Watch a YouTuber Do What Nintendo Couldn’t: Get ‘Super Mario 64’ Running on an SNES
YouTuber Tobias Friedly has successfully created a work-in-progress version of Super Mario 64 running on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The project, titled Super Mario FX, utilizes a custom engine and the SNES's Super FX coprocessor to render 3D graphics on the 16-bit hardware. Although the game is playable, it faces significant technical constraints regarding level and texture size limits.
- ▪The N64's 64-bit architecture and 4 MB of RAM are vastly superior to the SNES's 16-bit system and 256 KB of memory, making a direct port impossible.
- ▪Friedly developed a custom engine to run rebuilt Super Mario 64 levels using original game assets on the SNES.
- ▪The project relies on the Super FX enhancement chip to handle polygon-based 3D graphics, a chip rumored to have been originally intended for a 3D Mario title.
- ▪The primary technical hurdle for the project is the limitation that levels cannot exceed 2 MB in size.
- ▪Friedly plans to release the completed project to the public once development is finished.
3 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 27 hours. All of the coverage we found sits in one bucket: centre. That one-sidedness is itself worth noticing.
- ▪ Someone got Super Mario 64 running on the SNES using the Super FX chip — XDA Developers
- ▪ Using the SNES Super FX Chip to Run Super Mario 64 — Hackaday
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| Original publisher | Gizmodo |
| Canonical URL | https://gizmodo.com/watch-a-youtuber-do-what-nintendo-couldnt-get-super-mario-64-running-on-a-snes-2000818387 |
| Publication time | Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:25:10 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-29T14:26:22.564Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-29T14:26:22.564Z |
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| Cluster | pS3aO_Vpp7gm · 3 stories |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
The whole getting-x-running-on-y thing is fun, but a lot of those challenges (getting Doom running on a lawnmower, etc.) seem kinda arbitrary. I mean, who’s going to actually play Doom on their lawnmower?* The idea of getting Super Mario 64 running on the original SNES, though, has a certain charm, not least because there’s a persistent rumor that Nintendo itself tried and failed to do this back in the day. That hasn’t deterred a YouTuber by the name of Tobias Friedly, whose channel is called Game of Tobi, and who recently posted a video where he showed off a work-in-progress version of what he’s calling Super Mario FX—a nod to the rumored original project.
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