So, there's the "pixel remasters" now, which are finally confirmed as heading to the Switch. These ones are... interesting. They really did take complaints about the "smoothed out" and rather... ugly sprites of the Android version to heart and instead kept a "blocky" SNES style look across all six games. However, they still redid a large chunk of the spritework. This makes a sort of sense, because by redoing all the sprites with a fixed pixel display in mind (meaning square pixels) there's no worries about any "shimmering" effects when the screen is scrolled horizontally. That said, the game engines aren't 2D any more. The games are all now rendered internally in 3D but with a unique zooming solution that makes everything "look" the same size no matter the distance from the camera (keeping an oblique perspective like the original games). This has a few consequences in gameplay, in that pillars that formerly blocked access can now be walked "behind" in almost all instances. While more realistic, it breaks the intended pathing. The sound design is interesting. The sound effects have been touched up so that while they still sound "old school", they're synced. Every effect is the same across all games if it's for something in all games. Personally, I'm not a fan of that. I like that each game gets its own take on things and prefer that to enforced uniformity. The music is completely recomposed, but having learned their lesson from how badly received the new OST in their Secret of Mana remake was, they made sure to maintain the full "spirit and tone" of the original tracks. I'd say these are, almost universally, the best versions of these songs. They really went the extra mile with the famous Opera scene in FF6 though. That one used voice synth that sounded bad on the SNES and bad on the GBA, but in these versions they hired actual performers, so for the opera there's voice acting not present in the rest of the games. I think that's the perfect "light touch" approach. In case you're curious, they're singing in multiple localizations depending on your version, including Italian, the "language of the opera" and the version they sang in the original CD OST release way back when, which I think is perfect. They even go the extra mile just for this scene and dramatically rotate the camera around and zoom in, since you can't directly control your character during this moment anyway. They even had the characters sing off-key if you forget your lines. (These voice actors would return for the final boss fight for that choral chanting.) And yes, they bug fixed an issue where the phantom train wasn't flipping it's sprite when Sabin suplexed it. They FIXED the issue of Sabin not properly suplexing the train when it was caught by fans in the trailer!
In terms of gameplay, the forced uniformity is in full effect. Just about every single spell and ability shared across each game now has identical effects across them too. The ATB also functions identically, as do things like how experience works. They also fixed a large number of glitches and unintended play across each game. Some of this is for the better (Final Fantasy 1) while some of it I think is for the worse (goodbye to vanish-doom tricks, all item duping, and numerous actual intended effects that were simply broken and ignored like how undead react to healing magic). I would call the overall changes to gameplay, on balance, a wash except for one detail:
All bonus content from later remasters has been scrapped. ALL of it. No special super dungeons with hidden super bosses any more. While I won't pretend all of the bonus content was well done, none of it was galling or bad, and most of it provided additional challenges that really press veteran players who are used to their min-maxed kits and aren't challenged by these games any more. Some even added additional storyline details worth exploring, and others were just silly fun. In some cases, the bonus content was literally just giving players additional options, like new summons in FF6 to find in tiny little bonus events, or being able to swap in every party member that's still alive for a custom party in FF4. All those moments gone, like tears in the rain. I'm saying this as someone who doesn't even care for The After Years. Well, since FF3 (the real one) never did get a 2D remaster, nothing's lost there. They added a few extra classes from the reimagining on DS in fact, and altered how the existing ones perform to make them closer to how they behave in later entries. FF4 for it's part didn't get any additions from it's DS reimagining.
All in all, I'd say these are very well done and interesting takes, but it's a shame they took content out from the GBA versions. It makes it very hard to recommend these as the "definitive versions", but they are an alternate take and FAR better than what we got with those abysmal "mobile editions".
Isn't it interesting how slang works? Sometimes a new word, or a new meaning for an old word, just appears out of seemingly nowhere. One day everything is as it was, the next everyone is saying that word as if it's always been around.
That is my experience recently with the word in the thread title, "mid". Since when did mid get re-defined to mean "something mediocre at best but probably kind of bad"? I don't think I'd seen it until the last few weeks at most. It's kind of interesting.
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.
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.
Around here more and more are getting behind this notion they deserve to be "tipped". Ugh... It's bad enough that they offer absolutely nothing to me other than land they don't even use nor WOULD they use beyond "renting" it... It's bad enough they switched over the decades from trying to entice us with "pet friendly" terms to charging an up front fee for having one to now charging a monthly additional cost, EVERY month, so long as my pet shall live. (Sure pets CAN damage the place, but so can kids and they can do far worse damage. No one's charging tenants a "kid fee".... yet...)
The prices skyrocketed the past two years... and I have no assurance they won't again the next time I renew... We need a better system of determining who owns land. This isn't working. I spent myself into quite a situation managing to help my parents out of a bind with their rent, then my grandmother with burst pipes... and I only have one friend who is even in a position to own a home... that was inherited.
Just FYI. I have migrated the database backend of the server to latest MYSQL Server.
Apologies for the extended downtime. I believe I have the issues sorted now. And we can enjoy a much faster site.
So, right now, Nintendo still doesn't have any Mario games announced for 2023. Nothing. If this continues, this would be the first year in quite some time without any Mario-related titles. There is the moving coming soonish, but that's not a videogame...
Last year they had a few Mario games, but fewer than in most recent years before it. It was a little odd.
Of course, the Switch in general has next to nothing announced first-party-wise after Zelda in May. And Nintendo is skipping E3 this summer, since they say they have nothing to show. That's kind of odd.
We know that there have been rumors about a Switch II for years, but it keeps getting pushed back farther and farther, probably because of covid-related parts shortages and price increases. I think that if not for covid a new Switch would be out by now, but, it's not. I'm okay with this, the Switch games I play mostly run fine, but clearly as far as game development goes something has changed at Nintendo given the absence of game announcements or an E3 showing to announce major stuff for this holiday.
The question is, what's going on? Are they just working on stuff they don't want to announce yet? Are most first party titles after Zelda delayed until whenever Nintendo's next console releases, but that's not ready yet due to parts delays, and that's the main problem? I'm fine with the Switch continuing on, but they'd need to release games for it for that to happen... so yeah, it's odd.
Of course, Nintendo knows that they have never followed up a hit console with a system more successful than their previous system, so they've got to be feeling some pressure, they've got to get this right. But still, something odd is going on and I wonder how long it will be until we know exactly what Nintendo's plans are.
Also, the UFOs being spotted and shot down. Those UFOs are probably more balloons that the Canadian and U.S. militaries are refusing to identify so they don't reveal their own capabilities. In fact, generally the policy for such spy craft like planes, satellites, and so on has been "pretend we don't know it's there, and stage false intel for them to take pictures of". Political pressure seems to have changed that policy. Goody...
In any case, it's not aliens, and it's not anything to really worry about. We're in the second cold war now. Carry on.
But if you do want to know if there's something to worry about: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/
This will tell you what to actually worry about.
