🕹️ What happens when a software engineer misses the strange, experimental magic of the Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation era?

Apparently, he builds an entirely new game console.

Meet Nova64: a JavaScript-powered 3D fantasy console inspired by chunky polygons, mysterious cartridges, CRT glow, demoscene creativity, and the wonderfully weird software of the late ’90s.

I designed and engineered Nova64 as an open platform where developers can create a game cartridge in JavaScript and launch it instantly—no actual plastic cartridge blowing required. 😄

Underneath the playful exterior is some seriously fun engineering:

🎮 A shared game-development API across Three.js, Babylon.js, and Godot 🧠 JavaScript running natively through an embedded QuickJS engine 🕹️ A custom RetroArch core for playing Nova64 cartridges alongside classic systems 🛠️ A browser-based studio with Monaco, hot reloading, and developer tools 🌎 3D graphics, physics, particles, shaders, audio, controllers, voxel worlds, and WebXR 💾 More than 70 playable demos and experimental cartridges 🖥️ A Mac OS 9-inspired desktop—because modern software could use more personality

Nova64 isn’t an N64 emulator, and it isn’t pretending to be a historical machine. It’s a new creative platform built around a question I couldn’t resist exploring:

What if the next fantasy console used JavaScript cartridges?

This project brings together nearly everything I love building: games, graphics, creative tooling, native integration, web technology, nostalgic interfaces, and slightly unreasonable ideas that somehow become real products.

I’m not selling Nova64 as a Contra service. I’m sharing it because it demonstrates what’s possible when creative direction and deep engineering live in the same project.

If your idea sounds ambitious, interactive, technically unusual—or just a little bit weird—I’d probably love to hear about it. 🚀

Explore Nova64: https://nova64.io View my services: https://contra.com/brendon_smith_axke294z/services?r=brendon_smith_axke294z