Mario Kart 64 And The Minish Cap Land As Native New 3DS Ports, With AI Credited On One Of Them

Following his well-received port of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, developer EstebanPdN is back with two new native projects for New Nintendo 3DS: a port of Mario Kart 64 and one of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, both designed specifically to take advantage of the handheld's dual screen.

One screen for the interface, the other for the action

The Mario Kart 64 port, built on the unofficial PC project SpaghettiKart, renders races at 400x240 (with an optional 800-pixel mode on compatible models) and offers a choice of widescreen 5:3 or the original 4:3 ratio; the bottom screen acts as a touch-enabled race dashboard, and multiplayer is planned for a future update. The Minish Cap, meanwhile, builds on the game's official open-source decompilation and on the Project Picori effort: it runs in true widescreen on the top screen, while the bottom screen shows a touch-controlled map, inventory, and quest log, plus support for Project Picori's randomizer. EstebanPdN recommends a New 3DS for a smooth experience, since older models still suffer from slowdown on this port.

One detail that got people talking: EstebanPdN credits Claude, Anthropic's AI, as a contributor on the Minish Cap project, but not on Mario Kart 64. That transparency sparked some debate in the homebrew community about AI's growing role in fan projects, to which the developer responded simply that he doesn't pay much attention to the criticism, adding that "nobody is obligated to download or play it." Both ports are free, with source code and setup instructions, on their official GitHub repositories: Mario Kart 64 3DS and The Minish Cap 3DS.

Source: Time Extension