A Lone Fan Delivers Mario Party 4 Natively to PC in a Playable Alpha Build

Mario Party games have always been the real deal at bringing people together around a TV screen, and it all began with the first title on the N64 all those years ago. The fourth one, Mario Party 4, was released in 2002, and it was the moment when eight dependable party friends, as Mario, Peach, Yoshi, Waluigi, Luigi, Princess Daisy, Donkey Kong, and Bowser, all came together for the first time in a board racing showdown on the GameCube that had them all rolling the dice for some silly minigames.

That simply wasn’t good enough for one programmer who wanted to have the same experience on a Windows system. So they went on an enormous undertaking to decompile the GameCube’s original code and reconstruct it from scratch to operate on Windows. The process of getting the project off the ground began easily enough, with tearing apart the original game and rebuilding it from scratch for the US release. They quickly got it operating on modern hardware without the use of an emulator, and even better, without an emulation in the middle.

The initial alpha build of the project, which they called “Party Board,” appeared out of nowhere just a few days ago. The only way to get to it is to download the executable from the Github repository and get your hands on the corresponding US version of the original game, which just needs to be copied into place and run.

This port does not include any of the original game files, thus you must have a copy of the original game. Once your original disc image is in place, the setup is straightforward. You get the exact same board layouts and characters as the original GameCube version, including Mario and Peach, Yoshi, and the rest of the group. You simply roll the dice to advance across the board, pick up coins, or trigger an event, and everything happens as expected.

All of the action takes place in real time, with no lag, and because it’s all tethered to the graphics hardware, the images remain clean and sharp. However, there are a few roadblocks that we’ve encountered thus far. It appears that roughly 15 of the 50 minigames are simply not working, and sound effects and music are completely absent, however this is all set to be corrected in the upcoming version. One trick for overcoming these issues is to save your game frequently and simply reload before you encounter a problem. As for controls, whether you want to play with a keyboard, a mouse, or even a regular controller, they’ve got you covered.
[Source]