Okay, I have to be honest before we start: ‘Portal’ is my favorite video game series of all time. The dark humor, the strategy, the perfectly designed puzzles, a unique and irreplaceable style… It’s Valve at its best. And, of course, it has spawned as many fan games as you can imagine. At least until Nintendo got involved, the devourer of fan projects.
Portal and such
It all starts on James Lambert’s computer, the developer of ‘Portal 64’. And what is this? Well, it’s a version of the famous Valve game but developed for Nintendo 64. At first glance, everything is fine, everyone spends their time on what they want and can, but the studio has forbidden him to continue in a kind of “If it weren’t for us, really, if we’re already doing well, but the others…“
And the thing is that ‘Portal 64’ used development libraries owned by Nintendo that, although any developer can easily have, the company has not officially made them public. Yes, after so many years. You know how Nintendo is. Faced with rejection, the boy decided to remake the game with open source alternatives, but Valve, unable to take a look, has stuck to its guns.
So Lambert, with what he has learned, has decided to make another fan game on Nintendo 64, which has nothing to do with ‘Portal’: a kind of action platformer with magic, runes and spells. In other words, and according to YouTube commentators, like ‘Magicka’, that video game from 2011 that Arrowhead came up with before the success of ‘Helldivers 2’.
At least we have the consolation that ‘Portal 64’ hasn’t died in vain. Now we just need Valve not to close it again for good.
