How I implemented MegaTextures on real Nintendo 64 hardware
Why Hacker News recommends it
Pointed to as an impressive technical N64 homebrew demo showing unexpectedly high-res textures.
What it is
James Lambert demos a MegaTexture-style technique running on real Nintendo 64 hardware, built for an N64Brew game jam. It streams high-resolution textures onto stained-glass scenes on the console.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2023 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends echelon · 2024-03 · on “VR Powered by N64 [video]”
This is what James Lambert does as a follow up when Valve shuts down [1] his "Portal in N64" project [2]. James is like Kaze [3] and builds incredible N64 demos [4] and technical videos about them. [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] [this video]
Recommends cubefox · 2026-03 · on “I Built an Open-World Engine for the N64 [video]”
The same guy, James Lambert, also implemented texture streaming (which would not be invented until two console generations later) in an N64 demo. The textures look uncharacteristically high res: [this video]
Cites JohnBooty · 2023-09 · on “Demo of megatextures running on n64 hardware”
Appear to be videos of this project in action: "How I implemented MegaTextures on real Nintendo 64 hardware" - [this video] "Megatextures Tech Demo - N64brew Summer Game Jam 2023 Submission" - [LINK]
Cites kmeisthax · 2023-11 · on “RPG Engine for the Nintendo 64”
Prerendered cutscenes ate up the lion's share of the disc. If you sacrificed on those and used lots of compression, you absolutely could build an RPG on the N64 that would stand up to whatever you could do on PlayStation. However, nobody wanted to do that. The only RPGs we got on the N64 were Quest 64 and Paper Mario. The reason why requires diving into the development history of what would have been a third RPG for the system: MOTHER 3. To put it bluntly, they ran out of storage space, and pivoted to the N64 DD to get more. The custom floppy disks the N64 DD took could hold 64MB[0]. Even then, this wasn't enough, so the game was then broken up into two parts: an N64 cartridge plus a DD expa