Truckin' Along

[roushimsx]

Finished up Spirit Tracks a little while back and I would not recommend it to fans of Zelda games, or games that are fun in general. The train portions are awful and the last boss is a tedious chore. With any luck, this will be the last Zelda game in this style and future iterations will go with a sensible control scheme with overworld navigation

Comments

[roushimsx]

It's pretty damn terrific. The main reason I dropped the coin on it was because of the sorry state of N64 emulation. PJ64 went open source and development started up on it again, but it's still making absolutely minimal steps towards improving the state of things. 1964 and Mupen64 both excel in different areas; realistically, you need to have all three emulators and at least a half dozen different plugin configurations ready for each to maximize your compatibility, and even then there's a substantial amount of side effects, bugs, and persistent issues that no one knows how to fix (likely common core issues among the various emulators). Plus there's the entire problem of being trapped in a plugin-based ecosystem instead of having something that "just works".

Of course, the most popular games work "well enough", which leads to a lot of super defensive fanboys decrying any criticism as being trumped up bullshit and insinuating that the problem is obviously my computer (which I'm told is "shit"), especially since N64 emulation "was perfected on the original Xbox". I've spent so much time hanging out on emulation forums not infested with retarded fuckballs like that that I'd forgotten that they existed.

But the EverDrive64? God damn is it slick as hell. Stuff just works, man. Played some of Shadows of the Empire (still sucks) until I got to the AT ST (fight still sucks), died (sucks), and had to restart the whole god damn level again (checkpoint system in the game really sucks). Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine worked like a champ, though the controls are still a bit sloppy. Better than they were on PC, at least. World Driver Championship worked like a boss, but I was reminded of how low of a resolution that game (and Stunt Racer 64) really ran in. Jesus. It looked awesome for the time. Body Harvest is still pretty damn fun, even if the framerate, draw distance, and controls are pretty less-than-ideal.

When I clean off my plate a bit more, I'm going to hunker down and work my way through some N64 titles on the thing. Just going to focus on stuff that exhibits issues under emulation. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and Body Harvest are the leading candidates, but it really depends on what I'm in the mood for at the time :D

[roushimsx]

Nice to hear you're enjoying the Everdrive. Igor makes some awesome stuff. If you didn't know they have an official Everdrive sub-forum over at AssemblerGames. Igor and the Assembler folks provide some fine support and chat.

Sad to hear that N64 emulations seems to have stagnated. Sounds like it is still in the same shape it was last time I checked it out where I had to switch between a few different ones and play around with plugins to get stuff working. I remember all of the THQ/aki wrestling games having graphical issues :(

Speaking of emu sites, are there still any good ones? I pop into Retrogames every once in a while and that place is a ghost town. I can't tell if that is just that site and lack of involvement from Atila and lev or if the emu scene in general has burned out.

I remember really liking IJ:Infernal Machine on pc. It had some nice colored lighting from what I remember. I made it pretty far into the game and then sort of sequence broke a puzzle somehow. It glitched out my game and I think I ended up getting stuck in the level geometery or something and not having a save to revert to. The Infernal Machine did me in! Looking forward to your write-ups.

Megahurtz