Beloved Nintendo 64 Platformer Finally Getting Superior PC Port

The Nintendo 64 was home to some brilliant platformers, so it’s a shame so many of them get overshadowed by Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie.

That’s not to say either of those games don’t deserve the recognition. They do. But, plenty of other Nintendo 64 platformers deserve some love as well.

One such platformer is about to get a brand-new, unofficial PC port, and it’ll undoubtedly become the definitive way to play.

Donkey Kong 64 Was A Great Game With A Major Flaw, But The PC Port Will Fix It

Before it was saddled next to all of the other studios on the chopping block with Xbox, Rare was one of Nintendo’s best partners.

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GoldenEye, Banjo-Kazooie and Conker’s Bad Fur Day are just a few of the legendary titles produced by Rare for the Nintendo 64, and many of them are easily accessible on modern consoles thanks to Rare Replay, Xbox Game Pass and Nintendo Switch Online.

Donkey Kong 64 is another excellent game in Rare’s repertoire and it was recently added to Nintendo Switch Online.

This mighty collectathon had one major flaw however. While its playable characters were many, options to switch between them freely were few.

In order to swap between Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Tiny Kong, Chunky Kong and Lanky Kong you had to find floating barrels scattered throughout the levels. Because each character had their own unique collectibles too, this made completing the 100% a real slog.

A new, unofficial PC port by 2dos fixes that however. It supports mods that’ll allow you to ‘tag-anywhere’, so you can quickly switch between characters without having to find a barrel to hop into.

There’s a suite of other improvements coming too, which will hopefully all work in tandem to give us the best version of Donkey Kong 64 yet. It’s a shame an official remake is off the cards.

Like usual you’ll need a physical copy of Donkey Kong 64 to rip a ROM from. You should download ROMs you don’t own from the internet, otherwise you’re in violation of copyright law. Yes, King K. Rool is a pretty cool pirate, but that doesn’t mean you should be one too.

Decompilations like this one have been all the rage recently. It’s resurrected several Legend of Zelda games you can’t currently play on modern hardware like the Nintendo Switch 2.

They’re in a weird bit of legal limbo right now so enjoy them while you can, provided you have the legally-obtained ROMs needed to get them working on your PC.

The Donkey Kong 64 PC port is just another fantastic way games like this can be preserved for the future, as while they’re definitely a product of their time they’re still a lot of fun today.

At the time of writing the PC port isn’t available to try yourself, but it’s getting there. Hopefully it launches sooner rather than later.