This year, christmas comes early because nothing can top this...
With the advent of the major Nintendo data-breach of 2020 - finally, a PC-port of 'Perfect Dark', with 1080p internal rendering (INI-edit can likely get higher), solid 60FPS, and support for mouse and keyboard out-of-the-box, with seemingly no compromises so far. I never thought I'd ever see this game run anywhere close to 30FPS, let alone 60! This game is notorious for being nigh impossible to get working correctly on emulators, always with at least one aspect breaking apart at the seams. Because many game-mechanics are directly tied to the hardware timings and thus framerate, which is common for consoles of the era, even if the stars did align, the performance didn't really ever benefit. This is, however, not emulation. It's a port that was reverse-engineered and rebuilt from the ground up, and must have been painstakingly so since this is one of the most complex titles that the platform ever saw released. Now it escapes the shackles of emulation.
The original game was marred by its abysmal framerate which could drop into single digits frequently. Although ahead of its time (like its predecessor GoldenEye) in so many ways (sorry Halo fans), and definitely pushed the Nintendo64 to its very limits in every way, it came at significant performance penalty. Understandably it didn't jive well with anyone who wasn't already a huge Rare/GoldenEye fan with a N64 in the year 2000. Even though many of us were accustomed to dismal framerates back in those days, PD pushed things quite a bit too far and framerate drops all too much, even for a masochist like me. Nevertheless, a true classic that was a huge influence on me and which impacts my creative sensibilities through to this day, some 23 years later.
My only complaint so far is that I'm finding it a little too easy now. Well, I'll just have to play through it to unlock 'Perfect Dark difficulty-mode' so that I can tweak the AI settings and perhaps find that original pain again, because this game can really get brutally enjoyable.
https://www.dsogaming.com/news/an-unoff ... s-support/
https://github.com/fgsfdsfgs/perfect_dark
As a bonus stocking-stuffer for fellow lovers of hallucinogenics, a romhack of GoldenEye64 called "DisasterEye", which can not be described in words and simply must be seen to be believed. It is what it sounds like - James Bond on acid:-
http://n64vault.com/ge-misc:disastereye-64
.