Tendo City

So, the new Goldeneye port came out.  To be specific, the Switch version is an emulated ROM while the XBox One version is a port.  Why did this take so long?  We've been blaming a lot of different game studios, mostly Nintendo, over the years.  That isn't what did it though.  MGM shifted to a new owner who didn't want lowly video games associated with her bond license, and she had gone on record as HATING Goldeneye and it's depiction of Bond.  Goldeneye's original N64 release itself only JUST squawked by her demands because of a preexisting contract she couldn't override, but it still infuriated her enough that Rare and Nintendo lost the license and it went to EA.  They went on to make TWINE though so... I really am not sure how the Goldeneye styled game got approved when Goldeneye itself didn't.  Anyway, now that Amazon owns James Bond, that's all changed, and we are FINALLY able to see a rerelease after all these years.

However, it's barely even worth giving this port a full review.  This is basically to say that while there are a few appreciated tweaks, it's almost exactly the same game as the N64 original.  So what changed?  The game now runs at a much higher resolution and frame rate, ranging from 2K at 60fps to 4k at 120fps depending on your system and TV.  The game also supports a lot of new control options, modernizing it somewhat.  I've got mine set to custom though, because the super fast diagonal run only works with the d-pad and not the analog stick.  Further, "leaning" no longer works which makes corner shots a LOT more risky.  Those speed runs involving turrets are going to be hell...  There is no XBox Live online mode.  There isn't even system link.  Somehow, Nintendo has the online play and MS doesn't.  This is a far cry from the enhanced port Perfect Dark got.  In fact, a number of the visuals are actually worse.  At a higher resolution, huge seams show between lots of geometry.  Many textures go transparent in glitchy ways.  In fact, texturing in general is done improperly.  They use 4 point sampling in this when the original used 3 point.  This issue also happened with Nintendo's Switch emulator resulting in all the textures in the game being displayed wrong, sometimes being very glaringly so.  While the game does support widescreen (as did the original N64 release), it's a rather lazy implementation that letter boxes some sections and not others.  This is better than how the N64 game simply stretched all the 2D elements to make it wide screen, but not by much.  Heck, while they removed the N64 logo at the very start, they failed to scrub all the Nintendo references out of the XBox version.  It feels barely tested.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aja9OWAWx_onhl6ZtY5c...h?e=vX50vm

But, there is another that they have and, after some bug testing, could release RIGHT NOW, and that's the 360 port:

https://tcrf.net/Prerelease:GoldenEye_00...rcade_Port



Look at this.  LOOK AT THIS!  This looks even better than the Perfect Dark port.  They enhanced it across the board, with new multiplayer levels (Odd they didn't add cradle too, but hey it was in beta), new functions like making all characters the same height in multiplayer (Oddjob and Jaws matchups just changed a lot, and yes this feature can be turned off), oh and this one I really love.  Hate the new look?  With the press of a button, switch the graphics back and forth MID GAME.  Perfect Dark's XBox 360 port also had this feature in beta but it was scrapped before release for some reason.  Oh and yes, it had online multiplayer and system link.  It also did a lot of streamlining so you no longer have to start a mission just to adjust game settings, and can see what par time to aim for without having to beat/abort a mission first.

This is absolutely the version we should have gotten.  There's not even the excuse of "needing to port" it.  The XBox One/Series runs a LOT of 360 games very well through it's excellent emulation.  They easily could have just made sure this one was working and release it that way.  Further, they should have integrated it with the Rare Replay game.  Like most Rare Replay 360 games, this one would still be executable outside the Rare Replay interface, but by adding it properly, they could also put in those Rare Replay videos that they actually recorded for this, as well as giving us a music player for all the game's amazing music.  So, why?  I can only guess at one cause.  I have no evidence for this, and it could easily be any number of factors none of us can guess at, but Nintendo may have demanded that MS's version not be obviously superior to Nintendo's version as part of their agreement to allow MS to release it at all.

Edit: Forgot something, and so did MS!  So, DK Mode cheat is still called "DK Mode" in this version.  They altered it to "Monkey Mode" in the 360 release of Perfect Dark.

Incidentally, its 2023, the year Perfect Dark was set in.  Where's my hovering laptop-bot?

Alright, mechanically speaking this port is, outside of a few hiccups related to the boosted frame rate here and there where the pause function suddenly works a lot faster in a way I can't reliably reproduce, pretty much gameplay-identical to the original.  In fact, I just finished fully "completing" the game.  I got the best time I've ever gotten on Facility at 1:43 (my previous best was a pathetic 2:04 on the original N64 cart) and Caverns was... well Caverns actually took more retries though I did focus on it first yesterday.  The achievements were easy enough to get since I got most of them (save the multiplayer ones) just by playing through the game and unlocking all the cheats.

It did it's job, which was to bring back a lot of memories and skills I thought I'd long forgotten.  If anything I feel like I'm better at this game now than I was back then in the leadup before Perfect Dark's release.  I've become especially skilled at manipulating guard behavior as well, but I'm not going to pretend the game's greatest challenges are "easy" now.  It's still very tough to complete those highest challenges.  It wasn't made much easier by removing the "corner lean" which made taking out turrents and certain "sneak shots" at guards far trickier.  I had to find workarounds.  So, patch in the corner lean, patch it so I can use analog movement to get the same diagonal run speed as I can with the d-pad, and you have yourself a functional replacement for the N64 game, if barebones.

Come to think of it, I really should fully do a replay of Perfect Dark's 360 remaster next.  I think the though of going through that game's toughest challenges again scared me off at the time, but I feel more energized and as great as Goldeneye is, I always liked Perfect Dark more.

Xbox One / Series Goldeneye 007 IS integrated with Rare Replay, though, in that if you own Rare Replay the game is free.  I was really surprised by that, lots of people own Rare Replay and giving all of them a free copy of Goldeneye is pretty generous, that probably lost a lot of sales...

Otherwise, the Xbox 360 version and X1 online play probably were casualties of Nintendo not wanting Microsoft to have a clearly better version of the game than they were getting.  That back and forth is a major part of why the X360/Wii versions never released in the first place, after all.  They came to an agreement this time, but unfortunately for only the original version of the game with some control tweaks.

(16th March 2023, 8:09 PM)A Black Falcon Wrote: [ -> ]Xbox One / Series Goldeneye 007 IS integrated with Rare Replay, though, in that if you own Rare Replay the game is free.  I was really surprised by that, lots of people own Rare Replay and giving all of them a free copy of Goldeneye is pretty generous, that probably lost a lot of sales...

Otherwise, the Xbox 360 version and X1 online play probably were casualties of Nintendo not wanting Microsoft to have a clearly better version of the game than they were getting.  That back and forth is a major part of why the X360/Wii versions never released in the first place, after all.  They came to an agreement this time, but unfortunately for only the original version of the game with some control tweaks.

I thought I'd mentioned that above.  But it isn't actually integrated into the Rare Replay interface, is what I'm saying.  Still, it's a nice little bonus (little being the operative word here, considering what we got).  In any event, think of it this way.  Goldeneye alone may not have been enough to motivate more people to buy that by itself, but adding Goldeneye to Rare Replay may have motivated a lot of people to get the whole bundle that may have slept on the original release until now.  It's a cross promotional thing and it's rather common these days, but still very welcome.

I've speculated on whether Nintendo may be responsible, but we don't know that to a certainty, since development of the 360 remaster actually started only AFTER the biggest Nintendo-side barrier died.  What I can say, and thought I did above, is that MGM turns out to have been the primary party responsible for how long the delay was in getting a Goldeneye rerelease from 2010 up until now.



Also, I have a strong suspicion at this point that this is actually an emulated slightly altered ROM of the original Goldeneye, and all the frame rate and resolution improvements are simply built into how the emulator handles N64 graphics.  I reproduced a glitch from the original game where I blew up too much stuff at once using cheat codes and caused graphic corruption of certain ammo sprites in the UI.  This glitch, being caused by the severe memory limitations of the N64, has no reason to occur in a true port of the game's code.

Oh and Rare Replay is still missing a significant chapter of Rare's history, and that's the SNES/Gameboy/Genesis era of their games.  Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, the arguably superior Genesis version of the first Battletoads, the unique sequel on Gameboy, and well the Double Dragon crossover title which... well that is it's own licensing hurdle.  Donkey Kong Country trilogy and DK64 also comes to mind but... we all know there's no way Nintendo is allowing those games anywhere near MS's console, but there's also a small library of Gameboy games missing from the lineup.  Oh yes, and all those GBA games released after MS bought Rare.  The Replay collection is still a great collection mind you, but I'd say there's over a dozen games missing from it at least so a full "Rare collection" still requires looking out side of it at this time, unfortunately.

It's very interesting the legacy of this particular subgenre of shooter.  No series seems to stay "golden" forever.  Goldeneye is great, while TWINE for N64, made by another group but intended to imitate Goldeneye's style, wasn't so good.  Perfect Dark is even better than Goldeneye, but Perfect Dark Zero imitated too much from the likes of Half-Life and Halo and lost it's identity as another "me too" shooter.  TimeSplitters is... alright the first one is basically a rushed tech demo (every level's objective is, go to x then go back to start) but TimeSplitters 2 is an absolutely amazing "Goldilike" that I think also surpasses Goldeneye if not quite reaching the heights of Perfect Dark.  TimeSplitters 3, unfortunately, fell into the trap of copying it's contemporaries and becomes another "cinematic" driven "me too" shooter (it's objectives are "complete as you go" that more or less automatically happen just by heading through the more modern "tunnel" design of the levels).

It looks like we get one really amazing game a franchise from this genre.

Holy shitballs! I just popped in this game to the other night for nostalgia. And because I’m without a modern TV atm and decided to fire up classic games on my old CRT. 

I was lamenting that the graphics are much blurrier than I remembered and it took its toll on the gameplay. And here I come to find they released one with a higher res. Sweet fanciful Moses! But it’s a damn shame that they took our corner leaning, idk that I want to give that up. 

btw, 1:43 for the Facility?? Motherfucking speedy Gonzales over here. Even 2:04 seems unfathomably fast. I usually just poke around and try not to get shot too much (with a hit precision rate of maybe 10% (okay not that bad but let’s just say I’m in a constant state of anxiety of running out of bullets in 00 mode, and rightfully so)).

(27th March 2023, 7:19 AM)Sacred Jellybean Wrote: [ -> ]Holy shitballs! I just popped in this game to the other night for nostalgia. And because I’m without a modern TV atm and decided to fire up classic games on my old CRT. 

I was lamenting that the graphics are much blurrier than I remembered and it took its toll on the gameplay. And here I come to find they released one with a higher res. Sweet fanciful Moses! But it’s a damn shame that they took our corner leaning, idk that I want to give that up. 

btw, 1:43 for the Facility?? Motherfucking speedy Gonzales over here. Even 2:04 seems unfathomably fast. I usually just poke around and try not to get shot too much (with a hit precision rate of maybe 10% (okay not that bad but let’s just say I’m in a constant state of anxiety of running out of bullets in 00 mode, and rightfully so)).

Funny thing is, popping in the N64 game in an attempt to replicate that time on my old cart didn't go so well.  Let's just say the updated controls and the ability to do things like assign certain single buttons to tasks that formerly took a combined button press makes a huge difference.  Also, having those functions accessible to other fingers while I'm still moving around helps a LOT too.  I think that's what kept my motion so smooth, because replicating even close to that on N64 was way harder.

And yes, it's a big shame that corner leans aren't mapped properly in this emulated game.  I'm hoping a patch will fix that, as well as the odd rendering of textures and perhaps a rendering fix for the seams between certain aspects so you don't go seeing through the world.  Incidentally, the "fog" is still there.  I think since so much of the level design was built with the expectation of fog they thought it wouldn't be wise to remove it.  I think I agree with them.  It's still way smoother though.  Oh I recently RGB modded my N64 with a special chip that even lets me toggle on and off the "horizontal blur" filter the N64 normally uses, while keeping the antialiasing.  It really does make those old games look sharper.  Good on you for keeping that CRT by the way!

(Oh and here's a little trick to help you with aiming to a small extent.  The Dot!  Without touching the control stick, press the "R" button to pull up your aiming cursor, then put a little bit of sticky tac right in the middle of that cross hair.  That's where your character normally shoots unless autoaiming gets triggered (So turn that on or off too if you like).  You don't need this in Perfect Dark (it has an aiming cursor even outside "fine aiming" mode), but it really helps in Goldeneye.)

I'll tell you right now though, this "new version" just being a slightly modified ROM in an emulator is disappointing.  It's probably better to just hack your 360 and stick the unreleased remaster on there.  Heck fans have even been patching that version themselves to fix it's remaining bugs bit by bit, since they've got access to the source code.  That, or you can play a specially modified N64 emulator I found that lets you use full mouse and keyboard controls in both Perfect Dark and Goldeneye on your PC.  (Or, just use a controller on your PC, plenty of options!)  In this way, you don't have to worry about buying an XBox One/Series if you don't want one.  If you already have one of those, while I can't recommend buying this version of Goldeneye, I CAN recommend buying Rare Replay, which "bundles" this with it as it's own download.

Sadly, a collection of emulated and updated N64 games is the best "exclusive" game on both of MS's most recent console generations.

Quote:Oh and here's a little trick to help you with aiming to a small extent.  The Dot!

This is a clever hack. I’ll have to try this out. 

Quote:they've got access to the source code

Whoa, how did they get this? Did it get leaked or something? Getting one’s hands on game source code is unusual, right?

(28th March 2023, 9:03 AM)Sacred Jellybean Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Oh and here's a little trick to help you with aiming to a small extent.  The Dot!

This is a clever hack. I’ll have to try this out. 

Quote:they've got access to the source code

Whoa, how did they get this? Did it get leaked or something? Getting one’s hands on game source code is unusual, right?

Normally yes, but the leaks started a while ago and keep getting bigger.  Of course, the best examples are companies like Id who willingly release their own source code rather often.  Well, used to.  After Id was bought by Bethesda, the source code releases kind of dried up.  I think the last one we got was for Doom 3.

Then there was the Blizzard leak.  We've got the code for Diablo now thanks to that.  After that, an even bigger one from Microsoft.  It included a crazy amount of internal data like the aforementioned unreleased Goldeneye remaster, as well as source code for older versions of Windows and the XBox and 360 custom OS.

However, that's small change!  Get ready for this...  The Nintendo megaleak.  This one was an even bigger leak than what MS got hit with (but not as big as MS's most recent source code leak... of all of their major cloud code for their enterprise products).  This one's got source code for Nintendo games going back decades, including a handful of Rare games in various states of completion.  That includes Star Fox, Star Fox 2, and a few others that can now be properly recoded to run at higher frame rates without completely messing up the timing by making the game play way too fast.  It also includes a lot of Nintendo's unreleased projects coming to light.

Alright, so the big issue with these code leaks is it's illegal to publish them or projects using them.  The grey zone (not the movie... oh god that movie is grim, and stark) here is "decompiling".  It's taken a lot of work, but by finding out exactly what programming languages AND which custom coding databases Nintendo used to make various games, they've found a way to completely "back convert" games into their original source code.  They test this by immediately recompiling the game back into a ROM and then checking the hash to make sure it matches.  When it does, they know they have bit for bit identical source code and the right features on in their compiler.

They've been focusing on N64 games for this, but we've got full decompiled source code for Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and I think Banjo Kazooie last I heard?  These games can TRULY be ported to PC with all kinds of custom features that won't require the awkward kludges we currently use to hack these games with ROM patching, and basically this was just reverse engineering.  It's hard to say that this is the literal exact source code, it's just known that it's FUNCTIONALLY identical.  So long as they didn't copy the original code at any point, reverse engineering is considered protected fair use.  Of course, the mods to these games are still going to start out a little slow even with the source code.  There's one thing missing that never gets compiled, and that's code comments.  NONE of the code is going to have the programmer's original commenting, and ALL the variables are going to be given more generic names by the automated process that decompiles them.  The code names for the variables, as well as the code comments, are irrecoverable.  So, this means experimenting and reading through it line by line to figure out what does what.  As it's worked through, the hackers responsible are commenting the code and giving useful variable and function names bit by bit.  The more is done, the easier it gets to figure out what the remainder does.  Point is, it's a big step and basically makes these games fully "open".  Well, except they're ONLY sharing the code, not the assets.  Textures, models, sounds, that's all still got to be ripped yourself from your own surely legally obtained ROM.

Edit: Oh and thank you but before you praise me too much, apparently the current world record for Facility 00 is 51 seconds which is just... well it's something I can't even imagine.  I'm content just beating my own time though.  Oh and, one thing I love about the little unintended gameplay tricks I used (ABF) is that they're all still sensible in-universe.  I merely used guards to open doors for me by alerting them with gunfire.  Dr. Doak is still a pain though.

I've just finished both my full playthrough and review of Perfect Dark if anyone wants to give it a look.

https://www.tendocity.net/showthread.php...#pid139342