Talented homebrew dev makes open-world Nintendo 64 game “the scale of Skyrim” that is almost impossible to believe

Published:

27 March 2026

Last Updated: 27 March 2026

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Back on the Nintendo 64, your average “open world” was the size of Hyrule Field, a jaw-dropping hub at the time that pales in comparison to the sheer scale of current-day offerings. There were bigger worlds—Body Harvest, anyone?–but the technical limitations of the N64 were thought to make true open worlds impossible.

As it turns out, with the power of foresight and modern optimisation techniques, you can make massive open worlds on N64 bigger than those found on the PlayStation 2 as talented homebrew developer and YouTuber James Lambert recently proved.

In a video on YouTube, Lambert unveiled his handcrafted game engine designed to power full open-world games on the Nintendo 64. “This game has a draw distance on the scale of games like Skyrim,” the YouTuber said. “You can stand on one corner of the map and see all the way to the other side.”

Built for a game called Junkrunner 64, the size of the Nintendo 64 game is around four times bigger than The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a game that launched simultaneously on the Nintendo GameCube and Nintendo Wii. The game is currently available to download here on GitHub alongside its source code.

The N64 game isn’t just a massive open world, but it’s also a game that sports better graphical fidelity than most games on the system. Lambert has achieved this via a spectacularly optimised Level of Detail method that splits the game world into multiple planes, splits areas into managed chunks, and swaps in low-and-high quality detail versions on the fly to deliver a seamless open world.

This is far from the first time that the homebrew developer has pushed the Nintendo 64 past its perceived limits. In the past, the developer has brought Valve’s Portal to the N64, ported real-time “wiggle physics” to the system, and much more.

While the Nintendo 64 wasn’t the most popular console of its time, and had some rather glaring flaws, it is a beloved system. As someone who grew up with the machine, there’s a magic to N64 that other consoles at the time simply didn’t have, and it’s fun to see the console pushed way past its perceived breaking point three decades after its release.

To support Lambert’s continued work on the N64, you can subscribe to the creator’s Patreon right here.

About The Author

Lewis White

Lewis White is a veteran games journalist with over a decade in the field. Starting with beloved Xbox website ICXM/XboxMAD, Lewis became the Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser before becoming the Editor in Chief of StealthOptional and Gfinityesports. Lewis later jumped to By Gamers For Gamers where he jumped to become EIC of VideoGamer and the host of the New VideoGamer Podcast prior to the website’s acquisition.

Over the years, Lewis has also seen long-form investigative pieces published in outlets such as Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, Retro Gamer, Nintendo Life, and EDGE. Now, as the Editor in Chief of FRVR Blog, Lewis strives to bring the same level of quality journalism with interview-led content to the site in both written and audio form with the FRVR Podcast.

With a First Degree BA Hons in Games Journalism and Public Relations, Lewis has been a stable part of the British games press for over a decade, and has frequently displayed his love of Halo, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and other games pretty much everywhere he’s worked. And FRVR is no different.

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