OptOut

Boom!

Finally found time to polish this one off, and... Yeah, you know what? I had fun! It's NOT an abomination, or the second coming of Satan. It's a rushed, unfinished beta-level game, with big ambitions and a lot of ideas that could very easily have been SO much better with a little more time in the oven. But the core elements ARE here, and there are absolutely glimpses of what this game could and should have been throughout.

It's WAY more playable than people give it credit for. The controls are clunky, but they are CONSISTENT. Once you figure out how best to achieve the movement and action you want, you can perform pretty well, and the game is easy enough and forgiving enough with health drops that you really don't have any excuse for giving up.

As far as glitches, yeah, there are a few, most notably OOB and clipping related. But when they happen they are usually more funny than frustrating, IMO, and it wasn't often I'd actually have to restart a mission, or even if I did, it's not really like these levels are that long to redo stuff.

As for the famous onion rings, I'm just gonna straight up own that one. Best part of the game, I actually really enjoy the ring segments. You genuinely DO get a feeling of flying around like Superman, it's fun! The city is actually impressively large, even if you don't get much of a sense of that due to the fog. But, you play the game enough and you play through all the ring stages, and you DO genuinely start to recognize various areas of the city and start to get familiar with the place. If they had more time to come up with a few better objectives and ways to put more variety into the ring stages, that would have immediately improved the game even further, but as it stands I still enjoyed myself.

And, having said and done it all, absolutely I stand by this game I'll defend it from anyone who hasn't even bothered to give it a go and just shits on it because it's a popular opinion. I wouldn't suggest regular people go out of their way to play it, but if you're an N64 fan, and if you're someone with a decent tolerance and patience for bad games, ABSOLUTELY give this one a go, it's WAY better than people say.

4.5/10, better than LTTP.

SPLAIN ALERT!!!

Superman 64. 

1 hour ago, Reed Rothchild said:

 

This is like a 6 on the literal number scale, and like a 6.84 on the words scale.  I think that comes out to a 13.84 if you use both.

I'm planning on finishing Superman this weekend dude... Scoring imminent, and I'm feeling favourable and forgiving... 

15 minutes ago, ZeldaFreak said:

I think it's also perfectly valid for someone to give a game a 5 (or less) just due to it not personally being their cup of tea, even if objectively it's a very good game.

4/10

1 hour ago, fcgamer said:

Well for those who kept their game sealed, they should just order a second, corrected copy so that they have both variants of the game

Well, my copy came without any sort of seal, I'm assuming they don't seal em! Probably a good thing too, depending on how many Roo has to open and inspect! 

Update on the faulty Big2Small situation!

I have been back in contact with Roo, and apparently the reason I haven't received my replacement cart yet is because his entire batch of these Big2Small carts are faulty! I figured my one might have been a one-off, but sadly it looks like this is not the case!

I am not sure how many carts he has on his hands there, nor how many other people have bought this game and are either knowingly or unknowingly holding onto a dud, and whatever the case may be this is obviously a seriously costly and detrimental issue for a small company to be dealing with!

So, I'm sending good vibes over their way at https://theretroroomgames.com/ and I'm hoping they find a quick and painless resolution to this situation as soon as possible! 

On 1/30/2024 at 9:17 PM, RegularGuyGamer said:

I wonder if the Celeste sequel will make its way into a cartridge.

https://www.ign.com/articles/celeste-64-fragments-of-the-mountain-release

Hmm, from what I can gather from the press releases online, this game is actually just a little side-project of sorts, rather than a fully fledged game. Also, it would appear to be a regular PC game simply mimicking the N64 in style, rather than actually utilising an N64 based game engine, so there is little chance of this making it to the actual N64, unfortunately!

More important question:

How can I delete OTHER people's accounts? 

Full-sized, sealed, retail boxed DLC download code for GTA IV Lost and Damned?

My collection has never felt more complete! 

Hmm... After reaching out to Roo to get my Big2Small replacement and his initial response, I tried contacting him again to follow up and it's been radio silence since...

I don't want to hassle the dude, I'm sure he's busy, but it's kinda frustrating not knowing whether I'm gonna be seeing a working copy of this game any time soon. 

14 hours ago, OptOut said:

I'm still going strong! I found out that I won't actually be able to beat the game on Normal mode, which is what I had been playing on up till this point, so I started again on Superman mode!

So far, it's a LITTLE harder than before, but because I've already done it once, it's not really slowing me down much. Still enjoying myself, I will continue to update on my progress as I near completion. 

OMG I think I'm becoming something of a Superman 64 savant... I just got back to this warehouse level where there's this tricky part where you have to escort Lois Lane to the exit. It's pretty annoying because you need to fly ahead of her to deal with badguys before she gets to them, but if you do that then additional bad guys spawn next to her and you need to fly back quick to save her.

Anyway, she died like a bitch on me a bunch of times and I was thinking like, man, you know? But then all of a sudden I come up with this genius big brain strat! Before you talk to her to trigger the escort mission, you can just fly back through the level and killed all the dudes and even the boss before she moves an inch. After that I was going to fly back and escort her scot-free, but then I just flew to the end to scope ahead and just straight beat the level without even having her move!

It's like this game really just works best if you let the jank flow THROUGH you, you know. I'm like the ultimate vessel for this game's broken gameplay! 

I'm still going strong! I found out that I won't actually be able to beat the game on Normal mode, which is what I had been playing on up till this point, so I started again on Superman mode!

So far, it's a LITTLE harder than before, but because I've already done it once, it's not really slowing me down much. Still enjoying myself, I will continue to update on my progress as I near completion. 

I think the Halo games and Metroid Prime games both do a good job of integrating the HUD into the gameworld, seeing as in both games you are wearing a helmet and looking through a visor. It feels natural to have a bunch of info on screen in that context.

I also remember one of the most talked about innovations of Donkey Kong Country when it came out was the fact that it hides your banana and life count as you play, only showing when the number changes one way or another. There were few SNES platformers at that time which weren't cluttered with HUD chaff, so that was just another element that made DKC stand above the crowd and seem like something totally fresh.

Finally, the PAL region getting the recognition it truly deserves. 

8 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Japanese Colonel Sanders looking MF right there. 

7 hours ago, Brickman said:

So no GG2024?  

Soz dude, I'm absolutely snowed under with everything at work ATM!

I will be happy to give the awards another go at some point in the future, if by some miracle I manage to get more freetime!

Otherwise, of course, I would be happy to pass the baton if anyone else wants to take over!

8 hours ago, JamesRobot said:

And another thing, who the hell am I supposed to vote for this year?  I don't see Kanye West or Princess Khadijah Maryam Jacob-Fambro running in this election.

Write-in Billy Mitchell! I hear he's running a dark horse campaign this year! 

4 hours ago, RH said:

I can’t say.  I refuse to let myself play anything else until I beat FF VI and, well… it’s like I’m allergic to this game.

But after that I want to play through some GG games on my Pocket with the adapter.

I do know that of the several tests I’ve ran on it, it’s been fine.  Have you updated your Pocket firmware lately? Maybe that it.

I haven't updated it to the latest firmware that came out recently, but I did update the firmware to whatever the latest one was when I got it. The Game Gear games I tried at that time, the first time, ran without issue, but now nothing does.

It's okay though, I'm ordering a modified OG Game Gear with fresh caps and a new screen to serve my GG needs, I'll keep the pocket just for GB/GBC/GBA stuff.

Anyone else having issues getting Game Gear games to run on the pocket through the Game Gear adaptor? First time I tried it out when I first got the system it worked fine, but yesterday I tried to play a few of my Game Gear games, and basically they were all borked. Some of the games wouldn't load at all, others would load with glitched out graphics and would hang on the title screen. No matter how much I jiggled or re-inserted the carts I couldn't get them to work, tried about 5 or 6 different games with the same result.

And, yeah, before anyone asks, the carts are clean, and I have had no problems playing any of my Game Boy games etc. I looked around a bit online and people are saying the GG adaptor is finicky, so I guess I got a dud on my hands?

@skinnygrinny is a stand up bloke, I'd die for the guy.

I mean, he's no angel... there was that time we were hitchhiking down some dusty ol' road out in the sticks at 3am, outta our minds on moonshine, and he was singing this filthy song about @Murray's fat momma. But we've all been there... @Murray's momma I mean.

Anyway, what was I talking about again?... Oh yeah, Skinny! Yeah, that dude's alright, but don't turn your back on him. I once witnessed him shank a guy for taking one too many peanuts outta the communal peanut sack. I tried to tell him that the peanuts were for the circus animals, and the guy he was shanking was a fully grown African bull elephant, and that we weren't actually at a bar, we were at the circus, and that the guy who was "looking at him funny" was actually a clown, which he ALSO shanked, and I that was after I tried to tell him that he should probably put his pants back on and the growing crowd of crying children and startled parents was a bad sign, but you know, he won't be TOLD you know? He's that kinda guy, once he's had that many... Great dude. 

9 hours ago, OptOut said:

no judgement here.

5 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

 

Ignore him.  He gave the PS1 a 1/10 as a console.  He doesn't get to judge anyone's scores 

I literally SAID no judgement. 

And my 1 for the PS1 was GENEROUS. 

44 minutes ago, Sumez said:

8 is really good. I wouldn't even rank 20 games of all time across all platforms a 10 

I give out 10's all the time, but all the games I give a 10 I really LOVE you know. I really love my games, I can't say no to them, I truly love all the games I give 10 to, I can't deny them!

2 hours ago, GPX said:

Are you referring to only the rings stage? Or his movements throughout the whole game? Impressed with your enthusiasm with all things N64. I’m now in the contemplation phase with regards to this game.

 

I've continued to play and I'm not wavering at all! I'm about halfway through now, I've done a few more ring stages and a few more regular stages and yeah... It's clunky, it's simplistic, but it's actually fun. It's a bad game, there's no denying that, but it's working for me, I'm stroking along the grain and making progress, and genuinely enjoying myself!

So far, I'm saying the 4 stands. No way it's hitting 5 at this rate, but there's nothing dragging me down to a 3 either. I'm going to keep playing and do what I said, I will rate it when I'm finished, but right now, I actually am enjoying myself!

30 minutes ago, skinnygrinny said:

@Dr. Morbis @OptOut @Link what’s the issue with giving this game an 8 as 4th best in the genre on the console? 

Hey, dude, you can give this game whatever score you feel like, no judgement here. Obviously, you can see I rated it at a 10, so you know where I stand.

The only thing I find funny is I would rate like probably 20 different NES games as 10/10 out of the entire library, at least. And for you, the 4th best action platformer is an 8... and NES's BEST genre is action platformer... So like what... SMB3 is 10, and then Ninja Gaiden and Shatterhand are 9's and then Batman is an 8... So every other game is worse than that is what you're saying, it seems? Every other NES action platformer is 8 and lower.

I dunno, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth it just seems funny on the face of it that your number 4 game only rates 8/10! 

1 hour ago, jonebone said:

Nice eye.  I love that it seems "authentic" to have some information, but I question those numbers a bit.  The Pure Evil is relatively common compared to the rest, I'm highly skeptical more Super Monkey balls were printed than it.  You also think that Sonic would have printed more than Super Monkey Ball... Sonic was much more of a bread winner wasn't it?

Perhaps, but then aren't these collections regular disks inside new packaging? Is it possible that they had too many Monkey Ball disks leftover, so they repackaged them in double packs?