I had forgotten how many interruptions there were to actually getting to the game. Intro cutscene, letter from Peach, prompt from Lakitu outside the castle, prompt from Bowser inside the castle, prompt from the Bombombs inside the first level...
I get it though, they had to ease people into 3d games. Still, kind of annoying when I just wanted to get to jumping and star collecting.
first you press the power button, then wait for the console to load (5-10s usually for a Switch), then dismiss the ads asking you to buy or subscribe to something, then navigate to the game you already have inserted into your console, then press play, then confirm you DON'T want the recommended update (which prevents you from playing the game), then accept the update when you realize it stops you from playing the game, then wait for the update to finish (10-30s + a console restart), then accept the System update which didn't even pop up before (another 1-2m + restart), then finally go through the above again, and now.... you're finally at the main menu of the game
sorry i just tried picking up the Switch again today during my sick day and had to wade through all this just to play Metroid Prime (a game that came out a decade ago)
I don't want to dismiss your experience out of hand, but...how long had it been since you last turned it on? When I play my Switch regularly, I don't ever turn it off all the way; putting it to sleep (either by pressing the power button in handheld mode, not long-pressing it, or by holding the Home button on my controller and selecting the option to put it to sleep in docked mode) doesn't lose much power overnight even when it's not on a charger in my experience. I also don't really remember having either frequent or extremely larger updates very often on any of the games I've played, although I guess I might just happen to play games that are on the lower end of update density. I don't think I've ever _ever_ had any sort of ad that I had to dismiss before playing a game; the closest thing I can think of is the "News" app, and I definitely find it a little annoying that there's no way to completely disable the notification dot on it or (even unsubscribing from every possible channel in it doesn't seem to fully stop them) or uninstall it, but it doesn't actually cost me any time unless I decide to go in and mark all of the stories as "read" to make the dot go away.
Wait, you get an update cycle done in 10-30s? I feel like on mine I download an update over the course of 3 weeks, and then it takes 4 hours to apply. Also every time I touch a game it needs to be updated, which takes another 4 hours.
All in all, I have been trained to never touch a console after I haven't used it for a day or two.
That's oddly a staple of the 3D Mario games even years later: Super Mario Sunshine had an annoying miniboss and a ton of cutscenes before entering the first world, and Super Mario Galaxy had cutscenes and a very long intro level before getting to the main game.
Galaxy 2, Odyssey, and Bowser's Fury toned the tutorials down a bit.
At the time, many games were linear and didn't have anywhere to get lost. The first time I played SM64 I remember not knowing exactly what to do. I spent the first bit of time banging on doors, grates, or other inactive features trying to figure out how to work them. The interactions let me know I was going in the right direction.
Reminds me, I played Genshin Impact once and I was struck by how brief the opening cutscenes were. Given it was a fantasy epic I sort of expected a bit more introduction to the characters in the first 30 minutes. But I think that was because of my conditioning on console games.
It makes logical sense. The longer the intro cutscene took, the more people would just exit out before the action could take place, the more money they lost on IAPs. So fast-tracking the player to beating things up within 2-4 minutes is critical. The longer story cutscenes can take over later. There are probably hard metrics to back this up somewhere.
you can jump after peaches letter, and for new players none of the motives have been established yet. those interruptions are integral to getting started.
Those files are all over a year old. Has playing mario 64 in the browser been possible all this time and nobody posted it to hn, or am I missing something?
What is more impressive is that Mario 64 itself was a measly 64 megabits (8 MB), already tiny for its era. So this version is almost double the size of the N64 original!
Question: does anybody know why the size of old cartridge games where always reported in bits instead of bytes? To make them look more impressive?
Nah, it's been shared at least a couple times over the last 2 years, some people spinning up versions on glitch etc, even tho it's no longer maintained
I've recently been enjoying watching this young modder on YouTube optimize all of the original SM64 source code, doubling frame rate, and modding his own Return To Yoshi's Island
Just finished the talk. It was one of the best from any Handmade event I’ve seen, and I’m including the Acton talk from the first con in that praise. Congratulations on getting him in running such an amazing con.
I just purchased a mint N64 with a new-in-box OEM Nintendo controller (it is TIGHT). Console came with Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Mario, Kart, Smash Bros. A few hundred $$$ investment, for: 3 N64s; 9 Controllers; ExPak; dozen top-shelf games, few crap; HDMI output on one; bunch of Pokemon +x-fer pack [gave to friend for cheap].
A local pawnshop had good copies of Ocarina+Mask; a friend wanted an N64 so I found one with expansion pak (which came bundled with Donkey Kong + Pokemon, which I also sold to friend)... Conkers and Rocket are on my wishlist [they are one hundred$/each].
I'm about to replace all the internal batteries for another few decades of cartridge savestates. So much time. So many memories.
All to say: the N64 Controller is a thing of beauty, and I cannot wait to dual-wield with dual controllers and 8MB RAM. I'm just under forty. Christmas came early.
> All to say: the N64 Controller is a thing of beauty
Honestly, it's always been one of the ugliest controllers in my opinion, and I was under the impression my opinion wasn't super common. I'm not usually one to care about form over function, but if anything the function is even worse, because no matter how you hold it, 1/3 of the controls are unreachable. If I had a third hand, maybe I'd appreciate it more, but it just looks like it was designed by an alien who had never seen a human before...
I did something similar but got a flash cart and a CRT. The nostalgia aspect still works for me since I had a flash cart back then too, only that one was maybe double the size of the N64 itself and this one is the same size and shape as a regular cartridge. Interestingly both of them costed a few hundred bucks, though I guess the one from back then (I think it was the Z64 or maybe the Mr Backup?) would have been a lot more if you account for inflation. Would recommend, too many N64 carts are unavailable or prohibitively expensive.
The pain of a first degree burns pales in comparison to dominating the star count the whole game, only to lose after the playing is finished due to someone else eking by due to impossible-to-predict bonus stars. Toad is a masochist, and he would give us all third degree burns too if they didn't destroy nerves and therefore the ability to feel them.
In Firefox you can work around this. Click on the padlock next to the URL, then click the Right Arrow, and More Information. Head to the Permissions tab, scroll down and find Autoplay, and switch it to "Allow Audio and Video." Refresh, and you should have sound.
For whatever reason Firefox blocks it, tells you in the console that it blocked it, but fails to present the extra little UI in the site info dropdown that would usually expose the user override. Might be a bug with how this particular game sets up the web audio context or something.
Firefox prevents audio from playing with no initial user interaction like a play button. Can see the warning if you pop open the dev console. Don't know of workaround besides sites not creating an AudioContext on page load.
Edit: Keyboard input does not work :/ it was a good effort.
Found a workaround throw it in an iFrame and have the frame load with a user interaction. Here is a jsFiddle link, just click "Run" after the page loads.
Haha ! I miss how experimental those old games feel... unique gameplay, art & music, no design best practices and no cut&paste from internet when those were created, just pure skills
Still, even when building the decompiled source yourself it gets its assets by stripping them from the copy of the ROM we all legally dumped from our personalized copies of the cartridge.
I couldn't figure out the keyboard controls (and can't find the source code), but you can plug in a controller and it'll play just great (presumably through some web controller API).
Readit News
I get it though, they had to ease people into 3d games. Still, kind of annoying when I just wanted to get to jumping and star collecting.
first you press the power button, then wait for the console to load (5-10s usually for a Switch), then dismiss the ads asking you to buy or subscribe to something, then navigate to the game you already have inserted into your console, then press play, then confirm you DON'T want the recommended update (which prevents you from playing the game), then accept the update when you realize it stops you from playing the game, then wait for the update to finish (10-30s + a console restart), then accept the System update which didn't even pop up before (another 1-2m + restart), then finally go through the above again, and now.... you're finally at the main menu of the game
sorry i just tried picking up the Switch again today during my sick day and had to wade through all this just to play Metroid Prime (a game that came out a decade ago)
All in all, I have been trained to never touch a console after I haven't used it for a day or two.
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Galaxy 2, Odyssey, and Bowser's Fury toned the tutorials down a bit.
Are later games different? I thought all Mario games had a bunch of cruft at the start. Look at Galaxy; 3D games weren't exactly unheard of by then.
It makes logical sense. The longer the intro cutscene took, the more people would just exit out before the action could take place, the more money they lost on IAPs. So fast-tracking the player to beating things up within 2-4 minutes is critical. The longer story cutscenes can take over later. There are probably hard metrics to back this up somewhere.
I was able to stand up my own copy of it just by importing the GH project on Glitch: https://glitch.com/edit/#!/positive-rhetorical-timbalehttps://positive-rhetorical-timbale.glitch.me/
Also, I think this is the game file: https://github.com/ProbablyKam/Mario64webgl/blob/main/sm64.u...
15.2mb! Quite a lot smaller than games today!
Question: does anybody know why the size of old cartridge games where always reported in bits instead of bytes? To make them look more impressive?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_rzYnXEQlE
[0] https://vimeo.com/853440902
A local pawnshop had good copies of Ocarina+Mask; a friend wanted an N64 so I found one with expansion pak (which came bundled with Donkey Kong + Pokemon, which I also sold to friend)... Conkers and Rocket are on my wishlist [they are one hundred$/each].
I'm about to replace all the internal batteries for another few decades of cartridge savestates. So much time. So many memories.
All to say: the N64 Controller is a thing of beauty, and I cannot wait to dual-wield with dual controllers and 8MB RAM. I'm just under forty. Christmas came early.
Honestly, it's always been one of the ugliest controllers in my opinion, and I was under the impression my opinion wasn't super common. I'm not usually one to care about form over function, but if anything the function is even worse, because no matter how you hold it, 1/3 of the controls are unreachable. If I had a third hand, maybe I'd appreciate it more, but it just looks like it was designed by an alien who had never seen a human before...
But still awesome seeing the game pop up instantly with no loading, prompts or whatever. Just like turning on an actual n64.
For whatever reason Firefox blocks it, tells you in the console that it blocked it, but fails to present the extra little UI in the site info dropdown that would usually expose the user override. Might be a bug with how this particular game sets up the web audio context or something.
Found a workaround throw it in an iFrame and have the frame load with a user interaction. Here is a jsFiddle link, just click "Run" after the page loads.
https://jsfiddle.net/sg1r3h60/
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c to attack
q/w/a/s/d adjust camera angle