Portal 64 project now out of beta, with more to come

Let’s just get this out of the way: Valve is probably not going to make Portal 3 (boy is my face going to be red if I turn out to be wrong years from now). However, we can enjoy the fruits of the modding community that are keeping the franchise alive.

One such example comes from James Lambert, a coder who’s just declared that their Portal 64 project is now out of beta. Or at least the first 13 chambers are, which is being referred to as the “First Slice.” You can download the project (in ROM form) in its current form here.

In the above video, Lambert goes over some of the things that have changed since the previous iterations. One of the more obvious ones is the higher polygon count for the portals themselves. There’s also a lot of talk about Z-buffering, if you’re into that sort of thing.

The flour-based sweet treat is most certainly not an untruth

For those who don’t know, Portal 64 is essentially a remake of the first Portal game that Lambert has been working on for some time. It’s essentially an attempt to recreate Valve’s classic from the ground up to make it run on the Nintendo 64 hardware. A console that came out in the mid-90s.

In that regard, it’s more of a “demake.” But the result is something pretty astounding, given the processing power that’s being worked with.

Along the way, Lambert has built up quite a following. We get shown an N64 cartridge/game box combo that one fan has made, while another has customized a console with a Portal theme. Lambert also promises that more chambers will be added, so the project could end up being a full recreation of the entire game. With nostalgia a-plenty.