Which there is so much clear hardwork and long nights in this stupid thing. Why the shortcut there. That’s not a question. The new world we live in where we have to stare at everything to decide “is this theft?” And so often the answer is yes. It is exhausting. It does inspire me to release and show whatever shitty art I make because I Know I Made It. The (Human) Flaws Are Beauty.
So looking at the logo I also have to consider the game has tons of different game songs played in the Banjo Kazooie sound font. And looking at the wider internet you get so many Nevermind but Mario 64 Sound Font (AI Generated.) Kurko seemed to give music credit on the trailers for his earlier mods but not this one.
It isn’t like there is a long history of romhacks/fangames stealling assets.
But this is different and we all know it is different and it sucks.
It is super frustrating all around.
Last night I did the Goldeneye and Bomberman stages and they were both fantastic. So much effort to translate a known 3D space into a Banjo Kazooie level. Its so impressive!
A Metroid Zero Mission hacker recently released a hack that allows you to play through the game as Zero Suit Samus from start to finish (this required a large amount of code and design changes to get working, so I hesitate to really call it lazy). (video for the curious)
Every single in-game illustration featuring the power suit was replaced by AI art.
And all the illustrations that already had ZSS were replaced by AI art as well (in an attempt at aesthetic consistency, I guess?).
It looks ridiculous.
I don’t know what else to say other than that it’s really deflating to see an otherwise talented person in the scene look at a task beyond their skillset and decide to just not ask for help from the talented artists in the community.
The Pokemon Snap level could have used 3 or 4 more people looking at the script because it took me an hour to figure out what I was doing. In the hub there are photos along the walls. You can go to 3 stages of Snap. You’re supposed to identify which photos are “real” go to where they were taken and butt stomp to reveal a jiggy. Gotta be the longest stage in the game.
Conker’s Bad Fur Day: this is certainly just the first 2 hours of Conker without any of the character assets. So you’re just playing a different Rare game without any of the personality. I had to turn it off for the night but if there isn’t some way to see the Mighty Poo, then why even. Because it was very easy to import Conker levels into Banjo Kazooie probably. The jump in texture quality is noticable. Not that anyone wants to look at lifeless or lifeful Conker levels.
After that the next level is Donkey Kong 64 so not holding out hope for stellar level design there either. Less characters to take out though. Like any at all.
Just maybe this game was made sebquentially and the effort and thoughtfulness of each level going steadily down is not a surprise. I really want to scream like a maniac at the Castlevania 64 level!
this isn’t a videogame thing, but a guy i knew at school was a really talented artist, regularly doing original pencil drawings in that style you saw a lot of at the time on like, marylin manson covers and such: all deformed demons and such.
the past couple of years he’s been regularly posting on facebook image generatir crap that’s also the most generic robot skulls and all that shit. it’s sad and disappointing.
I enjoyed reading your posts about this romhack Rudie. I played it for a few hours and sadly thought the moment-to-moment experience of playing the game sucked big time, but it was an interesting exercise in structural blending as you say. Like, what if you had a Banjo level but it followed a Goldeneye mission structure. Ahh so it’s like that huh. I understand completely. (jumps off the dam and dies)
It was funny when I had a moment of disorientation because I’ll be playing the beach-themed level from Mario and there’ll be the crab enemy from Banjo-Kazooie and it would feel so natural that it took a moment to realise it’s from the wrong game. The “sound font” of roaming low-level baddies. Makes me wish these nostalgic mashup games could have the wit of a Neil Cicierega album.
Very weird that they gated progress based on collecting notes whereas jiggies don’t seem to do anything? I just wanted to beeline to the levels I was familiar with. Why bother gating progress at allllllllll
i got a kick out of watching the goldeneye level - something about the weird changeability of scale involved in making the area both feel recognizable to the original but also work as a mascot platformer was more effectively disorienting to me than some of the more official plunderludics stuff tends to be, some real dream game of an 8yo energy in being able to swim in the water to that inaccessible tower etc
really enjoyed this part of the mission briefing too
