Recomps of old games are becoming more popular and common online as a way to experience classic games easily on PC, with more options than ever before. And for all of you wild souls who love Donkey Kong 64, like Kotaku’s own Rebekah Valentine, you’ll be excited to hear that the next big retro recomp project will make that beloved (?) N64 platformer playable on PC. This version will also not include any AI-powered “vibe coding,” either.
On June 28, YouTuber 2dos posted a short trailer for Donkey Kong 64: Recompiled, an upcoming fan-developed PC port of the original 1999 platformer. This new recompiled version of Donkey Kong 64 is being built using Wiseguy’s N64 recomp tool, which helps devs translate N64 games into software that can run on a PC. The upcoming recomp will feature widescreen support, high framerates, 4K resolution options, updated minigames that work better with “lagless gameplay,” extremely low input delay, and mod support.
Here’s the trailer for the upcoming project:
As with all recompiled projects, you’ll need a copy of the game to play DK64: Recompiled, as it will contain no actual assets from the original N64 game. This is also why Nintendo has been unable to legally go after these tools and projects using C&Ds and scary lawyer letters.
Donkey Kong 64: Recompiled is being developed by the same team behind the popular Donkey Kong 64 Radomizer mod, a team that has years and years of experience working on the classic 3D platformer. More specifically, this team is making it clear that it isn’t using AI-powered tools to “vibe code” this recomp port. In fact, the reason the team even announced the port before it was released was to make it clear this DK64 recomp isn’t being vibe coded, as explained by one of the project’s devs on Reddit.
“Unfortunately, the [DK64] recomp comes with a special case on that we have a competitor who is vibe coding their way through, and doing a very poor job of it,” said developer
theballaam96. “As such, we want to get our intention out that we’re doing a recomp of actually good quality before our competitor releases their poorly made one and some infrastructure is built around that one.”
Over on the team and project’s Discord server, the devs shared more insight on why they are recompiling DK64 despite at least one other dev trying to do the same using AI assistance.
We have decided to take on and own this development due to the poor development direction of another recompilation project of DK64 happening concurrently that is heavily leaning on AI vibe code, and thus is resulting in a poor quality project that will make it progressively harder to manage as time goes on. Our DK64 recompilation project is backed by folks who have worked on and tinkered with the backend of the DK64 code for well over a decade, and do not rely on vibe coding to make code changes.
Vibe coding, where devs tell AI tools what they want programmed and then modify the code using their own code and more AI assistance, has become quite popular among some recompilation projects. The PC Gaming Wiki’s list of recomp and decomp projects actually had to add a rule banning these projects, which often aren’t as stable or reliable, to stop them from flooding the list. As of June 29, only one DK64 recomp project is listed on PCGW’s list: DK64: Recompiled.