Files
goldeneye-pc-port/docs/index.md
T
James Dansereau d6561a15b3 README/Pages: replace Sept-1 attract shots with v0.2.0 playtest captures
The old attract-bunker1/attract-dam PNGs predate the D227 sky, D229 water
and 60 fps fixes. Point both pages at the Sept-13 playtest gallery instead
(shot-06 Bunker 1, shot-01 Dam) — same files as the gallery below, honest
captions — and drop the stale PNGs.
2026-09-13 22:20:49 -04:00

10 KiB

title, description
title description
GoldenEye 007 PC Port A native PC port of the original Nintendo 64 GoldenEye 007, built from its decompiled source with a software RSP. v0.2.0 is out for Windows and Linux (including Steam Deck) — download it, drop in your own ROM, and play; or dig into the code and the engineering record behind it.

GoldenEye 007 PC Port

A native PC port of the original 1997 Nintendo 64 GoldenEye 007, compiled from the game's decompiled source with the N64's graphics coprocessor (RSP) running in software — the same architecture as the Perfect Dark PC port, the same Rare "Indy" engine family, one hardware generation apart.

Status: v0.2.0 — to our knowledge, the first open-source port of the original N64 game to ship as a public release. The full single-player campaign runs at a steady 60 fps with no known crashes, and audio (music + SFX) plays throughout. Known rough edges — cutscenes still glitch, a few music tracks sound wrong, a handful of cosmetic rendering defects remain — are listed plainly under Honest status.

~32 s gameplay montage from live play sessions
~32 s gameplay montage loop from live play sessions, running in the port.

Download

Platform Bundle Notes
Windows (x86_64) win64.zip Engine + runtime DLLs + the one-time asset tool.
Linux (x86_64) / Steam Deck linux tarball SDL2 is bundled — it runs as-is on any distro, and sideloads onto a Deck with nothing installed.

Bring your own ROM. Both bundles contain no ROM and no game assets — you supply your own GoldenEye 007 N64 ROM (the Requirements table has the three region filenames and SHA-1s). Then: unpack, drop the ROM in data/, run prepare-assets once, launch. The full four steps are in the Quick start; pre-built releases are legal to distribute precisely because they're useless without a ROM you already own.

See it running

Bunker 1, rendered by the port (v0.2.0 playtest) Dam, rendered by the port (v0.2.0 playtest)

Full playtest gallery — 19 in-engine captures from the v0.2.0-pre Windows playtest, across the campaign

In-engine — Dam (v0.2.0-pre)
Dam
In-engine — Facility (v0.2.0-pre)
Facility
In-engine — Runway (v0.2.0-pre)
Runway
In-engine — Surface (v0.2.0-pre)
Surface
In-engine — Surface (v0.2.0-pre)
Surface
In-engine — Bunker 1 (v0.2.0-pre)
Bunker 1
In-engine — Silo (v0.2.0-pre)
Silo
In-engine — Frigate (v0.2.0-pre)
Frigate
In-engine — Frigate (v0.2.0-pre)
Frigate
In-engine — Surface 2 (v0.2.0-pre)
Surface 2
In-engine — Bunker 2 (v0.2.0-pre)
Bunker 2
In-engine — Statue (v0.2.0-pre)
Statue
In-engine — Statue (v0.2.0-pre)
Statue
In-engine — Archives (v0.2.0-pre)
Archives
In-engine — Cradle (v0.2.0-pre)
Cradle
In-engine — Cradle (v0.2.0-pre)
Cradle
In-engine — Aztec (v0.2.0-pre)
Aztec
In-engine — Aztec (v0.2.0-pre)
Aztec
In-engine — Frigate (v0.2.0-pre)
Frigate

More captures may land here as playtesting continues.

Play it — or take it apart

  • Try it yourself — grab a bundle above, bring your own ROM, and play the campaign. It's an early cut for exactly this: if something breaks, an issue with what you were doing is genuinely useful.
  • Read the code — the game logic in src/ is unmodified decompilation; every hardware surface (video, audio, input, save storage, and the software-RSP renderer) is shimmed in the MIT-licensed port/ layer. Internals is the map; Porting notes is the catalogue of N64→PC bug classes hit along the way — a good read even if you never touch the code.
  • Mod it — the port layer, build system and tools_pc/ helpers are MIT licensed and yours to extend: new video options, input tweaks, your own asset sidecar. CONTRIBUTING has the ground rules that keep it faithful to the original game.
  • The research angle — this is also a case study in AI-agent collaboration on a large, low-level codebase: two coding agents (a local open-weight model on a single RTX 5090, and Claude / Claude Code), driven by one person part-time through ~230 translation units of unmodified big-endian MIPS game code. The full write-up: setup, timeline, the handoff workflow, and an honest assessment of what did and didn't work.

How it works

The R4300 game code is compiled completely unmodified — the decompilation's control flow is ground truth. The N64's Reality Signal Processor, the graphics coprocessor that builds and executes each frame's display list, is emulated in software: the port interprets the GBI stream the game emits and translates it to OpenGL, bypassing the RDP entirely. Everything else that would touch N64 hardware — video, audio, input, timers, save storage — is shimmed in a small dedicated layer, following the architecture of the Perfect Dark PC port from the same Rare engine family. Full detail: Internals; the bug catalogue: Porting notes.

Honest status

  • Cutscenes glitch frequently — skipped beats, wrong camera, misplaced or hovering actors. The most visible gap in this release.
  • A few in-level music tracks sound wrong (wrong instruments, occasional garbling).
  • Particle colours drift through a rainbow palette instead of holding grey/orange.
  • Water levels show a moving seam; pixel strips at screen edges at non-integer scales; some front-end 3D models mispositioned or absent.
  • The F10 overlay's bottom row duplicates the selected item; one intermittent Steam Deck SIGSEGV in heavy firefights remains open (D255).
  • No macOS/ARM support; no controller rebinding UI yet.

The full list, with root causes and fix status: the README's Status section and the finding log.

Documentation

  • The two-agent development case study — goal, setup, timeline, the handoff workflow, and an honest assessment of what did and didn't work.
  • Development process — how work was scoped, partitioned, and budgeted across agents; the finding-log discipline.
  • Internals — architecture, the software RSP-emulation approach, GoldenEye-vs-Perfect-Dark engine differences, the phased plan.
  • Porting notes — the recurring Nintendo 64 → PC bug classes hit during the port, with fixes.
  • Building — full build and asset-extraction guide.

Non-commercial fan preservation/research project. No ROM or game assets are distributed; you supply a ROM you already own. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo, Rare, Microsoft, MGM, Danjaq, or EON Productions.