Star Fox 64, running natively on iPhone and iPad. Native ARM64 app. Metal rendering. 2x internal resolution and MSAA in settings. Touch controls. Controller support. Running on real hardware. Not an emulator, and not streaming from a Mac. HarbourMasters built Starship, the native source port. I built StarshipPad on... top: the iOS/iPadOS layer, Files import, on-device setup, and mobile lifecycle. The surprise is iPhone: it doesn’t feel like a compromise. It feels like a real way to play. I used Codex 5.6 Sol to do the iOS integration work. Source, build guide, and ROM-free IPA below.show more

GitHub repo, build guide, and Preview 2 IPA are here: The IPA is ROM-free and unsigned, so you still need to sign it yourself. Use your own legally acquired supported US Star Fox 64 1.0 or 1.1 ROM, import it through Files, and StarshipPad creates the local archive on-device. The repo includes the iOS integration, maintained patches, build scripts, touch controls, package audits, license notices, and docs.

The engine isn’t mine. HarbourMasters built Starship, with LibUltraShip and Torch underneath it. The Star Fox 64 decomp/source-port work is the foundation. My part was getting that stack onto Apple’s mobile platforms: compile, link, Metal, UIKit, Files-based setup, on-device extraction, app lifecycle, physical-device signing, controller handoff, and touch controls. Once your ROM is imported, StarshipPad creates a local archive and runs as a native source-port app. No N64 hardware is being simulated, no ROM is interpreted at runtime, and unrelated N64 games will not work. The build is running on real iPhone and iPad hardware. Controller support uses the native GameController/SDL path, with the full physical-controller matrix still being tested. StarshipPad’s original integration code is open source under MIT. Starship and the other upstream components keep their own licenses. No game data is included.

How are people doing these? Saw one for a Zelda game the other day. Does the process work for any n64 game? Like Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart?

the zelda game you saw might have been mine? The games need to be recomp'd or decomp'd to make them eligible for this. I did Mario Kart yesterday and posted it.

Apple and Nintendo watching you save the world

Looks great, good job, also 2x resolution seems to be a visual sweet spot in terms of keeping the spirit of what the games looked like while cleaning it up just a bit

agreed, it looks and plays amazing on the iPad. I had wanted to see how far gaming on iPad could go...when paired with a controller it's kinda like a giant gameboy (only way more compute!)

Did Wave Race 64 here. WebGL.

If anybody here can dumb this down and guide me how to play these on my iPad iPhone , I’ll appreciate it.

Hey Hely! Putting the readme into an LLM would be a solid start. I've tried to make the readme as approachable as possible.

Thanks 🙏 and may the gaming gods bless you

Nice.

mario party 1,2 and 3?

Yeah, I've considered this, I believe many of them have been fully or partially compiled!

Of course this is running technically on a $500 processor chipset equivalent compared to n64 sgi chip 20 years ago. Shows the best of both worlds.

My 5 year old loves iPad gaming, it’s an easy intro and the on screen controls are intuitive bs a controller at this stage. Standard mobile iOS games are trash and ad ridden.. I’ve been contemplating a switch 2 or even mod retro but I love the work you’re doing here! 🫡

You’re doing god tier work here! Feels like every day another n64 classic is coming to IOS 🙌

do you think you could make a port for wii u? i would love to play this and a few other n64 games on wii u!

Are you gonna port the whole Nintendo 64 library on iPad?! 😂 well done 💪

A couple down.... a couple hundred to go...

fuck...

gorgeous!

Great idea! Nice work 🔥

The worst way to play

hey joe - the touch shown in the video is purely to showcase the iPad. Preferably, I use a controller, and the repo comes with support for just about every controller out of the box.

Any plans for similar projects on Windows 11? Or are Windows tablets too niche?

Many of these projects have already been compiled and run on Windows, hence why I was doing it for the first time on iOS and iPadOS. I travel frequently, and I don't travel with a Windows machine (I run one I remote into, and I don't own a Windows tablet). So it's a great idea, but local testing would remain out of reach at the moment for me personally.

1080 Snowboarding next?

allat for a 4/10 game