[HN Gopher] Super Mario 64 has been ported to iOS
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Super Mario 64 has been ported to iOS
        
       Author : codetrotter
       Score  : 102 points
       Date   : 2021-10-08 17:08 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.reddit.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.reddit.com)
        
       | vikingcaffiene wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | trykondev wrote:
         | I feel the exact same way. Perfectly articulated. It's personal
         | now for me as well.
        
         | mimsee wrote:
         | For this reason I like to use Teddit.net when browsing on
         | mobile
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
             | Then... good? Isn't that a healthy social network?
        
               | 0des wrote:
               | 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 wrote:
               | I love feeling bad after using the internet, it's the
               | surest sign I have that freedom is alive and well online.
        
         | junon wrote:
         | While I agree with you wholeheartedly, these sorts of comments
         | are discouraged by HN guidelines.
        
           | malka wrote:
           | I dont see on what else to comment, as I, as well as many
           | other commenters, are unable to read the content of the link.
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | anonymousab wrote:
         | While the "download our app goddamnit" popups are clearly user-
         | hostile, I do wonder how much of the rest of the UI is poor due
         | to incompetence. Or to put it more nicely, due to structural
         | and organizational issues.
         | 
         | Most of the new(er) UI seems to be a poorly performing, slow,
         | and inefficient experience on desktop as well. There's a few
         | improved features here or there, but most of the site is just
         | genuinely awful to use - beyond things that are 100%
         | subjective. Buttons and interactions are laggy and way more
         | resources are used than you'd think were necessary. It
         | certainly seems worse for getting ad impressions, ignoring the
         | additional dark patterns it has over the old UI.
         | 
         | Across all of the new UI, the mobile version of it, and the
         | official reddit apps, the experience is quite terrible, in many
         | of the same ways. It seems odd to me that the same mistakes
         | would be made in all of the products, and not solved after so
         | much time and talent were available.
         | 
         | Maybe there's just some product person who likes a lot of bad
         | ideas and has too much power. I dunno. It's weird.
        
       | jmole wrote:
       | Petition to automatically change "www" to "old" in all Reddit
       | links submitted to HN?
        
         | SimeVidas wrote:
         | By the way, you can declare your preference for "old" in
         | Reddit's settings. It has worked pretty well for me on desktop
         | (not sure if old even exists on mobile).
        
         | Qahlel wrote:
         | javascript:(function() { window.location.href =
         | window.location.href.replace("www.reddit", "old.reddit"); })()
        
         | 0des wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
           | 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_...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | hackmiester wrote:
         | Personally, I can't stand that interface, but I also use a
         | userscript to change "old" to "www" automatically, so I guess
         | this wouldn't really bother me. I definitely recommend using
         | the reverse userscript if you have the reverse opinion though.
        
         | aaomidi wrote:
         | Use a browser extension.
        
         | Taywee wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | frankenst1 wrote:
       | https://old.reddit.com/r/SM64PC/comments/q3nm9f/sm64_has_bee...
       | for everyone without the Reddit app.
        
         | MaxBarraclough wrote:
         | Also, here's the GitHub repo: https://github.com/sm64pc/sm64ex
         | 
         | Where things stand regarding copyright law, I'm not certain.
        
         | staticvar wrote:
         | I use Firefox Mobile and have to turn on "Desktop site" to
         | browse Reddit. Is there a way to view the mobile Reddit site?
        
       | muterad_murilax wrote:
       | Uhm, so? Please come back when you have successfully ported it to
       | the original Sony PlayStation or the Sega Saturn.
        
       | tambourine_man wrote:
       | How legal is decompilation? Have we stablished legally accepted
       | ways like in reverse engineering?
        
       | siva7 wrote:
       | 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]
        
       | smoldesu wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | vmception wrote:
       | 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...
        
         | paulryanrogers wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
         | 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 wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | mattbee wrote:
         | My first memory was that it was the first 3D platform game that
         | didn't suck - they designed platforming challenges that worked
         | without the player feeling like they'd been screwed over by the
         | camera. You barely needed to touch the camera, and the stick
         | responded very intuitively to what's on the (very low res)
         | screen.
         | 
         | (In 1997, directly controlling a character with one stick was
         | not an obviously correct choice - some games had "tank"
         | controls where one stick rotated the character/camera and the
         | other went forwards and backwards! Imagine how much that used
         | to suck)
         | 
         | Plus it was a huge game, full of secrets, without being
         | overwhelming. The castle & level structure was easy to
         | understand so you weren't lost.
         | 
         | Also it was tremendously charming by itself, but nostalgic for
         | the crowd who'd grown up on the NES and SNES, like suddenly
         | this kids game we'd known for 14 years can be a whole 3D world
         | - and no other game franchises had reinvented themselves so
         | successfully over such a long period.
         | 
         | Finally it came at a time when the PlayStation was so dominant,
         | and asserted that grown up games didn't just want EDM & edgy
         | violence (to parody Sony's 1997 marketing). In contrast
         | Nintendo had produced a masterpiece through game design
         | discipline, and without compromising this charming childlike
         | aesthetic.
         | 
         | I guess these days some views might look a bit flat but I'm not
         | sure they've improved on the Mario formula since.
        
         | kibwen wrote:
         | Several reasons: 1) it's the ultimate codifier of the 3D
         | platformer genre, 2) it pioneered the idea of a "camera" in
         | third-person 3D games, 3) it was a cultural touchstone in its
         | own day, and is still reaping the benefits of nostalgia, 4)
         | like every physics-based third-person 3D game it has both a
         | high skill ceiling and a bevy of exploitable bugs, making it
         | excellent for speedruns (which are the primary means by which
         | classic games remain in the limelight these days), 5) because
         | of the prior point as well as its cultural impact it was a
         | centralizing influence on the nascent speedrunning community in
         | the mid-2000s, giving it outsized cultural importance in that
         | context as well, 6) it's a Mario game, which remains a relevant
         | brand to this day, 7) it's a pretty decent game (although,
         | naturally, in many aspects it will compare unfavorably to its
         | descendants).
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | Super Mario 64 was a legendary game that basically set the
         | standard for 3D platforming and took a gaming icon from 2D into
         | the 3D realm.
         | 
         | It's also a very straightforward game with few "tricks" to get
         | the most speed out of the hardware. (Matter of fact, it's
         | suboptimal in some ways devs have improved on.) Meaning that
         | decompiling it yields reasonable high-level code. Unlike NES or
         | SNES games, all the graphics stuff was made via draw calls into
         | an API in the console's ROM -- not by manipulating graphics
         | hardware registers directly. So reimplementing that graphics
         | API in terms of, say, OpenGL or Direct3D, automatically yields
         | you high-performance native graphics without having to emulate
         | a hardware part.
         | 
         | So it really is an ideal game for this kind of work in multiple
         | respects: it's familiar, has cross-generational appeal, easy to
         | get high-level code for, and easy to make changes to.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | siva7 wrote:
         | It was back then a memorable landmark game which set off the 3D
         | Evolution in Nintendo Games
        
       | jmknoll wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | natchy wrote:
         | Same. Couldn't view the link and won't be installing an app I
         | have no intention of using.
        
         | frankenst1 wrote:
         | Try prefixing "old":
         | 
         | https://old.reddit.com/r/SM64PC/comments/q3nm9f/sm64_has_bee...
        
           | 0des wrote:
           | 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 wrote:
             | 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 wrote:
               | 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!
        
         | sbaildon wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | toqy wrote:
         | The only way I have found to prevent the behavior is to log in
         | and set a preference not to be prompted
        
         | nseggs wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | germinalphrase wrote:
           | Happy Apollo user here.
        
           | poglet wrote:
           | Do you know of a way that this can be done with Firefox on
           | iOS?
        
           | dt3ft wrote:
           | Thanks, but no thanks. I am not installing an app just to
           | view a website. I have a browser.
        
             | salusinarduis wrote:
             | 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.
        
             | TedShiller wrote:
             | lol so true. Apps are actually inferior for the user these
             | days. Example: I can easily skip YouTube ads on the mobile
             | YouTube website, so I use that. Can't skip ads on the
             | YouTube iOS app.
        
           | MrDunham wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | tediousdemise wrote:
       | I wonder if anyone ported it to a TI calculator yet.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-10-09 23:00 UTC)