mereel

@ToneDeath This is true. While certainly playable, the framerate is not consistent in this version. This game needs the “post-release” attention that Ocarina got from the Nintendo porting team.

@durrdevil The online is just the basic lobby-based system for all these NSO retro apps. It’s friends-only, and peer-to-peer meaning if you have a good connection to your friends, you’ll have a great online experience. If you (or their) internet connection sucks, you’ll have a bad experience. Not much to say about the online mode. It’s just a way to simulate the couch multiplayer of the original.

It’s true. X is the best in the series, easily besting GX in the all-important gameplay category. All professional reviewers agree on this point.

@dudujencarelli Sadly, this announcement does not mean the game will have online multiplayer with RANDOM opponents. Rather - as with all NSO retro titles - it means you can start an online lobby and invite friends to play with you. Still a great feature (try it if you haven’t, it’s like being back in the 90s again on the couch), but not a modern online multiplayer experience.

What kind of pervert is gonna put this on display? You’d have to hide it in order to have visitors over.

Wow has it really been 15 years (!) since the last Mario Strikers game?

@Specter_of-the_OLED Kimishima stated at the time he took the reigns at Nintendo that his time as president was only temporary to give Nintendo ample time to search for a permanent replacement for Iwata. He did a fine job during that period in my opinion.

I registered for this tech test. Downloaded and played it despite having less than zero interest in baseball. Mostly I’m curious about top tier sports titles like these finally arriving on Nintendo platforms.

The experience was comically abysmal. We’re talking 3/10 territory, for me at least. I know it’s still beta, but that tech test was a serious dumpster fire.

@Not_Soos I agree with every single point you’ve made. N64 was my jam in college. I’m loving having the best N64 games with me on the go, uprezzed but otherwise left in the original glory and not “remastered” which is so often a mixed bag.

I thought I was not a huge fan of the Netflix approach to retro gaming. But I’ve now experienced so many NES and SNES and especially Genesis games that I never would have bought.

So there are intangible benefits to the subscription approach. Plus the rewind and save state features are brilliantly executed, making these impossible 8-bit and 16-bit games actually “beatable.”

I guess I just like the era of games before online/DLC/patches/battle passes/micro transactions ruined everything. NSO adds a lot for people like me.

@Freek I learned the same lesson the hard way. Sold everything up to and including N64 and regretted it every day since. Never sold another game ever. At least I have a nice physical game library from GameCube onward.

Cool! I played through Banjo-Kazooie 100% last month. It was great on NSO. Now I’m ready for my next challenge. Personally hoping for F-Zero X next month.

I hope all you salty NSO haters find whatever it is you’re looking for…

I just watched some recent footage of this game in motion. It really doesn’t look bad at all. The graphics are far more impressive in motion than in screen grabs. Regardless I don’t see it as a $40 purchase but it definitely looks fun and in the 7/10 range when you watch some gameplay.

@nessisonett comment made me laugh

Fun game totally worth it.

Remember when Iwata predicted that the “NX” would return Nintendo’s fortunes to Wii-like results? Seemed laughable at the time to many, as this was during the midst of WiiU’s collapse and peak Ninten-doom.

Somewhere, I hope Iwata is seeing this. Truly a visionary president who is still missed.

So this game was indeed in development hell. Where there’s smoke there’s fire. I hope it turns out well. Bayo 2 was awesome.

I wonder who will play this. By that I mean, who is this for? PCs have been able to emulate this fine for ages. My raspberry Pi emulates this just fine. I also played through the whole game on NSO. Guess what. It was great. And I’m old. I played the original while in college.
So again I wonder, who is this for exactly?

My kids and I always enjoyed watching the Nintendo Minute episodes. For our household, Kit and Krysta were definitely a part of the current Switch culture, and they will be (already are) sorely missed by us.

It was nice to have a show featuring actual Nintendo fans telling about their progress in the latest game release, or recounting stories from their youth which involved Nintendo of course. This is much preferred to just paid actors like the Alison and Dark Gary stuff in the Wii days.

I don’t know what happened to Nintendo Minute and the sudden departure of both of these employees almost simultaneously. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence. Either way, Kit and Krysta leave some big shoes to fill.

Already 11 hours into Banjo-Kazooie. Going for 100% on this one as it’s a childhood favorite which I haven’t played in 20 years. So glad to have it portable with save states now!

I can’t wait to play this on the go while the NL forums whine about emulator nitpicks. Peace!

Double-dipped on this when it came out on Switch. Great concept, wonderful execution. Despite the switch port not having access to a Wii U gamepad, the controls work just fine.

I haven’t missed a Tetris 99 Maximus Cup yet! Earned every theme on the weekend it released, which means I have lots of unused tokens earned. I wish I could gift them…

@Arckadius Take it slow. I recently acquired another Switch and experienced the joy of expertly splitting a formerly shared Switch into two unshared Switches while preserving as much as possible for the other person, including an Animal Crossing split. It wasn’t easy.

F-Zero X is better. 60fps and 30 cars on screen at once. I’ll enjoy playing it portably on Switch NSO when it drops. Hopefully it’s the February game.

Ahh. Great memories of playing this with buds in the college dorm when it first released.
My roommate (a foreigner) kept wanting to choose the “chicken-rat” character, a.k.a. Pikachu.

Edit; oh wait. MELEE is 20 years old?! I thought we were celebrating the original Smash. Wow now I feel even older…

Without detachable (and more importantly, replaceable) controllers, this will never have the functionality, versatility and consumer friendliness of the Switch.

Feeling good about the 99 cents I paid for it!

I think the original ExciteBots developer - Monster Games - is now defunct, sadly. The likelihood of that one being remastered is therefore quite slim.

A better choice for ALL these suggestions is to add a Wii app to the NSO expansion pack.

I watched the entire Digital Foundry tech analysis of this trilogy release, which compares all aspects of the games across all the platforms on which it released.

GOOD LUCK getting the switch version anywhere near the level of quality it deserves.

I don’t really play these types of games, but isn’t crossplay typically a much requested and even much demanded feature? Why is disabling it considered a good thing?

My kid will be excited for this! He loves this game.

Does this mean he will give us all the N64 Rareware titles for NSO? In the name of preserving the art, of course. Let’s hope so.

This is an opinion piece, hence the ‘Soapbox’ label affixed to it. Why is everyone so mad? Not everything on this site must be hard news you know.

All joy-con drift eventually. All of them. While NoA at least repairs or replaces them for no charge, this won’t help collectors trying to play the console in say, 15 years from now.

Hopefully those cheap joystick modules are readily available decades from now.

@J-Fox I was searching the comments to see if anyone had caught this. Yikes Doug. This is your flagship product and you don’t know how long it’s been for sale?

@Kwehst Glorious comment. I laughed out loud. Thanks for that.

By the way, this is exactly why Nintendo’s retro offerings of basically the upscaled original ROMs is THE way to go. You can’t go wrong with the originals. Remasters or whatever often introduce new problems as they try to fix old ones.

PJ O’Reilly does it again. His reviews are gospel truth. I was staying away from this as soon as I learned of the required download just to boot it up, but now I know there is no reason to touch it regardless.

Too bad for Valve. The Switch will continue to dominate in this space in the meantime. Really Nintendo could use some direct competition to the Switch, if only for keeping prices in check.

@ChromaticDracula We are spoiled for choice these days. Also I couldn’t believe that figure. Did the N64 really only have ~100 games?! Turns out it had about 300, in North America anyway. Still a tiny number by modern standards.

I own ALL of these various incarnations of Ocarina of Time. Honestly I’m really not seeing any issues with the NSO version. Put about 15 hours into it so far. It’s crisp, runs well, the C buttons translate well to the right joystick. No glitches or whatever. Much ado about nothing…

Oh man. All these pirates who bought the controller to get the authentic N64 experience while avoiding having to pay Nintendo for it must be really bummed right now.

Lots of whiners in these comments, trying to justify not plunking down for the expansion pack. I’ve been sampling all the N64 games over the past few hours. They look and play great! And this is coming from someone who grew up with the N64 and bought many many Virtual Console N64 offerings on multiple consoles.

Been complaining about this since day 1

Yeah right. They just plop the same Chinese commodity joystick module into these joycon that everyone else uses, and that can be bought on Amazon as direct replacements.

Who’s this ‘we’ you keep going on about? You got a mouse in your pocket or something?

@HIGHscores85 the Switch is (wisely in my opinion) marketed to an older audience. Everything from the industrial design on down to the OS look are meant to exude a more premium feel than past consoles, which skewed clearly more “toy” than Switch.

But soulless, come on now…

Cool. I remember these from the 3ds days. However I have over 80 Switch Game Paks at this point, so I have a 3-ring binder solution instead.

I just updated and tested with my AirPods Pro. There is some slight latency, enough to be noticeable but not enough to be distracting. I understand this is basically a fact of life with video gaming and Bluetooth. Also max volume still too quiet IMO.

In any case, great feature! I thought this was a hardware limitation, so I’m happy to be wrong here.