How I implemented MegaTextures on real Nintendo 64 hardware

The same guy, James Lambert, also implemented texture streaming (which would not be invented until two console generations later) in an N64 demo. The textures look uncharacteristically high res: ▶ this video

This is what James Lambert does as a follow up when Valve shuts down [1] his "Portal in N64" project [2]. James is like Kaze [3] and builds incredible N64 demos [4] and technical videos about them. [1] link [2] link [3] link [4] ▶ this video

Prerendered cutscenes ate up the lion's share of the disc. If you sacrificed on those and used lots of compression, you absolutely could build an RPG on the N64 that would stand up to whatever you could do on PlayStation. However, nobody wanted to do that. The only RPGs we got on the N64 were Quest 64 and Paper Mario. The reason why requires diving into the development history of what would have been a third RPG for the system: MOTHER 3. To put it bluntly, they ran out of storage space, and pivoted to the N64 DD to get more. The custom floppy disks the N64 DD took could hold 64MB[0]. Even then, this wasn't enough, so the game was then broken up into two parts: an N64 cartridge plus a DD expansion pack, which would give them 96MB in total to play with. MOTHER 3 would then continue in development hell before being canned and reborn as a Game Boy Advance title[1]. Fire Emblem was also supposed to release on the N64. However, unlike Itoi biting off more than he could chew with the N64, FE64 failed because the head designer, Shouzou Kaga, didn't even want to touch the hardware. He'd stalled for time by working on Satellaview FE games[2] on the SNES, and then left Nintendo entirely right before Thracia 776 came out. He'd then release a totally-not-Fire-Emblem clone on PlayStation and get sued into oblivion for... basically telling all the games press that he was making Fire Emblem on PlayStation. So that's a 50% success rate for RPGs on the N64 - not a good look. Could homebrewers

Appear to be videos of this project in action: "How I implemented MegaTextures on real Nintendo 64 hardware" - ▶ this video "Megatextures Tech Demo - N64brew Summer Game Jam 2023 Submission" - link