Super Mario 64 Online

Many people have asked me why Tarek701 (the main developer of SM64O) calls SM64O “firmware”. In fact that is because it is a kind of core for SM64. SM64O has gone through so many transformations that it is now a pretty special project that is no longer just a “classic” hack, but an almost stand-alone program that performs the tasks to make SM64 run normally in online mode. This included a lot of technical work, also the synchronization of objects, characters, and much more. However, this could not all be incorporated into a simple SM64 hack. So instead we decided to implement SM64O together with a heavily modified Project64. So a lot of the work is done by the emulator (which isn’t really an universal emulator anymore, since it will only start SM64O), while the actual SM64 hack (which is called SM64O) contains essential modifications that add to the overall experience of the online game (like extending the ObjSpawn limit, etc).

Although this might somehow seem reasonable, we still decided to drop the name “firmware” when the v6.00 release became available because I personally think it’s not quite fitting and confuses too many people.

The History of SM64O

Now, back in 2007, Tarek701 had the idea of creating Super Mario 64 “online”. Following on from Super Mario 64 DS, in which the Nintendo developers made a Versus mode available via DS Download Play, so that you could play with four players (but unfortunately no Co-Op), he had the idea of developing an SM64 hack that would enable an online mode for SM64. This goal was certainly not easy, because unlike the Nintendo DS, the Nintendo 64 had no online function and also the N64 emulators implemented Netplay only barely or rather half-heartedly. So he put together a team and started to work on the biggest project for him until today. We first modified SM64 and wrote some assembly code, and made a good foundation for the online function (e.g. optimizations for loading/unloading objects near Mario, removal of limitations of the ObjSpawn function, etc.). Later we heavily modified the source code of the Project64 emulator (v1.4) and implemented an online function (we abandoned Kaillera and developed our own strategy), developed a kind of pseudo-homebrew that runs a master server and then loads the corresponding server list via the online function in the emulator, set nicknames, administrator/moderator rights to keep its server clean from trolls, etc. Over time many useful features have been added.