I’ve never felt an N64 analog so tight.
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Damn. Where did you get it?
Amazon japan, even ships internationally.
There’s still a NIB Gold one available there: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B008LUR3A6
Not all consoles and all games display the same size of the image (depending resolutions), and on my CRT TV I can do one setting to display roughly all that people close to the optimum.
Exept for some N64 games as Zelda OoT. It has a huge image, and if I calibrate my setting with it, all my other systems will display too small. I also noticed that the UI of OoT seems designed to be displayed with the image hanging over the screen, otherwise the icons appear slightly too close to the center.
So if that surface on the edge was not meant to be displayed, why does it exist and use power for nothing ?
Does anyone have a clue ?
Perhaps to account for overscan on some TVs?
Back then they could choose their own resolution based on a number of factors. How much they can draw in a frame would be one.
DF’s John revisited Turok last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4RJn0mEhIg
I only ever played the sequel, foolishly avoiding the original because of the fog in magazine screenshots at the time. But having watched that video it’s clear the game really was well ahead of its time, while also offering something quite unique in the FPS space that generation. I found myself blown away by the animation work shown off, the large level environments and how they were structured, and some of the graphical effects (like the particles and water). Quite impressive given how it was an early N64 title.
I’d love to play it natively but I’ve settled on the Switch port for now. The level design certainly holds up.
I’m on an N64 kick right now. Maybe it hit the right age to click the nostalgia switch for me. Technically a formative console for me too given I was a teen.
Gonna cost me a pretty penny to get all the US games I want though. I had PAL back in the day and most PAL and Japanese games are still cheap, but US prices (and ripoff global shipping program prices) are high.
I think I’ll grab a gold console and gold controller and play through Goldeneye on them for maximum goldness.
You can even replace the shell of Goldeneye with a gold Zelda OOT cart and print a fresh Goldeneye sticker over it if you want to be a complete monster.
Hmmm…
Challenge accepted.
(or at least play gold Zelda on it)
This is another thing I’m glad I got before things got expensive. I have like 90% of the N64 games I want and managed to get a gold N64 back in the day for free. Which I made it into my daily driver then, I wish Nintendo would do some gold or platinum consoles again.
My console is a transparent black one. It’s stunning, but no way I’m using the mint controller as a replacement would be so expensive these days!
I’m using a mint controller on my N64 that was barely used by its original owner. She gave it to me a few years ago. Pretty amazing how good it feels with a brand new OEM stick that has barely been touched.
I’m cool with aging it though via normal play. Here’s hoping that Nintendo some day manufactures some replicas.
I just read that the Chinese "iQue Player”, which is an reduced cost N64 in the form of a controller, has all its components running double clock speed.
So available N64 games run a lot better on it.
Wish I’d picked up an ique years ago when they were cheap. Now they’ve all been snapped up by collectors.
Does the iQue emulate games or have native hardware? If the latter I wonder if people could inject other games into it to take advantage of the extra horsepower.
I’m happy to use a mint controller, the ones I use are essentially mint too.
Just not the transparent black one, as it seems they’re getting exceedingly rare.
It’s a SOC N64, not exactly the same but not emulation.
I’d forgotten about the iQue, I remember reading about it in NGC Magazine when it launched (they imported one from what I recall).
Interesting that the hardware team revisited the N64’s components for it - never really thought about what was actually inside it. Would be cool to see how some games which don’t lock to their target framerate perform. OoT was locked to 20fps and stays there so it’s hard to tell the difference.
The iQue is the thing that messed up some of the n64 speedruns right? Like in the communities that accepted runs with it alongside other runs, making it so only people that would shell out the cash for one could compete. Or am I thinking of something else.