The creator of the Portal 64 demake has urged fans not to direct their anger at Valve amidst the project’s cancellation.
Portal 64 was a Nintendo 64-style demake of Valve’s groundbreaking 2007 puzzler – Portal. Its developer, James Lambert, had intended the demake to run on real Nintendo 64 hardware before Valve pulled the plug on the project for good by issuing a cease-and-desist order. As PC Gamer reports, Portal 64 “depends on Nintendo’s proprietary libraries,” hence the stricter approach, here.
In the wake of Portal 64’s cancellation, Lambert published a video to his YouTube channel explaining the situation. While news of the project’s cancellation is disappointing, Lambert stresses that he doesn’t think any less of Valve for the decision. “Don’t be mad at Valve here,” he says. “The project was probably doomed to be taken down from the beginning.”
Until recently, Valve has been fairly receptive and even supportive of fan-made projects. Famously, Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat both began their lives as Half-Life mods. In Portal 64’s case, however, it’s quite understandable that Valve wouldn’t want to muddy the waters by getting Nintendo’s own legal team involved.
Despite pouring over two years of hard work into Portal 64, Lambert seems to be in high spirits, stating he’s “pretty happy with how far I got with it.” He adds that his plans going forward are to start work on a wholly original title developed “simultaneously for the Nintendo 64 and PC.
“That way[,] it’s an interesting project that runs on N64, but I also have a way to easily monetize that and have a wide audience of people who could buy it.”
Got a hankering to play some retro titles? Check out our Nintendo Switch Online explainer as well as our best GBA games list which features many titles available to play as part of Nintendo’s subscription service.