Matthew Underwood

Mario 64 Made to Render 8000 Polygons on Real Hardware

If you own a Nintendo 64 flash cartridge and don’t know of Kaze Emanuar already, then you’re going to love this. Kaze is likely the most prolific N64 modder out there with over 100 mods, and his creations are as fun as they are impressive. One of the best things about Kaze’s mods is that most of them run on an actual N64 with a flash cartridge. My wife and I recently just played through his Mario 64 Splitscreen Mod, and I loved The Legend of Zelda: The Missing Link (Which Nintendo all but scrubbed from existence). In his upcoming mod, Return to Yoshi’s Island 64, Kaze has pushed the hardware to new highs. As showcased in the video, the mod includes a level, Koopa Karnival, with 20,000 polygons, 8,000 of which can be rendered at a time. Normally the game would never render more than about 3,000 polygons at a time. Perhaps most impressively, Kaze accomplishes all this while maintaining a stable 30 FPS. Find out how in the video above.

Kaze on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KazeEmanuar

Kaze on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KazeEmanuar

Kaze prefers that people get his mods directly from his YouTube videos so I’ll refrain from linking you to them directly, or via other sources. If you scroll through his videos though, you will likely find something that interests you!