[HN Gopher] How to Make a Nintendo 64 Game in 2026
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How to Make a Nintendo 64 Game in 2026
Author : atan2
Score : 465 points
Date : 2026-08-04 13:24 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phoboslab.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phoboslab.org)
| valorzard wrote:
| At some point I reallly gotta sit down and play around with
| Pyrite64, it looks super cool
| boricj wrote:
| I'm tinkering with a PlayStation homebrew (voxel space renderer)
| and development for fifth generation consoles has never been
| easier.
|
| Modern toolchains, programming languages, dev cartridges and
| libraries from the community makes all the difference. Outside of
| some niceties like ICE (gotta write that GDB stub for target
| hardware at some point), it's not that different from what you'd
| experience with modern embedded work.
| dottjt wrote:
| How did they do it back in the day? Was basically everything
| from the tooling etc. just created inhouse from scratch?
| RugnirViking wrote:
| https://www.retroreversing.com/playstation-2-development-
| har...
| inigyou wrote:
| They had stuff, but it was all proprietary. The N64 was a
| stripped-down implementation of the technology used on (high-
| end) SGI graphics workstations of the time. SGI certainly had
| all the required tools.
| inigyou wrote:
| The N64 SDK docs, if not the SDK itself, leaked at one
| point. I would expect that by now the whole thing has
| leaked long ago.
|
| Come to think of it, it must have, because the bit-perfect
| recompilation projects are using the exact compilers from
| the SDK.
| monocasa wrote:
| Yeah, the full SDK leaked decades ago when the system was
| still economically relevant to Nintendo.
| skelpmargyar wrote:
| You can buy CDs of the SGI SDK on ebay.
|
| Recompilation projects aren't bit perfect, only decomps.
| They use a recompiled version of the compilers for Linux
| so that they don't need to emulated with QEMU like they
| used to, though.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Yeah, pretty much.
|
| They provide the devkit hardware, the specification technical
| documentation and the tool chain to compile the binary.
| Bad_CRC wrote:
| The Dreamcast dev kits came with CodeWarrior as an IDE iirc.
| spicyjpeg wrote:
| The same way it's done now with current generation consoles:
| the manufacturer would provide you with SDKs and development
| hardware once you paid them a decent chunk of money and
| signed an NDA. Prior to the fifth generation it was common
| for the SDK to be just an assembler, debugger and register-
| level hardware documentation, leaving the implementation of a
| kernel and game engine up to the game developer.
|
| Sony however decided to provide a full C toolchain based on
| GCC as well as a set of very high level libraries that
| abstracted away basically all aspects of the PS1 [1], all the
| way up to implementing a ready-to-go 3D engine and MIDI
| sequencer. This was an unpopular move as the libraries were
| slow, inefficient and most game developers were used to
| having full control over the hardware, but it also allowed
| inexperienced devs to get started quickly (as proven by the
| thousands of low budget PS1 titles that used the high level
| APIs) and eventually contributed to the popularity of the
| console over its peers with worse tooling.
|
| Sony would eventually go on to release some slightly lower
| level documentation for certain aspects of the console as
| well as APIs that better mapped to how the hardware actually
| worked under the hood. It wasn't however until years later
| that the hardware would be fully reverse engineered at the
| register level [2], and it took even longer for most homebrew
| to move away from the official SDK (which only really started
| happening a few years ago as accurate emulators and homebrew
| SDKs started popping up).
|
| [1] https://psx.schnappy.xyz/sdk/Psy-Q/DOCS/LibOver47.pdf
|
| [2] https://psx-spx.consoledev.net/
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Crazy then that the Bleem and Bleemcast emulator were so
| early!
| inigyou wrote:
| It may actually be helpful to emulation. There's a
| technique called High-Level Emulation, where instead of
| emulating the hardware registers that are twiddled by the
| SDK function, you recognize the call to the SDK function
| itself and emulate the whole function in one go. This can
| provide a massive speedup over low-level emulation, but
| relies on the game primarily using the SDK. This was also
| used to emulate the N64 on Windows 95.
| shoobiedoo wrote:
| There is something so charming about the N64/PS1 era. They were
| so unique in their own right and you could tell at a passing
| glance which system was displaying on the screen even if you
| didn't know what game it was. Two radically different systems
| at the dawning of 3D console games.
|
| I bought a MiSTer for me and my son and we played the heck out
| of Mario Kart 64 and Mario Golf. I think he picked up my
| "gaming is dead now" outlook since he doesn't really have any
| interest in new systems or games anymore
| kevinminehart wrote:
| I love that. My wife and I are hopefully having kids soon and
| that's one thing I really want to encourage. Not to say that
| modern games aren't any good, but there's an increasing lack
| of respect for the player's time and wallet. The goal is
| shifting to maximizing value because they're getting more
| expensive to produce, but increasing the game price itself is
| a cardinal sin. Not to mention that live service games just
| out-earn non-service ones.
|
| I hope it works out. I can see it working in the reverse: I
| play n64/ps1/ps2/gamecube games with my kid, they go to
| school and their friends are playing fortnight or valorant,
| and then you become the bad guy for trying to be an obstacle
| in that.
| inigyou wrote:
| Let your kid go over to their friend's house to play
| Fortnite or Valorant. And let your kid's friend come over
| to yours to play Mario Kart.
|
| I think as adults we get locked into a few things. I
| remember as a kid I would play anything I had access to and
| liked. Now it's more of one or two games at a time.
| operation_moose wrote:
| One thing that's absolutely shocking is how "hard" it is to
| actually play games these days. Sit down with anything
| modern and between software updates, EULAs, load times,
| network congestion, etc. it can easily be 15-20 minutes
| before you actually do something; especially if you're an
| infrequent player.
|
| Pop in a game on N64/Gamecube and you're controlling the
| character within 10 seconds every time.
|
| The modern upgrades for those generations really make them
| great - the 8BitDo kit to make an N64 controller wireless,
| N64 Summercarts, replacing the optical drive in Gamecubes
| with a memory card reader...
| coldpie wrote:
| That's true for the big-advertising-budget AAA slop
| games. Go do a search for "best indie games 2025" and
| you'll find more amazing games made just last year than
| you could spend several whole years playing.
| inigyou wrote:
| of course with the GameCube your 10 seconds is
| significantly Ur into with the big long dyobololodololo
| dobololodelolodelolode PLOP
| auto wrote:
| As a lifer of gaming (with a wife with similar tastes),
| prior to having kids my friends and I would have the
| discussions about "raising our kids right on the old
| games". I can't claim to be some classic purist, my last 25
| years of gaming has been 90%+ Halo, with other competitive
| shooters and hardcore racing sims, but we still own almost
| all of our old systems.
|
| My oldest is 7, and my youngest almost 5, and they came
| into gaming in a round-about way. My sister was visiting
| when the oldest was 3 or 4, and asked to play "an old Sonic
| 3D game". So, I pulled the Dreamcast out of storage, hooked
| everything up, and she played for all of 15 minutes before
| getting bored. However, my daughter was enamored.
| Immediately asked to play and even knowing how janky old
| Sonic was, I obliged.
|
| Honestly, the rest is history. I'm not exaggerating when I
| say that our living room TV currently has a Dreamcast, a
| Gamecube, an Xbox One, PS3, PS4, and Switch hooked up to
| it. Both girls are _huge_ Sonic fans, and play everything
| from rereleases of the Genesis games, to every brand new
| Sonic game that comes out, along with a whole mix of other
| age appropriate games (3D Marios, Animal Crossing, Smash
| Bros, and Mario Kart all being staples in our household).
|
| My point in all of this is that if you expose them to the
| older stuff at a young age and it clicks, they'll explore
| the gaming landscape in their own way. I've also got an 11
| year old brother that plays Fortnite with his friends every
| day, but also is trying to collect every single Lego game
| that's come out since they started the Lego Star Wars,
| Harry Potter, etc. series of games. Kids will like what
| they're going to like, but having parents that are
| enthusiastic about the breadth of what the medium has to
| offer will encourage them to dig being the modern
| offerings.
| kjs3 wrote:
| I dug out the Wii I bought for my daughter for my 6yo
| grandson. He thinks it's great...it's about the only thing
| that he'll put down Roblox for.
| inigyou wrote:
| I heard that Roblox is itself a slop platform to the
| point where someone AI copies every single popular game
| onto Roblox full of micro transactions, and the Devs of
| these games are saying they'd rather you pirate the game
| than play the crappy Roblox knock-off of it.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Wouldn't surprise me. It's an endless stream of
| ruthlessly annoying, seizure inducing 'games' seemingly
| trying to one-up each other as to how over the top silly
| their visuals and audio track can be while having
| virtually the same gameplay for Every Single Game. Add to
| that, it's filled with every dark pattern imaginable to
| try and trick kids in to paying for something, anything.
| Seems like it was from the start designed to be the
| perfect slop utopia.
| inigyou wrote:
| Btw they're getting sued for _actual_ child labor
| violations as it turns out all the dark patterns they
| used to entice children to make games for them amounted
| to _actual employment, paid in company scrip_ which is
| obviously illegal and super illegal when the employee is
| a child.
| kjs3 wrote:
| The only thing surprising about that is someone might be
| held accountable. Maybe good news?
| rightbyte wrote:
| Don't forget NES, SNES and Genesis. 2d games are way easier
| for small kids like 3-4yo. I personally would recommend
| Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in World of Illusions as you
| do Coop and can save the kid a lot.
|
| I was surprised that children that didn't grow up with the
| graphic revolution, does not seem to care about graphics.
| They don't seem to care they are playing 40-30 year old
| games.
| wsc981 wrote:
| I'm a bit of an old-timer now (almost 45), but I enjoy a lot
| of the classics on GOG. And at a price that can't be beat.
| Totally no interest in playing modern games.
| ifjeicjwidj wrote:
| "Old timer" "44 years old"
|
| Now come on. The greybeard act was never believable nor
| interesting.
| 3form wrote:
| >I think he picked up my "gaming is dead now" outlook since
| he doesn't really have any interest in new systems or games
| anymore
|
| This is interesting, as I was about to say that gaming has
| never been more alive than it is now - but it's true that at
| least the developments in hardware are not nearly as exciting
| as they used to be in the past. Maybe that's what he's
| feeling?
| newswasboring wrote:
| The hardware thing is a yes and no type of deal. Yes next
| gen hardware is largely boring but retro gaming hardware is
| amazing right now. I recently acquired a r36s which is an
| amazing system and apparently can also run things like
| Undertale or Stardew valley (yet to try out this part). I'm
| having a blast playing the Pokemon games.
| pizza234 wrote:
| > "gaming is dead now"
|
| One gets the impression that gaming is dead when one's only
| contact with modern gaming consists of reading headlines
| about a handful of AAA games.
|
| In reality, the gaming landscape has never been better, as
| game production has expanded in several directions:
|
| - The barrier to entry into game development has been
| lowered; People who are talented in design but not
| programming now have the opportunity to create games
|
| - AAA budgets have increased; those who enjoy large-scale
| productions will find increasingly large games
|
| - There is still a market for old-school games, so plenty of
| (especially smaller) companies produce retromodern games
|
| Heck, they even still produce commercial Commodore 64 games
| o_O
|
| Of course, there is less room for radical innovation, but
| people do not play only radically innovative games. And
| regardless, innovation still exists today, especially in
| smaller-scale productions.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Hell with emulation the sky is the limit now too. I'd be
| bummed if my steam account exploded today but I've got
| countless other options available to me. Whenever I hear
| people act all snobby and claim there's nothing to play
| today i tell them stop playing modern games and go play all
| the old games that are allegedly so much better and
| perfect. How they can't find anything among modern Indies
| in particular is beyond me, but hey, emulation's right
| there waiting for them. Hell I have RetroArch on my iPhone.
| I was playing a PSP game all last week on mine.
| officeplant wrote:
| it should instead say "AAA gaming is dead now"
|
| All we see out of mainstream AAA gaming is abused devs,
| private equity scalping, and mindless remaster
| regurgitation. Basically going through the same problems as
| Hollywood is with major films. You get a massive banger of
| a production every few years, and the rest is just endless
| money burning and developer harm.
|
| Meanwhile the good indie devs are a dice roll on if they
| are gonna get recognized by the world at large and find
| success, just like small budget films.
|
| My game library gets older by the day and I prefer it that
| way, but love it when an indie game bubbles to the surface
| and gets beloved by enough fans to break into the news
| cycle. Itch.io is the only place I look for games anymore
| unless something I need for the collection hits GoG
| finally.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| This is a very rose tinted take. AAA game development was
| far more brutal in the 90s.
|
| Go look up the development of Sonic Xtreme in the 90s. A
| brutal development process in the 90s that led to more
| thsn half the development team camping out in Redwood
| City Sega office building for months until they all got
| so sick half the team went on medical leave. Or Quake,
| where the game development process literally broke the
| team.
| officeplant wrote:
| >Or Quake, where the game development process literally
| broke the team.
|
| Going by interviews with the team over the decades, they
| had clashing personalities and poor leadership.
|
| > AAA game development was far more brutal in the 90s.
|
| Honestly it's probably always been brutal going back even
| to the early days of Atari. Companies like EA have spent
| three decades destroying beloved studios for profit, only
| to now be chewed up and spit out by PE/VC bastards
| themselves. A fitting end really.
| inigyou wrote:
| But they released the game and the game was good. Unlike
| today.
| zuzululu wrote:
| Main issue with AAA gaming was studios consulting people
| who wanted to tell gamers what they should want, using
| their capital on paying influencers and media to demonize
| said gamers for rejecting their games and so on.
|
| That's what pisses off the mostly straight hetrosexual
| male crowd that make up most of the gaming market.
|
| A big reason why many east asian game studios are doing
| so well by rejecting that tried and failed formula from
| the West.
| ifjeicjwidj wrote:
| > That's what pisses off the mostly straight hetrosexual
| male crowd that make up most of the gaming market.
|
| Honestly, the hell kinda remark is that?
|
| It's nothing to do with sexuality or "companies telling
| you what you want" but everything to do with companies
| putting out complete and utter slop and people ACTUALLY
| buying it all. They wouldn't waste all that time and
| investment money if they knew there wasn't a market for
| it, but guess what? There is.
|
| Gamers seem to have the memory span of a goldfish. Horse
| armour? Bad. GTA VI at 80 bucks and no physical release
| on consoles? OMG YAAAAAASSSS GIVE ME MORE OF THE SAME
| HOOKER-SEX SIMULATOR WITH CRIMINAL ACTS SPRINKLED ON
| TOP!!!
|
| Don't complain about gaming companies' behaviour if you
| keep giving your money to them.
| officeplant wrote:
| You don't have to go full GamerGate non-sense to find
| plenty of issues that are hurting the AAA market. Private
| equity, shareholders, and greed have been far more
| damaging to gaming.
| zuzululu wrote:
| why can't you see that their greed has enabled the
| dynamics that brought AAA market to its where it is ? you
| dont think PE has influence on media with their vast
| resources ?
| inigyou wrote:
| PE wants profit, why would they hurt profit?
| pizza234 wrote:
| > it should instead say "AAA gaming is dead now"
|
| > All we see out of mainstream AAA gaming is abused devs,
| private equity scalping, and mindless remaster
| regurgitation. Basically going through the same problems
| as Hollywood is with major films. You get a massive
| banger of a production every few years, and the rest is
| just endless money burning and developer harm.
|
| The production ethics and the product are two distinct
| aspects.
|
| Regarding the product itself, definitely the AAA gaming
| industry is, like Hollywood, a dysfunctional production
| model, but that doesn't mean that it's dead in terms of
| quality - some franchises do maintain high quality (Doom
| has been exceptional in this sense) but even in terms of
| new IP, in average, there at least couple of high quality
| entries in average, every year. Things could go better,
| but they're certainly far from "dead".
| ColdStream wrote:
| My take is a bit reductionist but I have found that there
| is this huge divide nowadays between the AAA top of the
| town and the indie games at the bottom.
|
| AAA you know what you are getting, big brash but usually
| really polished cutting edge stuff but also designed by
| commitment.
|
| Then you have indie games that are high ambition but also
| very limited in what they can achieve. So you get a lot of
| things with brilliant ideas but dont always stick the
| landing. Two recent ones I have been going through are
| Skate story and Gecko gods. Both have wonder ambition but
| you keep hitting those issues when you realise, yeah it is
| an indie title.
|
| There is a middle ground but it is so hard to find in
| between those two extremes.
| inigyou wrote:
| Maybe that's why it's dead. Do you know what triggered the
| _first_ video game crash? It was a flood of so low quality
| games that people gave up on the whole video gaming
| industry. No one wanted a game or a console until Nintendo
| rescued the industry with the NES lockout chip enforcing
| their quality control.
| ryan_n wrote:
| I grew up playing diablo II and super smash bros (super
| nintendo before that!). While I don't have as much time for
| it these days, gaming couldn't be farther from dead, IMO.
| There are incredible games and worlds being created both from
| AAA and indie studios alike.
| tayo42 wrote:
| It's interesting people have this perspective, there are
| some Numbers that support it. But there endless layoffs,
| studios closing and it's impossible to get a game dev
| related job at the moment.
| bluedino wrote:
| > you could tell at a passing glance which system was
| displaying on the screen even if you didn't know what game it
| was
|
| I always felt the same about the look of PS2 games
| StilesCrisis wrote:
| I demand Sega Saturn representation in this list!
| spicyjpeg wrote:
| I am still amazed my own minimalist PS1 tutorial series [1]
| became as popular as it did, given that prior to it basically
| all learning material on the internet was written around the
| decent-for-the-time-but-horrible-now Sony SDK and often based
| on 30-year-old example code full of 30-year-old C practices (in
| particular the complete disregard for aliasing and concurrency,
| which resulted in plenty of headaches once people started using
| those ancient libraries and example code with modern GCC). We
| even have bleeding-edge C++ SDK options [2] complete with an
| STL and coroutine support, so if anybody here wants to try
| their hand at PS1 homebrew development I would highly encourage
| checking out the modern tooling we have now.
|
| [1] https://github.com/spicyjpeg/ps1-bare-metal
|
| [2] https://github.com/grumpycoders/pcsx-
| redux/tree/main/src/mip...
| pjmlp wrote:
| To put this into perspective for youngsters, that horrible
| Sony SDK was considered a wonder for its time, and what
| kickstarted the movement away from Assembly into C for home
| console development, as main language.
|
| Until then, only arcades had already made the switch.
|
| On PS2, PS2Linux, Dreamcast there was already C++ support, by
| the way.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I've started to adapt my historic accounting of gaming away
| from hardware centric (console generations) and toward
| languages and compilers, and the force-multiplication they
| provided to developers which is tangibly evident in the
| products. Though these do correlate strongly with orders of
| magnitude of RAM being made available.
|
| - Physical logic gate era of gaming.
|
| - Assembly era
|
| - C era
|
| - OOP era
|
| - Interpreted languages and game logic living in scripts on
| top of c++ engines
|
| - Fully Gen-AI era?
| ifjeicjwidj wrote:
| > Fully Gen-AI era?
|
| Yeah, no.
|
| Your historic accounting is not to be trusted by any
| means if "gen-AI era" is something that you really
| believe is happening.
| inigyou wrote:
| It's happening whether you like it not, because
| billionaires love gen-AI and they're the ones who decide
| what gets made.
| monocasa wrote:
| FWIW, interpreted languages living on top of a native
| code engine has been a pretty common theme throughout. It
| goes back to early PC days (when PC meant IBM, Apple II,
| etc), where it was common that engine would be written in
| ASM, but it would implement a VM with all of the game
| business logic would exist to ease porting to very
| differnt systems. Almost all the early LucasArts games
| were written this way (hence ScummVM), Another World, the
| Sierra Games, etc.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Zork comes to mind. I am pretty sure there are plenty
| more really early.
| yellowapple wrote:
| I've been on-and-off writing a Zig library for writing N64
| games and it's indeed pretty wild how getting working code was
| as simple as telling the compiler to use LLVM's MIPS III
| target.
|
| Of course, getting working code that actually does anything
| useful is a much different story (it's taking multiple days
| just to write the wrappers for RDP commands, for example; lots
| of cross-referencing between N64Brew wiki pages v. official SGI
| docs v. libdragon source code v. Peter Lemon's assembly code to
| figure out what all the different bitpacked fields really mean
| and how to best represent them), but it still feels magical
| that I can just use an ordinary toolchain and not some ancient
| proprietary monstrosity.
| ayanb wrote:
| Super interesting article - thanks for sharing your journey. As
| AI slop takes over the internet, well written and original
| technical content like these will be important.
|
| Also,
|
| 2026 web dev: 4MB of JavaScript to render a button. 2026 N64 dev:
| entire FPS in 1MB
| inigyou wrote:
| Have you seen .kkreiger?
| stewx wrote:
| I am in the process of using Claude Opus 5 to build an N64 game,
| and it really works. I've written no code and it is able to build
| a fully functional game.
|
| I got it to write a skill for driving the Ares emulator via GDB
| Remote Serial Protocol and it uses that for its feedback loop.
| Flashtoo wrote:
| What do you get out of that? The utility of having the end
| product (a generated game for an obsolete console) seems pretty
| small, and personally I would think the fun is in learning
| about the inner workings of the time capsule that is 90s
| hardware. Would you mind explaining?
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Not the OP, but when I was kid I used to draw game level for
| 8-bit systems back when I wasn't allowed on a computer
| (screen time).
|
| My point is, people get enjoyment out of game design too.
| It's not just about nerding out on technical specs.
| lucideer wrote:
| I guess the curiosity here is in why game design for a
| modern target platform wouldn't garner the same enjoyment.
| gambiting wrote:
| It's just not the same. I made games for the PSP and Vita
| and it's "different" than making games for Windows or
| Playstation/Xbox. There's something about seeing your
| creation on a tiny handheld. I guess maybe nowadays we
| got desensitized to it because our phones are actual
| supercomputers which can run Fortnite without breaking a
| sweat, but making a device with 2MB of ram play _your_
| game as you imagined it is just hyper cool and (for me
| personally) is incredibly satisfying.
| trescenzi wrote:
| If you enjoy this sort of thing I'd highly recommend
| pico-8 and tic-80. Both have pretty full featured dev
| environments and have a set of restrictions that make
| developing for them fun.
| inigyou wrote:
| But they aren't real hardware platforms.
| gambiting wrote:
| Yep, I made several games for the Pico-8, it's really
| really fun.
| lucideer wrote:
| I'm not trying to be dismissive here - I am the type to
| be into the nitty gritty nerdy stuff that using Claude
| skips, BUT I have exactly zero experience developing
| anything for a legacy hardware platform in any capacity
| (with or without Claude) so genuinely curious to learn
| varying perspectives here.
|
| Is it about the idea of the platform having limited
| capabilities (e.g. akin to Game Bub or MiSTer) or about
| tactile aesthetics (e.g. possibly vaguely comparable -
| though not really - to r36t or play.date) or something
| different entirely.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Honestly I think part of it is just that it's cool to see
| software running on this platform. I remember coding some
| trash apps on the 3DS back in the day simply because I
| could. It was great seeing code running somewhere it
| isn't strictly "supposed to"
| pelasaco wrote:
| > My point is, people get enjoyment out of game design too.
|
| The plot-twist here is: The game design is made by Claude
| too :)
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, there is plenty of people out there who enjoy the
| process of making a game(they have a really clear idea of
| gameplay mechanics they think would be fun when put together)
| but they really don't enjoy programming at all. I guess it's
| kinda the same - I Want to see my game happen, I don't want
| to code it. Which isn't _that_ different from where all the
| other tools are leading us anyway. Nowadays you can make a
| video game by just downloading an engine and building
| everything using the included scripting language most of the
| time - no need to understand rendering, IO, input or anything
| else.
|
| There's a time and place for everything.
| bilekas wrote:
| > Nowadays you can make a video game by just downloading an
| engine and building everything using the included scripting
| language most of the time - no need to understand
| rendering, IO, input or anything else.
|
| I don't disagree, but I don't see it as a positive, looking
| at the current game releases and their performance being
| shockingly unoptimised, there is a lot of lost real world
| value in knowing the lower level details, it's like
| anything really, sometimes you have to do the
| hard/unappealing work to create your best work.
| gambiting wrote:
| Hmmm look, I can offer you my perspective on this.
|
| I've been a low level engine programmer in video games
| all my working life. I worked on a few AAA games that
| sold 20M+ copies, I'm not saying this to boast, I'm
| saying this to say I know how the sausage is made. My
| literal day to day job is fixing issues like "The RHI
| thread on the Switch takes 0.5ms longer than it should"
| and optimizing things as much as possible.
|
| I think if you asked me few years ago, I would have also
| taken the same stance you did - that these tools make it
| "too easy" and we get unoptimized crap out there.
|
| But you know what, nowadays I feel like I mellowed out a
| lot. A lot of these so called "friendslop" games are
| horrible in terms of technical work. And you know what?
| They still bring joy to people. They still make people
| laugh and have a great time with the people they like.
| One of my favourite memories from a game I worked on was
| reading comments from people who said they were looking
| forward to just playing the game after work in the
| evening with their friends. Was optimizing the IO
| performance on PS4 essential to make the game happen?
| Sure. But what mattered more was that the game was
| actually fun to play.
|
| Nowadays I see the improvement in tooling as nothing but
| a positive. There will always be hardcore engine
| programmers who know how to do this stuff, I have zero
| doubt about it. But allowing people to just download an
| engine and _make the thing_ is absolutely fantastic. To
| say that it 's bad - to me personally - that's
| gatekeeping. Saying you can't make a game unless you know
| how to write a renderer or a physics system is so
| offputting to people who want to make a game but just
| don't know how - we should be encouraging them, not
| chastising them for it. Little Big Planet did it well as
| one of the first games of that kind, if you recall that -
| just saying, here's a sandbox, make a thing that brings
| joy to other people. Isn't that what gaming is about?
|
| And on a more serious, business side - it's kinda crazy
| that Epic lets you use UE for FREE until you start making
| serious money on the game that you made. You can start a
| company, hire people, and just start making the game you
| want to make without paying anything for the tooling.
| Very few other companies in the world let you do this.
| bilekas wrote:
| You know thats completely fair. I'm not in the game
| industry but I see some friends and what they do and I do
| have to admit, I wouldn't be able for it so it's not
| really fair for me to critisise.
|
| > it's kinda crazy that Epic lets you use UE for FREE
| until you start making serious money on the game that you
| made.
|
| Thinking about how powerfull UE is, it is kind of insane.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| If your game fits in the bounds of N64 hardware it makes
| perfect sense IMO. You basically get virtually all modern
| platforms for free. Much easier than wrestling with all the
| modern API that are "platform independent" but not really.
| yellowapple wrote:
| While I agree with you, I think it's interesting that LLMs
| have progressed enough to be able to write working code even
| for niche and heavily-constrained platforms like the N64. I'm
| sure it helps that modern toolchains make that easier (I
| don't expect very many LLMs to be able to put up with the old
| Windows 9x or IRIX toolchains, to say the least!).
| inigyou wrote:
| Just as there are people who like programming for its own
| sake, there are also people who like making AI do things, for
| its own sake.
| GlacierFox wrote:
| Urgh. Cool story...
| pelasaco wrote:
| if I am not wrong, the game described in this article, is
| presented in this video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gOJUEcKYRk, from Palmer
| Luckey[1]. Wild this guy find time and energy for this side
| quest. That's passion.
|
| References: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Luckey
| msephton wrote:
| Each person that dies by his weapons of war makes him stronger.
| ninjin wrote:
| Tried to see if it was possible to buy the Rom itself. But it
| seems like you would need to buy a physical copy at this point:
|
| https://modretro.com/products/xibalba-64
| rightbyte wrote:
| Does compatibility with M64 imply N64 compat?
| bakugo wrote:
| If you go into the "Specs" tab on the right, it explicitly
| lists the original N64 as compatible.
| phoboslab wrote:
| Yes. The game was mostly developed with an original N64.
|
| The cartridges from Modretro only work on NTSC N64s, though.
| I'm told the next production run should work on PAL, too.
| negative_zero wrote:
| Obligatory link to an interview with three of the Goldeneye
| developers about the development of the game. I found it very
| fascinating.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=bNN9XhGZ3Yw
|
| (Also The Centre for Computing History YouTube channel is
| seriously underrated)
| ltsSmitty wrote:
| Great writeup. Thanks author!
| FlavioMacedo wrote:
| Great work! I didn't even know it was still possible to publish
| new games for old consoles like the N64.
| 101008 wrote:
| It may be counterintuitive at first, but why wouldn't be
| possible? It's one of the perks of "offline" hardware without
| subscriptions or DRM. You build a piece of hardware (cartridge)
| that attaches to another one (console) and it works. As long as
| the console works, there shouldn't be a problem.
| cubefox wrote:
| > It may be counterintuitive at first, but why wouldn't be
| possible?
|
| For the same reason it wasn't possible at the time for a
| third-party to make N64 cartridges themselves to avoid
| Nintendo's fees. But I assume these lockout chips are
| replicated or circumvented by now.
| inigyou wrote:
| Fairly recently the chip was studied in detail and
| replicated. But like most systems of that era, I believe it
| was circumvented fairly quickly by pirates. The easiest way
| would be to piggyback a licensed cartridge - unlike the
| NES, it has to be one with the same region and bootloader
| as there are several lockout chip variants, but that basic
| technique still works.
| cubefox wrote:
| I never saw a piggyback cartridge at the time though, or
| one that was obviously unlicensed. Of course, this could
| have more to do with Nintendo's legal pressure than with
| technological possibility.
| inigyou wrote:
| I think a lot of the early flashcarts were piggybacks. I
| was never into that scene though.
| monocasa wrote:
| The main pirating route at the time (a device (oh which
| there were several) that sat under the N64 and had either
| an Iomega Zip drive or a CD drive for holding ROMs), had
| a port for inserting a real cartridge to use its lockout
| chip.
| cubefox wrote:
| Yeah, though piracy is not the same as publishing
| unlicensed original games (bootlegs) like Xibalba 64.
| inigyou wrote:
| As far as Nintendo's concerned, it is. Their method of
| piracy prevention at this point was putting a lockout
| chip on every cartridge, and attaching their license fee
| to the lockout chip. Your homebrew cartridge needs one
| too.
| phoboslab wrote:
| Related to this, every ROM needs a "boot loader" that has
| to be signed and is verified by the lockout chip.
|
| Nintendo's boot code is under copyright and thus cannot be
| used. So the boot code distributed with Libdragon is signed
| by finding a hash collision with a brute force tool running
| on the GPU[1]. Fun stuff!
|
| [1] https://github.com/DragonMinded/libdragon/tree/trunk/bo
| ot#bu...
| yellowapple wrote:
| The "development" version of that is even crazier: it's a
| very tiny signed bootloader that does nothing but copies
| the "real" bootloader into memory, then trampolines into
| it, such that even developing your own IPL3 doesn't
| require having to re-brute-force the signature for every
| build.
|
| And on top of that, libdragon's IPL3 doesn't just blindly
| copy the first megabyte of ROM code into RDRAM like the
| official Nintendo one does, but actually expects the ROM
| data after it to be a full-blown ELF executable, which it
| parses out and copies pieces of to the specified places.
|
| Pretty slick stuff.
| inigyou wrote:
| They might be able to get around it with an affirmative
| defense in court, but they obviously don't want to, lest
| they lose.
|
| But it's legal to use the Sony and Nintendo _trademarks_
| in a similar way. The court ruled that since they are
| checked by the console, there was no way not to use them,
| and Nintendo lost their protection by doing so.
| chungusamongus wrote:
| Nintendo is notoriously litigious.
| pezezin wrote:
| IANAL, but my understanding is that whatever patents and
| industrial design rights Nintendo had on the N64 expired
| long ago, so replicating N64 hardware is perfectly legal as
| long as you don't use the original logos and trademarks.
| jackb4040 wrote:
| Agree. There is a wall coming for "retro" video game
| nostalgia once we reach the end of the purpose-specific
| hardware era. Like, you can build an emulator for WiiWare
| games, but what does it mean to release a "new" WiiWare game
| when they're just built using an API like OpenGL which is
| still being used in new games today? What does following the
| constraints of an older system like that result in besides
| just another, lower, quality setting? What does "retro"
| Fortnite look like in 10 years besides just worse shaders?
| inigyou wrote:
| Well, one thing is that it would run on a Wii.
|
| The NDS graphics processor takes binary-encoded OpenGL
| commands through a FIFO, didn't stop anyone writing NDS
| homebrew.
| coryadams wrote:
| "Modretro customer service address and, to my surprise, heard
| back from the head of publishing within a day."
|
| This makes me want to jump in. But also, I wonder how many people
| will ever buy and play your game.
|
| Does Modretro's target market buy this type of stuff? Or are they
| the type to just download and emulator and ROM.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| > Does Modretro's target market buy this type of stuff? Or are
| they the type to just download and emulator and ROM.
|
| Speaking as someone who spent all weekend playing his new M64:
| Yes, the target market often does buy the cartridge. I've got a
| brand new copy of Xeno Crisis sitting on my shelf, although
| Xibalba was a close 2nd. (Tied with Buck Bumble ;) )
|
| That said, there's definitely a crowd that would rather buy a
| summercart and pirate all their roms. Personally, I'm
| interested in more thoughtful and intentional electronics, so
| I'm attracted to the idea of old school "buy the game on a
| cartridge" mentality.
| someperson wrote:
| I wonder the dropoff for launch titles versus on-going new
| releases.
| Taikhoom2010 wrote:
| So is Nintendo Online a popular service? I'm curious if I should
| get it.
| crest wrote:
| Strange choice to go for a raycaster with sprites on the N64. The
| hardware is basically begging to be fed textured polygons.
| phoboslab wrote:
| All geometry is rendered as textured polygons. The raycasting
| step only determines visibility.
|
| But yes, the N64 isn't particularly well suited for this type
| of game (or anything 2D, really). I didn't know that when I
| started the project.
| functionmouse wrote:
| Raycasters in the modern age are generally an artistic
| decision, not a technical one.
| Mizza wrote:
| Libdragon has been improved massively in the past year or so,
| there are now simple demo games that show capabilities far beyond
| the original N64 games (bump mapping textures, HDR, seamless
| loading of massive overworld maps, etc.) Really talented core
| team, fun to give them a follow.
|
| Demos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP8g2ngHftY
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I recall seeing a demo of an N64 driving an Oculus Rift.
| phoboslab wrote:
| That[1] was James Lambert, who was also responsible for
| Portal 64[2] and is now developing a completely new N64 game.
| His Youtube channel is worth a follow.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha3fDU-1wHk
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAkSHzR-P7M
| TZubiri wrote:
| Anyone know a vendor that might sell SummerCart in amateur
| quantities? Doesn't need to do that specifically, but maybe
| there's custom low volume board makers, like with 3D printer
| economics.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Are you looking to make homemade homebrew carts? If the M64
| carts are anything like ModRetro's chromatic carts, the boards
| will be flashable. ModRetro has also stated they're planning on
| open-sourcing the design, so if we're lucky there could be a
| large variety of people making flashable blank carts in the
| near future.
|
| I'm really looking forward to the Epilogue 64 Operator. I have
| the GB Operator, and it's been amazing to be able to flash
| romhacks onto carts and play on bona-fide hardware.
| someperson wrote:
| As open-source hardware they are on AliExpress no problem
| eltondegeneres wrote:
| [flagged]
| barrowclift wrote:
| The article isn't "about" ModRetro, please engage with the
| actual material instead of off-topic political tirades.
| eltondegeneres wrote:
| > Modretro agreed to publish the game as a physical launch
| title for their M64 (a modern N64 clone), complete with
| cartridge, packaging and manual!
|
| The article says the game is published by ModRetro.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| Good to see Kotaku's admirable journalistic practice of posting
| a list of histrionic tweets is alive and well
| Keyframe wrote:
| AWS (and many others) is also then war profiteering company
| with JWCC, C2E, WildandStormy, not to mention all the other
| defense contractors that rely on their computer power to design
| and operate mass surveillance and killing of people. Is your
| agenda selectively blind?
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| not OP but yes, i consider the tech sphere's dive into mass
| surveillance to be war profiteering and have eliminated or
| minimized several in my life including amazon and spotify.
| vrganj wrote:
| This is why I exited the tech industry.
|
| They've all become war profiteers and fascist enablers.
|
| The only way to live with my conscience was to choose not to
| be complicit.
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| Why are you presenting your unfounded assumption as a gotcha?
| Do you have any basis whatsoever to believe GP supports AWS?
| Keyframe wrote:
| for the same reason GP assumed war profiteering. Guy is
| maybe and probably, based on his talks, interested in his
| homeland's defense. Maybe he's in it for the tech. Every
| defense company is war profiteering and thus unethical,
| especially this one? That's not only uncalled for, but
| absolutely cancerous thought as exemplified by the thread
| and poison it spreads.
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| Nobody has invaded the US in nearly a century, nor will
| they ever again with the advent of nuclear weapons; to
| this day no nuclear state has ever been invaded, least of
| all one which is isolated from any conceivable rival by
| two oceans. Ergo, no American in the business of
| manufacturing weapons is in it for "his homeland's
| defense". Peace is an option, if only Americans would
| allow it to be.
| inigyou wrote:
| Did AWS post this article?
| lurk2 wrote:
| I saw a video from the ModRetro YouTube channel a few days ago
| and thought it was AI because it only had 10,000 subscribers.
| They've been at it since March of 2024 and have less than
| 400,000 views spread across 54 videos. Strong attention economy
| recession indicator that even a memeified billionaire can't get
| organic attention on a platform like that.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| that's wild, it's not like the videos are hosted on an
| irrelevant platform like bluesky or something. Who knows
| Dig1t wrote:
| This is the same concept as "separating art from the artist".
| i.e. can you appreciate the creation without associating it
| with the personal foibles of the creator?
|
| If you went around scrutinizing the personal failings of every
| single creator and deciding not to support their art, you would
| cut yourself off from a huge chunk of human creation. Creators
| and builders are disproportionately imperfect people.
|
| Harvey Weinstein, for example, is a serial abuser and genuinely
| evil person. He also was involved in an enormous number of
| Hollywood productions. Do you go out of your way to make sure
| to never watch or consume media associated with him? My guess
| is probably not. It's impractical and also I think the net
| benefit of this mindset, where we only allow people with
| certain moral characteristics to succeed, is a loss for
| society.
| ferbivore wrote:
| Yes. It's not impractical, it's baseline human decency.
| inigyou wrote:
| I think one thing we can all agree on is that if you despite
| the artist, you shouldn't give him money.
| bofadeez wrote:
| The only "artist" that matters anymore are AI art
| generators. Human artists are done.
|
| Why would you waste time on anything other than the top
| quality AI art?
| wombat-man wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about it. I don't agree with how my
| country often ends up using these technologies, but defense
| tech and weaponry still seems pretty necessary. The US is not
| the only one doing this. Should they wait for their adversaries
| to have the upper hand? I don't think it's such a bad thing, as
| long as they can put the right people in charge. That's a whole
| other problem.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > which makes human-killing robots
|
| I mean, that's just defense companies in general now. Would you
| rather have your own soldiers dying in a war, rather than
| robots? Ukraine is using AI in their targeting, is that
| something you condemn?
|
| This is no different from the invention of machine guns or
| artillery. Yes, it's sad that these things will be used in war
| to kill (more) people. But intentionally avoiding that
| technology means you're just handicapping your own military and
| sacrificing others' lives for your principles.
| ferbivore wrote:
| Anduril is not "just" anything.
| veeti wrote:
| Well, are those humans Iranian schoolchildren or Russian troops
| invading Ukraine? Hard to make a judgment without knowing.
| CMay wrote:
| He's not a war profiteer, he's a peace profiteer. His
| philosophy is peace through strength, not profit through death.
| He even strongly emphasizes saving lives through weapons with
| better precision, which has been the trajectory of US weapons
| design for many decades. Russia is over there killing
| everything in sight and leveling entire cities including
| thousands of schools.
|
| Your claim is similar to saying nobody should own a gun,
| because it should be illegal to defend yourself or others. So
| everyone who owns any kind of weapon is evil and bad? Only bad
| people are allowed to own weapons and we should just roll over?
|
| Nobody should defend Ukraine from Russia? Anduril has been
| helping Ukraine since very early on.
|
| Let the guy have his little side modding hobby.
| orangedog wrote:
| Starting a weapon company is different from owning a gun. You
| have control over that gun. Your weapons company, those
| weapons will be used to kill innocent people, there is no
| doubt. Weapons don't only get used for clean operations in
| war and there is almost always collateral damage.
|
| It is a decision to start producing regardless of how well-
| intentioned it is. You will be profiting off of people being
| maimed and killed. Various people thought they solved war
| through new weapons only to create more effective killing
| machines. That's what WW1 was.
|
| Palmer does not have to work on weapons nor justify making
| them. Building tech that will be used to murder people (and
| yes, it will happen) is a decision. Not funding his other
| hobby when he's getting money off US military contracts is
| hardly breaking his bank. He wants to build weapons? I don't
| want to buy his products. Easy.
|
| Building more efficient weapons does not make us safer. Every
| dollar saved through "strength" and better weapons matters
| little to the parents who lost their kid when the most
| precise weapon in the world kills a bunch of schoolchildren
| like it did at the start of the Iran war. If you can't
| gaurantee your weapons won't get used for that, why would you
| build them? You cannot.
|
| I thought Tony Stark already made this point.
| CMay wrote:
| The problem is that China, Russia, Iran and so on have all
| been accelerating their weapons manufacturing. Go complain
| to them.
|
| If nobody in the world was manufacturing any weapons and it
| was fully observable from space, nobody would have cause to
| manufacture these kinds of weapons. We do not live in that
| world.
|
| At some point, any reasonable person should agree that if a
| country exists in an environment that contains many threats
| it might need to defend itself or others from, then it
| makes complete sense for it to develop weapons towards that
| aim. Countries are not people, people are people. So people
| make the weapons.
|
| It just so happens that Palmer Luckey is a person. He can't
| sell weapons to any random person or country he wants, he
| can only sell them to the US or with permission of the US
| to a country that the US has a strategic interest in
| defending.
|
| Precision weapons have helped reduce casualties. This is a
| fact. Please try to contradict this fact in the face of
| napalm bombing and nuclear bombs of yesteryears. Please try
| to tell me that precision weapons aren't better than just
| randomly aiming artillery at the sky and letting'er rip.
| Please do. I want to hear your well founded argument for
| this.
| orangedog wrote:
| Hey, if your argument is that somebody has to build
| weapons, then that's your argument. I don't believe
| that's the situation and building weapons only encourages
| other countries to do the same. Notice virtually all of
| Russia's justifications are about US aggression, rightly
| or wrongly.
|
| Is it more efficient than napalm? Great. It still will be
| used to kill people which I find to be gross, especially
| when innocents will die, too. If somebody has to build
| weapons and somebody has to fund said weapons maker, I'm
| glad it doesn't have to be me. Doesn't have to be Palmer
| either.
| CMay wrote:
| If killing people is gross (which I agree with), then we
| should kill the people that kill the people, right? Or
| should people that kill people run rampant, because
| nobody should ever kill them?
|
| If they should be killed, then they should be killed with
| the minimum number of civilian casualties possible.
|
| Countless millions of people died in World War 1 and
| World War 2. So many people died that we only have
| estimates, because there were too many to count
| individually.
|
| If nobody pushed back against Japan, Germany, Russia,
| North Korea, China, Iraq, Iran and so on, the world would
| not be a better place. It would be a place where full on
| global war was legitimized as a viable global domination
| strategy. And global domination was in fact the goal back
| then. The problem is, we aren't sure that goal has ever
| gone away.
|
| As a result, the entire world is a chess board with
| smaller countries being manipulated or compromised in
| various ways for some other grand strategy. For many
| years now we've accepted that there would largely be some
| sort of equilibrium or status quo. Except these smaller
| countries also have a mind of their own and their people
| universally reject being controlled and manipulated.
|
| Russia with Ukraine. China with Taiwan. North Korea with
| South Korea. Venezuela with Guyana. Iran with Israel,
| Iraq, Yemen, etc. Now suddenly all of these countries are
| all the prowl almost simultaneously. If you only look at
| US action, look at the world we're reacting to. It's not
| as simple as some political propagandist hitjob soundbite
| on TV being the complete answer.
| wat10000 wrote:
| We're talking about a company whose primary customer is the
| US military. Said military is currently involved in a
| pointless war of aggression. It has carried out unprovoked
| attacks on at least two other countries just this year alone.
| When was the last time the it was used in self defense?
|
| "Peace through strength" is a fine motto, but you can't claim
| that motto and then turn around and base your business on
| selling to an entity that routinely starts non-defensive
| wars.
| CMay wrote:
| If you don't understand history or what's going on in the
| world, everything will seem pointless and you will fall
| easy prey to anyone telling you what you should believe.
|
| You have so many tools at your disposal for learning, you
| really have no reason to just have no idea what is going on
| unless you just don't prioritize your time that way. In
| which case, it's ok to understand that you don't know, but
| why hold your opinion so strongly then?
| wat10000 wrote:
| Come out and say what you want to say. Don't give me this
| nonsense about how I have no idea what's going on and you
| won't even deign to explain where you disagree.
| CMay wrote:
| It is completely logically unsupportable that the war is
| pointless, so your claim is so flat and empty that there
| is no need to do anything other than point out that
| weakness in your claim.
|
| Go do a couple searches real quick and see what some of
| the points of the war may be. Many of them will be
| incorrect or incomplete, but you will come back with at
| least some reasons that exist.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I was talking about the war with Iran. Is that what
| you're referring to here? Just making sure, because this
| is a pretty wild thing to say about that particular war.
|
| Sure, I can do searches and find people giving various
| reasons for the war. What's your point? Am I not allowed
| to disagree with people? If I can do a couple searches
| real quick and find some people saying A, I'm not allowed
| to claim not-A?
|
| I don't see how logic dictates that there's a point to
| this war. I understand that some people believe the war
| is being carried out to stop Iran from getting a nuclear
| weapon or whatever, but how does it "logically" follow
| that there is necessarily a point to it?
| CMay wrote:
| Ok, so that's one reason. It's not the only reason,
| because we don't commit so many assets for simply one
| reason. It usually requires many simultaneous overlapping
| reasons for us to do that. It is not a simple careless
| whimsical thing to send that much military to a place for
| no reason.
|
| So let's start with the nuclear thing.
|
| Russia is a bad actor. It treats its own people poorly,
| doesn't have a free press, doesn't allow free speech, it
| blocks a bunch of the internet so it's harder for people
| to find the truth. You get thrown in prison because they
| don't like you. Under the Soviet Union they killed
| millions of their own people in stupid famines from poor
| authoritarian decision making. They throw you at the meat
| grinder of the front lines of poor wars and destroy
| everything, because they do not value human life. They
| got nukes to make their bad behavior invulnerable. Ok, so
| fine, the world is a little worse off, but that's Russia.
|
| Russia spread communism to Korea, since they have had a
| long-term strategic interest in Korea as a basing for
| attacking Japan in order to control more warm water
| ports. Japan and Russia have had conflict around this
| since the 1800s. It's not new. So Korean war. Now North
| Korea has nukes. They make their people suffer. The world
| is a little worse off, but that's North Korea.
|
| Russia spread communism to China for many reasons too.
| China killed countless millions of people through poor
| authoritarian decision making too, through yet more
| famines. They kill any of their own people who don't
| agree. They took over Tibet by force. They execute more
| of their own people than the entire world executes,
| combined. They started building up the largest military
| mankind has ever seen and now they have nukes. Now that
| they feel invulnerable, they engage in the largest
| influence and interference campaign in world history,
| manipulating countries at scale and spreading extreme
| propaganda worldwide. It is all pervasive in social media
| comments, YouTube and elsewhere. I've seen this shift
| happen personally, slowly. It is not organic. So fine,
| the world is a little worse off. That's China.
|
| Russia tried to spread communism to Iran and helped the
| Islamic radicals overthrow the government, thinking the
| communists could have some control afterwards or exist as
| an alternative party. Instead the Islamic revolutionaries
| kill thousands of communists to say, "no, go away." Now
| we have an Iran that is explicitly friendly with Russia,
| China, North Korea and Venezuela, learning from North
| Korea's nuclear program, sending its scientists there. It
| engages in Islamic revolution in a way similar to how the
| Soviet Union was trying to spread communism before World
| War 2, with armed activist militant communist groups.
| They infiltrated Yemen and that caused the war there.
| They infiltrated Gaza and Lebanon and Iraq. Afghanistan
| HATES Iran, because of their attempts to infiltrate it
| with their radicals. Iraq went to war with Iran, because
| Iran was engaging in revolution inside their country. Now
| Iran had built up a huge conventional military just like
| its friends Russia, China and North Korea, and aims to
| get a nuclear weapon to make their bad behavior
| invulnerable.
|
| Iran can't be compared the same way as other countries
| that have nuclear programs, because most countries aren't
| Russia, China and North Korea which Iran is patterning
| itself after and buys military hardware from.
|
| We're done with "so fine, the world is a little worse
| off". This is domino theory. This is salami tactics,
| slicing little bits of the world one at a time until the
| steamroll is so strong it has passed the tipping point
| and physics no longer offers a way for you to push back
| the tide.
|
| That is only 1 reason for attacking Iran and it is highly
| abbreviated. There are dozens of other reasons for
| attacking Iran, defending Ukraine and deterring China
| from attacking Taiwan. Dozens of other reasons for
| capturing Maduro and trying to reform Cuba.
|
| The US doesn't want to have to do any of this. We'd
| rather just be left alone and leave others alone, but
| that is not the world we live in. There are people that
| seek global domination and they are not the ones that
| want you to have freedom of speech or value your life.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Is this some confusion over the meaning of "pointless"?
| It's all well and good that you and various other people
| see these reasons for the war. But "pointless" doesn't
| mean there's no reason or motivation. It can just mean
| "ineffectual" or "futile." It can both be true that one
| reason for this war is to prevent Iran from getting
| nuclear weapons, and that the war is pointless.
|
| If you want to back up your original reply to me, then
| you need to not only show that there's a reason for the
| war, but that the war can actually accomplish those
| things. And not only that, but that believing otherwise
| is so catastrophically ignorant that it can only come
| from a complete failure to be aware of basic facts.
|
| You can argue there are reasons for the war, although I
| already agree. You can argue that the war has a chance of
| achieving those goals. I don't agree with that, but it's
| certainly an argument that can be made. But don't give me
| this stuff about how it's logically impossible to hold
| the opposite position.
| ndiddy wrote:
| In a 2024 speech, Luckey said "Societies have always needed a
| warrior class that is enthused and excited about enacting
| violence on others in pursuit of good aims. You need people
| like me who are sick in that way and who don't lose any sleep
| making tools of violence in order to preserve freedom." (
| https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/01/palmer-luckey-every-
| countr... ). He's said in a Bloomberg interview that "there
| are actually things I would like to build that the DoD would
| not use and would not deploy, that they do think are beyond
| the pale" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItLFpYha6Wc ),
| and he's said in an Axios interview that he would be willing
| to build nuclear weapons, as well as chemical weapons "in a
| specific vertical". He then elaborates by saying that it's a
| huge mistake that the US military isn't allowed to use tear
| gas in combat. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZfW3YTJ5Eg
| ) I'm having trouble believing that someone like this is
| inherently peaceful and should be getting multi-billion
| dollar contracts to manufacture drones that autonomously kill
| people. Maybe it's better to buy a Nintendo game from someone
| who doesn't think that the US is being held back by war crime
| treaties.
| CMay wrote:
| I've already seen all those quotes and interviews. You're
| mischaracterizing them.
|
| He's probably not wrong that you have to be a certain kind
| of person that can stomach the inherent violence involved,
| that doesn't mean you want to kill innocent civilians. Yet
| you do have to be the kind of person who understands that
| civilian casualties can happen. Life is not kind to the
| mind that is fragile to the realities of nature. That's
| accurate.
|
| As for nuclear weapons, he explicitly said he thinks they
| have done a lot to stabilize the world, which does put some
| limiters on how extreme war can be, because there is an
| extra red line that actually matters.
|
| When it comes to chemical weapons, he already stated that
| no he wouldn't create biological or chemical weapons, but
| he thinks that there should be a special exception for non-
| lethal means like tear gas and pepper spray. It's like, a
| woman can take pepper spray out of her purse and use it
| against a criminal, but the US military can't use pepper
| spray to suppress enemies without killing them? Killing
| people is a more viable option than suppressing them? I
| think that's the argument he's making.
|
| You should actually watch the stuff you link.
| fryanyway_swe wrote:
| Do you see all weapons companies as bad?
|
| Is SAAB bad making JAS Gripen being soon used against Russia?
|
| I find your and similar views to be very childish. And somewhat
| suspicious.
|
| Who would benefit from the west investing less in weapons
| systems? It boils down to what side you are on honestly.
| missinglugnut wrote:
| Good Lord. You know that Anduril industries will keep making
| drones no matter how many discussions about retro gaming you
| ruin right?
|
| This backlash can hurt modretro, it can affect the author of
| this game, but the impact on the defense industry is zero. And
| this thread, fuck, you'd think running JavaScript on an n64
| would be the safest place to avoid yelling about US politics in
| 2026 but here we are. And there's nothing to be gained. A smart
| person doing cool work published a game through a fun and
| ethical company that is owned by a person that also owns a
| defense company, so let's all scream about murdering children.
| As if that protects anyone from anything.
| Damjanski wrote:
| wowowowowow
| chungusamongus wrote:
| I consider all homebrew stuff very cool but the number of games
| emulating PS1 / N64 aesthetics is so massively oversaturated at
| this point that I'm kind of burned out on it.
|
| But in general, the thing that really impresses me is what people
| come up with working within these various constraints. Less is
| more.
|
| Megadrive / genesis homebrew is where it's at for me. But tbh I
| am honestly kind of clueless when it comes to this stuff. Still
| trying to get parallax scrolling and foreground occlusion figured
| out for my "game."
| hbn wrote:
| > the number of games emulating PS1 / N64 aesthetics is so
| massively oversaturated at this point that I'm kind of burned
| out on it.
|
| The point isn't just to be a novelty throwback aesthetic. It's
| the most accessible way for indie devs to make a 3D game
| without needing to worry about particularly high quality 3D
| models and animation.
| zuzululu wrote:
| what about a playstation/sega saturn game in 2026 ?
| lmcd wrote:
| I've been building quite an ambitious flash cart menu system for
| the N64 recently, and it's been an absolute joy! Would really
| recommend anyone with a curious, hacker mindset that grew up with
| these consoles to explore this platform - it's fascinating!
|
| Here's what I'm working on - it contains a comprehensive retail
| game metadata library & cheats database, can screenshot running
| games and execute frame-perfect tool-assisted speedruns:
| https://youtu.be/UyqtU0hgGRA?si=_YisdNOrQrSpdpNT
| redbonsai wrote:
| What flash cart does your system run on? And do you have any
| docs about how to get it up and running? I'd _love_ to get TAS
| stuff running on my N64, has been a dream for a while
| lordfrito wrote:
| Wow the ModRetro units are really polished... Look great with
| more than a nod to the original system designs.
|
| Anyone know what Nintendo's stance is on the companies making
| these kind of "brand inspired" retro products?
| RankingMember wrote:
| > Anyone know what Nintendo's stance is on the companies making
| these kind of "brand inspired" retro products?
|
| Undoubtedly their legal team is at work 24/7 finding every
| angle at which to unleash legal hell upon it.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Companies have been building and selling clones of Nintendo
| consoles for many years now. I suspect if Nintendo had a
| legal angle against this they would've exercised it a long
| time ago.
| inigyou wrote:
| Just because they haven't found one doesn't mean they
| aren't looking.
| roboror wrote:
| Really? I think the ModRetro M64 is hideous compared to
| Analogue's 3D (their version of the N64)
| snvzz wrote:
| Eh, you'd have to pay me to use anything from Analogue.
|
| ModRetro put their effort where it matters[0], whereas
| Analogue aren't even honest about their hardware, with
| baseless claims of 100% compatibility, recurring shipping
| delays or screwing preorders out of picking case shells.
| Which can't even be readily replaced.
|
| 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gOJUEcKYRk
| opengrass wrote:
| Could one of you geeks figure out controller input over IP for
| multiplayer please?
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