Super Mario 64 moved onto the dining table

Michael Steil has turned Super Mario 64 into a living diorama for Apple Vision Pro. “Each level sits on your real table, and you walk around it while you play with a game controller,” he writes on his pagetable blog (October 18). It’s the most fun reason to clear off a dining table I’ve seen in a while.

The camera is the clever part, because you never fight it. Steil puts it in four words: “You are the camera.” You lean in for a closer look, or step around the table to see Mario from the other side. Anybody who spent an afternoon wrestling Lakitu for a decent angle will understand why that matters. His clips include Bowser in the Fire Sea, which he describes as “a lake of lava in the dining room.” (Coasters recommended.)

Steil is upfront that he built on other people’s work. His post credits the Super Mario 64 decompilation project and sm64coopdx, the game code the port runs, plus fan-made HD textures and 3D models. The project’s GitHub page calls it alpha and lists the author as “Claude, directed by Michael Steil.” So the credited author is an AI model, directed by Michael Steil.

The tabletop view may be the bigger idea here. Daily Dev’s summary of the discussion says many readers found the diorama approach “less nausea-inducing than first-person VR,” while others called Vision Pro overpriced for what it does. Both camps have a point, and only one of them has a sore wallet.

If you own a Vision Pro and a Mac with Apple silicon, this is a weekend build, not an App Store download. GitHub lists Xcode 26 with the visionOS SDK and a Bluetooth game controller, and you supply your own Super Mario 64 (US) ROM because the project “contains no game data.” It’s an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with Nintendo, so I’d read that disclaimer before building it.

Mario finally got the camera he always needed.