SNES mini - The Bear and Badger

davyK

retroking1981 wrote:

I think you'd have preferred 2 to 1 @davyK

I think you are right - what I saw of the game was glorious - I just didn't have the motivation to keep playing as I had a bellyfull of that particular type of game.

retroking1981

Yeah that's understandable.

Escape

Mario 64 was the first and last for me, too. I loved it, but none of its follow-ups addressed what I considered its weaknesses. I'm unusual for disliking Ocarina of Time, but now that Breath of the Wild exists I can better explain why via comparisons.

The GameCube's biggest mistake was 1.5GB discs, robbing itself of the potential to try anything like BotW, or of course buy their own copy of GTA: Double Pack. Among many others. Sunshine's garish overload of colour sold it to me as more heavily kid-focused than 64, and it went head-to-head with Vice City, so there was no contest among me and my friends at the time.

Dinostar77

Are we going to have a separate thread for the commodore 64 mini? (released 2018).

Escape

Given its low level of interest, you'll find that in Retro Gaming.

davyK

Escape wrote:

Mario 64 ........... I'm unusual for disliking Ocarina of Time, but now that Breath of the Wild exists I can better explain why via comparisons. .........

I didn't like it either. Or at least - I got fed up with it. Lost interest in Jabu's Belly.

It felt like a rehash of LttP. So given 3D has never been something that attracted me I didn't see the point in playing it.

Escape

It was billed as a 3D ALttP remake and that's what I wanted, but it's a semi-interactive game that failed to combine the best of ALttP with Mario 64's non-Z control freedom.

Eighteen years later they finally gave us manual jumping and climbing.

hylian_elf

The game played fine when it was released. Thoroughly enjoyable.

WorKid

It plays fine now. Y'all be cray-cray.

Escape

In another dozen years they might give us the Zelda that Breath of the Wild could've been. Nintendo have long had this habit of making brilliant games that are out of time. The SNES is when they were at the forefront of what was technologically possible with games, and they haven't had that form since Mario 64.

Even the best PCs of the time couldn't run anything more advanced than that, nor GoldenEye (except with a higher framerate).

JonB

WorKid wrote:

It plays fine now. Y'all be cray-cray.

Yeah, it was never a platform game. Auto jumping was irrelevant.

JonB

I mean, Ocarina was beyond everything else at the time in terms of 3D games design. Mario 64 and Tomb Raider the only things on a similar level. Everyone else spent a good few years copying it to try and catch up.

WorKid

Wipe out?

davyK

I'm not doubting the quality of OoT - majestic game. I admired the control scheme , and how the game trained you as it went along. It just wasn't for me.

mistercrayon

I was happy with the auto jump tbh. It’s easy to see why there were complaints but I think their reasons for putting it in (lack of buttons, focus on not it not being jumping game) were reasonable enough. At the end of the day it’s difficult to know how the game would have felt with a jump or if certain things they wanted to do were impossible with a jump button.

Also, I think this link to the past stuff is oversaid. Really there’s nothing in lttp that comes close to the weirdness of some stuff in ocarina (the spider, the song of storms stuff, jabu jabu). While both also share a connected world I think that the one in lttp is heralded too much for what is a fairly superficial link (and one dungeon that used the idea of linking which makes no real sense). While the world link in ocarina had noticeable effects on characters (the main being zelda). The dungeons are far more cool to (the dodongo one as a first 3 dungeon)

Sure ocarina copies the 3 easy quests then main quest but it’s a fairly thin thing to say one is just a rip of the other.

In other news I noticed in Mario world Marios hat moved with inertia as he comes down from a joke. The gag being that Mario wears a hat because miyamoto didn’t want to programme hair physics.

Escape

mistercrayon wrote:

I was happy with the auto jump tbh.

I'd have been okay with it had they ditched Z-targeting in favour of yellow-button strafing. Assigning those yellows to items when they could've used one as a toggle to cycle...

I remember a Dixons ad for the SNES calling it the latest state-of-the-art console, alongside an ‘amazing graffix’ screenshot of its pack-in World Warrior, and at £130 in Feb '93, that was more than enough to have me at full pester-power for my upcoming birthday.

I loved LandStalker, and in some ways have always felt that it outdid ALttP, but overall it was no contest.

hylian_elf

Reliving the moments from exactly 25 years ago (add a few hours). Such an amazing feeling.

hylian_elf

Slowdown? On SMW? Really?! Fucking hell. How'd they manage that?

stonechalice

Escape is on one again lol.

I still don't get the problem with z targeting. Why the fuck would I want to strafe about using buttons when I can just lock on? You could do it in Goldeneye and it was awkward as fuck but in Zelda? I don't see how it would make it better.

It's an adventure game. It isn't supposed to be tricksy - it's about framing the moment and having that cinematic angle. It's really easy to get turned around in combat, especially when you're in a 3D environment, which was really new for third person games back then. Z targeting was the only way OoT could work, and is testament to why it still works now.

I think those of you that thought otherwise were maybe after a different game...

hylian_elf

Going bed. Would've been too easy to just keep playing.

Almost had a tear in my eye. Nostalgia. You bittersweet bitch.

davyK

hylian_elf wrote:

Slowdown? On SMW? Really?! Fucking hell. How'd they manage that?

Maybe 60Hz comes at a price.....

mistercrayon

Super Mario Kart has increased in my estimations since playing it on the mini. It’s still a bit of a blurry mess but some of the cornering does feel good.

EvilRedEye

It's surprising how much of it is in place given that it's a technically primitive first one, it's just a shame about having to squint at it to see what you're doing. Sticky-up walls and coins would be a big improvement.

mistercrayon

I'm certain the amount of sticky up stuff is at the limit. I placed a banana and a shell disappeared.

EvilRedEye

Oh yeah, but if you were to continue to develop the 2D sprite-based paradigm of MK, I think that would be a key place to start.

Escape

stonechalice wrote:

I still don't get the problem with z targeting. Why the fuck would I want to strafe about using buttons when I can just lock on? You could do it in Goldeneye and it was awkward as fuck but in Zelda?

It was awkward in GoldenEye, but imagine multiplayer without it. We've had this convo more times than I can remember, and it always goes like this: I mention some left-stick-only, combat-oriented 3D games that I found more satisfying, and you say, Yeah, but I preferred Z-targeting for Zelda. It's all personal.

Ocarina's NPCs didn't have much to say for themselves, and the main story was ‘just there’. Riding Epona was so good because it liberated the player from Link's pedestrian clunkiness, and the proof of that freedom's in the carrots that artificially slow you down, else you'd traverse Hyrule too quickly and ruin its sense of scale. A scale that was built up by cumbersome otherwises.

The glider and fast-travel largely sorted that, with horses for intermediate distances (albeit still restricted).

davyK

Ocarina of Time was 32MB - so trickery to create scale can be forgiven.

It's very easy to look back with today's sensibilities. I forget just how long ago these games came out - Super Mario World is now 27 years old; OoT just shy of 20 years. Given how much tech and games have supposedly moved on it's astounding.

WorKid

Exactly. And yet my twelve year old is playing through OOT on her 3DS and absolutely loving it.

retroking1981

I replayed it on the 3DS, thought it held up remarkably well for its age.

Most games from that era have aged much much worse.

MattyJ

I'd say it is only the graphics that hold it back to be honest, and the 3DS update helps with that. The majority of the gameplay is solid.

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