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A fan port of Super Mario 64 to PC gives the classic game a significant facelift. A video from Digital Foundry highlighting the visual upgrades shows off the newly revised character models and ray tracing, which gives the old Mario game a huge visual boost.
As detailed in the video, the models are based on pre-rendered artwork that Nintendo released in promotional materials leading up to Super Mario 64. That means they don’t look quite the same as the Mario models in current games, because the art style itself is different. But it looks very impressive regardless.
The other key feature being shown off is the ray tracing, which has a big impact on lighting in various environments like the bright-and-sunny outside of Peach’s castle and the dreary underground dungeon settings. You can also see reflections of Mario in stage elements like crystals. As you might expect, Metal Mario is particularly impressive, since his chrome surface reflects the stage elements around him.
This is footage from the technical preview mod, which is now available to try through GitHub. You can feel free to put it through its paces and report any problems, though the creators request you look through the issue tracker first to make sure you aren’t reporting any already-known issues.
