StarTopic Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack |ST| New 2024 Poll Up

[chompys_paradise]

I can't believe a deku stick glitch that crashes the original game crashes the game.

 

[Dark Cloud]

A compilation of some of the issues

Lol.

 

[VHS]

A compilation of some of the issues

jeez... this is really unacceptable for a paid product. This might actually be some of the worst emulation we have seen a company release commercially...

 

[SeafoamGaming]

It's very possible that they add more games out of alphabetical order following OoT. SNES games were initially added in an alphabetical batch and then they just threw them in whatever order (presumably when they got permission to use them).


Yes; there are still a lot of gaps left open for both, especially SNES.

NES carried over its game ID system from the FC/NES Mini, so it isn't 100% reliable for NSO as some of the IDs are likely for games that will never end up on the service. It's fun to see how many games they presumably considered for the mini console but didn't make the cut though!

SNES restarted its ID system for NSO and didn't carry over anything from the SFC/SNES Mini, so that's a lot more reliable in terms of games specifically tested for NSO.


I think those guesses are pretty good! I do think that 1080, Excitebike 64 and Harvest Moon 64 will return from Wii U VC though, so i'd make a few changes to fit those in.

Isn't Harvest Moon's JP name starting with B? that rules it out due to Tooie.

A lot of discourse today has been regarding OOT. How’s the emulation on the other 8 games? Anyone have a quick breakdown of how those games are running?

I 1CC'd Sin and Punishment last night despite not touching it in five years and it felt way more responsive than Wii U VC which had mild input lag. Mario 64/Tennis felt amazing to me, but OOT definitely feels a bit heavier than the GCN version I'm used to (better than Wii U but not by much).

I feel it's a game-by-game basis here... Making me wonder if this was kinda rushed due to Game Boy NSO not being ready.

Also I don't think including the deku stick thing in any compilation video should be taken seriously as a sign of NSO's quality, because the dude who made that clip only made it to show how funny the Switch online handles it: the same trick crashes the N64 cart version hard, and the Wii VC one is the only version that somehow doesn't have a fit when adult link pulls out a deku stick, so speedrunners always try that trick first out of curiosity to see how the emulator handles it.

I dont know why a wooden stick destroys the fabric of reality, but it just does.

 

[Lozjam]

If it helps, here is an instruction booklet for Phantasy Star 4. It helps explain some of the menu icons.

https://manuals.sega.com/genesismini/pdf/PHANTASY_STAR_IV.pdf

And yes, Phantasy Star IV is really good once everything starts clicking.

Thank you so much! This really helps so much without having to use a Walkthrough that spoils the game.

 

[Josh5890]

I'm giving Nintendo the benefit of the doubt that the issues will be patched in sort order.

 

[MegaXZero]

A compilation of some of the issues

The first thing shown is adult link using a Deku stick. Then the usual people having shitty connections. Figures people need to lie despite there being some issues to make this look worse.

 

[Intoxicate]

A compilation of some of the issues

Let’s say N64 emulation is flawed. You don’t pay 50$ for N64 emulation, it’s the package including NES, SNES and MD, AC + N64.
I think it boils down people don’t care for parts of the offering and the more customer friendly alternative would have been to be able to select the systems you want, like any of the 5 above for +10$. But they have the online access + cloud saves as the initial incentive to subscribe, the emulation is to keep you subscribed.

Looking at the Virtual Console feedback where they only sold some Mario classics I get the decision to bundle systems. I think they went a bit far to also include the AC DLC on top, should have been an extra tier.

 

[chompys_paradise]

There are absolutely genuine issues here and it'd be awesome to discuss them without people peddling nonsense for a bit of internet fame.

 

[DecoReturns]

Why are folks playing Ocarina of Time when Yoshi’s story is right there.

 

[Clix]

Yeah while OoT has some noticeable issues on NSO that person is also using some disingenuous points such as the deku glitch which crashes the original game as well and playing with an a bad connection.

 

[HockeyBird]

Let’s say N64 emulation is flawed. You don’t pay 50$ for N64 emulation, it’s the package including NES, SNES and MD, AC + N64.
I think it boils down people don’t care for parts of the offering and the more customer friendly alternative would have been to be able to select the systems you want, like any of the 5 above for +10$. But they have the online access + cloud saves as the initial incentive to subscribe, the emulation is to keep you subscribed.

Looking at the Virtual Console feedback where they only sold some Mario classics I get the decision to bundle systems. I think they went a bit far to also include the AC DLC on top, should have been an extra tier.

I've said this before but most companies don't like tier subscriptions. They rather you pay to get everything. NSO is in rare company with it actual having two tiers. Playstation Plus doesn't have an option to just to play online games. Xbox Live has a free silver tier but it's very limited and only recently could use it to play F2P games. For all other online games you need Gold. But that's how subscriptions work. You pay for both the stuff you want and don't want. Netflix has thousands of shows and movies, 99.9% of which you'll never watch. So don't get your hopes of that there will be another tier for NSO. If anything, it's more likely that Nintendo will begin to phase out the $20 tier years from now.

 

[Pokemaniac]

A lot of discourse today has been regarding OOT. How’s the emulation on the other 8 games? Anyone have a quick breakdown of how those games are running?

The visual issues are universal, but it's more noticeable in certain games than others (also obviously if you know what games are supposed to look like). Audio timing feels like it's off at times, but I haven't measured it or anything. I think the games have been found to have a little bit of display lag, but I'll defer to others who have measured it scientifically.

Otherwise it's mostly what you'd expect from Nintendo's N64 emulation, with Controller Pak support still missing for some reason.

 

[GJ]

Otherwise it's mostly what you'd expect from Nintendo's N64 emulation, with Controller Pak support still missing for some reason.

We talked about this a little last night. Looking at the code of the emulator there actually is Controller Pak support and even Transfer Pak support. But it seems like they can only enable one Pak at a time (which was of course an irl hardware limitation at the time) which currently for all of these ROMs is the Rumble Pak.

 

[Mandos]

We talked about this a little last night. Looking at the code of the emulator there actually is Controller Pak support and even Transfer Pak support. But it seems like they can only enable one Pak at a time (which was of course an irl hardware limitation at the time) which currently for all of these ROMs is the Rumble Pak.

I do find it odd they didn’t at least link it to the rumble toggle. Or for slot 2 for single player

 

[Pokemaniac]

We talked about this a little last night. Looking at the code of the emulator there actually is Controller Pak support and even Transfer Pak support. But it seems like they can only enable one Pak at a time (which was of course an irl hardware limitation at the time) which currently for all of these ROMs is the Rumble Pak.

The names are definitely there, but I don't recall there being any solid evidence they're implemented. One would expect that they'd enable Controller Pak for Mario Kart 64 if they could, because, AFAIK, that game doesn't support the Rumble Pak at all.

Also with respect to the one Pak at a time thing, they were hot-swappable (well maybe aside from the Transfer Pak), and my understanding is that not only did Winback support this, but there's an emulator script in place that's skipping the prompt to switch to the Controller Pak to save. In principle, I don't see why that script couldn't instead auto swap the Pak when necessary.

There's definitely some evidence that Controller Pak support is at least something they're thinking about, and could potentially patch in in the future, but if it was truly complete, it really should be enabled for Mario Kart 64 at the very least.

 

[TurtleRock]

The first thing shown is adult link using a Deku stick. Then the usual people having shitty connections. Figures people need to lie despite there being some issues to make this look worse.

The game usually crashes if you use a Deku stick with adult Link so the fact the game continues to chug along at 5 FPS is actually an improvement.

Honestly I don’t even know why people are latching onto this. There are legitimate issues in the emulation quality but this ain’t it. Complete nonsense and clout chasing.

 

[GJ]

There's definitely some evidence that Controller Pak support is at least something they're thinking about, and could potentially patch in in the future, but if it was truly complete, it really should be enabled for Mario Kart 64 at the very least.

Yeah, I assume it just wasn’t ready yet, or working as they wanted it to. It’s really weird to be presented with those screens and not being able to do something about it. Let’s hope they’ll keep improving the emulator over the next couple of months. I didn’t know the Paks were hot-swappable though. That’s good to know!

 

[ArchedThunder]

Swapping the pak should be a minus menu option.

 

[TurtleRock]

I’m pretty disappointed with the emulation quality of n64 games but that’s mostly because I expect Nintendo to have the documentation and resources to really make it as accurate as possible.

I’m not even all that upset about stuff like input lag. You’re always going to have to deal with some of that stuff with emulation. It’s hard to get down frame perfect timing and syncing. Just make an honest effort to get it as low as possible which I felt was not the case on WiiU and seems to be a problem on Switch (for some not all games).

However the stuff I will take issue with is are graphical effects and rendering bugs. If no one at NERD noticed the missing fog effects and reflections then I can only wonder if it was an intentional decision or they really don’t have someone on staff that has a keen eye for this stuff. If it’s the latter that feels unacceptable for a team whose intent is to emulate old games as accurately as possible.

The other issue I have is the lack of features. No controller pack support or button remapping features in 2021? We still can’t disable the borders? Nintendo, we’ve been asking for these things since NSO initially launched with nes games. Cmon guys what is the hold up with this stuff? This is the bare minimum I expected from this.

At this point asking for other stuff like being able to reverse camera controls (since n64 games loved to have inverted as default with no options) is a pipe dream. Let alone being able to play games at native res (for people that want to play on CRTs).

At the end of the day though I feel like NSO pivoting to a retro gaming Netflix was a mistake anyway. The actual “online” service is still laughably bad. I would gladly pay $50 a year and dump all the retro games for party chat, messaging, better netcode for online games, a faster download server for the Eshop and other online focused features. At some point Nintendo got the message that people care more about free games than actual robust online service and that was the absolute worst takeaway they coulda gotten from all this.

 

[Timefire]

I think those guesses are pretty good! I do think that 1080, Excitebike 64 and Harvest Moon 64 will return from Wii U VC though, so i'd make a few changes to fit those in.

I don't think Harvest Moon is coming. The Wii U VC release was before the series had to be rebranded over copyright issues, right?

 

[Pokemaniac]

Swapping the pak should be a minus menu option.

If they can make it happen automatically, I don't think there's really any downside, but, failing that, a toggle in the emulator menu would certainly suffice.

They will at least need some amount of UI if they intend to actually support the Transfer Pak to select which game to mount.

 

[MondoMega]

I don't think Harvest Moon is coming. The Wii U VC release was before the series had to be rebranded over copyright issues, right?

It was one of the last Wii U VC games; a week before the Switch launch in the US and July 2017 in Japan.

Isn't Harvest Moon's JP name starting with B? that rules it out due to Tooie.

I'm kinda thinking the N64 list is sorted by English titles (unlike the MD list); but right now Sin & Punishment is really all we can go off. Paper Mario will be the tell-all.

 

[Josh5890]

@MondoMega Not sure if you would know the answer to this but is it possible that one of the 38 slots could be for an SP version of an N64 game? They are really big in the NES app but there is only one SNES game with an SP version at this point.

Just a random thought.

 

[MondoMega]

@MondoMega Not sure if you would know the answer to this but is it possible that one of the 38 slots could be for an SP version of an N64 game? They are really big in the NES app but there is only one SNES game with an SP version at this point.

Just a random thought.

SP versions don't take up unique game IDs. That Super Mario Kart SP version is S-2016_[region]-sp1 while regular Super Mario Kart is S-2016_[region]

 

[Chie]

I don't think Harvest Moon is coming. The Wii U VC release was before the series had to be rebranded over copyright issues, right?

From what I understand Natsume owns western rights to the games they translated in Europe/america. Marvelous/xseed own the Japanese rights for those games and they own the newer games they have localized themselves worldwide.

So they could get Harvest Moon 64 from Natsume (who have supported Switch online) but they would need a separate deal from Marvelous for the Japanese version of the game to launch it in Japan.

 

[Cantaim]

I'll have to see if I still have my Paper Mario strategy guide in the basement somewhere.

This is legit a big enough mood that I kinda wanna see if I can get an old Paper Mario Walkthrough guide and play through it that way. I'd literally dreamed of doing that as a kid haha.

 

[Josh5890]

Maybe this has already been discussed here, but when upgrading to the expansion plan it seems like Nintendo is not reimbursing the exact amount that corresponds to the whole unused period of the original subscription.

Here in Europe the original family plan costs 35€ (0.09586€ per day) yet they are applying a 0.09€ daily rate when calculating the reimburse amount. In my case, since my subscription was originally renewed every 16/9, if I upgrade today to the expansion there are approximately 325 unused days in my original plan, which means that Nintendo will keep ~2€ just because of their rounding choice.

I mean, it's not a huge amount, but I'm a bit annoyed that they came up with such a "cheap" choice.

Hopefully I made a mistake somewhere here.

So I did a little math and what happened to me was was my family plan went from September 19th to October 25th of next year so Nintendo basically added another month to my plan so I payed $53 for the new plan extension to cover the next 365 days. Basically Nintendo automatically threw an extra month on my plan and had me pay the pro-rated amount for the extra 40 days.

 

[Josh5890]

SP versions don't take up unique game IDs. That Super Mario Kart SP version is S-2016_[region]-sp1 while regular Super Mario Kart is S-2016_[region]

Gottcha. Again thank you for all that info you found yesterday

 

[Mandos]

Hey guys, thought you should know, left bumper button turns music off and off in Mario kart 64. So it’s not the sound glitching it’s you hitting the wrong button

 

[Reinhard Schneider]

Hey guys, thought you should know, left bumper button turns music off and off in Mario kart 64. So it’s not the sound glitching it’s you hitting the wrong button

Yep, that was always there and It was a strange touch coming from Nintendo

 

[Samus95]

And once again Nintendo have the worst Online service on the planet

 

[Indyblue]

So why are some people getting input lag and others aren’t? I’ve seen news articles about the lag but I don’t have any and several people in this thread don’t. What’s going on?

 

[Thorakai]

So why are some people getting input lag and others aren’t? I’ve seen news articles about the lag but I don’t have any and several people in this thread don’t. What’s going on?

People just have different levels of sensitivities to input lag.

 

[Reinhard Schneider]

So why are some people getting input lag and others aren’t? I’ve seen news articles about the lag but I don’t have any and several people in this thread don’t. What’s going on?

My bet is mix between oversensitivity and suggestion, kinda like how MonHun Rise and Yoshi's Crafted World looked really good until DF delivered the numbers.

Personally, i'm way more sensitive to dead zone issues than to input lag to a certain extent (for example i do notice xCloud input lag, but NSO N64 is perfectly fine for me)

 

[Mbolibombo]

Did they ever say when they would release additional games? I'm only really interested in Paper Mario for the N64 and hopefully Nintendo shapes up and fix the emulation issues.

How is the Mega Drive / Genesis emulation? on par with N64 or good?

 

[Reinhard Schneider]

Did they ever say when they would release additional games? I'm only really interested in Paper Mario for the N64 and hopefully Nintendo shapes up and fix the emulation issues.

How is the Mega Drive / Genesis emulation? on par with N64 or good?

Yes, they will release more games, It was part of the reveal trailer.

And the N64 emulation is not bad, a bad N64 emulator would have real issues with sprites and particularly Mario Tennis. The issues are mostly focused on Ocarina of Time.

The Mega Drive emulator is really good. Got to the boss of the third stage of Shinobi III yesterday and it ran very well. It uses a different scanline filter than the NES and SNES emulators but that's it

 

[Jersh]

Two, they should have had NERD fully do the emulation, or at the least have them refine it now.

True, but someone mentioned iQue actually did the N64 emulation and NERD “may” have gotten involved. Which if that’s the case, that’s bonkers. The work they did with SNES on NSO and the Mini is fantastic IMO

Hey, I think you may have misunderstood my earlier post. We know iQue handled N64 emulation in the past for the Wii U and 3D All-Stars, but there's not significant evidence that they did much for this; there's far more references to NERD in the datamining than iQue. It seems likely to be developed by NERD with some sort of assistance from iQue; whether that was active assistance or just re-using some of their prior work, I couldn't say.

 

[Jersh]

Did they ever say when they would release additional games? I'm only really interested in Paper Mario for the N64 and hopefully Nintendo shapes up and fix the emulation issues.

How is the Mega Drive / Genesis emulation? on par with N64 or good?

There's no word on timing, no.

 

[Onilink]

Maybe this has already been discussed here, but when upgrading to the expansion plan it seems like Nintendo is not reimbursing the exact amount that corresponds to the whole unused period of the original subscription.

Here in Europe the original family plan costs 35€ (0.09586€ per day) yet they are applying a 0.09€ daily rate when calculating the reimburse amount. In my case, since my subscription was originally renewed every 16/9, if I upgrade today to the expansion there are approximately 325 unused days in my original plan, which means that Nintendo will keep ~2€ just because of their rounding choice.

I mean, it's not a huge amount, but I'm a bit annoyed that they came up with such a "cheap" choice.

Hopefully I made a mistake somewhere here.

Not a mistake, unfortunately. And i don't know why games journalist and people doesn't make a fuss about this, honestly.

 

[Onilink]

A compilation of some of the issues

Lol at the "your connection is shit" banner in mk64 part (and wasn't the first one a glitch that made the game crash in the original version too?)

 

[Ozeiyo]

I started playing Sin and Punishment and the controls feel off. It's so stupid that Nintendo won't let you remap controls for each game on NSO (or, actually, each game they release). Or allow you to create controller profiles. Sigh.

 

[Jersh]

Or allow you to create controller profiles.

I'm pretty sure you can do this one, but it doesn't fix the problem of going to system settings each time.

 

[Jet Jaguar]

A compilation of some of the issues

Lol they're using the infamous adult Link deku stick glitch to push misinformation smh

You can't use the deku stick as adult Link in normal play

 

[Robin64]

On another note, has there been a single report of satisfactory online? I really hope so. Even if it's rare. My friend and I want to play Tennis and, down the line...Stadium minigames (edit: just saw one above, that's good to see)

My friend and I played loads last night, he's about 50 miles away and our connection was always full bars. We began to forget we weren't even sitting next to each other after the initial slightly input latency was gotten used to. It's very good with a good connection.

 

[Ry]

Online has been fine with friends who live in the area, and maybe I’m just old now but I haven’t been able to notice the input lag in Mario 64 so far.

No button mapping is quite the bummer however, and I’m hoping the OOT graphical bugs will be ironed out at some point.

While I do wish there was some more time and polish put into this expansion pack, having nes/snes/64/genesis and hopefully Gameboy and GBA games one day gives me hope that eventually Nintendo will just go all in on a Netflix like monthly sub with a greatly expanded catalog. (I’m a dreamer!)

First post and all, the site looks great (dark mode for life), super happy to be here!

 

[Clix]

Hey, I think you may have misunderstood my earlier post. We know iQue handled N64 emulation in the past for the Wii U and 3D All-Stars, but there's not significant evidence that they did much for this; there's far more references to NERD in the datamining than iQue. It seems likely to be developed by NERD with some sort of assistance from iQue; whether that was active assistance or just re-using some of their prior work, I couldn't say.

Ah, gotcha! Thanks for the clarification. So then that makes it disappointing for sure.

I am going to assume it was a time issue because their abilities have already spoken for themselves in the past.

 

[Reinhard Schneider]

jeez... this is really unacceptable for a paid product. This might actually be some of the worst emulation we have seen a company release commercially...

That's a bug that happens in real hardware, dude

 

[BassForever]

What SP versions do you expect we'll see on N64 online? My hope is we see a Mario Tennis with everything unlocked to help get around the transfer pack issue.

 

[dingbat]

That's a bug that happens in real hardware, dude

There’s about 1:40m more video after that