Dcubed

Good point @Glen-i. THPS is one of the very few licensed games based on a celebrity that actually features significant input from said celebrity. It’s not just a product endorsement, he personally championed the project from the very beginning and made the initial pitch to Activision (and other publishers); not unlike what Shigasato Itoi did with Earthbound. The series is as much Hawk’s baby as it was Nethersoft’s. And THPS is absolutely not only a 3D platformer, but an excellent one. You might not have direct control over your acceleration, but it features all the same core gameplay design elements as what you might find in Super Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie, including the camera system. Functionally, at the most core and basic design level, THPS is a 3rd person 3D Platformer where your character auto-accelerates and their movement is built on physics-based momentum (not unlike the classic Sonic titles actually!). Everything else is window dressing. The camera in particular is so incredibly well designed that it basically remained unchanged throughout the entire series; they simply nailed it on their first attempt. Even Metroid Prime took some inspiration from it with its half-pipe morph ball jumps (as mentioned in various Kiwi Talks interviews with ex Retro Studios staff). THPS is one of the most important and influential western developed games ever made, even beyond the obvious Extreme Sports genre.

Not the ideal version of the game, but it’s hard to argue about this game’s impact. It’s the best non-Rare western-made 3D platformer series ever made. Much like the best Nintendo games, THPS just feels good to play. Even without any interesting level design or set pieces, just the basic act of locomotion feels utterly divine. But, you know, it does have excellent level design to do along with its wonderful locomotion; making it a full package. The 2 minute time limit was also a genius decision, turning each level into a veritable clockwork diorama that encourages you to break it apart and discover endless ways to rack up high scores and find every tiny secret. It gave the game that critical Just-One-More-Go factor that the best arcade games excelled at. If anything, it’s shocking that this game didn’t originate from the arcades, because it nails that tightly designed loop. Surprisingly, the closest thing we’d ever get in the arcades would be probably Crazy Taxi. But it was that rare thing, an arcade score attack game doing gangbusters at a time where the arcades were starting to lose relevance. And of course, it essentially kicked off the Extreme Sports genre as we know it. It essentially nailed the late 90s zeitgeist with its theming; encapsulating everything that made the era so special. But it’s a big shame then that the N64 version came out 6 months late and still so compromised, really missing that crucial initial window of opportunity. As such, the series became associated with Sony platforms moving forward; a huge blow to Nintendo’s mindshare in the west. While future games on GameCube would have simultaneous releases that had (mostly) feature parity with their PS2 counterparts, the damage had already been done before the GameCube had even launched; and Nintendo would never manage to recover (even to this day, THPS 1+2 on Switch is considered an afterthought compared to the PS4 release). THPS is a landmark release that ended up being one of the biggest franchises of this generation (as well as the next), but it would not be in Nintendo’s favour.

Damn. End of an era… Even though he’s kind of been in very much a background role these last few years, that’s still a big loss for PlayStation. Wonder where he’s going next?

Nintendo finally remembered that Mega Drive NSO exists!

Not enough.

Preorder page is up on Amazon UK now… https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1913330273/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Weekly updates!? Don’t mind if I do Guess that means that we’ll get DKL 3, DK94 and DK64 over the next few weeks then. Edit: Oh wait, I forgot about DKC GBC and the GBA games (DKC 1-3, King of Swing and Mario VS DK). Plenty more DK that they could put out! (King of Swing is great BTW! Very underrated!)

Hydro Thunder is pretty good. It’s no Waverace, but it’s one of the better water-based racers out there. The N64 port is alright, but it’s pretty mediocre in comparison to the absolute miracle that was the PS1 port. Seriously! The PS1 port is far better than it has any right to be, and actually runs at a better framerate than the N64 version; with some additional special effects not found in the N64 version to boot! Still, the N64 version is the only one that supports 3-4 players (not even the Dreamcast/Xbox/GCN/PS2 versions support more than 2 player splitscreen), so that’s a pretty significant feather in the N64’s cap here; despite requiring the Expansion Pak to do so. You can’t really go wrong with any version of Hydro Thunder though. It’s cheesy Midway carney arcade fun at its best

https://www.piggyback.com/us/guide/metroid-prime-1-3-a-visual-retrospective/#features Oh God yes! Give it to me!!!

So... Famitsu did a follow-up interview with Sakamoto and Miyachi regarding Emio, and certain things said in the previous Ask The Developer interview. It's fairly lengthy and worth a read, but be warned... they do discuss the ending and inner workings of the game openly; so probably best save it until you've actually finished Emio itself. https://sites.google.com/view/emio-smiling-man-interview A few non-spoiler excerpts...

That actually sounds like a pretty neat concept for a racing game. Would be nice to see Nintendo take a crack at the idea

I realise that I'm probably the only person here who would give a shit about this, but MAGES just announced that they're doing a remaster of Ever 17 and Never 7; the VNs made by Kotaro Uchikoshi that would go on to inspire the Zero Escape series. And they're getting English releases to boot! https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:uksnrnzuksb46olb2t7nlpwi/post/3lbqh6aeays22?ref_src=embed

One thing to keep in mind with Simcity 64 that you probably didn’t experience yourself @Cube, since you played the game on an emulator, is that it runs like an absolute dog on real N64 hardware. Look at that framerate CHUG!

Hopefully should be available to join in from around 20:00-20:30 onwards tonight

They seem to use the official CD album releases where applicable, so that was expected. If they do release the other music, it would be done separately.