Topic: Nintendo 64 (Switch Online)

I was honestly kinda lukewarm on the expansion when it was first announced during the Direct. I don’t care about Genesis games, and I already have one of the best N64 games on Switch in Mario 64, while many of the other best games (Goldeneye and other Rare and WWE) seem less likely to come over, and I’ve replayed OOT and MM relatively recently so I’m not dying to play them again. I wasn’t exactly jazzed for getting something like Star Fox 64, or something like Mario Kart that has a far superior version already on Switch.

But now that I can think of it as a slight upgrade on the AC: NH DLC, which is a must-buy, I’m in.

A bit of a bummer for people who don’t play AC and still want N64 but that’s a pretty small population. Maybe if this doesn’t sell very well Nintendo will tweak it/unbundle. Personally I’m excited to see next year if new platforms get added, or other DLC (more AC: NH? BOTW 2? Splatoon 3?) is bundled in.

I was thinking about the base service recently. This is the 3rd year I’ve subscribed for it and I’ve played through all the NES and SNES games I wanted to, so now technically I’m paying for cloud saving I use (which was admittedly handy with my new Switch), and online that I don’t use. That’s an expensive cost for the little amount I use it really. Realistically I would expect them to offer more value to the base experience to convince me to keep just the base subscription going.

I’m not getting the expansion until my current subscription runs out in September at least, and without a bit more value I’m not sure if it’s worth any of it at the moment.

It feels incredibly rushed and that’s rather disappointing especially for the price they are expecting people to pay. I hope Nintendo do address the issues with emulation and controller remapping but I also worry they won’t bother.

@64_Galore
His complaints are a bit thin TBH, bit of clickbait for the views. To save other's watching the video it basically comes down to the Pro Controller isn't identical to the N64 controller (duh) and there is occasional slowdown in online play. The latter he says is inexcusable because he has a Gigabit connection but it somehow doesn't occur to him that it's multiplayer. The connection of the other guy also matters as does the quality of the signal to your Access Point.

I always take people's reports of connection quality with a truckload of salt. Especially with games that are designed for very low latency. Classic example, the multiplayer mode in Super Mario Maker 2. Every few matches you'll connect to someone who has a REALLY ***** connection and the game will be unplayable. Kinda sticks in your mind when you come across those matches. But sometimes you have matches that are flawless. That's just the nature of online play

For my part I've played about an hour of N64 games on NSO. Mostly Mario Kart 64 which I'm pretty familiar with but a few other games. Nothing online yet. But for what it's worth I haven't really had any issues and if anything it looks better than the VC did.

But yeah, clickbait's gotta clickbait

Just to clarify, are there any differences between the PAL and US versions besides the 50/60htz thing (and Star Fox 64 being called Lylat Wars)?

I was a little surprised how bad the N64 service was compared to the Sega one. The inability to remap the buttons to a more natural feel is just evil. I am sure if I was willing to suffer long enough, I would get used to it but I shouldn't have to. Even the Wii U had the ability to remap the buttons how you preferred. Thankfully, I don't really care about the N64 library for the most part as I skipped over to Playstation and PS2 during that time (and came back for the Gamecube).

I was split on the DLC part and would have just purchased it if not for my parents playing Animal Crossing. It washes out because of that and anything else included is a bonus. But they need to be a lot more pro-active in adding things to the service. We are paying enough now that we should start seeing better and more frequent releases.

Are people in Japan complaining about the issues with the service? If so, it would greatly increase the chances of improvements.

Looks like there is going to be at least 38 N64 titles according to this:

Hope they are right about Mario Party

@Reploid If this is correct and is going by the alphabetical order of English titles of games, there’ll be no Snowboard Kids on the N64 NSO. But on a brighter note, there’s still a chance for Superman 64!!!

Smash 64 ONLINE would be crazy!

I also hope that they bring back Mario Party. Would be nice to play that before getting Superstars.

@FragRed OK, that's even crazier.

So I've looked into a lot of the early discussions about this (mostly on Twitter and Reddit). But I think the broad opinions I've gotten is that there are some bizarre issues with some of these games and online have expected issues depending on people's connections, but at their core as re-releases, they're better than the VC versions.

Nintendo should absolutely fix some of these issues ASAP and anyone who lazily defends that is absurd BUT the core of these re-releases is seemingly the best Nintendo has done for these games. Which continues the trend of NSO being a decent retro gaming service that Nintendo goes out of its way to make sure it is put in the worst possible light. And its hard for me to even feel bad for them, considering how stupid this whole paid upgrade is, that any sane company should've seen the backlash for. But I do feel for the people who worked on them, as I have seen N64 emulation personally and I've had multiple games run into (often different) nearly game breaking issues until I figured out what to do (including needing two different versions of the same emulator). It's clear N64 is not the easiest system to emulate. I hope Nintendo is paying them all the money to continue to work on this.

I was used to Y being C⬅️ And X being C➡️, so it’s gonna take some time to get used to this new set up.

It’s gonna be particularly strange not having the ocarina of time permanently set to C⬇️

That's a big gap between Mario Tennis and Sin & Punishment. Come on, Mischief Makers!

Before anyone gets carried away, I'll point out that the 38 games may just be ones that were tested with it and the list could include several that were either unplayable or require a licensing deal that's not yet in place.

Well they better start making some deals since this datamine is better PR than Nintendo's actual attempts to sell the thing in the past couple of weeks.

What we need to know is how often and how many games will be added to the system at any one time? Will it be monthly or just whenever Nintendo feels like pressing the button? The whole NSO expansion thing is just so badly put together and does nothing but leave a bad lasting taste in the mouth - like licking a cartridge.

No matter how I feel about this in a week or a year, I haven't played Mario Tennis in 20 years and hearing Motoi Sakuraba's music for this (or basically any game he worked on in the first half of the 2000s) makes me happy.

@kkslider5552000
Hard agree with your take on the technical quality of this. There are certainly issues they need to fix but overall it is better than the VC was. Especially compared to the Wii U VC although that's a much lower bar to clear

Side note, that datamine shouldn't really surprise anyone. This service will almost surely end up with more titles than we got on the VC for N64. The N64 library was never huge and the VCs main issue was getting third parties. The inclusion of Banjo and WinBack was always going to mean we ended up with a bigger library on NSO. Anyone who has claimed otherwise is clearly just going out of their way to justify their opposition to the price