A Moment With
Leo Burke on his tribute to Nintendo 64 racing games
Leo Burke takes us for a tour through his virtual museum dedicated to N64 racers
The Nintendo 64 had a multitude of racing games and one person who knows this better than most is Leo Burke. After becoming fascinated with some hidden code he found in Aerogauge, he decided to create a tribute to N64 racers by creating a virtual museum. Here he tells us how it happened.
How did you come up with the concept of Auto Museum 64?
It had been on my mind for a while, after originally discovering the method of model extraction. The first game I tried was Aerogauge, which is where I found the hidden smiley faces in unused texture data. It made me think about all the people who worked on the games and I wanted to put names next to their work under one roof.
How difficult is it to extract these models from the N64?
It ranges from very easy with no texture work to do at all, to incredibly time intensive with multiple textures to correct the mapping of. The easiest models were from California Speed and Hydro Thunder, as they required no fixing at all. The hardest one by far was Beetle Adventure Racing. It took about four hours to fully restore one car, but Beetle Adventure Racing is a favourite of mine so I wanted to get it in.
Do all the vehicles share similar amounts of polygons, or are some more detailed than others?
Penny Racers, Nascar 2000 and Destruction Derby both had very simple models and textures, probably because those games have a lot of cars on‑screen. The most detailed I would say are the cars from GT64, because they are real‑world cars with very distinct shapes and liveries.
Is there any reason why you’ve not added games like F-zero X? Sometimes the restoration process was too difficult. In the case of F‑zero X all the textures it uses are 32x32 and are also not coloured in memory, and I really didn’t have a good starting point to even attempt to fix them. I considered adding models from Star Wars Episode I: Racer but Disney is defensive of its IP.
What cool programming things have you discovered while looking for suitable models?
I recently saw a video detailing how the N64’s texture limitations were down to its RDU ‘Reality Display Unit’ limited texture cache. Games could have a texture with a mipmap generated but they were limited to 32x32. To get around this it seems like developers would load textures directly from the cartridge so they could get 64x64, and that seems to be the case for a lot of these cars, which are displayed close to the camera and therefore don’t need mipmapped textures.
Out of all the models you’ve worked on, which one has impressed you the most and why?
Certainly the Aerogauge models. They are incredibly striking in their liveries and shapes. I didn’t do the models for every game except for Aerogauge, which all required a bit of fixing, because they were so well done. Aerogauge is kind of an obscure game, so I wanted more people to see them. Ridge Racer 64
was the other game that I really liked because the car designs are very well done, especially the texture work.
Any plans to create a museum for Saturn, Playstation or arcade racers? I have the greatest personal connection with the Nintendo 64, as that’s the system I had growing up and so that’s where my interests are. I don’t think I’ll be making any museums for different gaming systems, but I don’t think anyone else has made a dedicated museum to old game models before, and perhaps this will inspire other developers to do something similar!