YouTuber James Lambert has spent nearly two years demaking Portal for the N64, even getting it to run on the original hardware. He had to shut the project down last week, but he urges people not to lay the blame at Valve's door.

"Valve asked me to take Portal 64 down. I can't say I didn't expect this at some point," Lambert says in a video explaining the situation (as reported by PC Gamer). "It's their IP on a Nintendo console. I was hopeful I could get it to completion, but this is not unexpected."

Somebody at Valve reached out to me and I was put in contact with their legal team and they asked some questions about the project. When it came up that I was relying on Nintendo's proprietary library - Libultra, they had to tell me to stop.

While I might not be a big enough target for Nintendo to come after, Valve is. If they put their stamp of approval on the project, that could be grounds for Nintendo to come after them.

There are alternatives to the official Nintendo 64 SDK Libultra, such as the open-source libdragon, but Lambert says that it "would be a ton of work" and that he doesn't want to get his hopes up that Valve would back the project at the continued risk of legal battles with Nintendo.



Forgetting Nintendo and the potential legal headaches, Portal 64 isn't hosted on Valve's own platform. Given that it's a rebuilt version of one of its games, this is a major hurdle that Lambert would have to cross.

We know from Black Mesa, a fan-remake of the original Half-Life, that Valve is okay with its games being rebuilt in new ways, but those are monetised via Steam, allowing Valve to take a cut. So, even if Nintendo gave it the okay, Lambert doesn't think Valve would.

The only chance this has of coming back is if, somehow, Nintendo approves of the project and says, 'Yeah, go ahead'. Even after that, Valve still has to agree.

Instead of trying to find a way to keep Portal 64 going, Lambert is celebrating what he achieved before the inevitable takedown happened, moving on to new ideas.

"I'm thinking I want to create an original game and develop it simultaneously for the Nintendo 64 and PC," he said. "That way it's an interesting project that runs on N64, but I also have a way to easily monetise that and have a wide audience of people who could buy it."

As such, Lambert's not done with his channel just yet, as he plans to continue making N64 hacking videos while developing his new game.

Posted: Jan 21, 2024 9:53 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://www.thegamer.com/valve-reportedly-shut-down-portal-64-demake-fear-nintendo/