Thursday, October 28, 2021

Nintendo Switch Online's Nintendo 64

Ocarina of Time title screen as seen on the Switch

This week was the release of the "Expansion Pack" for Nintendo Switch Online, which makes your membership cost double in Europe and even more in North America, while it only comes with the three following items:

  • Nintendo 64
  • SEGA Genesis
  • Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Happy Home Paradise

The latter can also be purchased separately as normal DLC and is probably only worth it in family memberships, where everyone plays Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Otherwise you're better off to just buy this normally. The SEGA Genesis games are also available in collections on cartridges with SEGA Genesis Classics and again you're better off to just get this instead.

So, for most people this will leave the Nintendo 64 as an incentive to get this, which is what most Nintendo fans should be interested in anyway, but it appears that Nintendo doesn't cover itself in glory with this one. At first at seemed like the 60Hz could be an incentive for everyone in Europe to get this, because we only always had the 50Hz versions, but the emulator comes with even more issues than usual.

This video by ZFG goes over these issues quite nicely using Ocarina of Time as the example, so take a look. But here is a summary:

  • Input lag got even worse.
  • The control stick is even more sensitive than it used to be on Wii and Wii U.
  • You can't change the button layout and the right C-button is awkwardly mapped, either by pressing the right stick to the right or by pressing ZR + A, where holding ZR turns A, B, X and Y into the C-buttons. While this is a nice idea, there really should be options for these things. If you want simple controls, you'll need the new Nintendo 64 controller from the My Nintendo Store.
  • The fog has been removed for some reason and the visuals just look different overall, where a lot of the original atmosphere is gone.

So, no, this doesn't look like something you want to get. If I ever want to replay the Nintendo 64 Zelda games, I'll probably stick to the Nintendo 3DS versions, until we get some (U)HD remasters at some point (probably not on the Nintendo Switch). Hopefully those will take the complaints about the Nintendo 3DS remakes into consideration and get everything right.

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