How to Make a Nintendo 64 Game in 2026
In this first-person account, developer Dominic Szablewski details the creation of Xibalba 64, a new physical N64 game published by Modretro in 2026. He explains how he ported his JavaScript game engine to C, built a platform backend using Libdragon, and overcame the N64's hardware limitations—such as scarce texture memory and slow bandwidth—with clever batching and raycasting. The article covers the development environment, including emulators and the SummerCart64 flash cart, and offers practical advice for aspiring N64 homebrew developers.
The N64 infamously only has 4 KB of texture memory. The largest textures you can upload are just a meager 64×64 pixels.
- eltondegeneres
ModRetro is owned by the same war profiteer who runs Anduril Industries which makes human-killing robots.
Their previous console had an edition made of the same metal as Anduril's lethal drones.
[1]: https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/12/site-news-why-we-...
[2]: https://kotaku.com/modretro-anduril-chromatic-attack-drone-m...
- Mizza
Libdragon has been improved massively in the past year or so, there are now simple demo games that show capabilities far beyond the original N64 games (bump mapping textures, HDR, seamless loading of massive overworld maps, etc.) Really talented core team, fun to give them a follow.
- boricj
I'm tinkering with a PlayStation homebrew (voxel space renderer) and development for fifth generation consoles has never been easier.
Modern toolchains, programming languages, dev cartridges and libraries from the community makes all the difference. Outside of some niceties like ICE (gotta write that GDB stub for target hardware at some point), it's not that different from what you'd experience with modern embedded work.
- coryadams
"Modretro customer service address and, to my surprise, heard back from the head of publishing within a day."
This makes me want to jump in. But also, I wonder how many people will ever buy and play your game.
Does Modretro's target market buy this type of stuff? Or are they the type to just download and emulator and ROM.
- chungusamongus
I consider all homebrew stuff very cool but the number of games emulating PS1 / N64 aesthetics is so massively oversaturated at this point that I'm kind of burned out on it.
But in general, the thing that really impresses me is what people come up with working within these various constraints. Less is more.
Megadrive / genesis homebrew is where it's at for me. But tbh I am honestly kind of clueless when it comes to this stuff. Still trying to get parallax scrolling and foreground occlusion figured out for my "game."
- FlavioMacedo
Great work! I didn't even know it was still possible to publish new games for old consoles like the N64.
- negative_zero
Obligatory link to an interview with three of the Goldeneye developers about the development of the game. I found it very fascinating.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bNN9XhGZ3Yw
(Also The Centre for Computing History YouTube channel is seriously underrated)
- ninjin
Tried to see if it was possible to buy the Rom itself. But it seems like you would need to buy a physical copy at this point: