Incredible Portal Demake Runs on Real N64 Hardware

The clearly very talented James Lambert is currently working on a Portal Demake for Nintendo 64. Not one of those modern fancy demakes that runs in emulation though, but one that would actually run on the real and very much original hardware. Not only that, but lovely Lambert has even shared a video from the latest build of this incredible project and well… it looks like Portal. It’s a welcome break from the fake demakes that are really just rendering filters and animation. This is playable.

OK, admittedly, it looks like Portal running on a Nintendo 64, with all the resolution, texture, and frame rate limitations that such a thing would entail. But I’ll be damned, it’s still really impressive and I have to wonder, what could we really make for older systems using modern development knowledge? I mean, this is obviously one example, but if you have more, please let me know.

What’s even cooler? You can download this demake yourself and try it. It’ll run in any modern Nintendo 64 emulator too, of course, so don’t worry about having to flash a cartridge or anything just to try it out. One thing that really amazes me though is that the N64 can actually cope with the portal rendering, it’s pretty cool stuff.

Portal Demake

What’s he gonna make next, a cake that isn’t a lie? Now that I’d pay to see! However, if you just want to download this demo, you can do so here.