3 is…OK? Not great, but not bad either. It is the one where Kiryu becomes a full-on dad, which is cute af, because he runs an orphanage.
I am curious if the re-release (assuming it happens) will have all the cut stuff restored to it. Because some of that stuff was hilarious in its absence (gotta play mahjong to get this thing? well, we just took mahjong out, so walk into this empty parlor and pick it up off of a table).
I’m still planning on playing Kiwami 2 at some point having only played 0 because I want to try the new engine and I am not yet maxed out on Yakuza, but I think that’ll probably do me
MS: we will put effort into making BC happen
Sony, for the last 12 years: that’ll be $30 per game we decided to port, please. No, you can’t play those ps1 games on your Vita. Or PS4. Buy our awful mini console instead.
There’s a huge difference between the two approaches and I definitely prefer Microsoft’s. Sony in 1999 isn’t the Sony today.
And Sony today has already announced they are prioritizing it for the next gen so 
. Who even knows what they are doing?
I just always found MS’s approach of “maybe this game will work someday” to be a frustrating compromise, especially when it just never included the games I wanted it to. Like the odds it will ever include the JPN Cave games are non-existent at this point.
Finished a 100% playthrough of Banjo-Kazooie. I grew up not caring much for Rare’s aesthetic choices but after Smash Brethren’s recent canonization (in the saintly sense) of the conjoined animals I decided to finally play it. Still weird at first (the eggs and feathers you collect are sentient??), and a bit sluggish to adjust to in the current era (both in control and framerate), and the fact that notes were NOT saved if you died or left a level meant I had to make plans to complete levels, but every time I got frustrated and took a break, within half an hour I wanted to return to the game’s unique moveset. I gradually was endeared to the game. It’s a good thing, too, because Click Clock Wood took me three hours. Was worrying for a little while I might abort the playthrough.
A side note is that Grunty is accidentally one of the more sympathetic characters by being unapologetic in her “gross” lifestyle, and through literally every other character, including her sister Brentilda, constantly defining her by how tOtAlLy UgLy she is. Her obsession with being perceived as attractive is completely a byproduct of the environment. I only got to play Banjo-Tooie for half an hour before constant emulator crashes became too much to bother with, but I was relieved that in that time she outright murdered two characters. A lot less to unpack about that (unless you consider it payback for transgressions, which is also fair from a narrative standpoint). Justice for Grunty, I guess??
Lastly, I was searching Gamefaqs after finishing BK for fun (I recommend this with all older games), and found a Secrets FAQ last updated in 1999, apparently before Tooie came out. The entire document is speculation, a collection of rumors and the (probably young) author’s skepticism. It’s great, I love it.
I took a screenshot of these three points because the first two are actually true, and the third is hilarious. Two years after this document was last updated, Conker’s Bad Fur Day would drop, and I imagine this kid had to be STOKED (and then ultimately disappointed the swears are bleeped).
The Z->left C for bird feet running’s button combination, timing, and sound is engraved deeply into my brain
I love it even though nothing about it is as good as Mario 64’s long jump
i enjoy B-K but i think B-T is just straight up superior (i am surely massively in the minority here). i truly loathe grunty’s furnace fun in a way that i don’t hate anything in B-T. i get it, they wanted you to engage with the brentildas and gather the knowledge, but the implementation in GFF is just hot trash and i hate it. it is anti-fun. it is The Worst.
re: notes not being saved, this was allegedly a compromise made due to how little world-state data could be saved onto the tiny 4Kbit (that’s little-b bit, not byte) of EEPROM (most N64 games used EEPROM instead of battery-backed saves, though there are numerous exceptions as well - you can generally tell by feel because the battery-backed games are significantly heavier (Ocarina, 1080, F-Zero X are a few notable examples)). they changed how this works in the 360 and Rare Replay releases - all notes are saved on pick-up. this was also always how B-T worked (which uses a larger, 16Kbit EEPROM).
Somebody posted Trap Door here a few years back and I suddenly understood where the aesthetic of Banjo originated – it’s really good ‘rude slapstick’:
I know, it’s so absolutely Rare I can’t help but adore it
FWIW Microsoft has made essentially the same announcement as Sony - anything that runs on an XB1 will run on their next console, including the Xbox and 360 emulators.
I can play (many/most of my) Xbox discs, 360 discs, 360 purchases, etc. on an XB1, but all of my PS3/PS2 games, digital or otherwise, are stuck on that console. I wish I’d bought all of them on the 360 instead.
I wish I was in that shape. The 360 games I most want to be available on BC (i.e. the Cave shooters that aren’t on XBLA) are just…not there, and probably won’t be, even the ones that were released outside of Japan. At least some of them have gotten Steam ports.
Did anyone test if Coast 2 Coast actually works on a XBone? On the 360, it was a mess. The coin mode, for example, just had coins flickering in and out of existence.
I found this tidbit during my run and it helped me grapple with the inconvenience. The human element that goes into games is always the thing that makes them more appreciable and interesting.
oh my god this makes me want a BK done in the style of Kirby and the Rainbow Curse
It doesn’t, sorry. To your point, only games that they’re done the update for work. You’re not actually running anything off a disc - the disc is a license for running a copy you download in the emulation wrapper. Aside from Too Human (god, did they get the thumbs up from Epic to spite Dyack?), nothing with licensing issues is up there. I would totally take Outrun without Ferrari’s but that’s more work in 3D.
OTOH, the updated versions can improve on the 360 or Xbox versions - they all get V-sync and better texture filtering, and in the case of Reach it runs better than the original hardware. Some of the “X enhanced” games run at 9x resolution (720p Target x 9 = 4K). Halo 3 looks amazing.
It’s frustrating though, because MS totally lists Coast 2 Coast on the Xbone BC list, so an average person has no way of knowing if they work well or not based on the resources available.
Record scratch hang on what
Ah shit, no, it was on the BC list for the 360, but not for the Xbone.
Ahh, gotcha.
This is the XB1 list, for anyone curious.
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/backward-compatibility/available-games
Yeah that is the one I am looking at now. I previously had looked at the list of OG Xbox games that were (in theory) BC for the 360, which did include Outrun and Coast 2 Coast.
Edit: this list is really funny. Skate 1 and 3, but not 2.
Only odd numbered Skate games forever.
re: backwards compatibility
so when my actually backwards compatible ps3 bricked, my friend sent me a new one
i went FIVE YEARS not knowing i could just put any ps1 game inside it and have it work
i figured since ps2 games didnt work ps1 games wouldn’t either
so maybe ps2 games will secretly work on the ps5
