The source code of Ocarina Of Time

Art by Ocarina of Time

image: Nintendo

In 2019 the source code for Super mario 64 has been reverse engineered resulting in all sorts of wonderful mods and even ports to systems like that Dream cast and Playstation 2. It is now Ocarina of time Turn around.

As VGC report, the dozen members of the Zelda 64 Reverse Engineering team meticulously recreated the whole damn thing after two years of project work, telling the site, “Last night, Fig who is a remarkable community member and a project lead, matching the last remaining one Function in the project. This means that all compiled code in the game has been converted into human readable C code. For a while we thought that we might never be able to fully cover all functions, so this is an incredibly exciting achievement. “

It is! What is impressive about this effort is that nothing has been stolen or leaked or pirated. These fans simply rebuilt all of the game’s code – albeit “using modern programming languages” – from scratch until it was functionally identical to the original. This means that there is an expectation that technically they haven’t done anything illegal. How legal for sure that remains to be seen, but reverse engineering for reference Super mario 64 Code is still available at its source, although Nintendo is pursuing some projects that build on that code.

That legal shift occurs when you start talking about assets and characters. So while the code itself is meant to be safe from Nintendo’s attorneys, the second you add something to that code to make it look and sound like Ocarina of time in a playable sense, you are in trouble.

Not that Nintendo threats of legal action ever stop fans from doing this type of work, or ever will. While the team responsible for this reverse engineering has vowed to do any additional work besides refining their own code, with their efforts out there now, it is only a matter of time before others pick it up and take it work.

While your first thought on this one might be “mods,” one of the coolest things that comes out of the Mario 64 Reverse engineering project was actually a proper PC port that enabled things like 4K and ReShade support.

.

Leave a Comment