Wave Race 64: Recompiled

Wave Race 64: Recompiled

Watch the showcase on YouTube.

You need: Wave Race 64 (USA) (Rev A)

Also called v1.1. Cartridge ID WR, region E, revision 1, 8 MiB .z64, header CRC 0x492F4B61 0x04E5146A, sha1 508dfc2d4caa42b6f6de5263d0aed5e44ac7966a.

The original US release (v1.0, revision 0), the Japanese and European versions and the Shindou edition will not work: their code is laid out differently, and every address in this project is tied to Rev A. The launcher checks the file you pick; from a shell, WaveRace64Recomp.exe --identify your.z64 prints what it is.

Supply your own legally obtained dump. This project does not include one, and never will.

A native PC port of Wave Race 64, made by statically recompiling the game's MIPS code to C with N64Recomp and running it on N64ModernRuntime with RT64 as the renderer and RecompFrontend for the menus and controller support. It is unofficial and not affiliated with Nintendo.

Getting it

Windows (x64). Download WaveRace64Recomp-0.4.0-windows-x64.zip from the Windows and Mac release, extract the entire ZIP, and run WaveRace64Recomp.exe. Pick your USA Rev A dump in the launcher. HD textures, the replacement soundtrack, adjustable High/Aqua water, event haptics, and the required DLLs are bundled. See installation and controls.

macOS (Apple Silicon). Download the ZIP from this fork's latest release, extract it, and drag WaveRace64Recomp.app to Applications. Requires macOS 15 or later and your USA Rev A dump. Libraries are bundled; no build tools are needed. See installation and first-launch instructions.

The original project's releases are also available. This fork's packages include replacement artwork and music; original cartridge data is loaded from your dump each time the game runs. See Licensing below before redistributing it.

Build it yourself. docs/BUILDING.md takes you from installing the toolchain on Windows to the first race: clone with submodules, check your dump, disassemble and recompile the game from it, build. For a native Apple Silicon app using Metal, see docs/MACOS.md.

Settings, controller profiles and saves live in %LOCALAPPDATA%\WaveRace64Recomp. Started by double-click, the program writes its log to wr64.log in that folder; attach that file to a bug report.

What 0.3 is

The game boots, its menus work, and championship, time trial and two-player races run with audio, at speed, with records saved to the emulated EEPROM. Not every course has been played in both directions yet, and stunt mode and the championship ceremony have had less testing than the rest; reports of anything wrong there are welcome.

New in 0.3, all of it widescreen work on the 2D layer: the race HUD is laid out across the frame rather than kept at 4:3 in the middle of it -- time top-left, rank and lap centre, speed and the leaderboard right, MISS and power along the bottom -- while menus keep the 4:3 layouts their frames are drawn for. The game's full-screen overlays, the tint over a race and the pause screen's dim, now reach the edges instead of leaving a brighter band down each side. And the warm-up round is widescreen like every other race, truly so rather than a stretched 4:3 picture.

From 0.2: the 3D models on the watercraft and rider select screens sit in their frames in widescreen, and two-player split screen is presented in full.

All of it comes from a display-list rewriter in the port, which inserts RT64's extended commands into the game's lists before RT64 sees them without touching the game's code, and from four scripted patches to RT64 (see docs/PLAN.md, phase 07, and tools/patch_rt64.py).

Beyond running natively, the port adds:

• Widescreen at the display's resolution and aspect ratio, with the game's own black overscan borders removed. HUD Placement in the Graphics tab chooses whether the race HUD is laid out across the frame or kept at 4:3 in the middle of it.
• High frame rate. The game keeps its own update rate (30 Hz in a race, 20 in the menus and Time Trial, by its own choice) and RT64 interpolates each object's movement between game frames, so it presents at your display's refresh rate. Physics, camera and timers are untouched.
• A launcher with a ROM picker, a settings menu, and controller remapping with per-device profiles, from RecompFrontend.
• Audio through the recompiled RSP microcode.

Controller haptics

Settings → Haptics adds distinct feedback for wave landings, collisions, buoys, power gains, and race milestones, with a subtle engine and water feel. Events only feedback is enabled by default. Adjust its strength, select Full, or turn it off. Supported controllers can also use trigger vibration. Feedback stops during pause/settings and when the game loses focus. See the haptics guide for controls and implementation details.

Replacement soundtrack

Source builds of this fork include nine replacement recordings: Bryan EL's Main Theme and Dolphin Park, plus seven tracks from Retro Game Remix's Dolphin Park album. The build bundles the recordings, loop settings, and artist credits. They are available under Settings → Sound → Music → Custom, with a separate custom-music volume control. Custom is enabled by default. Original restores the cartridge soundtrack.

All courses have replacements; Options and first-place results also have assigned recordings. Effects and announcer commands keep using the original audio. Local recordings can override individual bundled tracks. See the track mapping and setup guide. These additions follow the v0.4.0-macos.1 binary release. Download v0.4.0-macos.2 or newer for the bundled soundtrack and HD textures with modern water enabled by default.

Bundled HD textures

This fork includes the reviewed HD texture pack, with 1,828 replacement mappings. HD is enabled by default under Settings → Graphics → Textures; choose Original to use the cartridge artwork. The build bundles the textures alongside the music, so no separate pack install is needed.

The pack includes refined HUD fonts and signs, both Wave Race logos, eight helmet portraits with dark visors, sharper rank and buoy icons, ramp wood, island materials, and improved jet-ski side panels for the primary and opponent models. Most textures are 4×; the focused portraits, icons, terrain, wood and secondary craft panels use reviewed 8× replacements. World materials have complete mip chains. Rejected generated candidates retain source-preserving replacements, so coverage does not imply that every material gained new detail. See credits and coverage and reconstruction details.

Modern water preview

Watch the water shader in motion on YouTube.

The source build enables High water with Aqua appearance by default. In Graphics → Water, choose Modern for detailed ripples, sun/sky lighting, depth color, refraction, shoreline wash and persistent wakes, or High to add screen-space reflections and fine spray. Choose Original to restore original rendering. Press F9 for a comparison from the current camera; F10 cycles the rendering diagnostics.

The Water tab adds Modern / Classic / Aqua appearance and Soft / Normal / Strong surface ripples. Aqua offers lighter teal water and clearer shallows using the full Modern renderer, including its lighting, refraction, reflections, foam and wakes. Classic preserves the original course colors, transparency and broad wave highlights while adding reflections, wakes and spray. Modern with Normal ripples keeps the earlier appearance. All three styles use irregular foam breakup to avoid a square pattern behind the craft. Wave heights and reflection highlights interpolate at the selected display rate, including when the original water grid recenters around the camera. Spray particles → Off removes the added airborne spray while retaining surface foam and wakes. Spray close to the camera also fades out before it can fill the screen. Fine ripples use irregular wind-stretched patterns to avoid repeating crossed bands.

Selecting Aqua reveals Water brightness, Aqua tint, and Water clarity sliders. Each defaults to 50%, preserving the reviewed Aqua look. Adjust them and press Apply; they are saved independently of the other water styles. Existing explicit Modern or Classic preferences are preserved.

The original wave mesh and game physics remain authoritative. Water assets are procedural and course settings are in assets/water/profiles.json. Metal and Windows Direct3D 12 have been runtime tested; SPIR-V and DXIL shader compilation also pass. See Windows validation and the implementation and evidence for the acceptance matrix, scope and reproduction commands.

Known issues:

• In a 4:3 window the picture is letterboxed. The game draws a 303x199 region of its 320x240 framebuffer, which does not fit a 4:3 window without bars. Fullscreen on a widescreen display, the default, has no bars.
• The results screen's layout is wrong when HUD Placement is set larger than Original.
• The MAX POWER banner loses its last letter while the HUD layout is on.
• The macOS download supports Apple Silicon; Intel Macs have not been validated.

Layout

src/        the port: platform layer, renderer binding, input, audio, launcher wiring
include/    its headers
patches/    replacements and wrappers for individual game functions
recomp/     N64Recomp configuration
tools/      the build pipeline's scripts, and diagnostics (see tools/README.md)
assets/     launcher assets, replacement music, HD textures and water profiles
docs/       the build guide, the phase plan, and what each phase found
lib/        upstream submodules

ROM dumps, disassembly, RecompiledFuncs/, and the ELF are generated locally and refused by .gitignore. So is the splat config derived from the reference decompilation. The reviewed replacement artwork is included separately under assets/textures; raw texture captures and generation work files remain local.

Licensing

The project's own code and artwork are under the MIT License (LICENSE). The separately credited recordings in assets/music and replacement artwork in assets/textures are excluded from that license; the underlying recordings, compositions and game artwork remain the work of their respective owners. See music credits and texture credits.

A built executable is another matter. It links N64ModernRuntime statically, and N64ModernRuntime is GPL-3.0, so the executable as a whole is a GPL-3.0 combined work: anyone who distributes one must provide its complete source under the GPL's terms, and this repository at the tagged commit, with the submodules it pins, is that source. RecompFrontend, which supplies the menus, has published no license at the time of this release. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for the full list.

How this was made

The original upstream project was written by Claude, Anthropic's AI model, working in Claude Code under the direction of Daniel Gomes Vieira, who set the goals, made the decisions, played the builds and reported what he saw. The launcher artwork and the executable's icon were generated with Claude as well. The work was done in phases (see docs/PLAN.md), and each phase's findings are written up under docs/, in the same way: by Claude, as the work was done.

This fork adds native macOS support, modern water, replacement music and HD textures, developed with Codex under Brian Tate's direction and validated through native playtesting and deterministic replays.

Credits

The recompilation toolchain and runtime are by Mr-Wiseguy and the N64Recomp contributors; RT64 is by Darío and the RT64 contributors. The function names this project leans on come from the Wave Race 64 decompilation by LLONSIT and contributors. Earlier recompilation attempts by WACOMalt and chronic8000 showed what to expect.