Sixteen players at the same time. A single Peach’s castle. Every level and every object kept in sync so that nobody drops through the floor while someone else is off using the wing cap.
That is the Co-Op mod built for the unofficial Super Mario 64 PC port, and up to this point you had to choose between it and the other headline mods. That restriction is gone.
Three mods that finally play nice
May 2020 is when the PC port arrived. Across the six years since, the fans who care most about a 1996 platformer have been steadily rebuilding it, and three mods emerged as the ones worth talking about: the Ray Tracing Mod, Co-Op, and the Render96 HD Texture Pack.
Every one of them pushes the look or the feel somewhere different. The news is that, for the first time in the history of the port and its mods, all three work alongside each other. Picking one is no longer necessary.
What each one actually does
The ray tracing mod does exactly what the name promises: real-time ray tracing, bolted onto a game whose original hardware could not have imagined such a thing back in 1996.
Render96 is the more curious entry. Its HD Texture Pack is not going after photorealism or a generic modern polish. Instead it targets the aesthetic of the game’s original promotional material — the artwork that convinced you Mario’s jump to 3D was worth it before you had ever picked up a controller.
Co-Op, meanwhile, keeps every level and object synchronised for as many as 16 players, a description that would have read as gibberish in the N64 era.
Thirty years, and Nintendo’s busy elsewhere
This year marks Super Mario 64’s 30th anniversary. As the first Super Mario title with 3D graphics, it earned critical acclaim for its level design, ambition, visuals and gameplay, and went on to become the best-selling Nintendo 64 game of all time.
Many consider it among the greatest video games ever made, and it is frequently credited as a major inspiration behind the 3D platformers that came afterwards. A Nintendo DS remake followed in 2004. After that, silence — no modern makeover has materialised.
Nintendo has plenty else in motion, including The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake, which makes a modern-gen Super Mario 64 an unlikely priority in Kyoto. The modding community decided not to wait around.
The reaction
Footage showing all three mods active simultaneously has been circulating, and the 1996 release has never looked this good while holding on to what made it work in the first place. Emotions in the comments ran high almost immediately.
“The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!” read one. Another: “This gives me the same feeling I first had as a kid. Crazy.”
The most important detail may be the price. Putting this entire setup together costs nothing at all — it is completely free, an appropriate way to celebrate three decades of a game that showed a generation what a camera parked behind your shoulder could accomplish.