Mario Kart 64 has a native PC port with 120 FPS Ultrawide support

Mario Kart 64 is now playable on PC with a native port of the game that supports 4K, Ultrawide displays, 120 FPS, and even ships with course editor.

Mario Kart 64 has a native PC port with 120 FPS Ultrawide support
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TL;DR: Harbour Masters has developed a native PC port of Mario Kart 64 using decompiled code, enabling higher resolutions, ultrawide support, and 120 FPS performance. This non-emulated version offers enhanced features like a course editor, adjustable CPU difficulty, and modding potential, available for Windows and Linux.

No, Nintendo hasn't decided to start bringing its back catalog of games to PC, that will probably never happen. Instead, Mario Kart 64 has just received a PC port from the team at Harbour Masters, which was created using the same disassembly and recompilation template seen with previous native PC ports for Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

The game's original code is decompiled and recompiled in a PC-friendly codebase and language without containing any of the original game's assets. Harbour Masters calls the release Spaghetti Kart, requiring a ROM of Mario Kart 64 to work. As this is not an emulation of the Nintendo 64 hardware, the game benefits from modern PC gaming features.

This includes rendering the game at higher resolutions, with Ultrawide support, and with performance that can hit 120 FPS. It also means texture packs, new audio, and other remastered assets can easily be added to the game. This PC port includes a course editor and the ability to tweak several settings not present in the original N64 release.

A common criticism surrounding the game's N64 debut was that the single-player mode was too easy, so the ability to make the CPU characters harder is a nice addition. Reverse engineering a game like this, without assets, also seems to be outside the reach of Nintendo's notorious legal backlash against things like ROMs and emulation, which is why these native PC ports have remained online.

Harbour Masters notes that the PC port of Mario Kart 64 is still in development and a little buggy, but it is playable on Windows and Linux devices. With that, it's probably only a matter of time before we see this port receive a ray-tracing mod and new courses based on the latest entry in the Mario Kart series, the Nintendo Switch 2's Mario Kart World.