Paper Mario PC ports beckon as coder completes full decompilation of the N64 classic

pcgamer.com:

It takes a brave kind of person to announce they've fully decompiled Paper Mario mere days after Nintendo finished mounting hacker Gary Bowser's head on a proverbial spike(opens in new tab), and that person is Ethan Roseman. Spotted by VGC(opens in new tab), Roseman—a coder—has announced that he's «reached 100% completion» on a project aimed at decompiling the Nintendo 64 classic, opening the way for mods and unofficial PC ports.

I'm extremely happy to announce that after 3+ years of working on a decompilation project for Paper Mario, we have reached 100% completion for the US version of the game. Every compiled function has been matched!https://t.co/2iwkrFmK4h pic.twitter.com/KRCd25u4TfApril 19, 2023

The completion of the project means that, sooner or later, we should be able to play Paper Mario on our desktops without having to resort to emulation.

As draconian and litigious as Nintendo is about these things, previous projects of this type have managed to avoid the gaze of its lawyers so far. Decompilation projects for Ocarina of Time(opens in new tab), A Link to the Past(opens in new tab), and Perfect Dark(opens in new tab) all remain in good health, so Roseman's project should—in theory—remain online for the foreseeable future.

The reason is probably because projects like these don't really infringe on any of Nintendo's intellectual property. Coders like Roseman aren't just ripping Nintendo's assets (like textures) out of their games and slapping them onto the PC, instead, they're remaking the code themselves, which Nintendo has yet to find a way to crack down on.

Of course, that does mean if you want to play an unofficial PC port of Paper Mario, you'll have to provide those Nintendo assets via a (legally acquired!)