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.
At least in terms of money. He lost hundreds of billions because he didn't like having his trans joke taking down that one time. He did it all to himself of course.
And, even though he lost ALL of that, he's STILL one of the richest people in the world. This is damning. This is a fundamental failure of the capitalist system that such a thing is even possible. No one person could ever, EVER do enough to justify having THAT much money. No one's work anywhere is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, each billion, remember, being a thousand millions.
What do you all think about Nintendo's direction in these post-Iwata years?
Yamauchi's Nintendo succeeded through a combination of focus on tech, developer relationships, and the best first party software in the industry. Some elements of that foundered at times, but he had a great eye for talent and for understanding what people wanted, even if people didn't realize that that is what they wanted. He apparently did not play videogames and was an imposing traditional Japanese boss, but it worked. This era of the company built up a strong and independent American branch, which was critical to Nintendo's continuing success when they totally collapsed in support in Japan with the N64 but did much better in the US market. Yamauchii retired in the '00s, but apparently his last suggestion was the project that became the Nintendo DS, Nintendo's best-selling console.
After Yamauchi retired, Iwata became head of the company. His era, from the Gamecube to the Wii U, saw some major changes. Essentially, Iwata dropped the tech part of Yamauchi's three main pillars, relying instead on innovation to sell systems. This sometimes worked and sometimes did not; Nintendo was both very successful during these years as the Wii and DS sold spectacularly, and struggled as the Gamecube and Wii U very much did not. He centralized corporate control in Japan and took away almost all of Nintendo of America's independence. He broke off relations with most of the close Western studios who had been supporting Nintendo, as well, only keeping a very few such as Retro and NST. Nintendo lost most "AAA" software after about '02 because of the above reasons, but did eventually get slowly growing support from smaller developers which helped to make up for it.
However, Iwata sadly died young, and now Nintendo has new leadership. The new leadership has dialed back his focus on innovation, but has not brought back a focus on tech; instead, they seem more focused on focus-tested ideas that will sell, while also re-releasing a lot of Wii U games that didn't sell well the first time because of how sadly poorly that console sold. Now, I don't want ot be too hard on modern Nintendo since the Switch has an absolutely amazing game library, with thousands and thousands of indie games available digitally and a top-tier first party library, but... I've always been a bit critical of the platform on a design front, and that has not changed. The eshop is absolutely horrible with one of the most broken, slowest shops this side of the PS3; the system drops most of the Iwata era's interesting, good innovations such as pointer motion and a second screen; the portable nature of the machine has left it as both an oversized portable and an underpowered home console; and more. Of course that it has one of my favorite games ever, Super Mario Maker 2, is a plus, though. Mario Maker is a better game for creators on Wii U, showing that system's advantages over the Switch in terms of hardware design, but the many added parts in SMM2 make up for that for me.
But still, yeah, I don't know, I have some major issues with Iwata, most notably with how he lost Nintendo's Western developers, but the new era is in a lot of ways worse. Sure, the Switch is both a portable and a handheld, which is an interesting idea which kind of works, and its controller does have built in gyro motion, which is great, but... I'm not sure how much of this is just because we are getting older and how much is real, but it does feel like some of the innovation and genius of old Nintendo has been lost in favor of more sequels and such. And the new leaders are not the kind of public-focused leaders Nintendo had before, they seem to me like more generic corporate board types.
Now, of course Nintendo is still doing interesting things. Labo was a pretty cool experiment, for instance. It didn't entirely work out, both in sales and in function -- my opinion on Labo is that they are a lot of fun to build but not that great to play with and are hard to keep around with how huge the resulting models are -- but it was an interesting idea worth trying. And making more sequels and the like isn't a bad thing, I like Splatoon 3 for instance; it's no Splatoon 1, but I definitely like it more than the second game and I'm glad the series continues. But in a lot of ways it is an entirely iterative sequel which does not change the series formula at all. And the Switch's insanely overwhelming volume of digital-only releases is something ... maybe in its favor, depending on ones opinion about how many of the games are actually worth playing. But even so, I do think something has been lost. How important what has been lost is I'm not sure, but I probably do think that Nintendo is slightly less interesting as a company than they used to be. Nintendo still releases amazing, innovative games and does more than enough to keep me buying their stuff as a fan, but the company as a whole is not what it used to be. That is both good and bad -- obviously as a company they are doing fantastically well right now, the Switch is extremely successful -- but for me it's as much bad as good. But things change over time, that's how it goes...
Trump has managed to powerfully disappoint his followers by, suddenly, just being retro Trump and trying to sell actual trash! Everyone was so excited. What would great leader say? What would their god-emperor announce?! He announced NFTs... "trading card" NFTs... of himself drawn as a super hero (more specifically, he looks a lot like Homelander which is.... very appropriate).
I can't get over how perfect this is. PLEASE tell me it's even worse! I want those NFT trading cards to be randomized! Make some of them preorder exclusive! Make SOME of them require monthly fees! Do all the bad things but exclusively in the space of NFTs!
