Enlarge / "N-tel (64) Inside" (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

In recent years, we've reported on multiple efforts to reverse-engineer Nintendo 64 games into fully decompiled, human-readable C code that can then become the basis for full-fledged PC ports. While the results can be impressive, the decompilation process can take years of painstaking manual effort, meaning only the most popular N64 games are likely to get the requisite attention from reverse engineers.

Now, a newly released tool promises to vastly reduce the amount of human effort needed to get basic PC ports of most (if not all) N64 games. The N64 Recompiled project uses a process known as static recompilation to automate huge swaths of the labor-intensive process of drawing C code out of N64 binaries.

While human coding work is still needed to smooth out the edges, project lead Mr-Wiseguy told Ars that his recompilation tool is "the difference between weeks of work and years of work" when it comes to making a PC version of a classic N64 title. And parallel work on a powerful N64 graphic renderer means PC-enabled upgrades like smoother frame rates, resolution upscaling, and widescreen aspect ratios can be added with little effort.

Enlarge (credit: Benj Edwards)

Ars Technica AI Reporter and tech historian Benj Edwards has co-written a book on the Virtual Boy with Dr. Jose Zagal. In this exclusive excerpt, Benj and Jose take you back to Nintendo of the early '90s, where a unique 3D display technology captured the imagination of legendary designer Gunpei Yokoi and set the stage for a daring, if ultimately ill-fated, foray into the world of stereoscopic gaming.

Seeing Red: Nintendo's Virtual Boy is now available for purchase in print and ebook formats.

A full list of references can be found in the book.

Nearly 30 years after the launch of the Virtual Boy, not much is publicly known about how, exactly, Nintendo came to be interested in developing what would ultimately become its ill-fated console. Was Nintendo committed to VR as a future for video games and looking for technological solutions that made business sense? Or was the Virtual Boy primarily the result of Nintendo going “off script” and seizing a unique, and possibly risky, opportunity that presented itself? The answer is probably a little bit of both.

As it turns out, the Virtual Boy was not an anomaly in Nintendo’s history with video game platforms. Rather, it was the result of a deliberate strategy that was consistent with Nintendo’s way of doing things and informed by its lead creator Gunpei Yokoi’s design philosophy.

Enlarge / Nintendo will eventually gift us Switch 2 information, hopefully in time for Christmas. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

While the past few months have included plenty of informed speculation about the so-called Switch 2, Nintendo hasn't given even a bare hint that the system is in the works. That changed at least somewhat last night, as Nintendo President Shinto Furukawa shared on social media that "we will make an announcement about the successor to Nintendo Switch within this fiscal year," which ends on March 31, 2025.

In his pre-announcement announcement, Furukawa warned that an upcoming Nintendo Direct presentation planned for June would include "no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor," suggesting more information may be coming closer to the end of the fiscal year than the beginning.

Furukawa notes that the eventual announcement will come over nine years after Nintendo first alluded to the Switch's existence with the March 2015 announcement of a console then called "Project NX." Nintendo didn't show that hardware publicly until 19 months later, with a three-minute preview trailer that dropped in October 2016. Hands-on press previews for the Switch came three months after that, and we then had to wait almost two more months for the console to finally hit store shelves in March of 2017.