So I spent the better part of yesterday playing a couple Nintendo 64 games. Why? mostly because I felt like reminiscing and enjoying some really great titles (despite what some may want you to believe, the 64 had a ton of killer games). Also, my friends and I were chatting briefly about Kirby 64, and the topic of how round things shouldn’t be made of polygons (or some such thing) came up. That note made me curious about how well exactly they made that work back in the day. The answer, I’ll get to in a sec. That’s actually one of the main reasons I’m making this post.
Now, I was mostly playing games that came out near the end of the 64’s lifespan, and I’ve got to say that the graphics are startlingly adequate. Sure, there have been huge leaps in graphical quality in the last two generations, but were they really that necessary? Just take a look at two choice titles: Pokémon Stadium 2 and Kirby 64. If you boot up either of those games, you’ll probably be surprised at how nice they look. Pokémon Stadium 2 in particular has some very impressive character models, which look like they could have come out of a lower-end GC game. And the Kirby issue? Quite frankly, Kirby is impressively round, considering he’s made out of decidedly not-round polygons. I’m pretty sure most of the round enemies are just made of rotating 2D circles (I forget what that’s called, or if it even has a name), but Kirby is the real deal, and he looks (and moves) great.
Given, both of those games are pretty easy on the system otherwise, so I suppose grahpic quality could possibly have been optimized because of that. But then again, Conker’s Bad Fur Day and Donkey Kong 64 both had huge environments and a lot going on, as well as fantastic (for the hardware) visuals, so I guess that’s a bit of a moot point.
I’m not sure where I was going to go with this, but it seems like I’m trying to say something along the lines of how I was more than satisfied with where graphics were at around seven years ago. Yeah, smoother textures and higher poly counts are nice and all, but we haven’t seen a single Kirby game since the 64 era where you can mix powers, so what’s up with that? Oh man, and if you could mix powers and have more than one attack per power? That would kick so much ass that my head hurts thinking about it. Come on Nintendo, I know you’re cooking up a Kirby game for the Wii. Indulge me! Or at least release Kirby 64 on the Virtual Console so I don’t have to play it on these shitty, shitty emulators… Also, classic Game Boy games would be nice too.
Oh right, and jus’ta let ya’ll know, Wario: Master of Disguise? Not so great. Parish was a little harder on it than I would say needed be, but it most certainly does not live up to the majesty that is Wario Land 2 (best classic GB game EVAR), or even WL3 for that matter, which I found was the weakest of the series.
This post took me exactly half an hour to write.