Just a week after releasing an impressive "first slice" playable build, work on the fan-made "Portal 64," an attempt to port Valve's popular "Portal" to the 1996 Nintendo console, was halted. Developer James Lambert said Valve asked him to halt the project because it "relied on Nintendo's own libraries."

Lambert has been working on the Nintendo 64 version of Portal since at least early 2022 and was the first to post a video of a "graphics test on real Nintendo 64 hardware." But he also warned that if he decided to go ahead with the project, he would have to "rebuild the whole game from scratch."

And he did, and to great effect: this was "Portal" on the Nintendo 64, which I honestly thought was impossible until I saw it with my own eyes; Lambert's work was praised by the Nintendo 64 fan base, which included our own Rich Stanton, who called Portal 64 "the most impressive homebrew game I've ever seen.

Unfortunately, releasing a playable build of the project seems to have crossed some sort of line. 'We're in contact with Valve about the future of the project. 'We have some news, and it's not good. Since the project relies on Nintendo's proprietary libraries, they have requested that I shut down the project."

In an email sent to PC Gamer, Lambert confirmed that the removal request was legitimate, but the reasons were not entirely clear. 'I think Valve didn't want to be involved in a project involving Nintendo's IP,' he wrote. I don't blame them."

"If somehow we could have a discussion with Nintendo about the possibility [of continuing "Portal 64"], we would love to. I don't know what it would take to convince them."

Valve's preemptive strike against Portal 64 may have been at least partly due to its encounter with Nintendo over the Steam release of the Dolphin emulator for the Wii and Gamecube consoles, which was scheduled for 2023. Prior to its release, Nintendo sent Valve a letter that Voyer Law attorney Kellen Voyer described as "a warning shot."

"Nintendo has sent Valve a clear notice that it believes Dolphin violates the DMCA and that Nintendo will likely take further action if it is released on Steam," attorney Voyer said at the time. Given Valve's control over what is available on its own store, it made the decision not to intervene in the dispute between the Dolphin developers and Nintendo, and instead followed Nintendo's preemptive request and removed the Steam page."

This seems not entirely dissimilar to the situation in Lambert: Portal 64 was not for Steam, but it utilized Valve's intellectual property, which would at least mean that Valve could be involved in the dispute, Valve's lawyers, may have decided that it was not worth the headache, even if only indirectly involved.

Not surprisingly, there was disappointment in Lambert's comments on Patreon's post, with some users saying that if Lambert switched from Libultra, the official Nintendo 64 SDK, to libdragon, an open source SDK, he might be able to move the project Lambert said he was not sure if doing so would displease Valve and was reluctant to jump in without first getting permission from Valve

.

"If Valve agrees to let me finish it before they try to jump," he wrote, "I will consider porting it to libdragon." It would be a lot of work and I don't want to commit to it before I know if it will actually pay off," he writes; they don't seem too interested in this project either, as there is no point in distributing it on Steam. "

For now, Lambert said he doesn't know what he'll do next, but he plans to continue his YouTube channel and other projects." He has a few other ideas in the works: an N64-powered VR, a pneumatically powered computer, and some other ideas that have been going around in his head." He may also start working on his own games.