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What's the difference between this and sm64-port / sm64plus that was released years ago?
I believe the previous PC ports needed to be built by the user. This one comes as pre-built binary. Just give it the game ROM, and you are good to go.
Oh that's pretty cool then
What's the benefit of using this over an existing emulator (e.g. Mupen)?
The other comments pretty much covered it, but a small nice thing that a port of the game can do that an emulator can't do is increase the draw distance and disable the LOD to always draw maximum quality models
This is a full native recompilation of the game for x64 processors, so you don't need an emulation layer. Should also make it easier to make custom texture packs and mods.
If this is a full recompilation of the game, why do I need the ROM file of the original game then? Just like an emulator. That doesn’t make any sense.
Because Nintendo would sue them if they included any assets of the game
https://github.com/isledecomp/isle
This decompilation of the game Lego Island doesn’t need something like that.
It’s possible withoit the company behind the game suing the devs
I actually followed some devlogs for this, and nobody knows who owns the rights to that game anymore. The original developing company was bought out, then merged, then bought out again, then the rights sold off in a bundled deal, and whatever else. They can't figure out the legal shit for that project, and no company knows if they own the rights to even sue over.
Implication from the readme is that the lego island decomp does indeed need original assets:
The simplest way to use the recompiled binaries is to swap the original executables (ISLE.EXE, LEGO1.DLL, and CONFIG.EXE) in LEGO Island's installation directory for the ones that you've built from this source code.
Read before that:
Prerequisites
You will need the following software installed:
- Microsoft Visual C++ 4.2. This can be found on many abandonware sites, but the installer can be a little iffy on modern versions of Windows. For convenience, a portable version is available that can be downloaded and used quickly instead.
- CMake. A copy is often included with the "Desktop development with C++" workload in newer versions of Visual Studio; however, it can also be installed as a standalone app.
And after that:
For advanced users, you can get LEGO Island to run from anywhere as long as ISLE.EXE and LEGO1.DLL are in the same directory and the cdpath and diskpath registry keys (usually found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Mindscape\LEGO Island on 32-bit operating systems and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Mindscape\LEGO Island on 64-bit operating systems) point to the correct location for the asset files (the directory that contains the LEGO folder).
Prerequisites
Those look like build prerequisites. Many decomp projects do not need original game assets at build time, just runtime.
and after that...
cdpath and diskpath registry keys [...] point to the correct location for the asset files
I read this as another implication that original game files are required. Otherwise, why would you need a registry key telling the new game engine where to look for assets? The /assets file in the git repo contains only 3 pngs of icon images. There's no way they've secretly bundled a whole game's worth of models and textures in the codebase.
Ship of harkinian (OOT) has all kinds of features like straight up adding buttons to the game and modifying the HUD accordingly, so I assume there will be things like that. Some of those features like adding right stick camera even make the game feel a whole generation newer.
Not only requires emulating the game more resources, its also the configuration and imperfect N64 emulation state that muddies just a little bit. Plus a native port to PC can use everything that a normal PC game could too without tricks, such as widescreen, better controller support with new features, higher fps and so on. Emulating a game still uses the same CPU of the original system and other constraints.
Frame rate, wide screen, mouse input... You can pretty much do anything you want with the game. Vs an emulator that runs the official ROM as it was.
This is native code, so you'd expect much better performance, but mostly this is just a really great foundation to build on.
Current features are thin, but you should expect a lot of improvements going forward, compare it to something like Ship of Harkinian (same team) for an idea of what might be to come. Features like high framerates and texture packs, built in randomizer and tracking support, modding support, a ton of features and tweaks for speedrunners, etc, and a metric ton of QoL features.
I hope someone will create a Super Mario 64 Maker. Someone already did this with the N64 ROM itself, meaning it even runs in an emulator. But having this on the PC port directly would be incredible.
This is really cool, I think it's the same guy that made the randomizer https://youtu.be/VTSP1ov2QYM
Seems like it could benefit from mouse and keyboard (for hotkeys), hopefully it gets ported
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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