Digital Foundry recently posted a video showcasing the incredible port of Mario Kart 64, made possible via it’s decomplication project. Basically, you can now play a true, non-emulated version of MK64 on Windows, Mac and Linux, at basically any resolution and refresh rate you’d like. I spent a few minutes with it, running at 4K144 on my desktop PC and even without the 4K texture packs, I don’t think I could go back to playing the original. It just looked and played perfectly! Check out the video above for all the info you’ll need to know and more info after the links:
Spaghetti Kart: https://github.com/HarbourMasters/SpaghettiKart
One thing to note, is you’ll need to provide a ROM that matches the exact hash listed on the Github page. That was very easy to find via a web search, so don’t worry, you won’t need to spend hours chasing down some rare version of the rom.
Next, when playing, I did get a crash in windowed mode, but everything worked flawlessly once I played it in fullscreen. It’s always possible I did something wrong, but if you have issues in windows mode, just hit F11 and see how it runs in fullscreen.
Also, my fellow CRT nerds will like this video too, as they showed it running on a PC CRT monitor. I think playing in 480p, but at a much higher refresh rate like 120Hz might be a perfect “happy medium” for classic console enthusiasts: You still get the look and feel of playing in 4:3 on a CRT, but at a framerate impossible to achieve back in the day. If I ever livestream playing this game, I’ll also try that as well, just to show how cool it looks…moiré pattern incoming! ;p
Lastly, at the time of writing, the new texture packs aren’t compatible with Spaghetti Kart. Here’s where to get it when it becomes available though:
Texture Pack: https://github.com/GhostlyDark/MK64-Reloaded-SK / https://evilgames.eu/texture-packs/mk64-reloaded.htm#downloads
