Video: Super Mario 64 HD plays flawlessly on iPhone 6

BY Killian Bell

Published 30 Mar 2015

Mario-64-iPhone

If you jailbreak your iOS devices, you can access a catalog of emulators that allow you to play classic games like Pokemon and Zelda. But one developer has proven it’s possible to play titles as good as Super Mario 64 HD in Unity on the iPhone 6.

Roystan Ross originally used Unity to build a browser-based version of Super Mario 64 HDwhich can be played on almost any platform that has the Unity plugin installed — including Macs, PCs running Windows and Linux.

With a bit of work, the game can also be played on an iOS device — as demonstrated in the video below. What’s impressive is that not only does it look terrific, but it also plays flawlessly, with no lag or stuttering, and no dropped frames.

It’s pretty astonishing that a 3D game like this one can be played in a browser — let alone on a mobile device. It really is a testament to the incredibly powerful specifications packed into Apple’s latest iPhones. But unfortunately, you can’t play it yourself — at least not on iPhone.

As explained in the video, TouchArcade had help from Mobot developer James Fletcher to make Ross’s Unity project playable on an iPhone, and there are no plans to make the tweak available to the community.

But if you want to try out the game yourself, you can do so on a Mac or PC by visiting Ross’s website, where you’ll find the original Unity version. Just be sure to install the Unity plugin before you attempt to play, because the game won’t work without it.

Now that Nintendo has confirmed plans to support iOS and other mobile platforms, official Mario games for smartphones and tablets could soon become a reality. It’s unlikely they’ll be as good as Super Mario 64 initially, though.

Instead, Nintendo is likely to deliver watered-down mini-games using its incredibly popular franchises to attract downloads, and it has made it clear it won’t be porting any of its existing titles to touchscreen devices.

But if those mini-games turn out to be a big success and Nintendo makes a lot of money from them, it could be persuaded to develop more advanced titles later on.

[via TouchArcade]