N64 Recompilation is about to have a big 2025

Friends, I ate a bad sandwich.

I want to love and support all sandwiches — if only we lived in a world where there were no bad sandwiches, only ones that tried and failed but still did their best. Unfortunately, in this reality there's one way a sandwich can be bad down to its soul, and it's by giving me food poisoning for 3 days and counting. Complete and utter betrayal!!

Thankfully it's been "mild" in the pain sense, and I'll spare you the other details, but this issue has mostly come together between naps on Friday night and Saturday, a bit later than ideal. On the bright side, sometimes these things work out, and I've got a fun scoop to share with you; the hot goss on what's going on in the land of N64 recompilations, which is about to heat waaaay up real soon.

We've got a few cool new translations this issue, too, including a dip back into 2000s Japanese phone games for all you Mega Man Legends lovers. Think Capcom will ever revisit that series? Someday, let's hope...

That's all the energy I've got for preamble this week (I'm blaming the lettuce), but the good stuff awaits!

The Big Two

1. SOON: N64 Recompiled strikes back

We're closing in on a year since the issue of ROM in which I interviewed Wiseguy, creator of N64 Recompiled, a tool that, long story short, allows for natively running N64 game code on a PC. This technique doesn't emulate the original console hardware, but the end result is code that runs very fast, is very moddable and can benefit from native platform features like high refresh rates and resolutions, easy controller support, yada yada.

There are a couple techniques to arrive at this same end goal: Static recompilation, which is discussed in-depth in the interview above, is (to be very reductive) a shortcut that bypasses the need for a complete decompilation, aka manually translating a game's compiled code into new code that will accomplish the same results. The fully rewritten new code is nice and legible and helps enable a native port to a new platform like PC, but only if someone goes through the effort of taking that decompiled code and building it into a game.

Currently there are a lot of decompilation projects in the works which may eventually bear fruit — and while we've only seen a few static recompilations so far, the recent splash made by Sonic Unleashed Recompiled made me think it was time to revisit this scene and see what's new. And it turns out big things are brewing.

After catching up with Wiseguy, I'm excited to report that in the next few weeks, he'll be rolling out a major update to N64 Recompiled that integrates a modding framework allowing modders to change basically anything and everything in a recompiled N64 game. This has been in development for most of the past year, and you can already find some mods for Majora's Mask based on in-progress builds on Thunderstore.

I will now highlight the most important one created thus far: Dabbing Link.

"There's been a lot of things that had to come together for it," says Wiseguy. "There was your standard tech debt from the initial release that I had to sort out before getting started on other stuff... and fixing some parts of the recompiler that turned out to not be suitable for using with some other games (since people wanted to start their own recomps at the time). From there I had to build the system for actually loading mod code, which started out as a system that could load mod DLLs and patch functions from the original game to run the modded versions instead.

"That evolved into a system where mods could perform complex interop between each other, which allows mods to provide APIs to other mods so that any common changes that several mods might need can be moved into a shared dependency."

Perhaps the most exciting feature of the framework is that it's platform-agnostic: Wiseguy built a whole new backend for the recompiler "that takes mod code and emits platform-specific assembly directly to avoid the C compilation step, which allows it to run from the game's launcher before the game starts to recompile mods for the target platform." That's the technical way of saying that a single mod file can be compatible with an x86 PC or ARM system.

Some more good news on the compatibility front, by the way: MacOS support is coming alongside modding, too.

Oh, and performance is getting a major boost. While N64 Recompiled already ran blazing fast on any modern PC, Wiseguy and contributor Dario have been hard at work optimizing the graphics renderer to perform better on low-end hardware, including with high-res texture packs installed. "We've been testing a 4K texture pack on a low end GPU from 2013 (a Geforce GT 730) that has only 1 gigabyte of VRAM and it runs basically flawlessly," he says. Here's an example showing the prior release chugging at 39 fps, while the new one hits 60 (due to V-Sync; otherwise it'd be even higher).

The Steam Deck has been a priority; Wiseguys says that in testing the latest build with Majora's Mask he's seen frametimes drop from 5.7ms to 3.6ms, and that on the OLED model the game should no longer drop below 90 fps when Link whips out the Lens of Truth.

Wiseguy is now wrapping up work on the UI for managing mods, the last major step before release. I'm anticipating a real frenzy of modding to come to Majora's Mask (and other upcoming recompiled N64 games) after this release, because it's going to be easier than the romhacking of the past. As Wiseguy points out, you can throw RAM and CPU constraints out the window that you'd deal with in traditioanl emulation, while a lot of existing knowledge and tooling will carry over. "So far people have replaced individual static models, character models, and entire scenes without needing custom changes to the existing romhacking tooling yet," he says.

Even if you're not particularly interested in modding, this release will still essentially serve as a big public milestone for N64 Recompilation, with multiple other in-the-works recomp projects officially debuting. They won't be launching yet, but very soon you're going to know what to look forward to in the year(s) to come.

Meanwhile, Resetera's Decompilation Projects Official Thread is an excellent, very thorough and frequently updated list of ongoing decompilation projects. Again, those aren't all guaranteed to become fancy shmancy PC ports, but the thread also includes a list of recompilations that have been released so far, with some that you may not know about like:

• WipEout
• Perfect Dark
• Legend of Dragoon
• Jak & Daxter

Finally, if you haven't watched it, I highly recommend Digital Foundry's look at the Unleashed recompilation, as well as Nerrels' video on N64 Recompiled from last year as a refresher before the new new hits very soon.

2. Mega Man dashes to 5 Islands in a new English keitai translation

I closed out 2024 with a deep dive ROM issue into the ongoing preservation effort around Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis, one of the most prominent (but faaaaaar from only) early 2000s games for Japanese flip phones that folks are making an effort to save. Here's another very cool one that has now not only been fully preserved, it's also been translated to English: Rockman Dash: Great Adventure on 5 Islands, a spin-off of Mega Man Legends!

This 2008 i-mode phone game is 3D just like the console Mega Man Legends games, so if a part of you is still mourning the loss of MML3, this may be your only shot at a little more time in that universe. In a detailed blog post at Rockman Corner, keitai preservationist RockmanCosmo offers some details on both 5 Islands and the effort that went into creating this translation.

"Rockman DASH 5 Islands is an ambitious Mega Man Legends spinoff set between the first two main games. It features five islands, each with seven missions, and an original story with surprising ties to Legends, including a major role for Denise Marmalade from The Misadventures of Tron Bonne. The game faithfully replicates Legends gameplay in 3D, with lock-on targeting, circle-strafing, special weapons crafting, NPC interactions, and sidequests—delivering a full Legends experience despite its limitations.

After Capcom delisted their i-mode games in 2018, Rockman DASH 5 Islands became unavailable for purchase and was effectively lost—only surviving on existing Japanese i-mode phones....

Ten years ago, Midori translated 5 Islands’ cutscene script. When the game was preserved last year, Mega Alex built an English patch, using Midori’s work as a base while translating menus and NPC dialogue from scratch.

Editing the files was incredibly challenging. While some data was in simple .csv files, cutscene dialogue was locked in proprietary formats, forcing Mega Alex to edit them byte by byte in a hex editor. Even a single misplaced digit could crash the game. Space limitations added another hurdle, but preservationist Yuvi stepped in to modify string lengths for longer text. After seven months of painstaking work, Mega Alex completed the patch."

The group working to dump keitai games and make them playable have a new launcher to speed up the emulation process: the Keitai World Launcher. With it you can download the game, configure a controller, and off you go for an island adventure.

Patching In

Azahar fixes up post-launch – As recently covered in these pages, new 3Ds emulator Azahar is now out in the wild. It's moved from release candidates to a stable release, and now gotten its first two lil' updates to fix some odds and ends. Notably a Linux Flatpak release is on the way, too! Meanwhile, the developers have also explained why you shouldn't totally rely on savestates due to the complexity of preserving everything running in the simulated 3DS OS — they'll become incompatible with future emulator updates. So save your games for real, too!

ShadPS4 v0.7.0 delivers a major update with support for HDR, FSR upscaling and more – The rate of development on PS4 emulator ShadPS4 remains extraordinary, with another major version number increment following its last in late January. This one includes FSR and HDR suppot, "a lot of fixes to shader recompiler" and motion control fixes, plus across-the-board compatibility improvements with Unity games. A glance through the open issues list still reveals a number of remaining bugs with Bloodborne, but it's getting better and better. Wild stuff.

PCSX2 looks out for Ryzen Hackintoshers – If you are the extremely specific person who built a Ryzen PC and then ran MacOS on it and then was like "I need to play Armored Core 2 on this thing," rejoice. There was an issue "making the Metal renderer horribly slow," but they fixed it.

PPSSPP pops the reset button – A nice lil' convenience. As PPSSPP gets a number of small UI updates, developer Henrik Rydgård added a pop-up to the pause menu where you can reset the game. Also, better drop shadows.

Core Report

Some little Downloader updates – As mentioned last issue, the MiSTer's downloading utility got a major overhaul recently, and this 2.1 release includes a few fixes: time-to-finish is more accurate, PNGs render correctly, and it's a lil' bit faster.

Sega Saturn MiSTer core adds Dual Mission Stick support – Go to town, Panzer Dragoon Zwei crew. Srg320 has worked up some other Saturn core updates: Specific sound board and button mapping support for Batman Forever, a fog fix for Astal, and some regressions corrected in Dracula X and Sega Ages.

And on top of that, the Saturn's arcade ST-V core has progressed by leaps and bounds since I wrote about it just six weeks ago. Check out this compatibility testing spreadsheet to see how many games are already playable.

Translation Station

Tales of Destiny Reforged goes in for a polish pass – It's been two whole months since I featured a Tales RPG in ROM, so obviously it was time! This is a nice little project: it's not a full-on retranslation of 1997's Tales of Destiny, but a heavy correction pass that fixes typos, updates some verbiage to modern Tales terms (e.g. "arte" instead of "skill), and implements a new font that can fit more text on screen to avoid stunted item and spell names etc. It also tweaked the menu layouts to more cleanly fit all the info on screen.

Famicom Jump puts you in the manga – Prolific hacker BlackPaladin is back with another release, and this one is a real cool bit of history: the first Shonen Jump game! You play as a kid entering "Jump World" to save it from Dragon Ball's evil Piccolo Daimaou, and along the way you'll recruit heroes from the likes of Saint Seiya, Fist of the North Star, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Kinnikuman... it's a who's who of late '80s legends, here. You're doing a lot of roaming around and punching guys as the various heroes, but it seems pretty minigame-heavy, too. (Apparently v1 of this patch came out 2.5 years ago and this is just an update, but I'd already written it up so let's just pretend it's brand spankin' new).

Good pixels

Running on fumes here, so a few Bluesky plugs to take us away! (Sorry, email readers, if the embeds don't work, but you can click through for your good pixels).

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