Video: Check Out Yooka-Laylee's Demastered Nintendo 64 Mode In Action

Seems to me they simply downscaled the resolution and changed the shadows. Still better than nothing I presume

For some reason I felt that something was missing from this game. I've played it for a few hours last year but never felt compelled to go ahead and finish it.

Mmm... I don't think so. They made the screen blurry, which isn't necessarily the case with old TVs, but the animations, amount of polygons and many other things sure don't feel like 64-bit stuff.

Just looks more like a filter, which isn't really great. Banjo and Kazooie certainly looked better than that...

I played through it and I think it’s missing something too. I’m not sure if the characters just weren’t as endearing as Banjo or it just wasn’t as polished but I was left a bit disappointed. I still liked the game enough but my expectations were probably a bit high.

I hope they didn’t spend a lot of time on this N64 mode. Personally, that’s something I might try once and never go back to. Most gamers would want their games to look as nice as possible, not downgrade.

Wow, that is an awful downgrade, even worse than 64, more like 32.

Still waiting on my physical from Limited Run before I can play this

@JasonLee99 If I remember correctly the reviews were quite middling at the time so I don't think expectations for me were all that high. I think it might have had something to do with the level design? Levels needed to be revisited several times but exploring them wasn't as fluid or exciting as it was in Banjo et al.

"I love going to the cinema to watch my favourite movies in standard definition" - Nobo Dyever

I actually want this game, but the reviews were lukewarm and there were technical issues (that I think were eventually fixed with patches), so I'd probably pay about 10 for the retail version, which soon will be possible on Xbox One at least. 40 digital for the digital-only Switch version, no way.

@Moroboshi876
Old TVs were blurry, or very small. The resolution was so low that a crisp image wasn't possible at living room sizes.

It's like the nineties, but now!

OOOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFF

@StevenG Yes, but the effect of this filter is like a tuning problem. I still have old TVs and the scanlines are not that visible (if they are at all), nor have so many problems getting a still signal like this video suggests happened back then.

Hi-res HUD elements?
Ray-traced shadows?
Animations and environments casually spouting hundreds of particles without causing slowdown?

What sorcery is this?!

To be fair, they do seem to have implemented a bunch of fun N64-limitations, so I'll give this a whirl.

Absolutely disappointing. Maybe playing the real thing I'll see a difference, but right now it's just... meh

I like that, looks like N64 to me.

What a shame !

This is ridiculous because they made that 64bits version without really working on it.

I give a single image to show HOW N64 could look on HD screen and HOW Playtonics displays its game... :/

Basically, they just drop the resolution and put the textures on the lowest quality and DONE ! :/

And another stuff that shows how bad they did the "job", THE FREAKING HUD stays in HD above the CRT shader ! o_O Morons...

@ShaiHulud One aspect I didn’t like is there is no hint system for finding Pagies. Found 24 out of 25 in the world? Good luck locating the last one. I don’t believe Banjo did either but I guess I had more patience for that kind of stuff back then.

@ShaiHulud

It is actually quite good. But for me the levels were too expansive and the secrets and puzzles not as good as Banjo Kazooie's. The karting sections and the Rextro games were broken. They neede to make the levels smaer and give us more of them, and have more interesting secrets.

Not enough N64 fog.

@Moroboshi876 I picked it up for £11 during the recent sale and using my Gold Points, which felt about the right price...

Love it.

Demasters are the future. Got special edition from LRG on the way!

@AndrewJ Pretty sure there’s an option to turn the voices off. But they were a nice call back to the Banjo series. I left them on.

@Moroboshi876 The Xbox version is £5 in my local supermarket. I have too many games in my backlog to pick it up even at that price.

For me this game was the perfect Rarelike platformer which is also its curse.

I loved them back in the day but now I see the mediocre cluttered level design, tedious padding out the game time but they do still have some character and charm.

My favourite was Conker but I couldnt even be bothered to finish it. Far too repeitive and the missions go on for far too long with the padding...that dino part made me want to eat my own head.

Yooka is all that to a tee.

@BionicDodo I think that's a bit excessive. Your comment, I mean. LOL

I understand it's an OK game, just not as good as Banjo-Kazooie, so it's probably worth 20-25, but I'm waiting for the chance of getting it at 10 tops.

Pretty good.

doesn't look 64-bit just looks blurry.

Not bad without just remaking the game completely on a 64. It even had moments of pop-in even nearby.

I still need to go back and finish Yooka Laylee.

It doesn’t look that N64-esque to me.

I know a lot of the issues for this game have been fixed since it originally released in 2017, but I just have so much ill-will towards it as a Day One purchaser. I wanted to love this game so bad, but that effing camera, minecart levels, janky controls, and trophy glitches on PS4 still infuriate me thinking about. I spent 32 hours in this game. I loved a lot in Yooka-Laylee, but I also equally hated a lot about it. A 64-bit that really just looks like CRTV lines were added and the images blurred definitely does not draw me back in to this game. I was expecting blocky character models like Mario's 64 costume in Odyssey.

Just looks a little blurry to me, but I guess that was the n64. Hope this is a free downgrade

Okay, that looks way more faithful to an actual N64 than the first screenshot from a few months ago.

Just looks like a major drop in resolution, not an actual downgrade to the graphics. If I were excited about this game, I'd be pretty disappointed in this supposed 64-bit mode.

I was expecting it to look like Banjo-Kazooie on the N64. Instead, as others have said it just looks like the resolution was scaled down and made blurry. Not what I expected when being pitched as 64-bit.

As with pretty much everything else, I hope it arrives before Smash Ultimate launches.

@Moroboshi876
40 is about the price in Canadian dollars when it's ON SALE on the Switch eshop. I was always curious about this game, but guess that instead of buying it on Switch, I'll buy it for about $15 or so in the next Steam sale.

@Realnoize I'm on the euro zone and 40 euros is it's usual price. I think is the most expensive when it comes to digital-only games. When it's on sale it's 30 euros. Not enough. I'll get it on Xbox One eventually.

Totally forgot about this! For all the bashing this game gets I really think they did a great job with it. It’s just missing that mini map or .... any map. Would’ve made a world of difference. But I’m still chugging along in the game. It’s really fun to play especially since I have nothing else (Save for Gurumin 3D, and Rayman 64 3DS) like it available to me.

@Moroboshi876 If you're worried about price, I was, and still haven't got it on Switch over it, look to the GoG or Steam Fall Sale out next month. The last time Yooka Laylee hit the sale it was either 66 or 75% off. That would drop the price down to as much as $10 to buy.

I wasn't a fan at full price, annoyed they canned, then un-canned it on Nintendo to then ask more than other formats so I just brushed it off.

The thing is the game got middling reviews not because it's bad, but because it stuck to a formula born on the N64 from those former Rare staffers who created those types of games. The yapping talk sounds, the goofy plot, the soft colors, the lots of stuff to walk and re-walk to collect usually too much crap. It's the same thing all over again here.

It's why I only ever finished Conker's Bad Fur Day because they killed off the collect-a-thon abuse and went into just a great game and story to roll through. This one kind of goes between that and Banjo in spamming stuff. SO if you liked the old N64 games it's a good A-/B+ effort, but if you hated that, this game is a C at best, perhaps a fat failure for being stuck on such ideas.

Love it

I love Yooka Laylee and am totally into this new modification for it. Sure it isn't exactly like a game would be on the N64, who cares. I'm her for the fun.

@VmprHntrD I liked those games. That's not a problem for me. I'll get it on Xbox One, that's for sure.

A lot of Rose Colored Glasses in here.

I played Banjo Kazooie a few weeks ago and it looks pretty much like that.

I'm pretty sure most of the complaints about this game come from people who honestly don't remember how obnoxious N64 3D Platformers Really Were. Banjo in particular has what might be the worst controls in any game I have ever played.

someday Yooka-Laylee will be a reasonable, competitive price on Switch

@KcebEnyaw Agreed until you lost me on controls and camera as they were better than most. The only really truly obnoxious thing they kept making worse by the game culminating in the atrocious game extending crap they did with DK64 was they having the term 'collect-a-thon' coined in reference to their games. You couldn't just enjoy the stage and do it, you had to run, re-run, and run again the same areas picking up an exponentially growing pile of crap (puzzle pieces in BK) just to unlock a door. And what did this get you? Yet another door on the other side needing the next step higher in collecting the same crap. DK being the worst because it gave you 5 Kongs, each you had to play, and each played the same stages over with the same collectables other than a few Kong specific tokens. You had a game at 100 hours of which 80% of it was a re-run as game lengthening filler.

That's why in my other post I said the only great one from Rare was Conker. NO re-runs, no collectathon abuse. You got a really funny, crazy, at places crude amusing story that just kept going and did it very well. That's the only Rare platformer I've kept all these years.

@ShaiHulud IMO the level expansion mechanic was unnecessary padding, the game could have worked just as well being expanded from the start, and there are too many places where a skill is needed, but it's hard to tell whether you don't have it yet, or you have it but haven't used it correctly. Also, that final boss was terribly frustrating and not fun at all.

I am not a huge fan of this N64 mode, but I really enjoyed the game personally. It had its faults and frustrations, but to me, a lot of N64 games had that issue. This game just reminded me of that. Only thing I didn't really like was the soundtrack.

@KcebEnyaw I disagree. Banjo 1 was great, and the controls were good for the time. You have to remember that back then 3D platforms were a new thing, and IMO Banjo 1 was one of the few that got it sufficiently right for the levels you got to play, which were mostly flat, small and linear overall. The Xbox version is even better because it removes some of the frustration in collecting music notes.

Yooka Laylee on the other hand has the worst and most annoying controls I've ever seen on a 3D platformer, and this is coming from someone who managed to 100% Gex: Enter The Gecko on the N64. Even that controlled better than YL.

@AndrewJ Someone here hasn't played Banjo Kazooie. Sad. And you can turn them off, but anyway.

So this is what they have been doing... Since when does a N64 game sound like a Game Boy game? Jokes aside, it doesn't look N64-ish. I think that these people should have stayed at Rare with the other members, honestly.

@nab1 Right, Banjo-Kazooie controls are tight, Yooka-Laylee's are floatier. Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie have also much better level design and the quests and collecting are much more fun. Yooka-Laylee's is beautiful but the level design is poor, the controls are floaty and even the camera is worse.

The only Rare game that messed 3D platforming up and that I consider worse is Donkey Kong 64.

@BlueOcean That's true, I remember 100%-ing Donkey Kong 64 back in its day and had a lot of fun doing it, but when it was released for Wii U, I tried playing it again (having never played it since) but couldn't stand the controls. I wasn't sure whether I had just gotten too old and maybe just bad at games perhaps, so it's good to know I'm not the only one who finds DK64 worse.

@AndrewJ The noises were part of the charm in BK, it gave more character to each, well, character. Gruntilda in particular was very memorable, and Banjo had that goofy-ness while Kazooie sounded kind of sarcastic in way, and I think for a game of this type the noises worked far better than for example actual voices would have.

IMO the problem with YL is that the noises they picked, both when speaking as well as during gameplay, were not as charming as they were in BK.

Rare's N64 games had much better water effects and lighting on characters and objects.

Looks like a filtered DS/PS1 game, although PS1 could only tiny 3D areas and corridors.

Is it just my Nintendo fanboyism talking, or I'm not the only one agreeing with Rextro's quotes after taking them at face value?

@AndrewJ
Tough talk given your profile pic...

You heard the dialogue noises in your head, admit it.

OMG THATS AWFUL 😳

I was really looking forward to this mode. How disappointing:(

Not something I want, just that short video hurt my eyes. Going back and playing 8 and 16 bit 2D games is fine, but the 64 bit 3d era is painful. It's why I won't be buying the PS classic, back in the day when it was the best we had it looked good, but now it's just painful to look at.

Made an account just to post about this but those of you who didn't actually try yookalaylee and just went off the reviews being "lukewarm". I say you ought to try it. It's probably the collective-thon with the best platforming I've ever played. Why? Because literally everything in the world that LOOKS like you can stand on, YOU CAN. Its a truly free platformer with no limitations on how you scale environments. You know those big rocky barrier that are usually at the borders of the map? Yep you can stand on those, and even use them to take shortcuts on to nearby platforms/plateaus. No longer are you bound by finding the single route that the developer wanted you to take in order to get to the objective (which may not always be obvious) and instead take an alternate route. You would think that would cause a lot of dead ends or glitches but I don't think I encountered a single one during my entire playthrough of the game.

But yeah this 64-bit version of the game looks like doo doo.

@VmprHntrD
Conker was the mutts nuts. Totally agree with the collect-a-thon complaints levelled at DK64 and Banjo. Even as a kid those two games bored me. Diddy Kong Racing and Jet Force Gemini were far superior games.

@AndrewJ It's literally in the options menu -_-

@deoxxys Welcome and if you liked Yooka-Laylee you should play Banjo-Kazooie if you haven't yet. It's charming, fun and the collecting is not annoying as in Donkey Kong 64.

To be honest I’d have preferred they spend the time putting a decent map screen in so I can find things more easily. Especially in the wake of Mario Odyssey it makes the game a frustrating exercise in aimless wandering trying to complete certain quests.

Question.... Is this game worth it now a days?
I was kinda excited for this game, and hear lukewarm reviews and many because of the controls and glitches like that.
I want to know if they have fixed the issues, especially on the Switch? I still want to play it a bit, but want to see what people think of it in October 2018.... As opposed to last year or year before that.

Nope looks wrong, they’ve just applied a filter. Far too many polygons on screen.

I've got to say, looking at that CRT filter I think it's actually pretty damn good. They've curved the screen edges and they've not just put scanlines in but also simulated a phosphor grid.

I've never quite got why scanlines are the main fixation of people wanting to recreate the CRT look when on all my CRTs the phosphor grid is the more prominent part of the image (and adds a very nice texture to the image).

@Hughesy you’ve got to remember TVs were small back then and even the low poly count low res N64 games looked sharp back then. My NTSC N64 is still hooked up to my 14inch TV and games like BK, conker look great. Ok 4 player MK64 and goldeneye is a bit too small. Back then a 25 inch TV was considered large.

I personally don’t like the look of thisN64 mode on YL.

When gaming friends come round the first question is always, is the N64 hooked up to my old CRT. We still play MK8, Waverace, 1080, Goldeneye, Bettle Adventure Racing, Perfect Dark. I’m half way through a rerun of Conker. Those of you youngsters here please don’t judge the N64 when hooked up to a huge modern TV. That’s not what it was designed for. The games on the right TV still look pretty good and are very playable.

@Cobalt
Aye, this is my real gripe.

Aside from not adhering to the actual limitations, or doing things the way they would have on N64, they're also making the final on-screen images of the game look considerably worse than what team leaders at Rare would have found acceptable back in the day. :-/

It's not a very good effort, but what they initially showed was much worse... so... yay? I dunno.

I get the idea of making this look retro, but N64 games never looked this bad on my TV. And these guys are from the UK--as am I--so they know fine well that they've way exaggerated how bad these games looked when output on normal SDTVs--to the detriment of the experience imo. They made it look like you're playing a poor quality videotape recording of the game rather than the actual game.

@Hughesy Trust me, the PlayStation Classic will show you that those old games can still look much better that what you see in in that video above. Sure, there's less polygons in those old games, and the textures on PS1 were rather blocky/pixelated and the ones on N64 very blurry, but the overall visuals still tended to look much cleaner and display much better than that video above what have anyone who doesn't know any better believe.

Well to me it looks like N64 game. Played it and yeah graphics on N64 were low as well. Resolution were around what? 240P or 360P.

@impurekind you haven't played N64 games lately maybe? go back and replay you'll see the graphics were horrible on N64. On CRT screen of course it looks like a beast but on TV's and gamingscreens not so much. This is the result

@Alucard83 Well no one doing this kind of thing properly should be mimicking how classic '90s games look on modern displays they were never made to be displayed on--that's just wrong, and it's certainly not reflective of how they looked to the people who actually played them back in the day--they should be making them look the way people remember them looking on the displays they were made for (otherwise what's the point?). This game's "retro" mode basically fails to achieve that for the most part.

This kind of thing below is actually closer to how these old games looked when played on a proper CRT TV through Scart back in the day (set it to 480p):

Seriously, set it to 480p on YouTube and you're honestly much closer to how these N64 games looked on my TV at home in the late '90s.

And people will see this very clearly if Nintendo ever decides to release an N64 Classic--that these games usually looked far better than most modern video footage on the likes of YouTube makes them look when they aren't running through emulators in full HD or whatever--even though that too will output in HD.

Yes, the actual graphics tech of these games is very dated and limited compared to modern standards, but showing old TV footage of these games on the likes of YouTube simply does not do them justice in terms of the display output quality.

@Moroboshi876 The reason that you don't see scanlines is because you had a PAL CRT. A hugely superior image to the NTSC equivalent. The scanlines are minimal and colours are clean and much more accurate. I wish PAL had been the primary platform and we didn't get all those terrible NTSC conversions..

@andykara2003 So the last few years I have been wondering if the problem was me because didn't remember scanlines and the reason was that!? Lol

Well, in Europe we wished we received all the games that made it to America. And back then we didn't know, but you had them in 60 Hz.

@impurekind Thank god - finally someone who really appreciates and understands retro gaming visuals. No matter how people try to replicate the N64 look they always fall short. On a PAL CRT, the N64 image is beautiful, unique and apparently impossible to emulate.

@andykara2003 Yeah, you make a good point: I mean, I honestly cannot recall ever really noticing obvious scanlines when I was playing my NES, SNES, N64, etc games on my PAL CRT SDTV through SCART back in the day. I guess old games must have looked so much better in the UK than they did in America--and I honestly feel sorry for Americans in that regard. But at least the Americans got 60Hz vs our 50Hz, so there's that.

@andykara2003 I totally hear you.

This game needed a story. That's what it is missing.

Honestly this whole thing is a big mess. As a filter itself, I don't think it's terrible but when you consider everything else, the devs really cheaped out on this.

1. A Hat In Time (another "Banjo-inspired" game that was kickstarted) only raised 12% of what Playtonic did (about $300,000 vs $2.3 million) and has a smaller dev team (32 vs about 15). Meanwhile they released a better looking N64 mode that wasn't just a filter on top but some models including the main character were redone to be low-poly.
2. They only added this after asking for $100,000 more dollars on their Kickstarter.
3. The filter doesn't even look like N64 at all, it does look retro but definitely not N64 and they promised in the Kickstarter "N64 Mode"

Pretty bad when a game studio with a much smaller team and budget can do a way better implementation, especially since they didn't ask for extra money to do it.

But does it make the game much better...