Programmer ports Super Mario 64 to Microsoft’s Zune HD media player — the 2009 iPod rival runs the game natively on its Nvidia Tegra chip, with touchscreen controls and saves

The Nintendo 64 game Super Mario 64 has come to the Microsoft Zune HD, Hackaday reports, through a project that runs natively on the device’s hardware through the unofficial OpenZDK kit, per the repo’s README. A touchscreen controller overlay is drawn over the game’s video, and the game “plays (mostly) at full speed with sound, touch controls and saves,” from the rsheldiii repo, although no ROM is included and one dumped from your own cartridge is required. The Zune HD, a 2009-era media player that rivaled Apple’s iPod, has Nvidia Tegra hardware inside, and the project is built on sm64ex, a fork of the unofficial, decompiled Super Mario 64 PC port.

The Zune HD, part of our 2009 gift guide, was marketed as having a “3.3-inch glass screen” using OLED and touchscreen technology, from Microsoft’s media alert at the time, with Tegra providing the “multimedia muscle,” according to an Nvidia release. The unit was originally priced between $219.99 and $289.99,…