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A native PC port of Nintendo’s 1999 platformer Donkey Kong 64 is finally here, and the team that pulled it off is proud to say that they used zero generative AI tools in the process.
DK64 Rekongpiled, a recompilation or translation of the game’s code for modern hardware (as opposed to emulation), dropped today. All you need is an original Donkey Kong 64 ROM to get it running.
In a post on Bluesky (and also in the trailer), contributor 2dos wrote that “no generative AI [was] used at any point in the process.”
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Everything in the original game is still there, including its old fuzzy 3D graphics, bouncy soundtrack, and the rest of the things that made Donkey Kong 64 an innovative and sometimes maddening game. It all runs at high resolutions and high framerates like any other modern PC game. You can even play with a mouse now, too.
The port is here just two months after a group of programmers decided to take the project on after seeing another group heavily use AI vibe code in the process. At the time, contributor 2dos wrote in the N64 Recomp Discord server that the competing project’s use of AI would “make it progressively harder to manage as time goes on.”
“Our DK64 recompilation project is backed by folks who have worked on and tinkered with the backend of the DK64 code for well over a decade, and do not rely on vibe coding to make code changes,” they wrote.
Piles of ports using generative AI programming tools like Claude have shown up in emulation and hacking communities a lot in the last few years because it allows programmers to put them together in a fraction of the time. Experienced programmers, like the ones working on DK64 Rekongpiled, see far too many problems with the bugs and other problems vibe coding creates.
Instead, they prefer to do it as cleanly as possible using their own skills from messing with the game’s code. Some of the same people who worked on the port previously worked on the DK64 Randomizer.
The release trailer for DK64 Rekongpiled features a goofy but exceptionally charming little scene where the villain King K. Rool—voiced by 2dos, of course—realizes his plan to keep people from playing the classic game on PC has been foiled by some pesky programmers. His henchman, also voiced by 2dos, can’t believe they got it to run in 4K at 200 frames per second and ditches his boss to go play it himself.
Generative AI couldn’t make anything as convincing as that, if you ask me.
