Dinosaur Planet Recompiled is the perfect game to kick off a new era of N64 archaeology

The promised day has arrived! Three issues back I spoke with N64 Recompiled developer Wiseguy about the exciting future of native ports of N64 games, and the project's big modding update has finally landed, alongside the announcements of several additional recompilations in the works. Performance improvements, a modding framework, and other additions to N64 Recompiled bundled into this update will hopefully mean we see a wave of actually playable projects over the coming year.

There's a lot to take in here. As I posted about last week on Bluesky, a good place to start is with a new video from Nerrel, which goes over the improvements in depth and shows footage from a number of upcoming recompilations. Those include, by the way:

• Super Smash Bros
• Kirby 64
• Banjo Kazooie
• Ocarina of Time
• Chameleon Twist
• Quest 64
• Dinosaur Planet

And probably more that aren't public yet! And let's not forget last year's Mystical Ninja recompilation, either. But the real reason to watch this overview is to see the modding capabilities on full display.

It's a great video, but one thing in particular from the section teasing upcoming recompilations really caught my eye: Dinosaur Planet. A game that, y'know, never came out.

I was exactly the right age and exactly the right degree of Nintendo-obsessed to be a sucker for the GameCube's Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet, the swan song of Rare's Nintendo partnership. In the early 2000s I read EGM and Nintendo Power religiously and also obsessively checked a few Nintendo fansites like Planet GameCube and DK Jungle Vine looking for new information on these games, so I'd seen scraps and glimpses of Dinosaur Planet's earlier N64 form.

In 2021, preservation group Forest of Illusion bought and released a prototype N64 build of Dinosaur Planet, which has been floating around online ever since and playable. I never thought to play it myself — my obsession with Star Fox Adventures unfortunately did not survive, uh, actually playing Star Fox Adventures — but today I've changed my tune. For one thing, the ongoing Dinosaur Planet decompilation means there's a very real, even likely chance that fans of this unfinished game give it a fascinating, even complete, second life (things are already headed in that direction). And more relevant today, we've got an early, but playable, recompilation right now.

So let's do it. This week we're checking in on the progress of this first wave of N64 recompilations with the only PC port of an unreleased Nintendo 64 game: Dinosaur Planet.

(And yes I know the headline should've been paleontology instead of archaeology because dinosaurs but it just didn't feel like the right fit for the subject matter as a whole okay!!)

The Big Two

1. A whole new Dinosaur Planet of recompilations

Like last year's premiere recompilation Majora's Mask, Dinosaur Planet has a simple interface with just a few options — you can set the resolution to its 240p original or to scale up to your window or full monitor res (even 4K!). There's control mapping if you need to tweak it, but my controller worked just as soon as I plugged it in. Plugging in the ROM took just a few seconds, and then I was playing Dinosaur Planet. And honestly? It looks pretty incredible for a Nintendo 64 game.

The higher resolution's doing a lot of the heavy lifting here of course, but for an unfinished game there's quite a slick cinematic presentation going on that closely mirrors what Rare ended up pulling off in the eventual GameCube version of Star Fox Adventures. (Sidenote: Good lord they sure hornified the hell out of Krystal's design for the GameCube version compared to the very chaste design here).

I played through the opening 45 minutes or so of Dinosaur Planet, featuring the introductions of both Krystal and original-hero-Sabre-turned-Fox in this very late build of the game. What I played worked flawlessly aside from some ugly stretched subtitles in widescreen and button prompts of course not reflecting my Xbox controller icons. Otherwise it truly does feel like a native port.

The new mod support for N64 Recompiled is important to Dinosaur Planet in particular. Because it's an unfinished game, there are several places where it will either crash or be impossible to progress; the first two mods add noclip and debug options to phase through the environment or give yourself an otherwise unobtainable item. Installing those mods is as simple as clicking an install button in the game launcher and double-clicking a file.

Dinosaur Planet Recompiled is the work of developer Shinx, who's also been contributing to a decompilation of the game for quite awhile; that project has no doubt been a factor in the game being understood well enough to modify. And it has been modified: fans have spent the last few years working on DinoMod, fixing up crashes and just generally improving and stitching up the unfinished bits of the game. Right now, the recompiled version of the game lacks these niceties because it runs off fresh, native code — making the romhack mods work isn't as simple as copying and pasting.

"As the Recomp is a much newer project, it is in an earlier stage in terms of bugfixes," says the official FAQ in the community Discord. "As there is great modding potential, matching the bugfixes to those of DinoMod Enhanced relies on peoples' willingness to work on mods."

I think it's very likely that they're brought over sooner rather than later, because it's honestly hard to imagine wanting to play this game any way other than the recompilation now. It's so easy to set up, it looks so nice, it's so effortlessly performant at high resolutions on a PC or even a Steam Deck; it just rocks. And N64 Recompiled's tools mean interested contributors can in the future work on things like HD textures or even new scripting and models and such to finish the bits of this game that Rare hadn't gotten to when it switched to development for the GameCube.

After playing some Dinosaur Planet Recompiled, I reached out to Shinx to ask about his experience putting together the recompilation — how much work did it take? — as well as his priorities for the project now that it's playable.

"It was definitely a bit challenging to build this recomp," Shinx said. "Aside from this being my first time creating something like this, Dino Planet has some very unique code compared to most other N64 games that N64 Recomp just wasn't prepared for at the time. I had to work pretty closely with Wiseguy to get the game's MP3 decoder working properly for example. Dino Planet also dynamically loads code at runtime in a way not seen in pretty much any other N64 game that needed some new features in recomp to work properly. Other than that tho, Wiseguy did such an amazing job making the process relatively painless, n64recomp is a really impressive tool!"

Shinx told me that the decompilation — which has been a team effort with a number of contributors — was "essential" to making the recomp a reality. "I had to have a good understanding of some of the game's core code in order to patch it for recomp. Without the decomp, even tho it's still in an early state, I don't think I would ever have gotten this far," he said.

So what comes next? Shinx doesn't have a concrete plan beyond what feels right to work on in the moment.

"The big tasks left that I want to finish at some point are really all the PC port enhancements like high framerate and fully functional widescreen. Those aren't something i can even finish today tho, there needs to be additional decomp done and in a few cases extra features I need from RT64 to fixup the rendering. We'll get there eventually!

A very important part of releasing this recomp now vs later in a "more complete" state was actually to put recomp modding on the table as early as i could. I know that patching the game to the extent DinoMod has isn't something I can realistically do by myself, so my hope is that others find modding this recomp interesting and start bringing over patches and possibly new content. That's totally up to the others tho, I think either way I'll be pushing for at least getting the core patches into the recomp at some point myself."

Expect more on N64 recompilations — dinosaur-related and otherwise — throughout the year!

2. New Sega Saturn emulator Ymir has entered the chat

It's a real good time to love the majestic 2D and hey-at-least-you-tried 3D of the Sega Saturn. I've been enamored with that console since I was a kid and visited a friend who had one, but obviously its short life meant few of the system's gems ever really made it out of Japan. It feels like only in the last few years have we started to see a notable effort to correct that, with fan translations for games like Sakura Wars, Sakura Wars 2 and Princess Crown, and other long-lusted-after exclusives making them playable in English.

So is it the sign of a trend that we've got a new Sega Saturn emulator popping up all of a sudden in 2025? Is the world about to be gripped by Saturn mania? Can I make anything sound exciting and dramatic by using italics?

Maybe let's not dwell on these questions and just focus on the cool new thing.

Ymir! It's a Sega Saturn emulator, new for 2025! That's pretty cool, huh? Currently almost entirely the work of one developer, Ymir's only had three releases so far: v0.1.0, dropped May 1st, and a couple incremental updates. It launched alongside a command line disassembly tool; I haven't spoken with any developers yet about whether this tool is a notable step up from what they can do with Mednafen or other Saturn emulators, but I think there's a strong chance the answer's yes. That alone could give Ymir a good reason to exist alongside other options.

There are several ways to emulate the Saturn across PCs, mobile, and FPGA, but I wouldn't say there's one definitive emulator the way there is with a few other consoles. Ymir seems to be aiming for a friendlier user interface than stalwart multi-system emulator Mednafen, and it already has several nice features:

• Automatic region switching
• Built-in turbo and 60 second rewind
• Automatic gamepad mapping
• A built-in debugger
• A user interface designed in this decade

Okay, I'm being cheeky with that last one, but the user experience with Ymir is immediately quite nice and simple because it's built with ImGui. If you've used Dreamcast emulator Flycast (or doubtless some other open source software), you'll recognize it immediately.

I plugged in a controller and was playing Princess Crown in just a minute, after plugging in a system BIOS file. I'm not sure if game compatibility is currently limited, but some other ISOs I have don't seem to want to load — I'll check back in on Ymir in the future to see how it's coming along. But at least interface-wise, it's already at "it just works" status out of the box. Keep an eye on the releases page for patches, bugfixes, etc.

If the debugger is as nice for developers as it looks to me at a glance, and if that command line decompiler is as useful as it seems it might be, Ymir might not just be the latest in a trend of Saturn Stuff Happening — it may well end up serving as a catalyst.

Patching In

Flycast 2.5 improves touchscreen controls, physical controller support and loads more – Here's a major milestone update for Dreamcast emulator Flycast! I spoke with developer flyinghead back in February about DCNet, the emulator's new VPN service for more convenient online play. More games have been added since, but the element of this 2.5 update that sounds most appealing to me is "support for physical Dreamcast controllers with DreamConn+ and DreamPicoPort adapters: gamepad, VMU, vibration pack and more." Or maybe it's the improved emulated GD-ROM performance... or better per-game VMU support? A dreamy update for sure.

Azahar lets your 3DS go turbo, adjust the screen gap – New kid on the block 3DS emulator Azahar only rolled out its first release a couple months ago, but it's already getting some notable new features. The most recent build, 2121, adds "a new Turbo feature which allows increasing the emulation speed to a pre-specified percentage using a hotkey or on-screen button for desktop and Android respectively" and "a new Screen Gap feature which allows the gap between the top and bottom screen to be configured by the user." You can also increase the 3D depth effect from its original 100% max up to 255%. I think that's how Homer got cubed.

Core Report

Jotego delivers Sky Kid Deluxe – Jotego's patrons can now get airborne (in first class!) with a MiSTer / Analogue Pocket core for this '80s Namco shooter. They cheer for you when you safely land your plane! Isn't that nice.

MAME 0.277 gets in on the CD-i love – Is there nowhere I can escape this monstrosity of a console?? Everywhere I look, someone is making CD-i games play "better." Your scientists were so preoccupied....

Ahem, anyway — the latest MAME build includes the usual mountain of fixes and new systems with limited compatibiltiy, but the release notes highlight "Konami GX blending effects are now looking much nicer, Sega Model 2 3D geometry is behaving better, and some remaining issues with Philips CD-i graphics decoding have been fixed. You may be able to hear improved sound emulation in some Famicom, WonderSwan, and Game Boy games, too."

TakiUdon's FPGA menu makes nice progress – I quite like the look of the minimalist menu theme Taki's been working on for the SuperStationᵒⁿᵉ, his PSX-esque FPGA system. In a recent post he mentioned that the underlying launcher, Simplermenu+, now runs on his MiSTer Pi and is much faster than the older version of the launcher it's forked from. It's lookin' real smooth. (You may have to click through the Bluesky embed below to watch the video of the UI in motion!).

Translation Station

Waku Waku Puyo Puyo Dungeon matches Japanese for English – I don't know if there's a more perfectly odd nugget of gaming trivia than the beloved, long-lived Puyo Puyo puzzle series being a spin-off of an early '90s first-person dungeon crawler. Weird! Before Sega bought the rights to Puyo Puyo, the developers at Compile released a Shiren-esque roguelike dungeon crawler that is more Madou Monogatari than it is Puyo Puyo. Compile was seemingly in a "throw everything at the wall" mode at the time, releasing a Puyo Puyo-themed tactics game and a Pokemon knock-off around the same time, but I'm happy this one exists, because it's quite a nice looking Saturn game.

And I'm even happier it's now translated! Props to solo hacker/translator Maud, who I spoke with in late 2023 for her translation of the "legendary shitty game" Hoshi Wo Miru Hito. Nothing shitty this time!!

Zero4 Champ drags racing into English – Is this Racing Lagoon before Racing Lagoon?? That's perhaps a reductively Boss Baby comparison of me, but forgive me: I'd never heard of the Zero4 Champ series of "racing/adventure" games until hacker/translator Supper released this patch. "Though nominally a drag racing game, it features an extensive story mode with simulation and money management elements," he writes. "Its unusual concept proved to be a surprising commercial success, resulting in several sequels over the following years." There was even an entry on the PS2 with what looks like a wild story, but it sacrificed its original drag racing focus at the altar of more popular drift racing, to which I say boooo.

Good pixels

To close us out, how about a few more Dinosaur Planet shots — aaaaand just for the sake of comparison, I booted up Star Fox Adventures in Dolphin and played through the opening to see how that fur holds up at 4K.

Honestly... I think Star Fox Adventures still looks really damn good 23 years later.

That's it for this issue. Catch y'all in two. 💽

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