Portal Can Time-Travel Now? Neat
Portal fans have been going a little shack-happy, it seems. With Valve releasing so few games over the last forever, even being reluctant to update titles like Team Fortress 2, the idea of a new game seems like a distant dream. A fantasy left behind in childhood, like being an astronaut or owning a home. Faced with this Portal-free reality, the fans did what they do best: took matters into their own hands. They can’t make Portal 3, they can’t make a new console, but they can take both ideas in the complete opposite direction.
Unlike the ‘remake’ sort of release you may be familiar with, where an old game is updated and re-released for a new generation, a ‘demake‘ opts to dive deep into nostalgia.
And what a glorious dive it is.
We’re going far beyond Portal 2, right into Portal 64. This demake project is designed to bring the Portal experience to Nintendo 64 hardware.
Obviously, there’s going to be some serious technical limitations for a project like this. That’s exactly why James Lambert, the creator of this Demake, is making a Youtube series documenting the development process. The project isn’t just a love letter to Portal. It’s fascinating exercise in pushing hardware limits and code work as far as they’ll let you. And if the last few videos are any indication, it’s a journey he doesn’t intend to stop anytime soon.