Super Mario 3D All-Stars

17-09-2020 12:14pm

One other point is that the original "Super Mario All-Stars" package was a complete remaster - moving from 8-bit to 16-bit graphics and animation, redone music scores and also adding several features like save files etc.

Doing that today with modern tools would not be a lot of work but it would certainly have been a big effort at the time.

The whole policy of Nintendo "vaulting" its older best-known assets and continuously milking people on each new platform is cynical at best.

At least put some effort in if you're going to bareback ride your customers yet again!

Retr0gamer · 17-09-2020 12:26pm

Why were people even expecting these to not be emulated? As opposed to what? a total remake from the ground up? I think people need to be realistic.

Nintendo wouldn't release something like the Crash remake because that game ultimately screwed up the physics. Nintendo make sure their games play exactly as they did on release and the easiest and best way to do that is with a good emulator.

Also this is a N64 and Gamecube emulator. Two very difficult systems to emulate. You can point to fan emulation like Dolphin or the numerous N64 emulators but the fact of the matter is, they aren't perfect and in the case of N64 emulation they aren't great at all. There would have been a lot of effort put into making these emulators and getting them to run the games as close to the original hardware as possible.

People need to realise releasing these games isn't a zero effort production like downloading an emulator and roms.

Eduard Khil · 17-09-2020 12:27pm

Gods help anyone that pre-ordered in GameStop

https://www.gamestop.ie/SearchResult/QuickSearch?platform=&rootGenre=&age=&listSkus=275280,275282,275284,275286,275039

BagheeraBlue · 17-09-2020 12:29pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Why were people even expecting these to not be emulated? As opposed to what? a total remake from the ground up? I think people need to be realistic.

Nintendo wouldn't release something like the Crash remake because that game ultimately screwed up the physics. Nintendo make sure their games play exactly as they did on release and the easiest and best way to do that is with a good emulator.

haha he's at it again

17-09-2020 12:32pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Why were people even expecting these to not be emulated? As opposed to what? a total remake from the ground up? I think people need to be realistic.

Well how about forget remastering - there are plenty of other issues ignored.

How come zero effort to address the clunky junk camera in Mario 64? - imo that is just unplayable by today's standards - it's something that just has to be updated

Sunshine - very mixed historical legacy on this piece- put it in there if you want but it's not Nintendo's best work

Galaxy 2 should have been included

Handheld controls for Galaxy don't seem to be ideal - seems like a better solution could have been found imo and impacts the experience. Not exactly appealing for switch lite owners having to use the touchscreen / thumbstick and button combo

CiDeRmAn · 17-09-2020 12:50pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Why were people even expecting these to not be emulated? As opposed to what? a total remake from the ground up? I think people need to be realistic.[

Exactly.
To the typical punter, that the games on the new collection are running via emulators isn't going to make a blind bit of difference to the experience of playing Mario 64, often for the first time.

My Nintendo soaked newsfeed seems to be full of clickbait bull about the series, and when you read the "article" it turns out to be nothing more that faux-rage about nothing at all.

Nintendo wouldn't release something like the Crash remake because that game ultimately screwed up the physics. Nintendo make sure their games play exactly as they did on release and the easiest and best way to do that is with a good emulator.

Super Mario Allstars on the Snes was great but it did make changes to the feel of the originals, as well as the look, and I'm not always sure the changes were entirely welcome.

Also this is a N64 and Gamecube emulator. Two very difficult systems to emulate. You can point to fan emulation like Dolphin or the numerous N64 emulators but the fact of the matter is, they aren't perfect and in the case of N64 emulation they aren't great at all. There would have been a lot of effort put into making these emulators and getting them to run the games as close to the original hardware as possible.

People need to realise releasing these games isn't a zero effort production like downloading an emulator and roms.

And, on emulation itself, as a recent returnee to the emulator scene after a 20 year hiatus, you are now seeing consoles like the GC, Wii and N64 being emulated on a typical desktop with incredible results, and those running the regular game code from the original carts and disks with no optimization at all.

Exclamation Marc · 17-09-2020 12:53pm

Mine arrived from Smyths this morning.

Nostalgia train ahoy, but never got to play Galaxy so can't wait for that.

Retr0gamer · 17-09-2020 1:13pm

glasso wrote: »

Well how about forget remastering - there are plenty of other issues ignored.

How come zero effort to address the clunky junk camera in Mario 64? - imo that is just unplayable by today's standards - it's something that just has to be updated

Sunshine - very mixed historical legacy on this piece- put it in there if you want but it's not Nintendo's best work

Galaxy 2 should have been included

Handheld controls for Galaxy don't seem to be ideal - seems like a better solution could have been found imo and impacts the experience. Not exactly appealing for switch lite owners having to use the touchscreen / thumbstick and button combo

Everything you mention is not an easy fix. It involves either tinkering with raw binary code in the rom or complete source ports. Two things that are incredibly difficult to carry out and massively time consuming to the point where you would be better off making the games from scratch. There's way too many armchair coders on clickbait sites that seem to think emulating a game is as tough as downloading roms.

As for Mario 64's camera making it unplayable? Pure Hyperbole.

As for including Mario Sunshine? They are making available a game that hasn't been available since the original release. I don't see why this is a bad thing.

As for not including Mario Galaxy 2? OK, fair enough there.

Retr0gamer · 17-09-2020 1:14pm

Got an email from Gamestop. Delivery is delayed due to problems with not getting the stock in time so mine isn't shipping until friday.

Useless ****ers.

skerry · 17-09-2020 2:02pm

Exclamation Marc wrote: »

Mine arrived from Smyths this morning.

Nostalgia train ahoy, but never got to play Galaxy so can't wait for that.

Mine just arrived there too. Fair play to Smyths, they seem to be on the ball with preorders.

CiDeRmAn · 17-09-2020 2:03pm

skerry wrote: »

Mine just arrived there too. Fair play to Smyths, they seem to be on the ball with preorders.

I'm awaiting notification that mine is ready, then I'll collect

17-09-2020 2:08pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Everything you mention is not an easy fix. It involves either tinkering with raw binary code in the rom or complete source ports. Two things that are incredibly difficult to carry out and massively time consuming to the point where you would be better off making the games from scratch. There's way too many armchair coders on clickbait sites that seem to think emulating a game is as tough as downloading roms.

As for Mario 64's camera making it unplayable? Pure Hyperbole.

As for including Mario Sunshine? They are making available a game that hasn't been available since the original release. I don't see why this is a bad thing.

As for not including Mario Galaxy 2? OK, fair enough there.

as I said before, amateur hackers have ALREADY managed to put a right-stick analog camera capability into Mario 64....

and what are you talking about binary code

- Mario 64 was written in a high-level language -> C to be exact . https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/ccx6yz/super_mario_64_decompiled/

and the controls for Galaxy seem messy at best - they had to code those controls anyway to release the thing but don't seem to have made a good job of it.

um7y1h83ge06nx · 17-09-2020 2:21pm

Just some info for those that ordered from SimplyGames in terms of dates you may receive your copy...

My copy was dispatched this morning. I was on their site Monday and saw they had a great offer on Control for Xbox One (£14.99). Bought that and it was dispatched on Monday morning. Arrived to me today. So 3 days from dispatch.

Retr0gamer · 17-09-2020 2:27pm

glasso wrote: »

as I said before, amateur hackers have ALREADY managed to put a right-stick analog camera capability into Mario 64....

and what are you talking about binary code - Mario 64 was written in a high-level language -> C to be exact . https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/ccx6yz/super_mario_64_decompiled/

and the controls for Galaxy seem messy at best - they had to code those controls anyway to release the thing but don't seem to have made a good job of it.

Amateur hackers took years to implement that hack and no telling what it breaks in the game.

As for Mario 64 being written in C that's all well and good if you have the source code. It's all compiled into binary for the room and if you are romhacking then you are dealing with binary.

17-09-2020 2:33pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Amateur hackers took years to implement that hack and no telling what it breaks in the game.

As for Mario 64 being written in C that's all well and good if you have the source code. It's all compiled into binary for the room and if you are romhacking then you are dealing with binary.

I'd hazard a guess that Nintendo might have access to the Mario 64 source code.

In fairness you don't know how long it took in man-hours for hackers to implement the analog camera

Retr0gamer · 17-09-2020 2:44pm

glasso wrote: »

I'd hazard a guess that Nintendo might have access to the Mario 64 source code.

In fairness you don't know how long it took in man-hours for hackers to implement the analog camera

Seems they do have it still on file if the recent leaks are anything to go by. But also that doesn't trivialise what a massive undertaking a source port would be. a Mario 64 source port would be a full price game on its own.

And you can take a pretty good guess that the second analogue hack took a huge amount of time and effort going by the hackers notes and also how long it actually took to be released and how much of a bodge job it had to be to get working.

Fysh · 17-09-2020 3:15pm

glasso wrote: »

I'd hazard a guess that Nintendo might have access to the Mario 64 source code.

In fairness you don't know how long it took in man-hours for hackers to implement the analog camera

If it was that easy to emulate Mario 64 and modify the code, it wouldn't be something that generated recent discussion when the game is 24 years old.

Without info we don't actually know if Nintendo retained the source for Mario 64, nor whether it trivially allows for recompiling for the significantly different hardware that it would be running on if ported to the Switch. One of the issues with the Crash Bandicoot remasters is that most of the original assets were lost and the devs had to pretty much recreate the games and trial-and-error their way to making them feel true to the originals. (Source)

Also - look at the Link's Awakening remaster. Lovely, but €50 by itself. "Hey, wanna pay €60 a go for shiny'd-up old Mario games that will mostly not be as good as Odyssey?" is not a solid pitch to new customers, whereas "For €60 you can either get the latest and greatest Mario game, or a collection of older ones that are also still pretty good" makes more sense and avoids muddying the water.

17-09-2020 3:35pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Seems they do have it still on file if the recent leaks are anything to go by. But also that doesn't trivialise what a massive undertaking a source port would be. a Mario 64 source port would be a full price game on its own.

And you can take a pretty good guess that the second analogue hack took a huge amount of time and effort going by the hackers notes and also how long it actually took to be released and how much of a bodge job it had to be to get working.

The analog camera hack was less than 100 lines of code (excluding the white space)

see video below re hack

here is the source code for the hack (from link in youtube)

https://pastebin.com/punH7Fdg

there is no excusing Nintendo's complete half-arsery here.

and anyone suggesting that they don't have the source code - that's rubbish.

and even amateurs were able to decompile it as shown https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/ccx6yz/super_mario_64_decompiled/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85cvMzz8HUI

RocketRaccoon · 17-09-2020 3:45pm

Isn't it very simple, if you don't like the game then don't buy it. There's no need to bore the arse off the rest of us going on about binary and source codes hacking.

17-09-2020 3:48pm

RocketRaccoon wrote: »

Isn't it very simple, if you don't like the game then don't buy it. There's no need to bore the arse off the rest of us going on about binary and source codes hacking.

well some posters were coming out with absolutely bonkers untrue statements so why don't I have the chance to refute them in the discussion?

If you have no interest just don't read it m8.

the Mario 64 Source Code (with others) was leaked so if Nintendo lost it they can just get it from the internet :pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE7IDzVyfAI

RocketRaccoon · 17-09-2020 3:51pm

glasso wrote: »

well some posters were coming out with absolutely bonkers untrue statements so why don't I have the chance to refute them in the discussion?

If you have no interest just don't read it m8.

the Mario 64 Source Code (with others) was leaked so if Nintendo lost it they can just get it from the internet :pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE7IDzVyfAI

Don't read it? The majority of the posts in here are about whether it's a remake or a remaster or it's emulated. Anyone buying it clearly doesn't give a shiny sh1te so the posts about it are pointless.

Star Lord · 17-09-2020 3:52pm

glasso wrote: »

The analog camera hack was less than 100 lines of code (excluding the white space)

That doesn't mean that it didn't take a hell of a lot of time and effort to achieve that.

17-09-2020 3:56pm

Star Lord wrote: »

That doesn't mean that it didn't take a hell of a lot of time and effort to achieve that.

seems fairly trivial if you watch the video of the programmer explaining it about just reading and outputting inputs

he doesn't labour on about how long it took - quite the opposite - "so I programmed one"

Riesen_Meal · 17-09-2020 4:00pm

Saw a headline on youtube saying Galaxy 2 was included as a secret game? Is that clickbait rubbish?

17-09-2020 4:03pm

RocketRaccoon wrote: »

Don't read it? The majority of the posts in here are about whether it's a remake or a remaster or it's emulated. Anyone buying it clearly doesn't give a shiny sh1te so the posts about it are pointless.

it has actually been the subject of a quite lot of discussion on the internet in general. And here -> and the original poster in fact brought it up

now I hope that that shiny sh1te isn't constipating you too much.

RocketRaccoon · 17-09-2020 4:04pm

Fieldog wrote: »

Saw a headline on youtube saying Galaxy 2 was included as a secret game? Is that clickbait rubbish?

I'm sure one of the posters here would have mentioned it.

RocketRaccoon · 17-09-2020 4:06pm

glasso wrote: »

it has actually been the subject of a quite lot of discussion on the internet in general. And here -> and the original poster in fact brought it up

now I hope that that shiny sh1te isn't constipating you too much.

General gamers don't care, they want to play these games so will buy them. Do you think someone my age who played Mario 64 first time around really cares that it's not going to stand up graphic wise to todays platformers?

17-09-2020 4:08pm

RocketRaccoon wrote: »

General gamers don't care, they want to play these games so will buy them. Do you think someone my age who played Mario 64 first time around really cares that it's not going to stand up graphic wise to todays platformers?

that's not what the discussion here was about primarily.

and in fact the graphics resolution is something that actually has been upgraded.

more so the controls, why they didn't bother to update obvious defects like the camera in mario 64 etc

but as you say yourself, this particular discussion is lost on you.

Retr0gamer · 17-09-2020 4:11pm

glasso wrote: »

seems fairly trivial if you watch the video of the programmer explaining it about just reading and outputting inputs

he doesn't labour on about how long it took - quite the opposite - "so I programmed one"

It's very easy to explain your code once it's finished and you have it nicely commented.

Of course he is going to ignore the hours pouring over the fan community's crowd-developed documentation over 25 years figuring out what the hexidecimal values being spit out by the system are, making sure it doesn't clash with any existing code, finding the right authoring tools and whether this will actually work on hardware or the very inaccurate homebrew emulators we have now.

Writing 100 lines of code isn't like writing a 100 line essay.

I wrote a video game AI routine in about 250 and it took weeks and I didn't have to deal with hexadecimal.

17-09-2020 4:14pm

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It's very easy to explain your code once it's finished and you have it nicely commented.

Of course he is going to ignore the hours pouring over the fan community's crowd-developed documentation over 25 years figuring out what the hexidecimal values being spit out by the system are, making sure it doesn't clash with any existing code, finding the right authoring tools and whether this will actually work on hardware or the very inaccurate homebrew emulators we have now.

Writing 100 lines of code isn't like writing a 100 line essay.

I wrote a video game AI routine in about 250 and it took weeks and I didn't have to deal with hexadecimal.

as I said he explains in it in the very short video the process of capturing and outputting inputs and he delivers this message as if it was a trivial enough process.

I'm familiar with programming , can code and likewise know that comparing one programming task to another is irrelevant.

trying to argue that this was some big effort that Nintendo couldn't do if they were even 1/2 arsed is not very convincing

Super Mario 3D All-Stars

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