It takes courage to announce that you've completely decompiled Paper Mario just days after Nintendo finished putting hacker Gary Bowser's head on a spike (opens in new tab), but that person is Ethan Roseman, VGC (opens in new tab) Discovered by VGC (open in new tab), Roseman, a coder, announced that he has "100% completed" a project aimed at decompiling the NINTENDO 64 classic and paving the way for mods and unofficial PC ports.

The completion of the project means that sooner or later, people will be able to play Paper Mario on their desktops without having to resort to emulation.

As powerful and litigious as Nintendo is about these things, past projects of this sort have so far managed to avoid the gaze of lawyers. The Ocarina of Time (open in new tab), Link to the Past (open in new tab), and Perfect Dark (open in new tab) decompilation projects have all remained healthy.

Perhaps the reason for this is that these projects do not infringe on Nintendo's intellectual property; coders like Roseman are not cutting assets (like textures) from Nintendo games and slapping them onto the PC, they are reworking the code themselves It's a good thing.

Of course, if you want to play an unofficial PC port of Paper Mario, you have to provide Nintendo's assets (obtained legally!) It means we have to provide it via ROM. It's a little more roundabout than just pressing "go," but it's probably best, since it keeps everyone involved out of jail.

For those interested in how Roseman accomplished the feat, a YouTube video (opens in new tab) details the decompilation process. And if you just want to play a port of Paper Mario on your PC, you probably won't have to wait too long until someone figures out how to do it; Roseman himself says he still has "documentation, support for other versions, support for more assets" for this project. documentation, support for other versions, and support for more assets" for this project.

For now, a reverse-compiled version can be found on Roseman's GitHub (opens in new tab). Perhaps the PC version of Paper Mario will one day have a strong modding scene like that of Breath of the Wild (opens in new tab).