Dcubed

Ahh, nothing quite like a classic Shot On Shittio off-screen camera leak photo. That means it must be legit!

How very Konami to release an "Our Game Sucks" stream. Not exactly very confidence inspiring when they aren't comitting to enabling higher resolution rendering or 60FPS on Switch though... you know, the two most obvious glaring issues with the port... The whole thing smacks of what happened with the Zone of The Enders HD Remaster Collection released for the PS360 back in the day...

Ahem! I'll have you know that this game is actually called SimCity 2000: The Ultimate City Simulator: It's New! Nintendo 64 Version. Come on @Cube, get with it here!

@Jonnas You should join me @Glen-i, @BowserBasher and @S.C.G for some of our N-E Mario Party NSO nights. You’ll quickly see how mad fun the N64 Mario Parties can be

1 million gambling addicts made... Thanks PEGI!

"Base Game Completion" is treated somewhat seperately from everything that was added after version 1.0 (it's not a seperate achievement list, but the game acknowledges the completion of all of the original achievements seperate from completing everything else; and also gives a particular noteworthy reward who I'm sure you're already well familiar with ).

... yeah, pretty much exactly what most of us predicted would happen ended up happening. It's remarkable how such massive and established companies keep missing the bleeding obvious time and time again.

Konami were pretty much the only Japanese publisher that really gave the N64 some proper 3rd party support. While most of their non ISS and Goemon efforts didn't turn out all that great, they certainly weren't for lack of trying. Here's something you might be surprised by... combing through the credits as seen on Mobigames, not a single person who worked on NBA In The Zone 98 on the N64 had previously worked on any of the prior NBA In The Zone games that were released on the PS1; and stranger still? Looking at the credits for the PS1 version? Not a single person who worked on that game had worked on any of Konami's other two basketball series that predated NBA In The Zone (Double Dribble and Run & Gun). Konami have always been a very strange company. You'd think that they would've wanted to tap into the institutional knowledge that they had already built from their previous basketball games, but nope. This isn't even all that out of character for them. As I previously explained in my Your Gaming Diary writeup for my playthrough of Castlevania Dracula X for SNES, Konami would often just throw everything out and start from scratch with staff who were completely new to a given established series. It's no wonder that the company was so dysfunctional and it's no small miracle that it actually did manage to put out so many stone cold classics throughout the 80s to early 2000s.

There is certainly a defined "end", which I won't spoil, but there's a seemingly endless amount of post-game content and DLC that continues to trickle in on a regular basis. Completing all of the achievements and unlocking everything (as well as completing every task checkmark) is what people use to define "100% completion" in this game, and that'll take you a very long time to pull off.

Wahey! Finally beat White Stake with all the base decks! Just moved on to Red Stake… and I beat it on my first attempt with Yellow Deck. Nice

Fun fact. This game was released on the smallest, cheapest and nastiest N64 cart ever made available (just 4MB/32mbit; the same size as the DKC games on SNES); with the publisher even having the sheer gall to eschew on-cart memory for saves on top of it’s utterly puny ROM size, requiring the purchase and use of the notoriously flimsy N64 Controller Pak if you wanted to save. It is as slight and miserly as N64 games get. You mean Robotron 32 X, PlayStation ain’t got no 64bits! Those extra 32 bits make it a totes different game you fool! There was, it was called Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved

Yeah, port is rock solid. That being said… … this is true. This game has the good kind of slowdown when you get to late-stage play, the kind where it’s just massively satisfying when you bring the system to its knees as you unleash pure rainbow vomit across the screen

I don’t actually want better graphics, I just want the same graphics we have now with better performance/higher resolution. The thing I really want more than anything else though is some new & interesting control input/communication/screen gimmicks; or at least the return of some of the hardware innovations we lost with Switch (dual screens, stereoscopic 3D, Streetpass, IR Pointer, Active Stylus, cameras, microphones etc). I miss the wacky hardware and interesting gameplay possibilities we used to have in the Wii/DS/3DS/Wii U eras.

I fear for the price tag… considering the current rate of price inflation on all electronics, and the fact that we’ve seen the first ever console price increase post launch with the current PS5? This is gonna get ugly… $699+/£599.99+ is quite possible…

And you thought that a Polychrome Egg was bad... The closest thing to a straight middle finger that Balatro can throw at you ... ...

It's amazing just how much the original Mario Golf would just utterly blow this game out of the water hazard just a year and a half later. I mean, it's not even like this game actually appeared all that dated for its time. Contemporary releases on other platforms like PGA Tour 98, Everybody's Golf 1 & 2 and Actua Golf all used a similar presentation style, with 2D billboard sprites for your character and rather simple looking 3D graphics. Likewise, Golf games being based on a single course were also commonplace. And it's not like T&E Soft were strangers to the genre, in fact, they were perhaps THE most prolific golf game developer of all time (You may in fact know them as the developers of Nintendo Touch Golf on the Nintendo DS!). Mario Golf on the N64 was just that far ahead of everything else at the time. God bless you Camelot

Yeah... I think I know too... Anyway, Chesnaught deserves better, so does Delphox; like, come on! There's nothing wrong with them! Actually Greninja deserves better too. Leave the poor thing alone Sakurai!

FINALLY! IT FINALLY HAPPENED!

This game gets a really unfair bum rap, usually being reviewed for what it isn't (A straightforward sequel to Yoshi's Island) rather than what it is (A score attack focused action platformer). For better or worse, it's a very experimental game; with some outright strange level design and gameplay structure. It was probably the wrong game at the wrong time, and I don't just mean that because it's Nintendo's one and only sprite-based game released for their shiny new polygon pushing 3D powerhouse; but because it was seen as a slight game when Nintendo desperately needed a sprawling and meaty adventure title to impress their early 1998 audiences (it only squeaks into 1997 in Japan on a pure technicality). When playing this game, you can tell that it was viewed by its developers as a bit of a game design playground of sorts, it's gameplay structure is outright bizzare, with its stages not even having a defined ending; only being completed whenever Yoshi has had his fill of fruit (though there are always exactly 30 melons to find; eat melons only for the best score!). Even the basic controls can be described as experimental, with a lot of focus being placed on what the N64's analog stick can bring to the table with very fine and granular movement and aiming controls (the d-pad goes completely unused here), while the enemy designs and level gimmicks come across as drug fuelled nightmare spawn... I mean... Just LOOK at this menagerie of monstrous designs ...UGH!! This bizzaro world concept also spreads to the music too, as Kazumi Totaka decided to coke up and thrust out some... experimental stuff... ... oh shit! That's a fan mashup, how did that one slip in there!? Lemme try that one again... ... some smooth Wave Race 64 vibes goin' on with that last one there... I see what you did Totaka Anyway. I can dig Yoshi's Story. It's a weird game that came out at an unfortunate time, where people wanted something grander and more contemporary, but I still have a soft spot for it If I do have any critisism to level at this game, it's that it doesn't have a huge amount of depth as a score attack game. There's a simple and obvious critical path to achieving a perfect score (eat 30 melons) and once you've done that? The game is clocked; there's no further capacity to chase higher scores. It's still enjoyable despite this, but there isn't much longevity as a pure score-attack game. Its DS follow-up (Yoshi's Touch N' Go) would end up being a far more compelling pure score-attack game, probably in response to the scoring limitations seen in its N64 predecessor. Despite the above, the game still stands out as being totally unique, both within the N64's library and within Nintendo's catalogue as a whole. And despite its gameplay structure never making a return, it would ironically end up being perhaps the most influential game within the entire Yoshi series (indeed, it's the game that turned what was once considered to be "Super Mario World 2" into its own entire franchise!)

I remember that diorama from back in the day! I also remember it being crazy expensive and well out of reach for younger me... so this bundle is actually not a bad deal. When they announced that they were remastering this game, I didn't expect them to remaster the diorama as well

The one time where I'm really annoyed to get a Polychrome Joker lol.

This is the best that FIFA ever got... but don't take my word for it, these are the words of Bruce McMillan, the series' executive producer over at EA... https://www.timeextension.com/features/the-making-of-fifa-road-to-world-cup-98-the-greatest-fifa-of-all-time Time Extension did a great interview with some of the game's original developers just a few weeks ago, well worth a read. But still. Even at FIFA's very best, it still doesn't hold a candle to ISS64/98/2000

Hope it does the trick. I have the feeling that the game has just been optimised around 30FPS on Switch though, and we won't see a big performance uptick... ... would be very happy to be wrong though!

I’m sure there’s a porn shop or two out there that would disagree with you.

I'm guessing that's the ticket here. Nothing we've seen from the in-game footage so far looks unachievable on the current Switch.