How to Make a Nintendo 64 Game in 2026

aatan2 2 days ago 27 commentsRead Article on phoboslab.org

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Discussion (27 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

boricj•about 2 hours ago

I'm tinkering with a PlayStation homebrew (voxel space renderer) and development for fifth generation consoles has never been easier.

Modern toolchains, programming languages, dev cartridges and libraries from the community makes all the difference. Outside of some niceties like ICE (gotta write that GDB stub for target hardware at some point), it's not that different from what you'd experience with modern embedded work.

shoobiedoo•24 minutes ago

There is something so charming about the N64/PS1 era. They were so unique in their own right and you could tell at a passing glance which system was displaying on the screen even if you didn't know what game it was. Two radically different systems at the dawning of 3D console games.

I bought a MiSTer for me and my son and we played the heck out of Mario Kart 64 and Mario Golf. I think he picked up my "gaming is dead now" outlook since he doesn't really have any interest in new systems or games anymore

dottjt•about 1 hour ago

How did they do it back in the day? Was basically everything from the tooling etc. just created inhouse from scratch?

Bad_CRC•3 minutes ago

The Dreamcast dev kits came with CodeWarrior as an IDE iirc.

inigyou•17 minutes ago

They had stuff, but it was all proprietary. The N64 was a stripped-down implementation of the technology used on (high-end) SGI graphics workstations of the time. SGI certainly had all the required tools.

RugnirViking•24 minutes ago

https://www.retroreversing.com/playstation-2-development-har...

doublerabbit•8 minutes ago

Yeah, pretty much.

They provide the devkit hardware, the specification technical documentation and the tool chain to compile the binary.

ninjin•14 minutes ago

Tried to see if it was possible to buy the Rom itself. But it seems like you would need to buy a physical copy at this point:

https://modretro.com/products/xibalba-64

rightbyte•8 minutes ago

Does compatibility with M64 imply N64 compat?

stewx•about 1 hour ago

I am in the process of using Claude Opus 5 to build an N64 game, and it really works. I've written no code and it is able to build a fully functional game.

I got it to write a skill for driving the Ares emulator via GDB Remote Serial Protocol and it uses that for its feedback loop.

Flashtoo•about 1 hour ago

What do you get out of that? The utility of having the end product (a generated game for an obsolete console) seems pretty small, and personally I would think the fun is in learning about the inner workings of the time capsule that is 90s hardware. Would you mind explaining?

hnlmorg•about 1 hour ago

Not the OP, but when I was kid I used to draw game level for 8-bit systems back when I wasn’t allowed on a computer (screen time).

My point is, people get enjoyment out of game design too. It’s not just about nerding out on technical specs.

pelasaco•40 minutes ago

> My point is, people get enjoyment out of game design too.

The plot-twist here is: The game design is made by Claude too :)

lucideer•43 minutes ago

I guess the curiosity here is in why game design for a modern target platform wouldn't garner the same enjoyment.

gambiting•about 1 hour ago

I mean, there is plenty of people out there who enjoy the process of making a game(they have a really clear idea of gameplay mechanics they think would be fun when put together) but they really don't enjoy programming at all. I guess it's kinda the same - I Want to see my game happen, I don't want to code it. Which isn't that different from where all the other tools are leading us anyway. Nowadays you can make a video game by just downloading an engine and building everything using the included scripting language most of the time - no need to understand rendering, IO, input or anything else.

There's a time and place for everything.

bilekas•4 minutes ago

> Nowadays you can make a video game by just downloading an engine and building everything using the included scripting language most of the time - no need to understand rendering, IO, input or anything else.

I don't disagree, but I don't see it as a positive, looking at the current game releases and their performance being shockingly unoptimised, there is a lot of lost real world value in knowing the lower level details, it's like anything really, sometimes you have to do the hard/unappealing work to create your best work.

GlacierFox•4 minutes ago

Urgh. Cool story...

dwroberts•about 1 hour ago

Post about learning and understanding how to do something

“Here’s how I’m doing the same thing, but also doing it in a way that totally avoids understanding or learning anything”

Cool story

Hugsbox•11 minutes ago

I saw a comment on HN a few weeks ago, can't remember the context but it was something along the lines of "listening to somebody talk about their vibecoded project is like listening to somebody describe a dream they had last night - you end up just tuning them out, because nobody gives a shit"

AussieWog93•about 1 hour ago

On the subject of learning something... Compare your comment to the sibling from Flashtoo. One is genuinely inquisitive and displaying willingness to learn, the other is just dunking all over someone.

dwroberts•about 1 hour ago

One thing that grates with that style of comment though is the implication (whether intended or not) that the link/post author wasted time and could have just had an LLM do it instead. And I think it’s important that we make clear that that style of comment is not welcome here.

If there’s elaboration on why an LLM is being used… do it in the original comment? Otherwise it’s just annoying and serves no purpose

ayanb•about 2 hours ago

Super interesting article - thanks for sharing your journey. As AI slop takes over the internet, well written and original technical content like these will be important.

Also,

2026 web dev: 4MB of JavaScript to render a button. 2026 N64 dev: entire FPS in 1MB

valorzard•about 3 hours ago

At some point I reallly gotta sit down and play around with Pyrite64, it looks super cool

pelasaco•41 minutes ago

I am not wrong, the game described in this article, is presented in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gOJUEcKYRk, from Palmer Luckey[1]. Wild this guy find time and energy for this side quest. That's passion.

References: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Luckey