@hideki @kerosene idk what you guys are smoking but n64 emulation is currently really good. there was a period of time where it sucked and had a bunch of plugins you had to juggle around (and it was often times better to emulate n64 games within dolphin's virtual console emulation), then there was the whole project 64 debacle, but it's been great for years now, check out m64p.

kaze's work was built on the back of years and years of work from plenty of n64 emulator devs and the decompilation project. still very impressive, i'm not trying to dispute that, but to say it's only kaze that's done anything impressive is completely incorrect. the only optimization you can actually use on default mario 64 right now is his audio code optimization. the rest of it is either stuff that mario 64 might need that he knows his mod doesn't, or is otherwise intertwined with other things his mod does, so he'd have to do a lot more work to get it into a retail ROM without causing bugs.

it would be cool to see people fixing up other games and actually releasing the code, but at this point as far as n64 goes, the actual emulation of the console is already pretty good and offers enough enhancements. the main focus of the community seems to be on decompilation projects right now because they'll be able to do more with that than they ever could an emulated game.

i'll agree that there's too much unnecessary drama in that space. comes with the territory i guess. there was drama with cracking groups forever as well and i'm sure there still is.