In the mid-'90s, with the Nintendo 64 looming, Nintendo was still looking for exciting new titles that would placate its enormous army of SNES owners. Donkey Kong Country, Killer Instinct, and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island are all examples of games that squeezed every last drop of juice out of the 16-bit platform, with savvy coders pushing the console to its limits.

Today, some 30 years after the fact, these limits are still being explored as inquisitive homebrewers look to expand upon the known capabilities of these humble platforms of yore. Case in point: modder Game of Tobi, who is currently attempting a minor miracle in porting the N64 launch title Super Mario 64 to the Super Nintendo.

Tobi's port uses Super FX technology to render Super Mario 64's polygonal 3D environment, complete with complex environmental features such as verticality and textures. This would imply that Tobi's port is specifically using Super FX 2 - utilised in DOOM, Winter Gold, and the then-unreleased Star Fox 2 - which was capable of rendering rudimentary textures on its polygons.

Recognisable stages in Tobi's port include the desert plains of Shifting Sand Land, Peach's Castle, and the iconic Bob-Omb Battlefield (which the homebrewer notes was by far one of the toughest stages to replicate). The engine itself was designed by Tobi from the ground up, but because the port uses assets from the original game's source code, models and animations were a little easier to replicate.

The performance is admittedly a little shaky at this stage, but the project is nothing short of a technical miracle - a tribute to the power of Super FX 2 technology and the talent of its creator. Tobi notes that they are not the first to achieve this, as another modder, retroports, recently crafted a similar project. This is not Tobi's first rodeo, however, as their Super Mario 64 recomp for the Game Boy Advance is equally impressive work.

There is currently no release offered for SNES Super Mario 64. Obviously, there is still much work to be done. But it's always awesome to see old platforms pushed beyond the finite nature of their technology. Not to mention that, ultimately, you never need a reason to add more 3D Chain Chomps to this world.