I don’t see many posts here about the N64 and it doesn’t look like there is an N64 community on lemmy.world It’s the console I have the most nostalgia for and I have over 130 games in my collection. I’m currently playing a ROM hack called SM64: Beyond the Cursed Mirror. It has some pretty challenging platforming but it is fun.
The ‘64 was my first console and remains one of my all time favorites. My love for it is definitely coupled with the final days of analogue tv and the end of my childhood but man—what a great system.
Always love me some N64. Unfortunately, it hasn’t aged as well as some of the other retro consoles since the dips in framerate was pretty common for that machine even back when it was new. In comparison, the SNES still outputs a clean 60fps, as it was more of a priority back then.
So many games for n64 feel like fever dreams to me. Mystical Ninja was where it was at. Also Hey Pikachu…. Conker… Zelda… goldeneye… banjo kazooie…
Love me some N64
I have tried playing banjo kazooie again with the Switch emulator and that game is hard
Did you ever play Glover? When I think “weird n64 games” I think Glover.
Oh wow yes! That unlocked a memory
Space Station Silicon Valley
Ooh, never heard of this one, but I know what I’m doing after work now.
Orcarina of Time just rocked my world back then. I think I had the gold cartridge that had the original Fire Temple music and symbol on the mirror shield.
Low framerates, extremely close draw distances, and odd controller make it less appealing to most retro gaming fans that don’t have nostalgia for the system. That’s not to say you shouldn’t go ham on some Buck Bumble or Doom 64, but it does explain why it’s not as active as some other platforms.
I love N64, it was one of the first console’s I bought with my own money, still play it today. I actually played F-Zero this afternoon.
NO ODDJOB! Slappers or throwing knives only. Perfect Dark no railgun.
My first ‘WTF is this controller’ layout but it just worked and could take abuse.
Banjo-Kazooie and Ocarina of Time are games I had that I think have aged well and that I still play occasionally. I also enjoy watching speedruns of them.
Played a lot of Mario Kart as a kid, but I don’t think the “feel” is as good as the more modern versions.
N64 was the couch coop king. There were so many to choose from. Me and my buddies would get together and destroy each other on several different games back then. It was a blast.
Although online games are pretty nice for me now since we all have moved on to different locations.
N64 was the couch coop king
That’s what actually supporting four controllers does for you, I still have no idea why PlayStation held on to only 2 controller ports for so long!
Anyone else remember Quest 64?
Ive had that sitting in my roms folder for years, but never gotten around to it. Do you think its a game that’s more propped up on nostalgia or do you think it hold up well enough today?
Quest 64 wasn’t considered good in its own time; not sure what people would think of it today. I think it was very elementary, “baby’s first RPG” type of stuff, if I remember right, and that certainly didn’t bode well against games like FF7.
Honestly, probably mostly nostalgia and the fact that there weren’t many RPGs of that style on the N64. I remember some fun stuff but also very rough around the edges.
It’s a 6/10. Nostalgia holds it aloft. I gave it a brief revisit and was totally unmotivated quite quickly.
I have a file with all the n64 roms, it wasn’t very big. I’ll use them in an emulation station at some point.
I think the best games for it now are the rom hacks, especially the Super Mario 64 ones.
I enjoy having some games people often don’t know about, such as Starcraft, Rainbow Six, the South Park fps game, the second 007 game, and Quake.
Oh nice I love Mario 64. Will have to check out these hacks
Ive been babying my N64 lately. Ive got it hooked up right now and I picked up a flashcart so I can try some romhacks, as well as a blueretro USB controller adapter. Its been pretty fantastic. Im just waiting for my upscaler to arrive so I can have some slightly nicer visuals.
Also, on the topic of flash carts, being able to use roms with the anti-aliasing disabled has been quite interesting. Good lord, the dithering!
My only other challenge now is finding which romhacks work on hardware and which are too much for it.
Wave Race, both Zelda games and Perfect Dark were my most played games for sure. Perfect Dark was awesome with bots if you had the expansion pack.
We were a Wave Race and Diddy Kong Racing household. Everyone use to fight over who got to be the pink racer because she was “faster.” I don’t think any of us actually confirmed that.
Goldeneye was the best fps game I’d played up to that point, especially for same room multiplayer. Like it was one of those games that was head and shoulders above the rest at the time and really stood out.
Then Perfect Dark came along and made Goldeneye almost unplayable because it was just better in every way.
Though all of this was while game devs were still figuring out controls for FPS games. I think Halo was the one that figured it out decently for controllers. Nintendo still had Metroid Prime in its future during the N64 era, which is an interesting game in that I consider it one of the best out there but the controls were awful.
I’m just not ready to call the N64 ‘retro’. I mowed lawns for months to buy that thing.
Based on the meaning of “retro” when the N64 came out (stuff from the 70s was considered retro in the 90s), it is. But in the almost 30 years since it came out, the meaning of retro might have changed.
Relative and absolute time frames are a bit of a bitch. Like the modern age has come and gone (ok, this isn’t exactly agreed on, either the modern age ended with WWII or we’re in the late modern age right now, but it started back in 1500 and things have changed a bit since then) but we still use “modern” to refer to current things, even when talking about an information age replacement of an earlier modern age product.
Should “retro” refer to <current year> - <range of retro years>, or should it refer to a specific time and a new name be given to the timeframe 90s kids are nostalgic about? My own mind thinks of things from like the 50s to the 80s when it sees “retro”.
N64 like a lot of the Nintendo consoles had none of the games on the competitors, but often vica versa as well.
Smash Brothers of course started there
Custom Robo started there (only in Japan though)
You got all the rare games that were only on it. Mario Kart and Diddy Kong racing were there.
Mystical Ninjas Starring Goemon and Goemon’s Great Adventure were the last 2 Ganbare Goemon games released in the west (and they’re two of the most fun as well)
WWF No Mercy is one of the best wrestling games for actually playing the game and not watching sims.
It had everything except the big name titles that basically won the era, unfortunately.
