Yooka-Laylee's Demastered Nintendo 64 Mode Is Out Now On Switch

Pretty cool! If I had this game for Switch I would probably check this out. As it is though, I only have it for Xbox One and my Xbox is a media player these days.

Phoned in tonic is phoned in.

Honestly, as a platformer fan, I enjoyed the game a lot. But this was the biggest disappointment of the features they added.

Just asking... Is the game any good. It looks like Rip Off Banjo-Kazooe and I'm the only one who found the game mediocre.

I'm enjoying it so far even if I have only played about an hour. Not really sure about this add-on, I think it looks gorgeous as it is so not really tempted to play it that way.

Highly underrated game. Loved playing it. Perfect for anyone looking for N64 3D platforming vibes.

Still doesn't look like a N64 game,but appreciate they've tried.

@LetsGoSwitch it is literally a spiritual successor of Banjo Kazooie. It’s by the original developers and is created to be as close to that experience as possible. If you didn’t enjoy BK, you won’t enjoy this. I thoroughly enjoyed it but I love those old collecthatons, warts and all.

This is my 3 year olds favorite game. Between this and POI, this looks better but Poi controls better. I've got both Highly recommended

They seriously just added scan lines. Hardly a 64-bit look.

Looks closer to an N64 game than the earlier videos of it... not exact but eh. I have this on PS4 so I can’t try the update yet anyways, but I beat the game twice and don’t plan on going back anytime soon so I suppose it doesn’t matter.

@ShadJV lumping this "collect-a-thon" in with the greats of the N64 days is doing those titles a disservice, though.

Those collect-a-thons actually enhanced the gameplay and charm of those titles.

Here's a solid breakdown on what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeU1bSsLerM

I’m really enjoying this game. Got it during the last sale.

@hihelloitsme opinion. I think YL is just as good as BK, maybe not as good as BT but that game was bigger than the original and I hope we get a sequel to this of that size. I’ll happily lump this with other collectathons, it feels like a return to the roots of the genre.

I just wish they'd add a map screen, Mario Odyssey spoiled me in that regard.

The effect is sufficiently and reasonably convincing now. Good job, Playtonic! So, the game is complete now?

NOW I'm interested.
But first, call me when a Hat In Time is out on switch.

Haha that's pretty convincing actually. Might have to go try it out soon

These guys worked at Rare in the UK when the N64 was around--as did I--and they know fine well that N64 games never looked this low quality in terms of the actual display. There's nigh-on zero chance these guys didn't play with something like SCART back in the day. And even if they did, you don't recreate the worst possible display mode someone would have set for these games; you recreate the best quality these games could have looked back in the day and that's still authentic to the experience.

This feels like a half effort imo. I mean, even the full resolution GUI/HUD on top of that really strange "retro" look is just off.

Turn off that awful OTT "retro" and scan line filter (you couldn't even really see the scan lines on old CRT TVs anyway, and certainly not with SCART in the UK. But maybe leave it as an option to turn ON/OFF), draw the HUD in a style and resolution that fits with that era of games, and it would look a lot better.

Your game should be looking much closer to this kind of thing imo (this is how people remember these games in their mind's eye--and that's how you do modern "retro" games properly):

And even if you didn't clean things up slightly so it matches how people remember it rather than how it maybe appeared on their terrible setup (using the worst cables/connection available), you should at least show it something close to how the N64 could look at it's best (which was probably even better than it appears here because CRTs would help smooth some things out far better than any YouTube video of a game on a monitor or modern HDTV can do):

Why am I having to even say this? You guys worked for frikin' Rare--come on!

This game!!!!!! I haven't had this much fun since my appendix burst.

Lol they just made it really low resolution and turned all the lighting off.

That doesn't really look N64. It would've been better if they kept the high resolution but reduced all of the polycounts and texture sizes.

I honestly thought this was a April Fools Article...

I definitely see why this game got a mediocre reception, but I personally enjoyed it quite a bit. I even managed to finish it to 100%. I’ll check out this update, but it definitely would’ve been more welcome sooner. Seems strange to release this so long after the game came and went.

That's some nice fan-fair. Well done dev team.

@ShadJV I'm with you - and I think we're in the minority. I think this game was Good. Not amazing, but good. My belief is, it is just as good as Banjo Kazooie and most other N64 3D platformers actually are today - it's just not as good as most remember them.

I had totally forgotten about this update until a few days ago. Glad it’s out finally!
Wish we had a mini map addition update though too!
Anyway, probably going to play this tonight and check it out. I still have to beat this game; I’m stuck on a mine cart section.

How cool! I finally received my copy from Limited Run yesterday after months of waiting (I would recommend not combining shipping if you want anything in a reasonable time) and I was wondering when they were going to release this update! Only played a couple hours but am really enjoying it so far.

I don't get everyone saying this doesn't look N64 enough. I'm of that era, I had a ton of games for the N64, and I've got an eye for visual details. This looks 'reasonably' N64 enough in its' flavour to echo the visual 'essence' of those games. For me at least it's a good effort and clearly done with care and consideration.

@aznable Agree that Poi is excellent and based on the responses in this post I'm gonna give YL a go at last.

Now put it on an actual n64 and I will be impressed.

@brunojenso It looks "UNreasonably" less than N64-ish imo. N64 games never ever looked anywhere near that bad on my TV back in the day. This retro N64 mode, at the very least, should mimic how an N64 game would have looked running through a SCART lead on an CRT TV back in the day as far as I'm concerned (which means the scan lines wouldn't actually be noticeable at normal viewing distance, the colours would be more vibrant, and the polygon lines/edges would be a bit cleaner in general). And at best it should look at least as good as we remember these games looking in our mind's eyes and maybe even a little better in some ways. Honestly, this is like someone made an N64-like game that deliberately looks worse than any N64 game could ever look, which kinda is the exact opposite of what I imagine people longing for an N64 mode in this game were hoping for. It doesn't even look as good as how the real thing looked back in the day running on TVs from that era, never mind how our mind's eyes remembering these games looking on TVs from that era. It's basically the totally wrong way to do retro-looking games in 2019 (and indeed ever).

@Kriven I'm not sure we watched the same video...

@impurekind I think because this is a simple solution; reduced lighting effects and a filter, that's easier to do than remaking all the models with a lower polygon count. It's a bummer they didn't do that, but it's a free update, so ehh.. I can't complain; just don't call it an N64 mode

@Octane I think you're right.

And I'm not a programming or artistic genius--although I did used to work for Rare as an artist/animator and I have made a few of my own games at this point--but I'm still pretty sure they really could have done a better job with this without having to remake the entire game in low-poly or the like, and largely just in the type of filter effect they've used and certainly with matching the HUD/GUI much better with not too much effort.

If absolutely nothing else, they should at least go back in and create an alternative HUD/GUI for the 64-Bit mode that much better matches the retro look. That alone would just round things off much better imo, and that's mostly just creating some alternative sprite images and a few days-weeks of coding to rearrange things to fit with the different HUD/GUI sprites and in-game speech font and stuff.

@impurekind You did work for Rare? That's pretty neat. N64 era or Xbox era? If you don't mind me asking.

For all I know there's some kind of automated tools that reduces the polygon count. They could've done more, but again, it's a free thing. I do agree that the HUD could've been better. A low quality 2D sprite without proper alpha blending, and an awkward cut-off at the bottom or the top would've gone a long way

@Octane N64 era. Although I actually worked on the Game Boy team at that time.

Edit: Here, I attached an example of some of the art I did:

Those were printable with the old Game Boy Printer (the letters anyway).

And the coloured levels you see: Those were meant to be used for some kind of mini games in the GBC version of Donkey Kong Country Color as I recall (I was working on a Battlefield-style mini game for example), but I don't think they ever did get used. Scoop!

@impurekind I don't know. Those CRT's were know where near as good as people seem to remember. I was forever trying to get a decent image on old monitors, N64/PS1 games in particular looked terrible sometimes. I've got no nostalgia for CRTs and fuzzy visuals in general, and I'm loving modern screens were we can finally see pixels and polygons in glorious sharp detail. I hate 'bilinear' softening in emulators, but quite like scan-lines IF I can have them with sharp pixels and polygons.

This is because I KNOW past screens and the games on them used to look like crap. Here this company is deliberately recreating that less than stellar look. I think N64 games did look this bad and they have nailed that.

Also just look at the visual detailing in the backgrounds alone – there is some SERIOUS work gone into this 'de-master'. They haven't just reduced the textures as some are saying. Some backgrounds are completely new art. As I'm saying, I don't like the look. But to dismiss the huge amount of work done by people who know this specific age of gaming very well - as nowhere near the look they where going for seems a bit too dismissive to me. There is no way this is just reduced lighting effects and a filter if you watch the video properly. That's my view anyway.

Real or April Fool's?

@brunojenso Trust me, I was using a CRT TV and running my old games through SCART on it until literally about 2 years ago, when my flatmate finally upgraded to a new HDTV, and games looked way, way better than people remember on old CRT TVs (especially regarding the whole scan line stuff)--at least in the UK. I would literally turn on my consoles and TV and compare side-by-side whenever I saw some utterly fugly footage on YouTube just to double check if I was imagining it or something--but I wasn't. Nothing you see on the likes of YouTube usually comes even close to how good my SNES, N64, Wii, etc. games looked on my CRT TV. And this retro N64 mode is an insult to how N64 games could look running on a decent CRT TV via SCART, imo, which is what I think they should have been trying to replicate here. I don't mean they should have made the entire game in lower-poly models and stuff, but just the filter could have been done much better and the HUD/GUI could have at least been made to match the retro look too.

@impurekind That's some lovely sprite work!

@Octane The irony is I think I'm a worse artist now, probably because I rarely draw any actual art these days. lol

@impurekind Ok. As I say, I can in no way remember liking the look of games on CRTs (Scart or otherwise), but each to there own. Do you at least agree that a reasonable amount of work has been put into this – or are you also of the view this is just a lazy filter or two and lighting too?

@brunojenso Well, not a truly "reasonable" amount imo, given the sales pitch and premise and that they likely made quite a bit of money on this game so I expect more of them, but certainly more than even I probably give them credit for in terms of how much work it took to even get what they have here. I just think they didn't truly give it their all in getting the overall look right though, and that's the opposite of how I think about guys who used to work for Rare and are basically trying to sell gamers on that nostalgia with this game. When I think of Rare, or "a group of guys who used to work for Rare making a games that's basically a homage to the best of Rare", I just expect more.

@impurekind N64 only had composite unless you modded it.

You worked at Rare? Did you work on Perfect Dark for GBC?

I don't ever remember seeing scanlines on N64 on my Sony 32" back in the 90s. It was more the fact that a CRT doesn't have pixels so it smoothed everything. It is painful to see N64 on a LCD/LED/OLED/Plasma display. Add GameCube to a lesser extent. SNES seems fine except for games that used 3d models like DKC and Killer Instinct.

@impurekind btw, it seems to be working for some, but your artwork link is broken for me (just shows a broken untitled image icon). I'd love to see it if you can fix it.

@Trajan I'm from the UK and you could absolutely buy proper SCART leads for it, probably even officially, no modding required. And it immediately looked much better than the standard leads that came in the box. As I recall, I also used SCART for my SNES too, and that also looked much better as a result. Either way, I never played an N64 game that in terms of the display looked this rough.

This is not what the N64 looked like. This looks worse than the N64. Now if you actually made a low poly N64 style game, I would be interested. I don't care much for the latest graphics.

@Trajan Nah, but it was getting made by the guy who sat next to me in the two-person office at the time (the art at least. The programmer was a couple offices along). Can't remember his name though (the artist or the programmer). Always remember that he was a good artist but some of his animation was for ****. And yet they never asked me, a trained animator with an hons degree in the subject, to do any of the animation for that game (Perfect Dark for GBC). As I recall, there was dogs in the game and the animation on them looked terrible. lol

@roadrunner343 agreed completely on the front that nostalgia clouds people’s opinions more than they realize. Personally collectathons were way up my alley but most of the things people complain about YL were present in BK. Playtonic gave us exactly what they promised to give. They weren’t reinventing the wheel and they never said they would. Fact remains, by most game design standards, 90s collectathons WEREN’T very good... and this is coming from a huge fan that replays them constantly. They were some of the early forays into 3D gaming when developers weren’t sure yet how to efficiently use 3D space. They were successful because the frame of reference was still pretty narrow, and in an age where the internet was still in its infancy (thereby meaning walkthroughs cost money), collectathons excelled because of artificial padding. They timewise were a pretty good bang for your buck... and yes, for many collecting is enjoyable, but that can be accomplished in games where the focus isn’t scouring worlds simply to get hundreds of mcguffins to progress. If you look at that pattern of collectathons through those years, they slowly became more bloated until gamers moved on from the genre. Yooka Laylee does a great job of emulating Banjo Kazooie in most ways, and nearly every flaw is a piece of that emulation. Awful camera that often fights against you? Check. Tedious final bossfight? Check. Minigames with horrid controls? Check. Perhaps if the series continues we’ll see actual improvements to the genre but that wasn’t the goal here. The goal was, in a sense, soft rebooting what they started with BK.

Tl;dr YL is no worse than older collectathons if you remove your rose tinted glasses. If you truly can go back and enjoy BK without relying on nostalgia, you’ll enjoy this. If not, you won’t. And that’s okay, this game wasn’t made for everyone! It’s literally for the minority that actually wholeheartedly enjoyed the genre as it was in the 90s!

@Trajan N64 looks great on my older 32" VIZIO LCD TV with S-video input. I wish newer TV's still offered the S-video input but that's not the case anymore. Composite on the other hand looks awful.

@impurekind it didn't look that rough on composite either. According to this: https://www.retrorgb.com/n64.html

N64 didn't have RGB output unless modded.

@impurekind Yeah it was pretty rough. I was playing it again a few weeks ago on my game boy player on a CRT.

@Trajan Trust me, it did. I have never hardware modded a console in my life, and I def had a 21 pin SCART connection going on. I think it was possibly a case of plugging the default included cables into the SCART connector and then putting that into your TVs SCART socket, but I'm sure I also just used straight-up 21 pin SCART as a single cable too (although don't quote me on that). Can't remember the exact combination or setup--and right now I'm questioning my memory and sanity on whether it was just on SNES or N64 or both that I did this--but there was 100% 21 pin SCART involved.

@impurekind I see the cables online with the standard connection. Maybe you could hook it up that way, but it didn't take advantage of them due to the lack of RGB output?

I will have to investigate this. Perhaps SCART to a HDMI adapter is the way to go on a modern tv. Then again we'll still be dealing with pixels...

I really wish a 64 classic came out.

@Trajan Well, there's a small chance I could be confusing this with my SNES, but I def used SCART on at least one of my old consoles without hardware modding it--I either used a 21 pin SCART lead that possibly had you plug another connection into the back of the SCART connector or a straight-up 21 pin SCART lead--and it would be strange if Nintendo had this on SNES but not N64. Whatever I used on my N64--still sure it was straight-up 21 pin SCART (and maybe someone else from the UK could confirm if this was indeed an option)--it wasn't the default cables that came in the box, and it looked waaay better than either the game above or almost every video on YouTube would have us believe. All I remember is that from my research at the time the 21 pin SCART was by the far the best way to go back in the day with my old consoles on my old CRT TV (even better than S-Video if I recall properly).

@brunojenso Is it still not working for you?

@impurekind I'm afraid not - I just tried it in another browser too. And on my iphone. Same thing.

can you get this if you have the limited run/best buy, or only if you have it from eshop?

@brunojenso OK, I'll try this:

Can you see it now?

@impurekind I can see it now – as someone else said, that's some very nice sprite work!

Thanks for re-posting!

BTW, since you are very invested in Rare - ignoring this new mode, and taking into account the various updates, do you personally rate Yooka-Laylee as worth a playthrough?

Just curious of your perspective.

@brunojenso Cheers.

If only nintendo bought rare 🙄 idiots. Even if the new games were rubbish we would still have access to the old ones and I’m not buying an Xbox

I could care less about a game that plays bad deciding to look bad too.

It doesn't replicate 64bit though. Rare's games were very vibrant, full of lighting, beautiful water, transparencies.

This is devoid of all that.

Guess I'll have to wait as I own this on PS4.

@ShadJV And it kind of sucks - If you ask me right now, I'd tell you I absolutely LOVE those N64 3D platformers. Pretty much all of them. Unfortunately, every time I break out my N64, I am extremely disappointed. As an avid retro gamer, it is the one generation of games I genuinely dislike revisiting, with very few exceptions - and that's even with the strong pull of nostalgia.

They should have turned on some fog for that more authentic N64 experience - and made everything more brown.

@roadrunner343 perhaps. I actually enjoy those games, warts and all... though I mean, there’s a few spots that always even turn me off. BK it’s the propeller section in Rusty Bucket Bay, BT it’s Canary Mary... heck I enjoy MOST of DK64 (Crystal Caverns does actively piss me off). I mean, I wouldn’t recommend those games to most people, I realize they aged poorly, but I still enjoy them, and I imagine a small group of fans do. However, I think that group is smaller than people realize, and a lot of people who think they are in that group... well, aren’t. I imagine if YL was backed only by people who weren’t acting purely on nostalgia, it would never have even reached its goal. And that’s why it was so poorly received even by most backers. Playtonic didn’t fail to deliver what they promised from the get go, they delivered it fully and people just didn’t realize they didn’t actually want that, they wanted a AAA Banjo Kazooie brought up to the current gen experience. Playtonic is a fraction of the size Rare was at the time, has a fraction of the resources, and from the start made it clear it was meant to feel like the old games. I imagine the closest we can get to a true collectathon without suffering most of the pitfalls of the genre is Mario Odyssey, which is borderline collectathon but not quite. I think if the YL franchise continues it might see some big changes to the formula in order to appeal to a wider audience (that or it will become a small niche series), but maybe we’ll get to see what Rare would’ve done with BK if the franchise continued (aside from Nuts & Bolts but all of the old staff had left by the time that was released, I don’t think it was naturally where old Rare would’ve wanted the series to progress). I do hope we get more though, at least for the smaller demographic that like YL. Personally, I’m glad with what I got from backing this, minus Rextro and the minecart stages. The minecart stages just need better controls, Donkey Kong Country manages them just fine. Rextro should just go entirely - I get the joke that those minigames aged poorly, blah blah blah, it’s fun to poke fun at it... but there’s a problem when you’re actively acknowledging something is bad and doing it anyways. Plus like... retro isn’t all bad, it mostly came down to controls again, that and they are horribly unforgiving. But it’s still par for the course, Banjo Tooie had Canary Mary and DK64 had Beaver Bother (along with a couple other annoying minigames). So I wouldn’t say YL really is any worse than BK, there’s just no nostalgia for it.

@Flangela Holy cow, your avatar! Nice!

I've yet to get around to Yooka-Laylee, but I might play it sooner than later.

@impurekind N64 had no RGB, but the SCART adapter had a much better picture as composit because of using S-Video (same cable as for SNES)
RGB output seems to been planned by Nintendo, but they didn‘t finished it. French consoles of the first batch have some parts in them, so that they can be finished with RGB output; so as written before, RGB just with modded consoles.

On paper this game should be brilliant but it’s just ... urgh! Lame. Like when I fell off my broom and landed in the bushes!

Oooooo... that looks really blurry...

@LetsGoSwitch It's nowhere near as good as BK.

PS. you're crazy

@ShadJV I would say that Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie still hold up perfectly today and beat every non Nintendo 3D platformer in existence,. Their cameras aren't as evolved as they would be nowadays but their gameplay is top notch.

I've tried so very hard to like this game, let alone love it, and it just isn't happening. At first I thought maybe it was because it never felt quite right on Xbox One. Got the Switch version - physical no less - still didn't win me over. Somehow I doubt the addition of some scanlines is going to be the thing that does the trick. Oh well, live and learn.

Love the game, but this “tonic” doesn’t downgrade it to 64 bit, looks more 32. They have tried too hard.

Meh. I would rather play it in 32 bit resolution.

@vanYth Then it's just the 21 pin SCART adapter I'm on about. I just called it RGB SCART because that's mentioned above and I assumed they were the same thing. But it was definitely a SCART connection I used, and it was definitely a much better picture than the standard connectors or pretty much any footage I tend to see on YouTube.

It makes the game more choppy, which sucks. It looks kind of cool, aside from the horrible frame rate. I wish they would include a PS1 mode that would reduce polygon and texture map complexity, introduce pop-in, and bring the game up to 60fps like numerous PS1 games (I'm thinking of Klonoa, Tekken 2, and others).

@LetsGoSwitch

It lacks the design of the Banjo-Kazooie games. These concerns do not stem from nostalgia, I came to the Banjo series pretty late.

The worlds are cavernous and dull. The collectables (feathers) lack distinction and seem randomly showered across the stages.

In Banjo however, the jiggies really stand out and are placed to pique your interest, and lead you to explore certain avenues.

@MysticGengar It's coming out soon. . . This is one of the few games I've been wanting the beginning of this year.

@LetsGoSwitch I could never understand the banjo games. They are childish and boring collectatons.
Not my kind of game. (But I have zero nostalgia for the N64 console)

Gears for Breakfast could swoop in and show them how a retro mode should look with A Hat in Time. As in, they could if they stopped being jerks and confirmed the new content will eventually release on consoles too.

This looks closer to PS2, and it's giving me massive Jak & Daxter vibes. I do plan on getting back to this game, it's just really easy for me to jump to another game and stick with that for a while.

@GetShulked I totally agree. The game isn't perfect, but it does quite a lot of things right. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it.

@LetsGoSwitch I enjoyed Yooka-Laylee, but I also enjoyed Banjo-Kazooie. If you enjoy 3D collect-a-thon platformers and the Banjo-Kazooie humor then you will probably enjoy this game. If not then it's not the game for you.

@LetsGoSwitch

Did a 100% run a while ago and must say: I really enjoyed my playthrough.
Sure, it's a bit rough around the edges and 1-2 puzzles could have benefitted from more clarity in design, but it's a really fun and charming game and just great for some relaxed item hunting (without being so relaxing that the game gets boring, looking at you Yoshi...).

People just overhyped themselves when it was announced, that's where most of the salt online comes from. It's a good game.

@andykara2003 That was my school for you. The weird guy who didn't like Banjo-Kazooie

@impurekind you are right, S-Video is already much better than Composite.
A problem nowadays is, that video grabbers and flat screens mostly have no S-Video anymore AND don‘t support the N64‘s low video resolution of 240p. So they convert it to something terrible looking.

I dunno, it doesn't even look like Nintendo 64, it just looks bad.

@LetsGoSwitch It seems like a ripoff, because the devs behind this game are former RARE employees. they left rare when microsoft bought them, started a new company and started to work on yooka laylee as tribute to banjo kazooie

They 64bit more off than they could chew when they promised everyone this feature.

@LetsGoSwitch No idea what that means.

@impurekind Absolutely agree - it's interesting how people look back at the N64 as being awful to look at. An RGB modded PAL N64 on a 25" (no bigger) CRT can look really nice.

Unrelated, but has this game's camera tracking been updated since launch? Something about the way the camera follows the character made the game so unappealing at launch.

Particularly noticeable when you stood on the edge of some geometry and your entire screen would shake to keep your character centered while the game couldn't decide whether to place your character high or low.

If the camera has been redone I might be able to give this game another try.

@andykara2003 Yeah, it was a 25 inch TV that I played my classic consoles on, and they all looked great.

Basically this one:

@impurekind Beautiful!