Nintendo Switch: Thread 09

[Dogg Thang]

The DS version is wonderful, hampered only by the controls. I do wish they had ported that. I wonder what the DS models and textures would look like rendered on the Switch? I have no idea how such things work.

Sunshine for me was always a difficult one because I feel the control and especially the camera are nowhere near as polished as most Mario games. I did replay it up to a certain point on the Switch but got frustrated and quit. Galaxy is absolutely sublime. Plays beautifully and still looks amazing. I completed that to the first main ending recently and might play further.

I still remember the first time I got to play Mario64 and it was just stunning. Such a leap from what else was around at the time. And yet it’s weird because, with hindsight, it feels like the N64 had so many limitations but Mario64 made it feel next gen almost by itself because of how well it used the system.

[Junko]

Received my switch N64 controller , spot on tension for the stick and it’s so pretty

[wakka]

I only played Mario 64 properly, all the way through, all the stars, for the very first time this year via the All Stars Collection.

Honestly, I thought it was sublime. Not only does it stand on its own two feet as a simply terrific game to play for the first time in 2021, but I find it absolutely mind boggling how they made it in 96 - essentially inventing from scratch how such a game would work.

It's hardly a controversial statement, but it really is one of the very best games ever made in my opinion. I love it so much.

Currently playing Sunshine through properly for the first time (although I won't be doing 120 stars on this one as it seems like a chore), and, yeah...difficult second album, to say the least. It's still mostly fun though, and I love the island setting.

The Galaxy games I'm much more familiar with as I played them to full completion on the Wii. They are obviously completely wonderful also.

[importaku]

It was way more impressive back in the day, at that point in '96 there was literally nothing that looked or controlled like it. Seeing mario moving around in 3D in worlds that looked amazing was a gamechanger literally. It was the first game that actually did a 3D platform game properly there were others around that time & even before but they were abysmal in comparison.

It certainly deserves it's place in history but for me i'm happy to stick to it as a memory now. Unless they did release the DS version with a graphical update and fixed controls. The new stuff added was like a breath of fresh air.

[wakka]

Yeah, I remember the first time I ever saw it on, on an ad on TV. I was blown away. I was jealous of my N64 owning mates - I was Megadrive then PlayStation, and I didn't own a Nintendo home console till the Cube.

I've dabbled with it here and there over the years, including on DS, but for some reason I never gave it the time it deserved. This year I sat down and did it properly, and I'm so glad I did. It rocks.

[danstan21]

Got my 6-Button MD controller. Not planning on buying the expansion though - this is just for Sonic Mania and various 2D shooters.

[importaku]

LOOOL just found out about this game Roombo where you play as a murderous roomba that kills intruders & then you have to clean up your carnage before your owners get home.


Currently making a wishlist of western indie stuff i went through about 200 pages on amazon uk yesterday looking at any physical release that looked interesting or ones i have been meaning to pick up. Payday tomorrow so i have a bunch of games to order with most been in the £20-£30 bracket so not too bad.

[Asura]

It was way more impressive back in the day, at that point in '96 there was literally nothing that looked or controlled like it. Seeing mario moving around in 3D in worlds that looked amazing was a gamechanger literally. It was the first game that actually did a 3D platform game properly there were others around that time & even before but they were abysmal in comparison.

It really was.

I generally don't make a habit of buying a console on the strength of one game. The N64 was the only console for which I went completely the opposite way on this. I bought the console (selling up my Saturn) on the strength of CVG's recommendation and a quick 10-minute play in a branch of Toymaster.

Not just 3D platformers, but 3D games in general... It's tricky to express now, but the early days of 3D gaming, while amazing, saw many titles fall into the trap of (in a very narrow sense) being 2D, with 3D visuals. Even games like Virtua Fighter, poster-child for the 3D era, was technically a 2D fighter; you couldn't go manually around your opponent until VF2, and it was VF3 before it was made a central mechanic of the game. Virtua Racing and Daytona, being racing games, are predominantly 2D affairs, in the sense that the player's motion is left/right and into/out of the screen. Saturn games like Bug! are a special case here, in that they were also generally 2D in terms of gameplay, but they at least swapped which axes where the present focus at any given time.

There were some games, like Descent, that tried to serve the goal of having 3D gameplay and visuals as a major selling point. I'm not saying they didn't exist.

But when Mario 64 came along, it was a revelation, because it was a game which was 3-dimensional in both visual design and gameplay scope. You could move in all three dimensions at all times, and the game challenged you with mastering thinking in 3 dimensions in places like Wet Dry Land, or played with the possibilities of shape and space in the world which made you big/small, or gave you vertigo in Tall Tall Mountain.

Tomb Raider was doing the rounds at the same time, and in fairness, that achieved many similar things, though it had an esoteric control system that was love/hate (compare/contrast the Resident Evil tank controls), whereas Mario in 64 just begs the player to chuck him around, flip, wallkick, superjump...

God SM64 was amazeballs.

[wakka]

Yeah, that's what's so incredible about it. They had a clear template for Mario by this point - he moved from left to right, surviving an obstancle course. With that in mind the obvious thing to have done, I think, was what Crash Bandicoot did. Basically just the exact same thing but in 3D.

Instead they chose to create a series of playgrounds with a variety of objectives in each, connected by a hub world which was in itself a playground - and with a sophistication of control which the vast majority of games in 2021 still don't achieve.

It's just nuts. It's a complete overachiever as far as I'm concerned. They could have delivered half or a quarter of what they did, and I think it still would've been seminal.

It's such a bloody great game.

EDIT: Just to say, on the Tomb Raider comparison, not only does Mario have much MUCH better controls - but the levels are also non-linear in a way that TR's aren't. TR is pretty much A to B. Whereas Mario had a greater variety of objectives within a single space.

[arcnas]

Back in the day when I had a smallish CRT and a N64 I thought it was a great system, but how people actually expect these games to look good on a 55inch or larger Tv is crazy, but the service will be worth it when F Zero X is on it , that’s on my top 5 game of all time

[Dogg Thang]

I think the Tomb Raider comparison is probably unfair due to how different those games are in terms of what they were trying to achieve. And when TR did change its control scheme to be more modern and responsive, such as in Anniversary, it had to gut the levels in part because the controlled precision jumping was no longer possible and the (improved and more fluid) camera became your enemy. There are trade offs and different controls for different games. The original TR controls worked for the type of game they were making.

[wakka]

That's true, and I really love the original TRs, so it's not a dig at them and what they achieved.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Got my 6-Button MD controller. Not planning on buying the expansion though - this is just for Sonic Mania and various 2D shooters.

Surely an 8BitDo M30 would've been cheaper??

[danstan21]

I own an M30 already - I wanted to like it, but it suffers from input lag.

[Nu-Eclipse]

I own an M30 already - I wanted to like it, but it suffers from input lag.

Can't say I've experienced input lag using mine and I pretty much use it for everything 2D/retro-based on Switch, but hey. *shrugs*