A native port of Donkey Kong 64 is finally playable on PC thanks to a team of programmers who boast that ‘no generative AI [was] used at any point in the process’
A team of independent programmers has released a native PC port of Donkey Kong 64, the 1999 Nintendo 64 platformer, allowing it to run natively on Windows without emulation. The developers have drawn particular attention for stating that no generative AI was used at any stage of the project, a notable declaration given ongoing debate within the gaming and development communities about the use of AI tools in coding and creative work.
The port reconstructs the game's engine to run natively rather than relying on emulator-based workarounds, following a broader trend of fan-led decompilation projects that have brought classic Nintendo titles to modern PC hardware. Such efforts typically require players to supply their own legally obtained copy of the original game's data, as the projects distribute only the recreated code rather than any of Nintendo's original assets.
- Fans release a native PC port of Donkey Kong 64
- Developers explicitly say no generative AI was used
- Built via decompilation, requires players' own original game copy
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Donkey Kong 64 is a 1999 platform game originally released for Nintendo’s 64-bit console. Players guide Donkey Kong and other characters through levels, collecting items and solving puzzles.
A native PC port adapts the game’s code to run directly on Windows, rather than using an emulator to imitate the original console. Fan-led projects like this rebuild how a game runs, while typically requiring players to provide their own copy of its original data.
The developers’ statement about not using generative AI reflects wider discussion in gaming and software development about how such tools are used to write code and make creative work. The project matters to players interested in running older games on modern computers and in how fan teams recreate them.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Supporters of the developers' stance would argue that generative AI tools are often trained on code and creative assets scraped without consent, so a project built entirely by human hands signals respect for the original creators and for the craft of reverse-engineering itself. In a fan decompilation effort already treading carefully around Nintendo's intellectual property, they might contend that avoiding AI-generated code removes an additional layer of legal and ethical ambiguity. For many in this community, the declaration is less a marketing gimmick than a statement of values about authorship, transparency and painstaking manual work in an era when such distinctions are increasingly blurred.
The case against
Sceptics of the emphasis placed on this declaration would argue that generative AI is simply another tool in a modern programmer's kit, no different in principle from a compiler, debugger or code-completion plugin, and that framing its absence as a badge of honour unfairly casts routine AI-assisted development as somehow illegitimate or inferior. They might point out that a project's value lies in whether the resulting port works well and respects the original game, not in the specific tools used to build it, and that broad claims of being entirely AI-free are difficult for outsiders to verify. From this perspective, the focus on AI use risks distracting from the genuine technical achievement of the decompilation work itself.