Popular Post Maf Posted June 23, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted June 23, 2021 The N64 is 25 years old today N64 is probably my favourite console of all time. First time I saw one was I met this kid who was also called Matt and he’s dad had one. So we went to his house but I wasn’t allowed in. So I had to peer through the window and see his little brother playing Mario 64 and it was the sky level where Mario gets the wing cap and flies around. Talk about desperation. Seeing Mario fly in 3D but not allowed to get any closer than outside. It’s like some tale of a starving orphan looking through a window of some rich, well off family having a big warm, family meal. I did eventually get to go in his house and I was blown away dude. He had Mario 64, Lylat Wars, Killer Instinct and Diddy Kong Racing I think. He was only at his dad’s at weekends so I only got to play it then but I spent so much time around there. When I got my own N64 it was a Christmas and my mum played a prank on me. She let me have it Christmas Eve and was like “Here it is!” And I opened it up all excited but it got cut short because there was no game. Just the machine. Then my mum said she didn’t realise you had to get a game with it so I went to bed kind of gutted. Some amount of time passed and she came in and asked if I had found it yet. I was like “Found what?”. She had tucked Mario 64 into my pillow and I just slept on it and crushed the box. I was disappointed I destroyed the box, but super excited to have the game, and spent all Christmas Eve playing it. By the time the morning rolled around I had a 100 stars in the game. It’s funny when the 3D Allstars collection came out last year and someone said I beat 64 really fast. I guess in retrospect I’ve been beating 64 fast for a long time! Almost 25 years it turns out...I really am an old man now... But I still love the N64 after all this time. People pick on it’s library, which I suppose if you want, but I loved so many N64 games. In fact here is a picture of my current collection. I’ve lost a lot because of moves and different things over the 25 years, and some of it I replaced as an adult through EBay but my collection is still about half of what it was. The 3 in the see through boxes. One of them is 1080 snowboarding, one is Goemon 1 and the other might be Turok 2. I lost or sold a lot of games, though. I don’t have Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Pokemon Stadium, Castlevania (Maybe good riddance?) and my most prized game for a long time my US version of Smash Bros (The one in the pic is the Pal one) Smash Bros was such an event for me. Back when there was no internet and genuine surprise I opened up the latest Official Nintendo magazine and they had a huge spread on Smash Bros. I remember being completely baffled by what I was looking at. It’s a fighting game. But it looks like a platformer. It’s all the Nintendo characters. But they all look really strange because the art for the game in the magazine was really weird. Now it’s an easy concept. But you can’t quite understand seeing the concept for the first time. I had just never even thought about something like this before. Then out of one turn of a page it becomes real. Damn it was nuts. Yes there was Mario Kart. But this had Mario, Zelda and Pokemon in. This was the childhood version of me! I couldn’t take it. So much actually that I got my mum to order me the US version of the game from the back of the Nintendo magazine. If you imported games in the 90’s you must have used and remember these. There were companies advertising games in the back of the mags. But it it was like looking through the yellow pages of games that weren’t out yet, and then you rung the number and placed the order. Even as a 10/11 yo kid I was sceptical of this because they seemed so dodgy. But I needed Smash Bros so badly I got my mum to take a chance to order it. It felt like it took months for the game to arrive and I was getting my mum to phone the company all the time to check the order. During the weeks waiting for it I just used to sit in my room drawing the Smash pictures from the magazine and reading the article over and over. It’s the type of hype only a kid can have. Then it arrived and holy fuck. Smash Bros dude. What a video game. And because I had it early my friends would come round and I’d smack them down all the time which was fun. Then when the game came out in the UK for real I was still so much better at it than everybody. Man what a video game. I love a lot of games on this machine obviously but since I’ve taken up so much room I guess I want to talk a little bit a about Zelda. Zelda is special for lots of reasons. How big it was, it’s innovations, how different and further ahead it was than everything else. The thing for me though is Zelda was my first ‘mature’ game. I don’t mean violence or rated content I mean it was the first game I ever played that was genuinely thoughtful. Obvious in some ways. It was a game that had inventory, resources, puzzles, back tracking, exploration, 2 maps, a story, etc. But it goes deeper than that. It was the first game I ever played that I think actually meant something. I already loved video games before it Mario, Sonic, etc. But it isn’t the same. Those games were entertaining, Zelda was captivating. And I still can’t quite word the experience of playing it for the first time. Skillup talks about Ocarina a little bit here at the start of this video and better than I can. And he can almost approach what it is I’m trying to say, but I think the music does it even better. This game was grown up in a way that no other game I saw was and it was so compelling. Still a genuine contender for my best video game of all time. This has exploded in to a nostalgia fest of a post but I love the N64. So many great games, times, experiences and memories with that machine. If you get to the end of this thank you for reading ? 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OCH Posted June 23, 2021 Share Posted June 23, 2021 Probably my favourite Nintendo machine without a doubt. PSOne catered more to my RPG tastes, but N64 brought so much to the table. Hybrid Heaven to Banjo to 1080 to Blast Corps etc etc A true multiplayer console too. Still never played Smash 64 Bros though. Never heard of the series til Melee. Which as an aside, was the first time I ever heard of Ness, Marth, Roy and Samus. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maryokutai Posted June 23, 2021 Share Posted June 23, 2021 I got into the N64 very late in its lifespan, it must have been months if not only weeks before the PS2 came out. I had very few games for the system – OoT, Mario 64, Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Snap, F-Zero X, Rayman 2, Beetle Adventure Racing (underrated!), Episode 1 Racer – but I loved all of them. I did buy some used games later but mostly just to have them in the collection and quickly try them out. But due to the late purchase and the limited amount of games played on it I never formed any kind of attachment to it, for lack of a better term. But the impact was still noticeable, even that late in its lifetime. There just wasn't something like Mario or Zelda on PS1 and Saturn. My Nintendo highlight is and was the Gamecube, that machine had everything and I was there from almost Day One. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OCH Posted June 25, 2021 Share Posted June 25, 2021 I think it is the first time I've played a demo on the PS5. To me, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin was the first dud too. I did not enjoy any of it. The aesthetic is ugly, which for an FF is very strange. Albeit an outsourced spin-off. The level, character and enemy design could not have been more generic. The only distinctly FF monster - Bombs - were washed out visually too. The controls felt really off. I mostly stuck with swordsman. As the switching interfaces and stuff the game recommends does not feel intuitive at all. Ultimately beat this Griffon sub-boss first try, but what was being asked of me in-game til now wasn't cutting it against Garland. In contrast to other games of this type, after four tries, I didn't feel particularly inspired to re-learn the game just for this single boss fight. Already deleted it. Meanwhile, had three game overs on the first level of Alex Kidd.? Loving it! I forgot how differently AK plays to most platformers of the time. He's floaty and hitboxes are not forgiving... There's a nice feature, wherein pressing R2 gives you the original Master System graphics. I tried it, but decided to stick with the new sprite designs. Which ooze charm. Already fought and won against my first Rock-Paper-Scissors Boss Fight. Although it seems just as RNG as the originals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfnick Posted June 25, 2021 Share Posted June 25, 2021 Just a FYI for JRPG fans. A new book which looks brilliant is now available from Bitmap. Been looking forward to this one for a long time! Just ordered my copy. https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/a-guide-to-japanese-role-playing-games 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OCH Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 On 25/06/2021 at 17:25, mfnick said: Just a FYI for JRPG fans. A new book which looks brilliant is now available from Bitmap. Been looking forward to this one for a long time! Just ordered my copy. https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/a-guide-to-japanese-role-playing-games Dammit. Sold out until October...? Meanwhile, since I skipped from PS3 to PS5, I hadn't noticed this before. Does any game actually run immediately off the disc anymore? Three or four games in now, and it is becoming irritating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfnick Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 Nope, they all need to be installed. The disc is basically just a product key. Yea, can’t really just have a ‘quick go’ on anything you haven’t got installed and updated. Can be annoying but just got used to it now. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OCH Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 I see. Well at least I know now that consoles don't have the 'pick up and go' feature they were based on, anymore. Ta? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-armed dwarf Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 I've not got one of the next gen systems but I find the installing pretty annoying on PS4 because it's so slow. Can take close to an hour for some physical games. But I only buy about one physical a year now anyway. Makes it a lot easier to just go fully digital tho with that being a thing. But it makes sense cause more and more of these games are being made in ways that a spinning disc would just be crap for data access. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maryokutai Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 Yeah, I definitely don't miss the noises these older machines made when reading off a disc. Not to mention the loading times that were even longer than from last-gen HDDs. It's just something that was unavoidable with technical progress. I guess Nintendo found a bit of a middle ground but cartridges are so much more expensive than discs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DANGERMAN Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 Tbh, I never stress over the game installing. You've got to wait for the day 1 patch anyway ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OCH Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 My dilemma was I had a spare 20 minutes. So I thought to myself, let's have a quick look at one of your other new games. Those 20 minutes were then taken up by "queuing, copying and installing". My free time expired and I just turned off the console. Seems kind of pointless. 36 minutes ago, Nag said: Installation is so much better in the longterm though... I assume you're referring to load times etc Because the thing is, when you just put a disc in and play a game. When it is finished, you're done with it and that's that. Take the disc out and put a new one in. Now, with these installs. I have to delete the old game before moving on to the next. Otherwise it starts to take up space on the system. So in that respect, long term now adds hassle. 14 minutes ago, DANGERMAN said: You've got to wait for the day 1 patch anyway ? Oh yes, of course. I forgot they don't even bother to release fully working games anymore, either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfnick Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 9 minutes ago, Nag said: Yet another tick in the reasons to go digital box... How come? As long as my disc game is installed it updates automatically still. & if it’s a fresh install from the disc it checks, downloads & applies the update at the same time as it installs the game from the disc. So it may potentially be faster since it usually installs faster from disc than downloading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OCH Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 7 minutes ago, Nag said: you must be very busy.? Yes? For someone that has been relatively estranged from gaming for a while, trying to get back into it. All of this new, needless faffing about, doesn't help. It's a deep rooted thing from when I was a kid: Gaming is quick. Press power button, brief load screen and away you go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DANGERMAN Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 it's a shame but it's a tech problem rather than a cynicism one I think @OCH Drives just can't keep up with the amount of data they need to move, or couldn't when Sony wanted to push Bluray. Then you've got that they need to last, you could potentially hit the speeds required but it increases the wear on the drive. Old harddrives weren't an amazing solution for it, particularly with slower cpus in consoles compared to pcs, but now we've got fancy NVMe drives and better cpus, it's not as bad 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfnick Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 Another point to balance out not going digital then. 12 minutes ago, Nag said: You can pre-load digital purchases (if it's a unreleased game) so it's ready from release time... on Xbox you can download games without even owning them, then just pop in the disc and you're ready to go, best of both worlds.? @mfnick Yep. Another thing that balances out going digital. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OCH Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 6 minutes ago, DANGERMAN said: it's a shame but it's a tech problem rather than a cynicism one I think @OCH Drives just can't keep up with the amount of data they need to move, or couldn't when Sony wanted to push Bluray. Then you've got that they need to last, you could potentially hit the speeds required but it increases the wear on the drive. Old harddrives weren't an amazing solution for it, particularly with slower cpus in consoles compared to pcs, but now we've got fancy NVMe drives and better cpus, it's not as bad It is wild to see how much this has all changed since the PS3. I mean, I do recall MGS 4 had a lengthy install. They even had Snake onscreen smoking a cigarette the entire time to troll you too. But Most other games I had just didn't have that. I suppose, as @Maryokutai noted, where I only had the Switch before the PS5. I just assumed it was the same (pick up and go) as it had always been. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-armed dwarf Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 Getting in the weeds a bit but the issue Och is best thought this way, disc drives have a very limited reading speed which isn't good for streaming in lots of data. This problem actually first started to poke its head during the PS3 era, remember installing MGS4? Whatever was going on in that game input/output wise they must have found that the game wouldn't perform right just reading off the disc, so they had us install every chapter as we went through Now games are even more hungry for the data that's being read in on the fly, so installing is mandatory. With older systems like PS4 from what I understand is they would load chunks of data into RAM and have it ready as needed, now with PS5 the idea is to stream in smaller amounts but on a more regular basis cause the communication is much faster. But there's no way a spinning disc can really work in a system like that edit you mention MGS4 in the post you just made so you do get the point here then lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OCH Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 Oh yeah, I totally get it. I just have to phase out the old mindset. Initially I thought it was just limited to the first few games I had bought. Skipping a gen, I missed out on when this became common place. That said, you just would have thought if they continued to use discs for gaming. As the data requirements began to increase, the disc drive tech would have progressed or innovated to keep up? As opposed to, as @mfnicksaid, discs just being product keys now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-armed dwarf Posted July 3, 2021 Share Posted July 3, 2021 This is not something I'm close to informed on but I think it's next to impossible for a laser scanning a spinning disc to compete with storage like SSD or cartridges and how it uses electrical signals to get stuff. It's like a physical limit with the moving parts involved and even HDD has it, how there's a latency period between starting up spinning the disc and accessing what you want versus the more immediate access that SSDs can rely on. Like my understanding is it's like SSD can just point to the relevant storage address and get what it needs Technically it's always been that way when you think of it, comparing something like the SNES originals of the Final Fantasy games to the ones that got ported to PS1, which had terrible load times. Also I'd be grateful if someone more expert could correct me on any of this, but that's my understanding. eg as an example of limits, discs will literally explode if span too fast ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_drive#Limit 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now