Is what I did and can you believe my excitement for touching that analog, oh boy that analog feels like I’m moving a stick in a bowl of sand. I already knew when I saw it sitting there limp and off-center in the auction pic, it didn’t look well. I can hardly press up without dislocating my thumb and it does make me ponder, just what N64 games make you press up all the time?
But instead of sticking with broken hardware like I usually do, I decided to like myself more and got a Hori Commander. Which is not one of those cool mini pads you might be thinking of when thunking of 3rd party N64 control options, no it’s like a regular three-prong monstrosity but the outer prongs are less monstrous because they look more like an SNES pad. It lacks grip imo, I feel kind of insecure with it, like I’m about to slip, but it works. Not nearly as grainy an analog stick too. Seems to be the same hardware but a lot less closer to death.
And yes of course I didn’t get any memory cards, excuse me controller packs, I mean paks. Fuck. Did I order some along with a shitty rumble pack, I mean pak, I mean jolt pak (that I returned because it made my ears bleed) for way too much money and did I end up spending more on peripherals than on the actual console? Fuck.
One of them controller paks is transparent and so is my Hori Commander which is why they will stay together forever, and not at all because Hori didn’t see fit to include that little spring mechanism to unlatch the latch that holds the pak in place, so getting it out involves the potential loss of finger nail(s).
Fuck. My controller paks have batteries and sometimes they aren’t recognized, and they have a button with which to switch between internal memory banks and there’s no indication of switching or which one you’ve switched to. I think there’s four. Or more. Sometimes switching doesn’t seem to work. Or they’re empty. Or I saved on multiple banks.
Did I mention that the N64 doesn’t have a controller pak manager? That’s a lie, you can press and hold start when the console boots with a controller pak utilizing game and it boots you into a custom menu that differs from game to game. You can look at and delete saves there. That’s about it. You’d think you could move or at least copy save files from one controller pak to another. You’d think.
My N64 came with two games. One of them is Toy Story 2 and the other a Formula One sim that only released in PAL land. You can see Michael Schumacher alive and well in a Benetton. It’s dreadful. I live in PAL land. Toy Story 2 runs like 20% slower than the US version. Or 16.6% or whatever the math is, let me just tell you it’s not good. I grew up thinking that seconds are longer than they are because I’m so accustomed to looking at timers in video games and they’ve always been slower when I was a child. Whenever I look at a clock now I get anxious. Time moves so fast. Fuck.
Toy Story 2 is probably a neat platformer when it’s running faster. I have a deep appreciation for miniature toy settings. Can’t wait to play Custom Robo translated.
I WILL GET AN ED64. Which is a cheap Chinese knock-off Everdrive, which is a flash cart, and you probably know that. But until then I’ll buy cheap games I always wanted to have as an anxious middle schooler.
I’ll talk about those next.