Super Mario 64 on the Web | Hacker News Reader

Super Mario 64 on the Web

probablykam.github.io

254 pointsnazgulsenpai121 comments

I had forgotten how many interruptions there were to actually getting to the game. Intro cutscene, letter from Peach, prompt from Lakitu outside the castle, prompt from Bowser inside the castle, prompt from the Bombombs inside the first level...

I get it though, they had to ease people into 3d games. Still, kind of annoying when I just wanted to get to jumping and star collecting.

That's not quite correct. EVERYONE plays in the front garden first. Beelining to level 1 is the unusual thing.

And swimming

Hell it took me 30 minutes before I stopped playing with Mario's face at the title screen

> I get it though, they had to ease people into 3d games.

Are later games different? I thought all Mario games had a bunch of cruft at the start. Look at Galaxy; 3D games weren't exactly unheard of by then.

I opened up Super Mario World today, and it just has one intro slide before going into the first levels.

Games on a surface level used to be somewhat simpler, but man, I pine for the days of games that wouldn't waste your time with long intro segments and just let you enjoy what it had to offer right from the get go.

That statement made me laugh a bit. On some level a lot of games (e.g. those repetitive "open" world games) seem to b structured around wasting time. Collect 10 herbs, raid the hideout, activate the lighthouse, etc.

Haven't played games on a long time, but from watching some let's plays I got the impression that a lot of games are just repetitive grinding these days.

Super Mario World is earlier than Mario 64, not later.

Sometimes, I don't believe I'm not in a simulation.

I was just using it to setup cloud saving with Syncthing and Retroarch across Windows, Mac and Android (Works brilliantly). Then I come here and see this thread.

That's oddly a staple of the 3D Mario games even years later: Super Mario Sunshine had an annoying miniboss and a ton of cutscenes before entering the first world, and Super Mario Galaxy had cutscenes and a very long intro level before getting to the main game.

Galaxy 2, Odyssey, and Bowser's Fury toned the tutorials down a bit.

The latest Mario game, Super Mario Wonder, still does it. Especially the stuff that pops up after you finish a level.

Wonder is a more modern balance, but it still does have quick tutorials for new mechanics which is fair.

The more traditional tutorials are replaced by the Talking Flowers.

The flowers have a good sense of humor, I thought that was their main purpose :)

try a modern console :(

first you press the power button, then wait for the console to load (5-10s usually for a Switch), then dismiss the ads asking you to buy or subscribe to something, then navigate to the game you already have inserted into your console, then press play, then confirm you DON'T want the recommended update (which prevents you from playing the game), then accept the update when you realize it stops you from playing the game, then wait for the update to finish (10-30s + a console restart), then accept the System update which didn't even pop up before (another 1-2m + restart), then finally go through the above again, and now.... you're finally at the main menu of the game

sorry i just tried picking up the Switch again today during my sick day and had to wade through all this just to play Metroid Prime (a game that came out a decade ago)

God forbid you are not playing in handheld mode on the switch, it will take ten minutes to get the controllers in the right configuration

Hard agree, my 8 year old habitually un-docks the Switch does his controller set up and then puts it back in the dock. He discovered the time saving and convenience by himself and doesn’t even realize he is working around Nintendo’s lackluster design.

Addendum — he and I both truly enjoy playing on the Switch and Nintendo’s games, so no ‘hate’ intended; but it is worrying for future hardware from the company that their designs are badly implemented enough that a child has to invent a way around the inconvenience.

Wait, you get an update cycle done in 10-30s? I feel like on mine I download an update over the course of 3 weeks, and then it takes 4 hours to apply. Also every time I touch a game it needs to be updated, which takes another 4 hours.

All in all, I have been trained to never touch a console after I haven't used it for a day or two.

Switch updates are extremely fast. The other consoles aren’t.

I don't want to dismiss your experience out of hand, but...how long had it been since you last turned it on? When I play my Switch regularly, I don't ever turn it off all the way; putting it to sleep (either by pressing the power button in handheld mode, not long-pressing it, or by holding the Home button on my controller and selecting the option to put it to sleep in docked mode) doesn't lose much power overnight even when it's not on a charger in my experience. I also don't really remember having either frequent or extremely larger updates very often on any of the games I've played, although I guess I might just happen to play games that are on the lower end of update density. I don't think I've ever _ever_ had any sort of ad that I had to dismiss before playing a game; the closest thing I can think of is the "News" app, and I definitely find it a little annoying that there's no way to completely disable the notification dot on it or (even unsubscribing from every possible channel in it doesn't seem to fully stop them) or uninstall it, but it doesn't actually cost me any time unless I decide to go in and mark all of the stories as "read" to make the dot go away.

I play with my Switch once every few months and have not encountered anything close to what he described so it’s probably longer. Honestly, I play more often on my switch over PC since it’s just easier to pick up and drop.

i admit it's been a while, but i did try to mitigate it by not connecting to wifi (I count News as an Ad when the News is "Buy More DLC!!")

i think the issue was the game had an update which wouldnt install unless the Switch was updated too; i didn't even include the time it took to put in my wifi info (and wait for connection to fail so i could try again)

just for blithe comparison, I can plug in my 30 year old NES which hasn't been powered on in eons and play Mario in less than a second :)

Then once you start the first hour of the game is an unskippable tutorial.

At the time, many games were linear and didn't have anywhere to get lost. The first time I played SM64 I remember not knowing exactly what to do. I spent the first bit of time banging on doors, grates, or other inactive features trying to figure out how to work them. The interactions let me know I was going in the right direction.

you can jump after peaches letter, and for new players none of the motives have been established yet. those interruptions are integral to getting started.

That's the moment where you wipe your hands and compose yourself after restart because of failed canonless!

all of that only takes a literal minute to get past.

Reminds me, I played Genshin Impact once and I was struck by how brief the opening cutscenes were. Given it was a fantasy epic I sort of expected a bit more introduction to the characters in the first 30 minutes. But I think that was because of my conditioning on console games.

It makes logical sense. The longer the intro cutscene took, the more people would just exit out before the action could take place, the more money they lost on IAPs. So fast-tracking the player to beating things up within 2-4 minutes is critical. The longer story cutscenes can take over later. There are probably hard metrics to back this up somewhere.

Here is the link to the GitHub project with the source: https://github.com/ProbablyKam/Mario64webgl

I was able to stand up my own copy of it just by importing the GH project on Glitch: https://glitch.com/edit/#!/positive-rhetorical-timbale https://positive-rhetorical-timbale.glitch.me/

Those files are all over a year old. Has playing mario 64 in the browser been possible all this time and nobody posted it to hn, or am I missing something?

Also, I think this is the game file: https://github.com/ProbablyKam/Mario64webgl/blob/main/sm64.u...

15.2mb! Quite a lot smaller than games today!

Nah, it's been shared at least a couple times over the last 2 years, some people spinning up versions on glitch etc, even tho it's no longer maintained

The web version has worked since at least 2020.

What is more impressive is that Mario 64 itself was a measly 64 megabits (8 MB), already tiny for its era. So this version is almost double the size of the N64 original!

Question: does anybody know why the size of old cartridge games where always reported in bits instead of bytes? To make them look more impressive?

Because ROM/flash/eeprom chip sizes are advertised as bits. It was clearer in a time where the definition of "byte" wasn't always exactly 8, and it stuck.

The size of a cartridge was never advertised to users, so it'd be quiet useless from a marketing perspective.

> The size of a cartridge was never advertised to users

SNK did — “THE 100 MEGA SHOCK!”, “MAX 330 MEGA”, and “GIGA POWER”!

<https://www.avid.wiki/The_100_Mega_Shock!>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE4xlr_WLc4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfN6HTKfVi8

Yes, all NeoGeo games have the size printed on the box, but I guess most people have never seen a physical NeoGeo cartridge.

I think it was also quite common for Master System games, but not so much for other consoles.

Because bigger is better for marketing. The goal was to get sprite sizes as close to arcade as possible. The console manufacturers competed with arcades back then and arcade games always looked better when the bit wars were going. Most systems weren’t even capable of their claim and had to add processors together to get the total up (jaguar for example). Simpler times. 80/90s were about big. Also important to remember that most people didn’t know what a megabyte was.

Speculation on my part, but most memory chips (DRAM, flash, EEPROM) that I've seen sold are measured in bits rather than bytes. That might be because some of them aren't divided into or accessed in bytes. Or, as you say, it's marketing all the way down.

I've recently been enjoying watching this young modder on YouTube optimize all of the original SM64 source code, doubling frame rate, and modding his own Return To Yoshi's Island

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_rzYnXEQlE

I asked him to give a masterclass on how he does the modding, for one of my indie conferences! Video's out for free [0] in case you're interested.

[0] https://vimeo.com/853440902

Absolutely interested, thank you!

Just finished the talk. It was one of the best from any Handmade event I’ve seen, and I’m including the Acton talk from the first con in that praise. Congratulations on getting him in running such an amazing con.

You're very kind. We have a Media Page [0] with more masterclasses and a newsletter [1] to announce future events.

[0] https://handmadecities.com/media

[1] https://handmadecities.com/news

I just purchased a mint N64 with a new-in-box OEM Nintendo controller (it is TIGHT). Console came with Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Mario, Kart, Smash Bros. A few hundred $$$ investment, for: 3 N64s; 9 Controllers; ExPak; dozen top-shelf games, few crap; HDMI output on one; bunch of Pokemon +x-fer pack [gave to friend for cheap].

A local pawnshop had good copies of Ocarina+Mask; a friend wanted an N64 so I found one with expansion pak (which came bundled with Donkey Kong + Pokemon, which I also sold to friend)... Conkers and Rocket are on my wishlist [they are one hundred$/each].

I'm about to replace all the internal batteries for another few decades of cartridge savestates. So much time. So many memories.

All to say: the N64 Controller is a thing of beauty, and I cannot wait to dual-wield with dual controllers and 8MB RAM. I'm just under forty. Christmas came early.

Take that stick apart and put some kind of grease in there, lest your enthusiasm kill it like most of them out there.

Not graphite? Which specific type/class of grease (I imagine you would want something extremely slick)?

Usually I see Lithium grease recommended

I used some kind of white ceramic grease in a stick I would describe as 75-80% condition; it has been about 10 years with little deterioration since. I've read Lithium grease is better.

I've also read somewhere, though I could never find conclusive information, that Nintendo actually intended for these sticks to have some sort of grease included but was unable to for some reason that wasn't as trivial to explain as "Greedy company wants players to keep buying gamepads"..

I can't find any solid reference, but a small "assemble yourself" toy my daughter received for Christmas recommended applying grease to some cogs during assembly and mentioned that the grease itself could not be included in the product due to varying Customs/Import restrictions across the world.

Post pics after you give your palms 1st degree burns playing Mario Party

The pain of a first degree burns pales in comparison to dominating the star count the whole game, only to lose after the playing is finished due to someone else eking by due to impossible-to-predict bonus stars. Toad is a masochist, and he would give us all third degree burns too if they didn't destroy nerves and therefore the ability to feel them.

>Toad is a masochist

I love the "inner beast" which often appears between well-matched players.

> All to say: the N64 Controller is a thing of beauty

Honestly, it's always been one of the ugliest controllers in my opinion, and I was under the impression my opinion wasn't super common. I'm not usually one to care about form over function, but if anything the function is even worse, because no matter how you hold it, 1/3 of the controls are unreachable. If I had a third hand, maybe I'd appreciate it more, but it just looks like it was designed by an alien who had never seen a human before...

I did something similar but got a flash cart and a CRT. The nostalgia aspect still works for me since I had a flash cart back then too, only that one was maybe double the size of the N64 itself and this one is the same size and shape as a regular cartridge. Interestingly both of them costed a few hundred bucks, though I guess the one from back then (I think it was the Z64 or maybe the Mr Backup?) would have been a lot more if you account for inflation. Would recommend, too many N64 carts are unavailable or prohibitively expensive.

No sound on firefox :(

But still awesome seeing the game pop up instantly with no loading, prompts or whatever. Just like turning on an actual n64.

Firefox prevents audio from playing with no initial user interaction like a play button. Can see the warning if you pop open the dev console. Don't know of workaround besides sites not creating an AudioContext on page load.

I there a way to turn on audio? I'm on chrome and do not have audio either

You can explicitly allow it in Site Settings, and then reload the page. For me, I click the little button (looks like sliders) to the left of the URL, Site Settings, and then scroll down to change Site Audio to "Allow".

Edit: Keyboard input does not work :/ it was a good effort.

Found a workaround throw it in an iFrame and have the frame load with a user interaction. Here is a jsFiddle link, just click "Run" after the page loads.

https://jsfiddle.net/sg1r3h60/

Keyboard may not work, but a controller did! Still, A for effort :)

No sound on Chrome either.

No sound on Edge either.

In Firefox you can work around this. Click on the padlock next to the URL, then click the Right Arrow, and More Information. Head to the Permissions tab, scroll down and find Autoplay, and switch it to "Allow Audio and Video." Refresh, and you should have sound.

For whatever reason Firefox blocks it, tells you in the console that it blocked it, but fails to present the extra little UI in the site info dropdown that would usually expose the user override. Might be a bug with how this particular game sets up the web audio context or something.

Great find! Seems to be a common issue with games, found the same issue with trying to auto play PICO-8 cartrages on web.

Worked like a charm. Thanks!

Thanks!

There is also Wipeout on the web: https://phoboslab.org/wipegame/

Haha well there goes everything I had planned for tonight

Haha ! I miss how experimental those old games feel... unique gameplay, art & music, no design best practices and no cut&paste from internet when those were created, just pure skills

Little surprised there isn't a prompt to upload the copy of the ROM we all legally dumped from our personalized copies of the cartridge.

It’s a wasm compiled version using the decompiled source

Still, even when building the decompiled source yourself it gets its assets by stripping them from the copy of the ROM we all legally dumped from our personalized copies of the cartridge.

I couldn't figure out the keyboard controls (and can't find the source code), but you can plug in a controller and it'll play just great (presumably through some web controller API).

x to jump

c to attack

q/w/a/s/d adjust camera angle

and arrow keys for the joystick!

And spacebar for crouch & ... er... "pound the ground jump".

This one has the keyboard controls listed at the top: https://28klotlucas2.github.io/Mario64webgl/

neither of them seem to work for me either unfortunately, can't get past the first tutorial prompt :/

Counting 3..2..1.. before Nintendo takes this down.

Based on other recent events, I would't be surprised if Valve somehow steps in and does it for them.

It would be great if someone could link to the relevant news.

Some HN links for it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38943797 and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38945090

I don't see how Valve would be involved in this unlike with the Dolphin Steam fiasco

I know intellectually that smartphones are more powerful than an N64... but playing this in a browser on a low-end smartphone is surreal.

  PSA: bluetooth keyboard: X, C, space; arrow keys. Adjust view with WASD

Smartphones have been able to emulate Mario 64 for a very long time now. For a truly surreal experience, play the Funkey S port: https://youtube.com/shorts/FfeRFmd27Jc?si=0WU8MW_ZtXcqOOkz

As I recently started playing with WASM as well for my emulator, it's fun to see the pitfalls I run into are the same for everyone, like the AudioContext being forbidden without user interaction, forcing me to add a "Start" button.

Gamepad support on browsers is abysmal as well. It works, but the buttons are not interpreted properly leading to the wrong button being reported (but the OS reports the correct ones!), even for the most standard xbox controller. It seems like the wheel that is sdl gamecontroller db will have to be reinvented on the browser again... while making it a bit harder since the browser might not tell you the exact gamepad model (it would add fingerprinting bits).

Interesting that the pitfalls for developers are both wins for the end user. I don't want my browser to know what kind of peripherals I'm using or be able to play audio I didn't explicitly ask for.

How would something like the sdl gamecontroller db work in this context?

I tend to agree for Audio; this is why I did write the Launch button. For the Gamepad API, if the browser does not want to expose model information, it should either:

- expose the buttons as sent by the OS, and let the OS to the mappings

- or build its own internal game controller db for mappings.

Right now it's doing neither, and that's an issue.

Chrome sound wasn't working for me on Linux, but after going into "Site Settings" (from the menu to the left of the URL) and explicitly changing "Sound" from "Automatic (default)" to "Allow", it seems to work perfectly.

This is where the main game with keyboard controls: https://28klotlucas2.github.io/Mario64webgl/

Does the Peach picture gradually change to Bowser when Mario approach it ?

Yes. Brings back some memories.

Looks like this is forked from the original at https://github.com/28klotlucas2/Mario64webgl ?

yeah not sure why they linked a random fork.

Absolutely amazing, worked straight off the bat, even works with my 8BitDo N64 controller with no config.

What an age we live in!

Did anyone else just... not like this game? I know it's sacrilege, but I've just never found the appeal. Even being the perfect age as a kid when it came out, I just could never enjoy it. Something about how disjointed the worlds are always confused me.

This is pretty awesome but I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't done anything about these online versions of their games, they're fairly aggressive about protecting their IP.

ROMs are and have been everywhere for decades

And Nintendo had famously been aggressively taking them down the entire time

They have, but are mostly very elusive, and definitely not something easily accessible like this

> <popular search engine>/search?q=sm64+rom

looks like it has about 6 sources on the first page, for me.

It kind of blows my mind to be able to open a browser tab and play mario 64, spent so many hours on this as a kid on the N64.

I wonder if in 2034, we'll be able to run GTA V in the browser for free with some cool open source project

This is amazing but I'm guessing it won't be long before Nintendo takes it down.

Sound seems to be an issue, as it works maybe 25% of the times I've tested this.

unrelated but I was surprised to learn that backward long jumping to clip through the star doors is very easy to do on original controllers. Took less than 5 minutes of attempts to get it right when I had SM64 recently.

This is working perfectly on my iPhone 6. Massive props.

How does input work on iPhone? Keyboard overlay?

You can pair a PlayStation controller to an iPhone and it works fine with this, at least on an iPhone 13.

Xbox controller over bluetooth, works great

i'm impressed with the performance! this laptop struggles with simple games in steam, but had no problem with this at all

Very impressive!

I agree!

I picked up [RetroPie](https://retropie.org.uk/) again during the pandemic. I'm sure many did the same haha.

That's when I learned [N64 emulation is difficult](https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Optimization-for-Nintendo-64/).

Well done.

To be clear, this is not emulation: this is likely a WebGL compiliation of the decompiled port, hence widescreen: https://github.com/n64decomp/sm64

Thank you for the clarification

it's so smooth. identical experience.

Isn’t this a bit sketchy to just have a repo with no source and a wasm file? I understand not having the actual Mario64 source, but I’d feel more comfortable running this if the translation code was open source

In what way are you worried that the binary blob is malicious, and do you not trust the browser's sandboxing? I'm curious why this is any worse than running javascript on any other website.

I am genuinely ignorant on the sandboxing and capabilities of wasm

Wasm shouldn't have any more capabilities than Javascript, it's theoretically the same sandbox with all the same underlying system access (or lack thereof). However, that doesn't mean I can vouch for the implementations.

I ran it through VirusTotal before posting the link -- I had the same thought : )

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/06f3a404ab8aff76e820e3b7d...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com