or navigate to the subreddit's index. Even choosing to navigate to the index and open a post directly displays the same prompt.
natchy 5y ago
Same. Couldn’t view the link and won’t be installing an app I have no intention of using.
frankenst1 5y ago
Try prefixing "old": https://old.reddit.com/r/SM64PC/comments/q3nm9f/sm64_has_been_ported_to_ios/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SM64PC/comments/q3nm9f/sm64_has_bee...
- 0des 5y ago
  there is also the i.reddit.com prefix. Sometimes the old.reddit.com interface can make titles very large, and body text (and links) very tiny, on mobile. I can only assume this was intentional, as it happened when the new UI was introduced.
  - anonymousab 5y ago
    This started happening in the past month for me with Firefox on Android. It turned out that it was due to some sort of Accessibility / font resizing setting - disabling that setting caused it to use the correct font sizes again (and apparently, has a large performance and battery life benefit as well).
    - 0des 5y ago
      While this is quite interesting, I've moved on these days. It's clear that my manner of use is not desired, so I'd rather not set myself up for disappointment when I arrive at the inevitable outcome. I do appreciate you commenting though, because I sure wondered what was going on!
nseggs 5y ago
For anyone on iOS, Apollo is really essential if you want to use Reddit. Especially now with safari extensions, you can just set Reddit links to automatically open in Apollo.
- poglet 5y ago
  Do you know of a way that this can be done with Firefox on iOS?
- MrDunham 5y ago
  Agreed! Apollo is great (but I’m biased, see below.) I lived with Apollo’s dev for 3 months ~a decade ago and can say he was a super friendly, genuine guy and a was great roommate. Best of the ~500 people that came through our hacker house. Seems to really care about his users, too. So for all of Reddit’s dark patterns and anti user behavior it seems that he’ll do right by users. Really happy to see HN sending support for his product.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  Happy Apollo user here.
- dt3ft 5y ago
  Thanks, but no thanks. I am not installing an app just to view a website. I have a browser.
  - nseggs 5y ago
    I am there for 9/10 cases, but needing to have a browser session logged in to Reddit at all times so that it defaults to old.reddit.com is pretty obnoxious on mobile. Apollo also surfaces far more functionality with far more immediacy than I can normally be bothered to interact with in a (mobile especially) browser session. I’m actually using the Hack app by Pranoy Chowdhury for Hacker News for many of the same reasons.
  - salusinarduis 5y ago
    I'm the same way, but I finally gave in and tried Apollo. It's really well made and unrestricting. Would highly recommend it, even though I no longer need it, as I've switched to a freedom respecting distribution of Android.
toqy 5y ago
The only way I have found to prevent the behavior is to log in and set a preference not to be prompted
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

vikingcaffiene 5y ago

Not on topic but can I just say fuck Reddit for the way they purposely hobble the mobile experience on web? No I won’t install your shitty app Reddit. Ever. I might have considered it before but it’s personal now.

mimsee 5y ago
For this reason I like to use Teddit.net when browsing on mobile
- 0des 5y ago
  Though Teddit's intentions are great, I feel like using teddit, reddit, baconreader, etc is still giving Reddit my time, focus, and fellowship. As a site, I've noticed I don't feel good after browsing it the last few years, so aside from articles or something that a friend passes along, I don't find myself there as often.
  - rudian 5y ago
    Then… good? Isn’t that a healthy social network?
    - 0des 5y ago
      I'm not sure what criteria I'd use to describe a 'healthy social network' but I would not put "user feels bad after visiting" anywhere on there.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        I love feeling bad after using the internet, it's the surest sign I have that freedom is alive and well online.
      - rudian 5y ago
        "I don't feel good" != "I feel bad" Addictive social networks are awful specifically because they're engineered to give you dopamine. If a website lets you check in and out without becoming addictive then… good!

jmole 5y ago

Petition to automatically change “www” to “old” in all Reddit links submitted to HN?

0des 5y ago
Are you asking a question, or is this the petition? (the question mark threw me off) I wouldn't mind it, but I'd be curious what happens when reddit follows the inevitable course and obsoletes that interface along with i.reddit.com
- jmole 5y ago
  Just starting a discussion. Interestingly there’s another Reddit link on HN that doesn’t exhibit this behavior: https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/q4nltn/ads_are_now_able_to_bypass_google_play_to_install/ https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/q4nltn/ads_are_...
Taywee 5y ago
You can get this everywhere. Just track down the "Redirector" extension and put a rule in to redirect ^(https?://)?www.reddit.com(/.*)?$ to $1old.reddit.com$2 You can also use it to automatically redirect all mobile Wikipedia links to the non-mobile site.
- asdff 5y ago
  Can't do that on iOS at least. With the amount of reddit posts submitted here, we need a hard rule.
Qahlel 5y ago
javascript:(function() { window.location.href = window.location.href.replace("www.reddit", "old.reddit"); })()
aaomidi 5y ago
Use a browser extension.

frankenst1 5y ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/SM64PC/comments/q3nm9f/sm64_has_been_ported_to_ios/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SM64PC/comments/q3nm9f/sm64_has_bee... for everyone without the Reddit app.

MaxBarraclough 5y ago
Also, here's the GitHub repo: https://github.com/sm64pc/sm64ex https://github.com/sm64pc/sm64ex Where things stand regarding copyright law, I'm not certain.
staticvar 5y ago
I use Firefox Mobile and have to turn on "Desktop site" to browse Reddit. Is there a way to view the mobile Reddit site?
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  rif is fun is the best reddit client
- Causality1 5y ago
  Interesting. I get the "fuck you, download our app" pop-up on Firefox Mobile but not Chrome mobile.
- nrb 5y ago
  Does it help if you add /.compact to the end of the URL? The reddit website constantly kicks you back into the desktop version these days but it mostly works
- ACow_Adonis 5y ago
  i.reddit.com? Is that what you mean/are looking for?
loudandskittish 5y ago
Thank you! I followed the link on my phone and WTF is this bullshit? There's a popover that tells me to either download the app or "Return to /r/popular" ...despite not having come from there in the first place. No way to just close it and, you know, read the content. At least, no obvious way.

smoldesu 5y ago

It has also been ported to WASM, Nvidia Jetson dev kits (including Switch hardware), Linux, Windows and ostensibly everything else under the sun. Frankly I'm surprised (not really) that iOS took so long.

GhettoComputers 5y ago
The xbone probably runs it as well since it’s open to homebrew. They stopped people from wanting to hack it that way too.

vmception 5y ago

Can anyone explain the obsession with this game in particular? As a cultural phenomenon or how it stands the test of time or what that particular porting community thinks about anything...

siva7 5y ago
It was back then a memorable landmark game which set off the 3D Evolution in Nintendo Games
paulryanrogers 5y ago
Nostalgia and a game that did a lot right when 3D was becoming mainstream. Few if any of its features were firsts but they were polished and combined to make a package that played better than most other 3D platforms of the day.
Taywee 5y ago
It's a lot of factors. It was a lot of peoples' first 3D game experience, it's old enough that a lot of people who were enchanted by it in their childhood are old enough to dig into it now, it's an early 3D game with relatively simple and primitive techniques that were state of the art for the time, and it's had a ton of time put into decompilation, and a few major leaks to help understand how everything fits together. It's also a very good game, and the controls and mechanics are more responsive and smooth than you'd expect for such an early 3D game. Mario games have all had a lot of effort put into understanding the way the code works under the hood. The NES Mario games have also been heavily broken down and analyzed, but there's not as much stuff you can do that's as exciting as what you can with Mario 64.
codetrotter 5y ago
Nintendo 64 and the original PlayStation were a paradigm shift in home consoles, with their native support for 3D. At the time of the announcement of these platforms, Super Mario 64 became a symbol representing the Nintendo 64. Sony wanted a mascot to represent them, and Naughty Dog convinced Sony to pick Crash Bandicoot as the mascot for the original PlayStation. As such, the marketing material and the press coverage talked a lot not only about N64 vs PS, but also gave a lot of attention to Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot. And in turn this meant that those of us who were kids at the time ended up playing these games a lot on N64 and PS respectively. Is it just nostalgia, or is there something more? Hard to say, but either way I think both these games will forever hold a special place in the hearts of many. Beyond that, porting efforts in general are interesting for their own sake.

muterad_murilax 5y ago

Uhm, so? Please come back when you have successfully ported it to the original Sony PlayStation or the Sega Saturn.

roywiggins 5y ago
There's a Dreamcast port apparently.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
motoxpro 5y ago
Huh? What is the point of porting it to those consoles? Or was this just a troll?
randomifcpfan 5y ago
The game has been ported it to the original PlayStation: https://reddit.com/r/PlaystationClassic/comments/pesjua/i_ported_the_sm64_pc_port_to_the_playstation/ https://reddit.com/r/PlaystationClassic/comments/pesjua/i_po...
dang 5y ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? We're trying for a different type of discussion here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

siva7 5y ago

I am more shocked by the fact that i can't read the article linked anymore without installing an app. This is pretty shady product development.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

tambourine_man 5y ago

How legal is decompilation? Have we stablished legally accepted ways like in reverse engineering?

GhettoComputers 5y ago
How legal are derivative works on GitHub with copilot? They can have rules, enforcement is separate.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  They are illegal, but github will leave them up until someone sends a dmca request / enforces their copyright.
thrownblown 5y ago
Didn't EU just drop a ruling regarding decompilation?
- judge2020 5y ago
  Decompilation to fix a bug or otherwise allow the software to be used as intended. Not just decompilation for the fun of it or running it on completely unsupported hardware or software. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28809559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28809559
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    Can you argue that you intended to use the software on your iPad?
    - judge2020 5y ago
      On the surface maybe, but > such an exception to the author’s exclusive rights may not be used in a way which prejudices the legitimate interests of the rightholder or which conflicts with a normal exploitation of the program could be interpreted to mean that, especially for anything still being sold (like the retro games sold on Switch), interop for the sake of interop would very likely conflict with Nintendo's legitimate [business] interest.

tediousdemise 5y ago

I wonder if anyone ported it to a TI calculator yet.

nebula8804 5y ago

I wonder if this game runs exclusively on the Apple processor's low power cores. Is there a way to find out? If so, this project could possibly be one of the best "watt to fun" ratios out there given how efficient the A series processors are! :) A side project I'd like to do one day is to compile this on a raspberry Pi zero and lower the clock rate as much as I can get away with so I could try to achieve the lowest possible power consumption to run this software. Just a silly idea since I love thinking about running things in a hyper efficient manner. Does anyone think this could run on some ARM dev board? I imagine something like the ESP32 is still not powerful enough. Anything in TI's inventory that can run this?

dcow 5y ago
Wouldn't the original N64 already achieve this ratio?
- after_care 5y ago
  Interesting to see that the N64 only used 19watts. I was expecting a much larger number. http://www.tpcdb.com/product.php?id=2602 http://www.tpcdb.com/product.php?id=2602
- nebula8804 5y ago
  The original N64 uses 19 watts(as printed on its power supply) to run a 93.75 Mhz processor. Actual usage may vary depending on the game. The Raspberry Pi Zero is less than 5 watts I believe? And thats a 1 Ghz processor with accelerated GPU. Plenty of opportunity to bring the clock rate down. Now what if you manage to run the game on bare metal? How low can you take the power consumption then? maybe 1W? Maybe less? I've thought about how to even measure this. I don't think those Cheapo tools on Amazon can go lower than 1 watt. We really benefited in so many ways thanks to the reduction from 350nm to modern nodes. I'm sure many will think its a silly idea but it came from this story I once read about the co-founder/CTO of Tesla: JB Straubel. Whenever he used to go to a hotel he would measure the power efficiency of the lightbulbs and actually replace them with more efficient bulbs. He was obsessed with extreme power efficiency. I also recall during the first Tesla AI talk that when designing their computer they focused on how many pJ each instruction burned. This story just remained in my head and comes up because the idea of optimizing down to this level just wrinkles my brain! :) [1]:https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=5196 https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=5196

BusTrainBus 5y ago

Wow the website is absolute garbage. No way to view the link on mobile. Do people on HackerNews actually work for this company? Any comments?

lawlorino 5y ago
I don't, but I can provide a likely explanation - ad revenue
asdff 5y ago
Yelp is just like this too on mobile.

toxik 5y ago

So this should be doable on an Apple TV?

flatiron 5y ago

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uYPH-NH3B6k https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uYPH-NH3B6k Pretty good video on optimizations to Mario 64 now that it has been decompiled.

codetrotter 5y ago
I don’t like that video, guy is very arrogant for calling the guys at Nintendo stupid for some of their mistakes. The Super Mario 64 development team was under immense pressure at the time to build and ship this game no doubt. And they did so while pioneering a lot of new areas and techniques in the world of console games. The kind of comments that dude makes say much more about him as a person than anything else – it shows that he is not able to put himself in other peoples shoes. His video does not deserve any views when he acts that way. And I feel sorry for anyone that would work on a team with someone that has the kind of mentality that the creator of that video is showing.