Last week, Eyepatch Entertainment unveiled their bananas attempt at Super Mario 64 on the 3DO. That initial version was actually pretty impressive, featuring a distinguishable Peach's Castle and even Bob-omb Battlefield, but its Mario spite has been keeping me up at night.
Thankfully, the developer has shared a Super Mario 64 3DO update, and the plumber is looking far less haunted (cheers, Time Extension). In fact, the whole N64 conversion is looking a lot better running on the real retro console hardware, with Eyepatch Entertainment signalling that "real progress" has been made with the project.
"The frame rate is better and worse than last time you saw this," admits the dev before explaining that it "costs time to get the renderer looking better." That creates a time dilemma between working on performance versus fidelity, which feels like the real challenge ahead of Mario 64 on the 3DO specifically.
I'm pretty astounded at what Eyepatch Entertainment has achieved in just a week. Yes, the game still looks jittery, and the dev is clearly still ironing out how the 3D assets are drawn and pulled based on proximity, but it's looking real close to an actual playable conversion of Mario 64. The demonstration even features some classic penguin rescue gameplay, but you thankfully can't yeet the babies off any cliffs right now (that has always upset me.)
Eyepatch Entertainment's new video features both good and bad news for anyone hyped about Mario 64 on anything other than a 64. The first tidbit is that there's also a Sega Saturn version in the works that runs at 60fps, but it's not quite ready to show yet. The part that's a bummer is that, while plenty of players have already asked for an ISO for running on emulators or an actual 3DO, they apparently don't want to invoke Nintendo's wrath.
"I don't think Nintendo, even though this does not really look like Mario 64, would be very happy with me distributing this," the developer caveats. "If it were possible, I would give it away. I don't care if you want to torture yourself with this. But until then, I guess that makes me the number one player in the world at 3DO Mario 64, which I guess someone has to claim."
I need Eyepatch Entertainment to know that I'd happily give myself a migraine playing Mario 64 on the 3DO. It'll likely always be a cursed endeavour, but I'm even more invested now that Mario doesn't look like pixelated creepypasta. At the same time, I get why the dev is wary of the big N, but it would be funny to see it get riled up about its first 3D game replicated for a system that had no chance against the N64.
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