Super Mario 64 PSX

 

Developer: malucard

Release Date: November, 2025

Graphics: 3D

Version: Alpha

Genre: Adventure 

Players: 1

Description

A remarkable port of Super Mario 64 rebuilt for the original PlayStation hardware. This project brings Mario’s iconic adventure to Sony’s 32-bit console with impressive accuracy and technical ambition.

Extra info

Super Mario 64, one of the landmark titles that redefined the 3D platforming genre (alongside Tomb Raider), has now been brought to the original PlayStation thanks to the public release of the game’s source code a few years ago.

Porting a game built specifically for the Nintendo 64 to the PSX is no small feat. The N64’s hardware architecture was significantly more advanced in several key areas, giving developers features that the PlayStation simply didn’t offer. First of all, the PSX CPU (R3000A) was a previous generation 32-bit processor compared to the N64's (R4300i). In addition to higher MHz speed (PSX: 33,87 MHz, N64: 93,75 MHz), there were other advantages offered by the N64's own GPU:

• Hardware Z-buffering, allowing accurate depth calculations.

• Built-in anti-aliasing, smoothing the jagged edges of 3D models.

• Perspective-correct texture mapping, keeping textures from warping when viewed at angles.

• Trilinear filtering and full mip-mapping, producing smoother, cleaner textures at varying distances.

Beyond these GPU-level advantages, the N64 also benefited from using cartridge-based media. Although the format ultimately hurt Nintendo in the long run (CDs were drastically cheaper to manufacture and offered around eight times more storage capacity) cartridges had their own strengths. The most important one for Super Mario 64 was extremely fast read speeds, allowing levels to load almost instantly and enabling the game’s world to be split naturally across several areas without visible loading interruptions.

Given all of these factors, the fact that Super Mario 64 can be made to run on PSX hardware at all is genuinely astonishing. However, the port is still far from complete, and numerous issues prevent it from being considered fully playable in its current state (see the list of known problems below).

With continued development and refinement, there’s hope that this project will eventually deliver a version that captures the original experience as faithfully as possible.

Known issues

• Trees with a mind of their own: Some environmental objects, like trees, appear underground due to incomplete placement data.
• Unpredictable animations: Certain Mario animations fail to play correctly — and in rare cases may even crash the game.
• Music roadblock: Background music can’t be built automatically without manually providing the audio tracks.
• Odd sound behavior: Sound effects are functional but may play incorrectly, with missing notes or unusual tones.
• Limited camera control: Many levels lack fully implemented camera movement, leaving the player stuck with default angles.
• Level-entry crashes: Entering specific stages may cause the game to freeze or crash entirely.
• The finale fails: The ending sequence crashes as soon as it attempts to load.
• Lakitu no-show: At the castle bridge, Mario looks up… but Lakitu never appears.
• Unresponsive poles: Poles don’t move down when ground-pounded as intended.
• Texture-by-texture loading: With textures loaded individually, certain areas suffer from noticeable stutters and long load times.
• Stretched textures: PSX hardware constraints cause visible texture stretching on some surfaces.
• Incomplete tessellation: Large polygons aren’t fully corrected, leading to gaps or imperfect geometry.
• Texture rendering bugs: Some textures display incorrectly due to unfinished rendering logic.
• Unfinished title screen: The opening menu isn't fully implemented yet.
• Pause menu issues: The pause menu is currently non-functional.

Media

Links

Github