#N64 mouse

[n64retro]

[lowpolyparrot]

Commission for @jareddillon !

Check out Wayward btw! It's a pretty cool webcomic :)

[90s-2000s-barbie]

JCPenney Christmas Book (2002)

[devileaterjaek]

Is it just me or is mickey fucking pissed?

[nostalgicfun]

"Obscure Games from My Childhood” | Mickey’s Speedway USA | (2/7) 🌈

[alln64games]

Magical Tetris Challenge

JP release: 20th November 1998

NA release: 14th January 1999

PAL release: September 1999

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom (JP/NA), Activision (PAL)

N64 Magazine Score: 51%

One week after the previous Tetris game comes another officially licensed Tetris game – this one starring Mickey Mouse, even though the title surprisingly lacks any mention of either Mikey or Disney.

This isn’t just a regular Tetris game (although standard Tetris is an option), but takes on more of a Puyo Puyo format as you battle an opponent.

As you clear lines, you’ll send “bad blocks” to opponent, which can be countered by them quickly clearing a line, going back and forth until left alone for long enough. These will then cause non-standard Tetris pieces to appear, consisting of more than 4 blocks. These are awkward to place, with some being large squares, to mess you up.

However, it’s not all bad. Filling up your power bar will erase everything above a certain line, while doing well will reward you with a straight 5 block piece, which can be used to score a “Pentris” by clearing 5 lines at once.

It’s a hectic back and forth, but one I quite enjoy. You get to play the story from the view of Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy, with Tetris used to resolve disputes. These are done on “Tetris machines” which fit into the classic Mikey aesthetic surprisingly well, with nice animation on the top and characters operating the controls.

On top of regular Tetris, you can also play “Upside Tetris” (which is one of the letter “Types” in other Tetris games) where blocks will appear at the bottom as you play.

I can definitely see why some people wouldn’t be keen on this version of Tetris, due to all the awkward blocks, but I personally like it a lot.

But interesting shapes there are – and they’re almost entirely rubbish. Especially the whopping five-by-five blocks, which comprehensively screw things up every time one appears. The reasoning behind them is apparently tactical – rather than having your opponent’s lines deposited beneath your opponent, the kerr-aazy new shapes are shuttled back and forth between you as a way of nobbling everyone’s best effort to win.

- Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #34

Remake or remaster?

The Magical Tetris mode would be nice to see in a newer version of Tetris.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Magical Tetris Challenge

[noctomania]

STOP TRYING TO REINVENT THE WHEEL. JUST MAKE IT SO THAT THE WHEEL CAN FUCKING ROLL. THAT IS QUALITY.

[transgenderwaterrat]

I did it anyway

if the switch 2's joycons can really be used as mice I'm ready to make a "welcome back nes mouse" meme edit

[onthegreatsea]

i actually despise how input design is not seen as one of the main art forms that make up game creation

the controller will never disappear. 'immersion' (i.e i forgot the controller was there (sorta (kinda)(not really))) is not an objectively positive goal. a camera you can move is not objectively better. making common or simple interactions use one button is not objectively superior control scheme to a more complicated one. the controller is the primary way a player interacts with a game but the implications and consequences of control schemes, and the controller itself, are barely thought of beyond 'how can we make it as easy as possible for the player to do x' this is why the modern tomb raiders, uncharted, jedi survivor (and a thousand other games) have mechanically forgettable and completely interchangeable ''platforming'' that says nothing interesting about them as individual experiences.

unlike the ps1 tomb raiders which, for all their flaws, are at least *interesting*. at least have something to say about the difficulty of navigating crumbling ruins. and i fucking hate the dual analog control scheme. it should not be in every third or first person shooter. it cant even convey precision aiming well because an analog stick is so poor at that and yet every FPS control scheme nowadays is a bad imitation of a mouse and keyboard. even tho they still need to douse it in auto aim and completely ignore the Y axis to make them playable!

the control scheme totally constrains how the rest of the game is designed and yet! it is unquestioned. it cannot be changed. every shooter must have the same dual stick controls.

but a lock on system conveys things too! a single analog stick FPS is a valid artistic experience! not every TPS needs to let you move and aim at once! its not wrong to decide to prioritise different input experiences! to create unique ones! so many times i talked to n64 indie devs about making a shooter on it and every time they wanted to have dual analog controls. on a controller that doesnt even have two analog sticks! its a curse! its a disease! every modern game is trapped in a cage made of idiotic assumptions about 'objective' control schemes and controller designs

its an interactive medium so why is the primary means of interacting with it such an afterthought for so many?

and modern controller design constrains what games are made, how they are made and which can thrive but we all just pretend a controller style invented almost 30 years ago is the pinnacle of design.

[hollowsart]

Back to thinking about if my spiderverse was a video game..

Thinking rn about like.. it being a low-poly type that is like.. reminiscent of some older Spider-Man games, like the N64 (high-key) or PS2 (low-key).. have a less realistic art style to save on resources and time.. but low-poly Acedia and Otto would be so cute to see!!

voice acting could be optional, but I do like the idea of there being some voice lines here and there.. ough it would be so cool and fun.. getting to jumping around and interact with various characters and explore a very green and lush NYC while beating up some random thugs, doing stealth missions, and detective work, too, while hearing Acedia and others speak.. Maybe not full voice acting. That'd be too much.

alternatively it could be like Undertale's "voices" where each character has a distinctive sound-byte that plays when their text is rolling. (forgot what that was called exactly)

Plot: black inky spots opening up all across NYC and you, Acedia, need to figure out who-- or what-- is causing them and figure out how to fix this. Going around NYC to help some NPC's and engage with others of her Rogues Gallery to gather enough information to find The Spot and take him on.

Some boss fights I can imagine happening:

Green Goblin: Run from him while hopping from car to car during rush hour. It's a Father-Son bonding moment as Hobby tosses little pumpkin grenades out at you as he rides on his dad's back. You're there for target practice, but don't worry, those pumpkins are duds.

Electra: Subdue her and get her to calm down. You gotta dodge her attacks and solve some puzzles to tire her out! (that's a pun.. implying what you're gonna trap her with)

Lizard: Chase Curt down in the sewers to take him back to Martha for a cure. Solve puzzles to get through the maze, unlocking valves and fending off rats and floods.

Rhino: Steer her out of the way of civilians and traffic while directing her towards the beach. The sand will surely slow her down and stop her impromptu rampage!

Mysterio: Play a little game of cat and mouse with him and he'll give you what you came for. His parlor is full of tricks and traps, but also plenty of spots for you to hide and swing from, as well as plenty of mannequins and illusions for you to swipe at! All the while, the marvelous Mysterio is enjoying this little game. He'd been waiting for your next visit for awhile, after all. Please, visit him more often. ;)

The Spot: Final boss of the game. Your job is to subdue him and get him to go back to his dimension. Attack the hands that come out of the portals he makes and avoid the larger portals where he comes charging out from. You can distract him with objects in the vicinity that make noise to give you a chance to land some good kicks.

Not a boss, but neat little mini-event things that ties into the story and makes things a little more fun and interactive:

Vulture: A reskin of Rhino, except this time, you control Vulture and have to maneuver around through the skyscrapers and obstacles to get to your destination. Otto is unavailable, but Grandpa Toomes isn't and helps to drop you off at a particular warehouse.

Eagle-Eye Swarm: Mini mission that requires taking out a swarm of Eagle-Eye bots sent out by J. Jonah Jameson to try and capture video and photo evidence of you. He's always trying to get a clear shot of the so-called 'Cryptid Crawler'.

Doc Ock: Wanna unlock a new skill? If you have enough Sloth Tokens, you can head back over to Otto and take him on! He's got a few little courses and challenges set up, too, to test your skills and teach you some new tricks.

Post-Game fun:

Mad Jack: Like a reskin of Green Goblin, but hard mode and is unlocked in the post-game. The pumpkins aren't duds this time around, so watch out!

Rematches! You can take on the many bosses again whenever you want, but they'll be more of a challenge this time around! I hope you're ready!

Maim: Bonus Boss Battle. Watch out for those webs, claws, and that wicked bite! Maim is fast and strong, and is causing trouble in the name of revenge against Sai.. They're very hung up about that. Your job is to survive and wear Maim down. There's 3 stages to this fight: 1) Laboratory Brawl, 2) Ventilation Maze Chase, 3) Final Fight on the roof. (a somewhat comedic ending where once defeated, the symbiote bails on Cagney Kasady cuz it got bored, leaving them to be apprehended.)

Secret bonus playable character!

Ferrol: If you've collected every secret Love Monkey Plush hidden around the game, you'll unlock the ability to play as Sai ( @bunny-j3st3r ) and Ferrol. This adds some fun new dialogue for the bosses when challenged. (unlocking this unlocked a bonus boss battle post-game (vs Maim)! also, you can swap between the two characters by visiting Otto's place where you'll find Sai hanging out in his lab and helping him with symbiote research)

There would be a 2 player mode, too, where you could play as both Acedia and Sai/Ferrol with custom cut-scenes and dialogue, too. Difficulty might be upped a little bit, too.

[delicatefury]

You know what? I’m excited about the Switch 2. I know a lot of people are underwhelmed and the launch trailer was more of a “fine! You already ruined the surprise anyway,” but I’m genuinely excited.

The Switch is a fantastic system. It’s just old and under powered for most modern games. So a lot of us fans just wanted the Switch-but-better. Which is what we’re getting! Backwards compatibility and all.

It doesn’t even need to be as powerful as the ps5 or whatever the next Xbox is. Just a lot more powerful than the Switch. Just closer to current processing speeds. Which it should be!

And the joycons! I’m a bit worried about the usb connectivity. The slides are annoying, but I’m worried about the plug snapping off. But that’s okay, because they can be used as mice! Mouse controls! On a console! Even on a system that no one was expecting to have big leaps of innovation, Nintendo did something new.

Color scheme is kinda blah. Wish they’d go back to the crazy colorful days of the N64 and GameCube, but if they’re smart, there will be multiple joycon colors ready to hit the market at launch.

And I’m so excited for the ports and expansions! Did you know you can’t get the last graveyard keeper DLC for switch? It was just a few too many things for the switch to process at once. No more excuses! And the impossible ports we had? Witcher? Red Dead Redemption? Hogwarts Legacy? Can you imagine what we could get on a more powerful Nintendo console? Hell, may e Bethesda will finally give us fallout instead of Skyrim for the nth time.

I’m just… I’m really looking forward to the April direct.

[n64retro]

64DD Modem N64 Control Deck 64DD N64 Mouse RANDnet Utility Disk RANDnet DD Keyboard

[vaporweb]

StarCraft Taught Me How to Code

It was the year 2000. I regularly hung out with my best friend, Mike. His older brother, Bobby, was always in the office using the computer. He was playing StarCraft. I was really captivated by it. Bobby commanded massive armies and used them to destroy enemies from an isometric point of view.

Bobby never left the computer long enough for me to give it a try, but Mike said they have it for the N64. We stayed up until 7 in the morning the next day playing it. It was terrible. An RTS on a console was an abomination. A mouse and keyboard was a necessity. But I was 10 years old and I didn't care and we couldn't stop playing.

I eventually got the game for my own computer. It was the fist online game I ever played. Battle.net was a super highway to another dimension. I could play with anyone—from the east coast to the west coast, Europe to Asia. It was easier to find people with similar interests than on the Web.

You could essentially create your own game using StarCraft assets. It taught me logic and how to code.

The game was fun. But the thing that became my favorite was its campaign editor. You could essentially create your own game using StarCraft assets. It taught me logic and how to code. You would create conditional statements, and if conditions were met, then something would happen as a result.

When you played other peoples' games, you first downloaded them and they would go in a specific folder that you could open in the campaign editor. Sometimes people used mods that would lock you out and prevent you from reading their logic, but most of the time you could learn from them and see how the games worked.

I read a lot of other peoples conditional statements, copied them and saw how they functioned. I learned a lot about triggers, making things happened at certain times, or causing something to happen when someone brings something to a specific place.

I give a lot of credit to StarCraft for my love to code and build things for the Web.

[paranormeow7]

man I missed shipwrecked 64 I decided to look back at it. man imagine if they dug up walt disneys gross old bones and shoved them into a Mickey Mouse costume and brought him back to life through dark magic or something and used him to say “FUCK YOU, COMPETITORS!! WE DRAGGED OUR GUY FROM HIS ETERNAL REST!!” and somebody documented it in a shitty n64 licensed game

[devileaterjaek]

[blackbearmagic]

you beat OOT on an emulator??

Yeah, when I was in college. Freshman year, so that would've been 2009-10.

I had just learned about game emulation from my friend James, so I figured what better way to get into it than with my childhood favorite? You know, a game that used a joystick to move the character? A game that featured active rather than turn-based combat? When all I had was a keyboard?

There are parts of the Fire Temple that I can, to this day, navigate without looking, because of the goddamn Megaton Hammer.

For anyone here who has never played the absolute classic that is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the second half of the game is broken up into temples that you have to clear. Each of these temples has a weapon in it that is necessary to defeat the temple's final boss; in the aforementioned Fire Temple, this weapon is a warhammer called the Megaton Hammer, and you use it to play Whack-a-Mole with a giant fire dragon.

When you find it, the Megaton Hammer is in a chest surrounded by fire, positioned at the end of a winding path that steadily narrows to the width of the character's movement box. You step on a switch to dispel the fire for a short period of time, then run along the path until you reach the chest. There are, of course, no guard rails on this path; in fact, on both sides of it is just a yawning void that drops you down several floors of the temple. If you fall down, you have to travel all the way back to that room to try again.

This is tricky and kind of annoying, but ultimately very doable if you're using a joystick to guide Link along the path. It is absolute hell if you're doing it using WASD.

Go ahead and take a second to imagine that.

There's no way to make curved movements. The emulator doesn't know what to do with simultaneous inputs, so the only way to go diagonally is by alternately tapping the keys you've assigned to forward and side movement. There's no pressure sensitivity determining whether you walk or run in the direction you've chosen; you always run. The only way you can take this path is in jerking, swerving fits and starts. And if you go off the edge, it's at least another ten minutes to get back for another try -- and that detour has combat, as well as time-limited paths and dicey terrain of its own. And, don't forget, you have a time limit.

It took me four days.

When I finally had hammer in hand, naturally, the first thing I did was tell all my friends about how I'd done it. (They'd all be very invested in my updates. Several of them thought I was insane for trying to play the game without a plug-in controller, but I couldn't afford one.) My friend James was impressed -- not with my accomplishment, but with how long it had taken me.

"Four days? Even using save states?"

"Using what?"

See, when you emulate games on a computer, you can create a save file at any point. No matter what you're doing, no matter how the game would otherwise save. (You can still use the in-game save, but those files are fickle and sometimes disappear.) With a save state, you can freeze the game at an instant, then reload it from there at any time.

After James explained this feature to me, for the very first time, I unplugged my USB mouse and threw it at him.

Armed with that new knowledge, though, the rest of the game went much more smoothly. I was able to make save states before doing anything difficult and simply reload them whenever I beaned it. Which continued to happen a lot, because all the practice in the world didn't change the fact that I was playing the game with inputs it was not intended to have.

I managed to complete the entire game, final boss and everything.

And I never emulated another N64 game that used the joystick for character movement. Ever. I learned my lesson.