In brief: Programmer James Lambert is working on a Portal demake that runs on real Nintendo 64 hardware, an impressive feat considering the complexity of Valve's puzzle platformer. The latest video in the Portal demake series is the first to feature a working portal gun with recursive portal rendering.
It's still a bit rough around the edges but there's a good reason for that. Lambert said he wanted to verify the N64 could even do portals before trying to do things he knows it can do.
Now that he knows the N64 is up to the task, he can add more details to sell the effect like the animation of the gun firing and the portal growing. Audio will also go a long way.
Lambert was unsure how many layers deep he could go with the portal and though even two might strain the hardware too much. In testing, however, he was able to go up to 15 layers deep without any noticeable slowdowns. It's largely pointless to go that deep as the final layer is just a few pixels across, but it's impressive nevertheless.
Portal arrived as part of The Orange Box compilation in late 2007 for Xbox 360 and Windows PC, more than five years after Nintendo's 64-bit home console had been discontinued.
Lambert has posted the latest version of the build over on GitHub for those interested in giving it a spin. The next update should feel much bigger, he said.
Nintendo, meanwhile, is working on Portal: Companion Collection for the Switch. The bundle includes Portal and Portal 2, and is scheduled to arrive later this year.
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Image credit: Joshua Sukoff