This game was mind blowing to Ciro Santilli and all kids. It felt so real. The perfect contrast between peaceful town work and saving the world. OMG.
Commented and labelled disassembly: gist.github.com/1wErt3r/4048722
Decompilation project: github.com/MitchellSternke/SuperMarioBros-C. That project does not produce the ROM however, it reimplements an emulator + game in a single binary.
OMG, the second half of the game where the world becomes quite open and all backstories are revealed, is one of the best gaming moments ever.
This is the one that hit Ciro Santilli the hardest, coming in at the point in which he started to discern between games and the real world a little better. His parents bought it for him during a trip to Disney World in Florida in 1996 (?), since electronics were much cheaper in the USA.
So as Ciro became older, and turned into a software engineer, he started to become more and more morbidly curious about "N64 internals": tool-assisted speedrun, how the devkit looks like, how games were developed for it, hardware leaks, etc.
Luckily Ciro's mind is not interested enough by that useless shit for Ciro to seriously study it himself. But that's what YouTube is for, right? Why do useless stuff when other more useless people can do it for you?
Ah, Ciro Santilli loved this one... games young Ciro Santilli played.
OMG, both of those just fucking work on Ubuntu 20.04 with README instructions, it is unbelievable, those people don't have lives. And it builds the ROM byte by byte equal from source!
There are a few different versions:
- github.com/n64decomp/sm64 for emulator (i.e. or real hardware), tested at 9214dddabcce4723d9b6cda2ebccbac209f6447d
- github.com/sm64-port/sm64-port Ubuntu native, tested at 6b47859f757a40096fedd6237f2bc3573d0bc2a4Full screen with F10.
- github.com/sm64pc/sm64ex: fork of sm64-port, untested by Ciro Santilli, but more new amazing usability features, notably:Also reported to work on ARM: www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ityg6w/pinephone_playing_super_mario_64_30fps/They also ported to browser with Emscripten: github.com/sm64pc/sm64ex/wiki/Compiling-for-the-web
Tested with the USA ROM at sha1sum 9bef1128717f958171a4afac3ed78ee2bb4e86ce (you need a ROM to extract assets, which the project automates), which is also documented in the project itself: github.com/sm64-port/sm64-port/blob/6b47859f757a40096fedd6237f2bc3573d0bc2a4/sm64.us.sha1. Disclaimer: Ciro Santilli owns a copy of Super Mario 64.
The only dependency missing from Ubuntu packages is the IRIX QEMU user mode which they need for their tooling. The project also has a QEMU fork for that, and provide a working deb.
From this project it was also noticed that certain ROM releases were not compiled with optimizations enabled, presumably because as a release title the compiler had optimization bugs! www.resetera.com/threads/so-apparently-the-ntsc-build-of-mario-64-didnt-use-any-compiler-optimizations.166277/ But now they do have a working compiler, and by turning that switch FPS increases in certain levels!!!
Some quick stupid patches:
- jump really high:
diff --git a/src/game/mario.c b/src/game/mario.c index 5b103fa..83c9f40 100644 --- a/src/game/mario.c +++ b/src/game/mario.c @@ -826,7 +826,7 @@ static u32 set_mario_action_airborne(struct MarioState *m, u32 action, u32 actio case ACT_JUMP: case ACT_HOLD_JUMP: m->marioObj->header.gfx.unk38.animID = -1; - set_mario_y_vel_based_on_fspeed(m, 42.0f, 0.25f); + set_mario_y_vel_based_on_fspeed(m, 200.0f, 0.25f); m->forwardVel *= 0.8f; break;
Interesting entry points:
src/game/game_init.c
TODO: enable the level select debug feature! tcrf.net/Super_Mario_64_(Nintendo_64)/Debug_Content#Classic_Debug_Display They actually shipped quite a few debug features into the retail game, and they have been reversed too. I tried this but it didn't work (or I don't know how to enable the level select menu):
diff --git a/src/game/main.c b/src/game/main.c
index 9e53e50..b7443a8 100644
--- a/src/game/main.c
+++ b/src/game/main.c
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ s8 sAudioEnabled = 1;
u32 sNumVblanks = 0;
s8 gResetTimer = 0;
s8 D_8032C648 = 0;
-s8 gDebugLevelSelect = 0;
+s8 gDebugLevelSelect = 1;
s8 D_8032C650 = 0;
s8 gShowProfiler = FALSE;The
enhancements/ folder contains a few sample patches.
Screenshot of mupen64Plus running on Ubuntu 20.04 emulating Super Mario 64 with the title screen hacked by Ciro Santilli based on the Super Mario 64 reverse engineering project
. The title was on a string, so the hack was trivial! The patch used was:diff --git a/include/text_strings.h.in b/include/text_strings.h.in
index 749179b..626f87e 100644
--- a/include/text_strings.h.in
+++ b/include/text_strings.h.in
@@ -131,7 +131,7 @@
*/
// Main Screens
#define TEXT_MARIO _("MARIO") // View Score Menu
-#define TEXT_SELECT_FILE _("SELECT FILE")
+#define TEXT_SELECT_FILE _("HACKED BY CIRO")
#define TEXT_CHECK_FILE _("CHECK FILE")
#define TEXT_COPY_FILE _("COPY FILE")
#define TEXT_ERASE_FILE _("ERASE FILE")Some tutorials of hacking it:
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkb7Naczoww SM64 Decomp Tutorial 1: Setting Up and First Code Changes by Bitlytic (2021)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuIpqX4neWg Rovert Decomp Tech Demo by Rovert (2019) Metal cap makes Mario huge.
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aG1Iyjo20w Is it Possible to Beat Super Mario 64 as Tiny Mario? (Mini Mario Challenge) coverts the obvious make Mario huge/tiny hack. Huge mario verion: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR_gol6zlIo. There was a pre-decompilation ROM hack doing that trivial change already: Tiny Huge Mario 64. Sample tool-assisted speedrun: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7BjzZ_Nkk0
FIXING the ENTIRE SM64 Source Code by Kaze Emanuar (2022)
Source. Now that we have the source, modders like this are going nuts.Ciro Santilli really liked the battle mode on this.
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
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This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
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- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
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