Mario 64 PC’s latest mod upgrades all its character models

The latest mod for Super Mario 64’s unofficial PC port upgrades a significant number of its character models.

Since the unofficial port’s release in May, fans have improved the game’s graphics with a host of modifications including upscaled texture packs and a 60FPS patch.

As demonstrated in the video embed below, fans have now replaced a large number of the game’s enemies and props with high-poly models, although they still rely on the same 24-year-old N64 animations.

Released in May, the unofficial Super Mario 64 PC port was made possible by a 2019 recompilation project which saw fans reverse engineer the game’s source code.

The DirectX 12-powered port allows players to run Mario 64 natively on PC, and enables fans to mod individual elements like those seen in recent videos by YouTube user Unreal.

As reported in May, it’s also possible to implement ray-tracing in Mario 64 via the third-party Reshade app.

Shortly after its release, Nintendo acted against sites hosting the fan-made Super Mario 64 PC port.

Mario 64 is set to be re-released for Nintendo Switch later this year as part of the Super Mario Bros.’ 35^th anniversary.

As first revealed by VGC, Nintendo will reveal plans to re-release most of Super Mario’s 35-year back catalogue this year, remastered for Nintendo Switch, including 1996’s Super Mario 64, 2002’s Super Mario Sunshine and 2007’s Super Mario Galaxy.