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Wrong thread.

Nice article & appreciation to those who impact your life (as well as keeping this site afloat). A quick Google search has told me the story of the Faceless Monkey and I’m sorry to hear about that, and pleased to hear that his family have reopened, and hope it continues. It looks like a great place with fun events and I wish there could’ve been a place like that up the road in Devon growing up (or nearby to me nowadays). Here’s to all those who keep our love for gaming thriving, and to you, Josh & the rest of the forum members for 2024!

I have no idea what you're talking about!

Wrong thread.

Another night of fun, laughs and some downright disgusting moments. See you all next time for more of the same.

I'll just stick this here as I can't really think where else to put it. If anyone is interested and reads Kindle books, Reggie's one is currently on sale for 99p on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0982YG2V2?smid=A1G3UP32AZJ14F&tag=pepperugc03-21&ascsubtag=2635369133

I have all the other stuff still in pretty great condition from when I picked up back at launch all the way back in 2010 while on a family holiday to York, but that outer cardboard box...yeah, that was never going to last for most, can certainly see why it bumps the value up so much my childhood copy of Ruby ended up being resigned to a simple GBA cartridge protector, too Absolutely excellent remakes, and for the first time I finally got to visit Johto! In retrospect perhaps it's a little too faithful at points (there's still that huge level gap between the second bout against the Elite Four and Red to overcome, and Kanto was still a bit weird in general) but, yeah, they'll always hold a very special place in my heart. The vibe? The recreated soundtrack which balances being in Gen IV with the traditional nature of Johto, which bleeds through in certain pieces with the use of certain instruments? That National Park theme You'll get Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl recreations which have been brutally forced out in under a year get overshadowed by the original GBC games being re-released and you'll like it! Black & White, Black 2 & White 2, X &– I'm just going to assume you misspoke here, Glen, because that golden era started one game earlier with Platinum, and certainly does not include X & Y It took everything great about Gen IV, remade already brilliant games with a new injection of colour and character with plenty of care and consideration...and I don't think any of the extra content missed, either? Every time I go back just to crit path the game and enjoy the vibe, I still end up pumping hours into the Battle Frontier and Pokéathlon. It's "side" content which feels essential to the main dish for me, the latter especially! I still need to play it so maybe I shouldn't be invoking it's name, but as far as remakes which effectively replace the original go for all but the more hardcore fans, this really should be in the conversation along with Resident Evil Remake. Guess we need to wait for my generation to break into games journalism (is my generation even trying to do that? No idea) but I've just read through a couple of "best remakes of all-time" lists and it took a few to even see HGSS show up! Trust them to start doing that with the games where the originals mean the most to me Gen III was my first gen, Gen IV was the gen where I probably got what was closest to a traditional Gen I/Gen II experience at school (rumours, trading, battling, etc.), and Gen V, well, is brilliant, and a wonderful way to close out the DS era. Makes me very nervous going into this year, actually, and the potential to see Unova revisited in remakes. Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire had some heart - even if they aren't the best way to visit Hoenn - at least, compared to the cold, corporate-sponsored corpse of a game that was Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, and that's before even questioning how exactly you'd even want to go about remaking Black & White because of their sequels being a thing. Anyways, great pick-up @martinist!

Oh yeah, I added some dynamic terrain that ended up being a bit too shaky and also a stupid amount of falling objects that then get randomly chucked all over the stage. It's still a WIP and I wasn't going to choose it yesterday because it can really tank performance, but seeing as it was just us two playing at that point I figured it wouldn't be too bad.

I'll see about getting on earlier in time for the custom matches when I can, I do enjoy them, it just depends on how the day goes. It'd be good if I can get online from 7:30pm though, as then all the excellent custom stages would be part of the stream.

Kind of ironic that you say that this is more of a home console fighting game than MKT; despite the fact that MKT never actually released in arcades, while KI Gold is actually a port/remake of KI2. The reviews from back in the day were super harsh on KI Gold, and while the game itself isn’t to blame, it does still kind of deserve it because of the marketing surrounding it. The original KI was always hyped up as being made on “Nintendo Ultra 64” hardware and that it was always due to get a perfect home conversion… which of course famously didn’t happen. So it’s not hard to see why people were left disappointed by KI Gold, since it’s a completely different beast compared it its KI2 counterpart. But considering that they were bringing a hard drive powered arcade game to a 12MB N64 cartridge? There was no way that the arcade visuals could be brought over as-is. The decision to recreate the pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D polygons was an inspired one though and really? They did a great job of capturing KI2’s look and feel, especially when running on original hardware on a CRT. But there’s just no getting around the fact that the flashy OTT presentation of KI2 and it’s FMV powered pre-rendered visuals just couldn’t be done justice on a cartridge, and KI Gold does feel rather cheap in comparison to KI2 as a result. Also, I believe this is the first ever fighting game to have a practice mode that shows your inputs and has a training mode that actually teaches you the various special moves available. That would’ve been a huge deal back in the day! I feel that Rare made the best of a bad situation really. But it is a bit annoying to think that if this game came out a little later, they could’ve used a larger cartridge to capture much more of KI2’s original presentation (maybe even being able to keep some of the FMVs intact), but then again, it probably would’ve come out too late to really capitalise on the arcade game’s popularity. Rock and a hard place really.

Killer Instinct Gold NA release: 25th November 1996 PAL release: 4th July 1997 JP release: N/A Developer: Rare Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: 62% As I mentioned in the Mortal Kombat Trilogy review, fighting games aren’t my kind of thing, so this will be opinions from someone who has no idea about balance or techniques. That said, Killer Instinct Gold feel much more like a home console game than the Mortal Kombat Trilogy, due to a few extra features. The game has a nice look about it, with detailed sprites (based on really well made 3D models, like Donkey Kong Country) mixed with 3D arenas. It definitely feels like an N64 game and the sprites somehow don’t look too out of place in the maps. I found the gameplay to be fun, even though I’m absolutely useless at it, this feels slightly friendlier to newcomers. One welcome feature is the practice mode, which lets you browse through all the special moves and select one to pin to the screen. The bottom of the screen shows all your inputs to help remind you which button “FK” is. There are also training modes to go through specific abilities, including a “focused training” mode which adds a timer. It’s something that will likely be good for people who have the capabilities of having skill with these games. Killer Instinct Gold still have a few oddities. There’s no mode in singleplayer where you can select a specific opponent, and map selection is done via cheat codes. Still, this seems to offer a lot more than Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Remake or Remaster? Its inclusion on Rare Replay is good enough – although it would be nice to have that package ported to more systems. Official ways to get the game. This is available via Rare Replay on Xbox One/Series. Re-releases 2015: Rare Replay

Those 1v1 matches we had during custom stage Smash were hilarious, especially the one with the baseball on the Mii swimming pool stage! I actually have no idea how a lot of my custom stage gimmicks effect the majority of items, but it sure is fun finding out over time. This double Home-Run Bat KO by @Dcubed was great: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2025006642?t=0h28m11s Although I still don't get how my Isabelle suffered a shield break.

Absolutely, the beginning of the golden era of Pokémon games, this and the next 3 mainline entries. HeartGold/SoulSilver in particular are remakes that don't compromise on anything that the original games have while bringing said games up to date (By Generation 4 standards), and adding lots of cool new features. I particularly like that it fleshes out the Kanto section to be a bit less bare, now that it's not limited by lack of space in a Game Boy cartridge. Future remakes would start cutting content from the improved third versions of games, which will always bug me. Hard to call them definitive versions when the originals have more things in it.

Thanks for the games. Here's a link to this week's stream... - - - - - N-Europe Saturday Smash! (06/01/2024) - - - - -

Yep, I can confirm this... I sold my copy of HeartGold almost a year ago for around £180, and even that had very slight wear and/or light creasing to the outer box, even though it was mostly just stored on a shelf, or as part of a display. A similar condition copy just sold for £220... it could well have been the same one. The value of such games will likely only ever go up, I just checked and one seller, is selling each individual part of the complete game sets for various prices, which probably adds up to even more than £200 + for a complete copy... they are selling just the outer boxes though in very good condition for £30... which seems like a very good deal, if that's all you needed to complete a copy of the game. It's all the other bits, the trays... inserts etc, that's what also seems to make up a lot of the value with collectors. They are very good remakes too from what I remember, Nintendo could do well if they were to re-release them in any form.

Yeah, I've definitely got a lot of love for GT3! My first and only GT that I owned - kind of surprisingly? But maybe not considering Sport and me missing out on the PS3 - prior to 7, actually (think I played 5 Prologue at a friend's house at some point?). I never got particularly far in it, mind, besides probably having 100+ hours in it I replayed the start of Career - with the MX-5, of course! - so many times back then! I'm really excited to losing myself in everything GT, but from 3 up to and including 5 in particular, as I feel like there's a real sweet spot there which could be exactly what I want from going. Very much looking forward to sinking teeth into those games...but not before I see if I can get accustomed to the PS1 games and go through their Careers, too I haven't got the PS2/RAD2X set up yet but I have popped the first game into the PS3 for a few goes around Trial Mountain. Definitely going to take some time to get used to using the D-pad, but my times are improving, so hopefully that sticks and I can start winning some races Sure thing turns out one of my older PS2 cables is a bit worse for wear, so I've ordered a replacement which should be arriving tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get around to testing it out then or Monday once it's all set up! Yeah, I figured I'd start there (and will probably try my best to go through these series on retro consoles in order) purely for the reason that the tech and mechanics evidently advanced so much between games in a series back then, much more so obviously than we see today (because now we just get bloated sequels for me to complain about ), and so not going through a series in order just makes going back a much tougher prospect. Looking forward to it – heard a lot of great things about the series over the years, but really only know the absolute basics about it mechanically and plot-wise. It was actually rewatching the EZA Hall of Greats videos which convinced me to pick it up, and I'm pretty sure Huber could hype me up enough to buy lint in a launderette Yeah, I know I said I was on the fence about seeing if I'd get the first game physically, and while I'm interested in potentially doing so, I guess I'd be breaking one of my above rules in tracking down a physical copy for a silly amount when it's still available on PSN for a bit over £5 so, thanks! You pushed me to do it and it's now sitting on my PS3! I also cheekily used up my PS Stars points on some credit and so got it for "free", which feels real good Much more interested in making sure I can get a decent copy of Silent Hill 2, from what I gather the Director's Cut only got a Platinum release over here? Which, well, yelp, gives me an interesting conundrum. Either the DC or the standard edition look to cost a pretty penny; I'm going to the Birmingham Gaming Market in a few months, where - based on watching YouTube videos from last year's event and seeing at least 5 different copies strewn about the place - I'm much more confident I'll be able to track down a copy, as well as some of the other more costly items on my retro wishlist!

Nice pickups there @Julius! If you want to legally own Silent Hill and not pay the insane prices on a physical PS1 copy on eBay though? The PSN release is your only option and I wouldn’t dawdle on that, because the old PSN store won’t be up for much longer…

Once again, lovely purchases, @Julius. Dino Crisis is one of the games in my tiny PS1 collection. Like you, I never finished it when I was younger but always wanted to rectify this, hence me picking it up. When you do play it, can you let me know how the RAD2X handles the switching between game and inventory? It's one of the games that switches resolutions and some HD convertors have trouble coping with it. I never played Ring of Red or Black but always wanted to. Black was very highly rated back in the day. Happy to see Onimusha 2 in the collection. It's my favourite of the series due to the partner gifting mechanic, which changes who helps you and what endings you can see. The original Timesplitters is worth playing to see how the series started but the sequel is a massive improvement over it.

Wonder Project J2 JP release: 22nd November 1996 PAL release: N/A NA release: NA Developer: Givro Publisher: Enix N64 Magazine Score: 55% A Japanese-only point and click adventure for the N64, and sequel to a SNES game called Wonder Project J. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of this, but N64 magazine gave it a 55% and said that the main character was “Pinnochio-esqe”. Thankfully, there is a fan-made English translation patch available for this, so I don’t need to resort to other methods to try and read it. You play as…yourself, a being from another world that the main character, Josette, can’t see. You communicate to Josette though a robot called “bird” and can point at things as well as say “yes” or “no”. Josette herself is also a robot, trying to learn how things work in the world. When trying new things, she will try something (often eating something) and you will need to let her know if this is right or wrong. In order to solve puzzles, you will have to mess around with Josette’s teachings and moods. For example, in one objective, you need to teach her to be nasty to a cat so she gets scalded and learn that harming things is wrong. Movies can be uses to put her in a certain mood to help with certain activities. When out and about, Josette heads off on her own, giving you no direct input. It sounds boring, but it works really well, like trusting your kid to go out for the first time. Wonder Project J2 also has a few 3D sequences. You can pilot a submarine and aircraft, with controls getting better the longer you stick with them. Underwater, you have to search for treasures and catch a lot of fish, while in the air, you shoot down unmanned aircraft of the oppressive army controlling the island. These segments are nice to begin with, but fulfilling everything is a bit tiresome. Another 3D segment is a mine you can explore, trying to find some lost treasure, as well as mining for a special kind of stone – getting jobs and making money is a requirements to buy everything needed to teach Josette. Luckily, this part is quite short. Through the wonderful animation, you can see Josette change throughout the game. She struggles at walking to begin with, falling over a lot, but slowly gets better and learns to run, dance and much more. It’s subtle and works really well, and Josette herself is incredibly charming (although you can be mean and force her to be more serious if you really want to). There are 25 tasks to do, most are lovely little stories. One in particular is quite annoying: you have to improve Josette’s strength to fight a member of the army, but you can’t see Josette’s stats to fighting and losing is the only way to check if you’ve done enough. Everything else in the 2D style, however, is just incredibly charming You don’t need to complete all 25 achievements, but I did it anyway. A friend of Josette’s will get ill and helping her will trigger the events leading to the end of chapter 1. Chapter 2 is unfortunately not great. You get a long cutscene followed by a maze segment as Josette loses her memories. You walk around in circles answering questions about what you’ve on in the game. After another long cutscene, you get captures and need to escape in another 3D maze, this time with guards chasing you. There are handy markers on the ceiling that gives you clues to the right direction. After this is done…well, sit back because the last 45 minutes or so of the game has no player input. The story gets a bit odd towards the end, but still interesting. It definitely needs some playable moments, though. For not expecting much from Wonder Project J2, I ended up loving it, particularly chapter 1, which is the majority of the game. The translation is great (apart from a few uses of negatives in questions where I responded wrong) and has made the game playable for people that don’t understand Japanese. This is a very unique game and I’m very glad that I’ve played it. Remake or Remaster? Considering they have new sprite work for the iPhone version, a remake with an official translation would be lovely – especially if they can do a bit more with chapter 2. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Wonder Project J2. Other versions Wonder Project J2 got a mobile port at some point, but other than some screenshots, I don’t know when. The game was also released on iPhone in 2010 with redrawn graphics, but I can’t find any details other than the initial announcement.

Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey NA release: 15th November 1996 PAL release: 1st March 1997 JP release: 28th February 1998 Developer: Atari Games Publisher: Midway/GT Interactive N64 Magazine Score: 75% Sports games are a type of game where you get as much out of them as you want, providing you enjoy the core gameplay. Seasons can be incredibly long, and lots of these games are similar (especially yearly updates), so for the most part, I will be playing a bunch of matches and checking out different rules and settings. My main knowledge of ice hockey is an EA game I played on the Mega Drive, but it’s a simple enough game to work out: get the puck into the opposing goal. I also picked the only team I recognized: the Mighty Ducks. Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey is very smooth, fast paced and a lot of fun. The controls are simple to use and there’s nothing to complicate things. I mainly played with Arcade settings, but more serious players can use Simulation settings which add things like fouls and injury time. You can also choose to have more realistic size ice rinks and up to 5 players. The characters look a bit blocky, but in a way that is quite adorable these days. The game looks nice and clean, with the puck easy to see. There are also some nice silly little touches like the goalkeeper turning into a wall to signify a great save – with the voiced commentary making a reference to it. You can play a single match, although oddly you can’t select your opponent without using a cheat code (the computer chooses at random). There is also a season mode which has a few options like half or full. Other than that, there aren’t a lot of nodes for the game. Still, the core matches are a lot of fun and I can imagine it being great in multiplayer. Remake or Remaster? I think a remaster or new game would be quite nice. Sports games these days are either serious or cartoony, so serious-but-a-bit silly would be a nice change. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey, and I don’t know enough about modern sports games to recommend an alternative.

@Cube ought to get a kick out of this... Hidden Palace just found and released a prototype of the PS2 version of Sonic Heroes! This build comes from around 2 months before the final release and... ... woof! It is rough! Insane how unfinished the game was this close to release! But then again, Sonic 3 was in quite a similarily unfinished state at a similar time with its prototype build. Looks like Izuka wasn't kidding when he said that Sonic Heroes was the most challenging game he's ever worked on! ... whelp! Guess you've gotta play another Sonic game now Cube

Wave Race 64 JP release: 27th September 1996 NA release: 4th November 1996 PAL release: 29th April 1997 Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: 90% It took a few months for the Nintendo 64 for a new game, and when it game it met with glowing reviews. I do remember playing this slightly as a kid, and distinctly remember having a lot of trouble with it due to being awful at it. However, it was only short goes as it was a friend’s copy of the game. Wave Race 64 is a jet ski racing game. Not only do you have to complete the circuits, but you have to pass buy buoys on the correct side. Miss one and you’ll lose some power, miss five and you’ll fail that race. Just a quick note about widescreen screenshots: some emulators can try to expand the view of games to work in widescreen, but a lot of games have issues with this. A few games have unofficial widescreen patches and some have action replay codes to make it run in widescreen. A very small amount of N64 games have widescreen support built in. For Wave Race, extending the view worked a charm, and the game looks great. It’s difficult to get across the look of Wave Race in screenshots – the ocean and how it moves is the main impressive part of the game. The ocean moves in a realistic way and it still stands out as water in games is still not easy to do today – to the point that it’s really games that are entirely focused on water that have proper wave simulation (games like Sea of Thieves). The water is also not just for looks – it affects the movement of your jet ski and you’ll have to work out how to race using them to your advantage. The levels in Wave Race also manage to feel distinctive, which is not an easy task for water based games. While I’ve just praised the waves a lot, one stand out level is Drake Lake – which doesn’t have waves. The level starts off foggy but clears up as you progress, with the lake having a silvery reflective surface. There’s something really beautiful about this level, even today. Another very memorable one is Southern Lake. In this level, the tide is going out. Each lap, the obstacles will be different due to the level of the water. A big pier blocks the way on the first lap, but you can zoom through its supports on later laps. Unfortunately, the game only has 8 courses (plus a bonus training course) There are three main difficulties in Wave Race, however the difficulty doesn’t just alter the enemy racers. Instead, the locations of the buoys are different, making navigating the levels much more difficult. You need to truly master the waves to succeed at the game and your reward is reverse mode, where you race across the tracks backwards, which makes the levels feel a lot different. Outside of the main championship mode, Wave Race offers time trial and a stunt mode. You can set your own high stores in the stunt mode as you have to make it to the next checkpoint while hitting rings and performing tricks. The other main move is a 2 player race. Wave Race 64 doesn’t contain a lot of stuff, but there’s so much detail in what it does do that it makes up for it. It’s a really fun game that rewards skill and offers a significant challenge. Wave Race got a sequel on the GameCube, but there’s nothing out now that’s quite the same. Remake or Remaster? Wave Race: Blue Storm has been accused of being too much like a remake, so a new game would be a better option. Official Ways to get the game There is no way to buy a new copy of Wave Race 64, the only official way to play is to rent it via the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pak. Re-releases 1997: Wave Race 64 Rumble Pak version (Japan only) 2007: Wii Virtual Console (this replaced the Kawasaki banners with Wii and DS logos) 2016: Wii U Version Console (this had the original graphics) 2022: Nintendo Switch Online (subscription only)

This sounds like a hefty endeavour, and I wish you great success, Cube. And more importantly, that you have a lot of fun exploring these hundreds of games. You definitely made a really good review for Pilotwings (which doesn't sounds like my type of game at all), and I felt like the Mario 64 opener approached the game from a new perspective than I'm used to. They are fantastic to read, and I look forward to seeing more.

Finally got down to the local-ish retro shop I'd mentioned before, which is Vintage Gamer in Halesowen. Today's pick-ups: 3 A-Spec (childhood platinum edition) and Arkham City (steelbook) are replacements for games I already have; Batman: Vengeance and Justice League Heroes I picked up for a mate who's a big DC fan; Lair and Mini Ninjas were purely curiosity picks, I know very little to nothing about those games really nice spot, they were sitting through some boxes for their boss to look through before putting games off for sale and I spied some rarities like Suikoden I and Suikoden II, Legend of Dragoon, and Silent Hill. Anyways, not that I'm collecting, some general rules I've set myself for picking up retro stuff are: • if I've played it before, I'll only pick it up if it's an absolute favourite - and in absolutely great condition. • focus above all else on games I haven't played and don't have access to elsewhere; Onimusha Warlords, for example, was available, but I already have it on PS4 through the remaster released a few years ago. • no need to break the bank - while I'm sure there will be games I want to break the bank for to experience because they're currently locked to old platforms (ahem, Silent Hill 2) • given the chance, do I see myself playing this in the next 6 to 12 months? There may be exceptions if I'm going through a series and see a super rare copy of a game from later in the series, but this is more of a "can I just dive in?" vibe as I want to play more shorter games. I feel like this also stops me from just picking up 50+ hour JRPGs, as much as I might love them. I've also got some other pick-ups from the same place from a pile which was only just dropped off today, so those are being priced for me to potentially pick up at some point, and I also ordered a couple of retro games from eBay. So...please be excited?

Always blows my mind to think that the music was composed by a guy who had never made music before (Dan Hess). He only has one other credit to his name (1998's F-1 World Grand Prix for the N64; also developed by Paradigm Simulation). What a waste of talent! He made an absolute banger of a soundtrack here, and basically never composed again afterwards; what a shame! Here's a couple of choice cuts...

Pilotwings 64 JP release: 23rd June 1996 NA release: 29th September 1996 PAL release: 1st March 1997 Developer: Nintendo, Paradigm Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: 89% Part of what made me want to play through all the Nintendo 64 games was growing up with Future Publishing’s N64 magazine. I only had a small number of games myself, but read about so many more. Pilotwings is one I remember getting mentioned a lot in the magazine throughout the years, and it always sounded fascinating. The image of a cannon and Mount Rushmore (with Mario’s face) was one I distinctly remember seeing a lot. Pilotwings is an arcade-style flight sim game, although still requires a lot of skill to perfect, especially landings. There are three main vehicles, each of which have a series of challenges to complete, which then unlock additional modes. The glider is first up and is definitely the weakest of the three main types. I can appreciate how it must have felt brand new, using a standard controller to control a game like this instead of a flight stick, not to mention the 3D worlds, which have lots of nice little details. The challenges start out simple, and get more complex and difficult. There’s a nice variety such as quickly going through a string of rings, finding more widespread rings and finding certain objects to take photos of. You’re scored based on your speed and accuracy, and it all hangs on your landing, which is difficult but does feel like you’re in control. The Rocket Belt (aka a jet pack) is immensely fun to fly. You have a strong thrust and a weaker thrust and will need to get across the map quickly, burst balloons, fly through a cave and land on platforms. Trying to avoid hitting the ground is difficult, even though the game tries to help by having a bar show up when you’re close to the ground. I think the weakest aspect of Pilotwings was the camera, which was a challenge in early 3D games. This one is a bit strange as it pans the camera away from you rather than around your character, and reverts back when you stop pressing the c-button. Despite this, the jet pack is just extremely enjoyable. The gyrocopyer is the third main one, and is equipped with rockets to blast targets with. This is much faster than the previous vehicles, so tend to use the whole islands, which are all really nicely designed with lots of little things to look at. I especially love “Little States”, a mini mainland USA with lots of details representing a few important locations. It would be lovely to see updated versions of these islands. With the gyrocopter, you’ll have some ring challenges that feel like intense races and you get to battle a giant mech as it terrorises a city. The gyrocopter is a lot of fun, and is probably the easiest to land, although being accurate for a best score is still difficult. As you complete the challenges, you’ll unlock bonus games. The first of which is a complete blast: human cannonball. You get three attempts at each target, with your best score out of the three being counted. This means that you have a few attempts to adjust your aim and power to account for the wind speed. While it stars off simple, like the rest of Pilotwings, it gets really difficult, with some targets you can only see on the radar as they’re behind a mountain or below the cannon. It doesn’t stop the mode being enjoyable, though. The second extra mode is skydiving. It starts with a rather wonky formation challenge above the clouds, but feels amazing when you get past and get full control of skydiving on the island. I wasn’t very good at the actual scoring, but the skydiving itself is really fun. The last one I couldn’t get the hang of. They’re a kind of bouncing boot, but the controls just feel strange and I kept bouncing in directions I didn’t want to go and just fell over a lot. My favourite mode of the game is locked behind getting a silver medal on all of these challenges, although you can temporarily try it out by finding hidden stars in the jetpack mode. The Birdman mode is a free flight mode. You don’t have to worry about fuel and staying in the air is easy. There’s no challenges to complete, it’s all about enjoying the sights. It’s just nice and relaxing. The main mistake is how many people playing the game may never actually get to try it due to the game’s difficulty and needing so much to unlock it (I have to admit, I ended up using cheats). Pilotwings 64 is a very interesting game and I really think it deserves another go. It did get a game on 3DS, but that just used Wuhu Island from Wii Sports Resort, which already had a plane more. I’d love a sequel that brought us the islands from this game in more detail, some new ones, plus all these modes and some new stuff. I’d also love just being able to choose free flight for any of the vehicles – having the challenges dotted across the maps would also be a great touch. A new Pilotwings could be a ton of fun. Remake or Remaster? A remake that’s also a sequel would be perfect for Pilotwings. Have the islands and activities from this with lots of new stuff. Official Ways to get the game There is no way to buy a new copy of Pilotwings 64, the only official way to play is to rent it via the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pak. Re-releases 2022: Nintendo Switch Online (subscription only)

Site News: Happy New Year! - - - - - Yep, it's the time of year again... This years post is a little different, but it's a celebration of life, and a reminder to just enjoy the moment. And there's some game related stuff in there too, plus it explains a bit of what has been going on with the site. Anyway, all the best, here's to 2024 and living in the moment, whatever that means for you, be it playing games or just enjoying life. (and if you have any fond memories to share, about old games/stores, and/or involving family or people you know or knew... please do, if you like)

Decided to give up on the remaining side content and just finish it. FFXVI = wasted potential, the game Even though I played most of it in 2023, this will be on my 2024 list and I'd be surprised if any game gets a lower score from me... But hey, the music was good. Aside from that one fight