As Nintendo is unlikely to ever release its games on PC, emulation has been the only way for users to enjoy them on hardware other than the original consoles for a long time. However, over the past few years, we have seen the rise of native PC ports, including ports of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, which offer advanced features over emulated versions, such as support for higher resolutions.
The latest of these is a native port of the original Super Smash Bros., which also serves as an example of the magnitude of what AI can achieve for a project like this, as it has been 100% generated by AI.
BattleShip is the name of the PC port of the first entry in the series created by Masahiro Sakurai. "The port is a pure C/C++ source tree; every byte of Nintendo-owned data is extracted at build time from a ROM that you supply. If you do not own a legal copy of Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64, you cannot build or run this project," reads the official description on GitHub. As such, it requires the NTSC-U v1.0 ROM to run.
What makes the project interesting, besides being able to experience the first entry in the Super Smash Bros. series natively on PC, is the fact that, as already mentioned, it has been 100% generated using AI. "This is a 100% AI-generated modern port. It took a little over 25 days, with me, Opus 4.6, Opus 4.7, and GPT 5.5 as the only contributors. As of 4/28, there are no >2 day gaps in development. At many points, agents were dispatched and worked to build and test autonomously while I did other things," said developer JRickey.
The project was started for two reasons. The first was for the developer to learn more about how things are actually made in C. The second was to provide a "proof of concept that AI can be used for a task of this magnitude. That is not to say that I gave AI an N64 cartridge and got a PC port out of it — years of work from many people went into the decomp, the 3D engine, asset extraction, and everything else this port stands on. The point I am trying to make is that there are tons of cases like this that are low-hanging fruit and can be done with a little bit of your time using AI".
"I want it to serve as proof that the barrier to making really cool things is incredibly low. Humans have always progressed our knowledge and capabilities by expanding on the work of others. Agentic coding is the newest frontier of that principle. I hope this project serves as inspiration for other people to learn by doing, make something for themselves, and give it freely to others," the developer concluded.
This native PC port of Super Smash Bros. having been created with the help of AI tools is, ironically, something that even Masahiro Sakurai himself could get behind. Last year, the legendary game creator commented on the current state of large-scale development, saying that using generative AI to improve efficiency can make it sustainable in a landscape where traditional game development no longer is.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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