Mario has obviously changed a lot through the years, going from 2D to 3D. There’s even furry Mario, and “May I have your hand in marriage” Mario (pictured). But there’s something about this ray-traced “remaster” of Super Mario 64 that has us absolutely shook.
This project is the work of Dariosamo who has been working on making an open-source Super Mario 64 port with full ray tracing capabilities for PC. While this isn’t the first time we’ve seen snippets from that venture, we got a full technical preview this week and a playable demo.
There’s a lot to take in here graphics-wise, but one thing you’ll notice right off the bat are environmental flourishes like real-time reflections in water or from bubbles, or the adaptive light and shadows bounce off the ground — all things ray tracing can (and does) augment in newer next-gen titles.
The game, sadly, is not fully ray traced yet, but if you’re interested in seeing the work that has been done, you can check out this in-depth half-four play-through from Digital Foundry. We highly recommend a gander if flipping your childhoods on its head is something you enjoy.