Harbour Masters release Paper Boat, a native PC port of Paper Mario 64

The Harbour Masters team has put out the first public build of Paper Boat, a Windows, Mac and Linux port of Paper Mario 64 built on the PaperMario-DX decompilation, alongside a row over its use of...

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The Harbour Masters team has released the first public build of Paper Boat, a native PC port of Paper Mario 64. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and according to the GBAtemp thread the game is playable from start to finish.

Paper Boat is built on top of PaperMario-DX, a decompilation project that turns the original N64 machine code back into readable C source. Decompilation is the technique behind most of these unofficial Nintendo 64 ports: rather than emulating the console, you rebuild the game's source and recompile it natively for modern hardware, which tends to run faster and opens the door to proper mod support. Harbour Masters has form here, having already shipped ports of other retro Nintendo titles.

What the first release actually does

Don't expect much polish yet. The GBAtemp thread notes that at launch Paper Boat supports custom aspect ratios and a handful of cheats, plus a mod menu, but otherwise there aren't a huge number of enhancements yet. As with every project of this kind, it ships with no game assets at all: you have to supply your own ROM on first boot, and neither GBAtemp nor Harbour Masters will point you toward one.

In its Discord announcement, quoted by GamingOnLinux, the team says its goal is to “provide the means to easily port existing texture packs as well as create new mods and experiences,” adding that “our menus are light at this time but I'm sure folks will have ideas of things to add that will bring the quality of life enhancements that the community has grown to expect.” In other words, this is a foundation release, and the interesting stuff, HD texture packs, new mods, community tools, is expected to follow rather than ship on day one.

The AI coding row

The release lands next to a separate argument about how Harbour Masters builds its software. GamingOnLinux reports that the team appears to use generative AI tools, including Claude and Copilot, quite heavily in its codebases, citing PCGamingWiki. Harbour Masters' own AI policy, quoted in the article, states that the group is “not an Anti AI organization, however, we are Anti Slop.” That distinction hasn't satisfied everyone: a moderator on the GamingOnLinux comment thread writes that Harbour Masters projects are “now disqualified from the PC Gaming Wiki as they violate PCGW policy on AI-generated content,” though the same commenter adds that it is unclear what action will actually be taken, and that the matter is still being discussed on the PCGamingWiki Discord. Other commenters push back, arguing that the real problem is sloppy AI use rather than AI use itself.

What's still unclear

None of this is settled. It isn't clear whether PCGamingWiki will formally delist Harbour Masters' ports, or what that would mean in practice for players who already have them. A rival project, Paper Mario ReCut, exists but according to GamingOnLinux doesn't seem to see active development, so Paper Boat looks likely to be the live option for anyone chasing a native Paper Mario port. There's also a separate decompilation project flagged in the GamingOnLinux comments, though what state it's in isn't detailed. For now, Paper Boat is a working, if sparse, first release, and the more consequential fight may end up being about how it was written rather than what it does.

Sources

Image: GamingOnLinux

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