Recently, we about the fan-made PC port of Super Mario 64, featuring DirectX 12 support, ray tracing, and 4K resolution. Knowing how intolerant Nintendo is towards fan projects regarding its intellectual property, players had no doubt that the company would soon demand its removal. This happened even faster than expected—within a week.
As stated by , lawyers from the American firm Wildwood Law Group LLC, collaborating with Nintendo, began sending letters to Google and YouTube demanding the removal of the port files and related videos. The reason—copyright infringement. The game can still be downloaded from some sites, but it will soon become impossible to do so.
Fans ported the game to PC through reverse engineering of the game code. This version surpasses the emulated one due to DirectX 12 support, ray tracing, native 4K resolution, and widescreen displays, as well as reflection and shading effects. Additionally, it can be played with an Xbox One controller.
Over the years, Nintendo has not softened its stance on fan creations related to its licenses. For example, in March of this year, under Sony's demand, remove a character model and levels from Super Mario created by a player from the PS4 exclusive . After that, the lawyers from "Big N" to monitor copyright violations in user content for the game.
The PC port of Super Mario 64 is not the first fan project related to this game that has been taken down at the company's request. In 2015, the same happened with the browser-based HD version of the platformer by Roystan Ross.
Super Mario 64 was released in Japan in June 1996 on Nintendo 64. It reached North America in September of the same year, and in March 1997 it appeared in Europe. The platformer is regarded as one of the greatest games ever created and a significant milestone in the history of 3D games. Upon its release, it received a perfect score from Edge magazine, which was known for its strict reviews of video games. By May 2003, over 11 million copies had been sold.
This week Nintendo the largest data leak in its history. More than 2TB of materials were stolen from the company's servers, including the source code and complete documentation for Nintendo 64, GameCube, and Wii, as well as early game demos for these consoles. Some believed that the PC port of Super Mario 64 was related to this leak; however, this information was not confirmed.
This year, Nintendo plans to release several Mario series games for the Nintendo Switch. Among them Super Mario 3D World: Deluxe — an expanded version of the 2013 game for Wii U.
Source: 3dnews.ru
