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It’s hard to believe that it’s been 11 years since the Nintendo 64 came out. It was a time when 3D was just being introduced and it was being accepted graciously. Yet, years later, we sit down at our Nintendo Wiis, plug in our Classic Controllers, sit back and enjoy some of our favorite classics that we played all those years ago; one of them, Star Fox 64.
Another thing we’ve had for some time now is Nintendo Power, and while flipping through one of my more recent issues I came upon a very interesting excerpt. Nintendo Power talked about how Starfox 64 looks much better on the Wii than the Nintendo 64, as well as the other three games released. This got me thinking, why would it look so much better? Could Nintendo have possibly taken the time to fix up the graphics? Or is this simply a case of better hardware?
Now unfortunately for me I didn’t have much time with a Nintendo 64 in my childhood but I have experienced the pleasure before. Recently my friend and I sat down and put Ocarina of Time in then played it for a while. Right after this we played Ocarina of Time on my Wii, we noticed some slight changes but we got pretty wrapped up in the game. He wasn’t too interested in the changes, but I was, and I was determined to find out why they looked better.
So after that experience I thought it best to take up some solo research. I browsed through some sites and looked at various pictures of the games on the Nintendo 64 then pictures of them on the Virtual Console; although I found finding good quality Nintendo 64 pictures proved very difficult. But then D4rk came to my rescue and found a video on youtube that showed the game on the Nintendo 64, Virtual Console 1.0 and the Virtual Console 1.1. So naturally, I’ve decided I’d show it to all of you. The first clip is the game on the Nintendo 64, the second clip is Virtual Console 1.0, and the third is Virtual Console 1.1.
Now when looking at these clips I saw a drastic change in visual appearance; it slowly gets better. With Virtual Console 1 (being the first release of the game on the Virtual Console), you notice some slightly better graphics. The Virtual Console 1.1 video obviously has better graphics then the Nintendo 64 version. Also, to clear some things up, the second release of the game on the Virtual Console was apparently to fix some bugs in the game, but it appears that they fixed more then just the bugs if you catch my drift. I find it rather shocking actually. I mean take a look at the water for a moment, notice how in the first it looks much sloppier, then when looking at it in the last clip it’s much better. It looks clearer and crisper.
Although, the visuals could simply look better due to the hardware, one detail kept popping up in my mind as I researched for information; the fact that some games like Kid Icarus had been altered. Nintendo removed many of the codes in Kid Icarus because of some programming issues that would make it too difficult to keep the codes in the game. Another game that had a lot of things changed was Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. The game has been changed a lot and instead of Mike Tyson they have “Mr.Dream”. So, if they would go to all the trouble to re-program a game then why not go through the trouble of fixing up the graphics? I’ve also heard that some other games have had the same thing done to them, a few have had codes removed, and some have had a few other small alterations. This makes it all more plausible that Nintendo worked on more then just making these Nintendo 64 games ready for the virtual console.
This may very well answer the question that has been on people’s minds for a long time: “Why haven’t more Nintendo 64 games been released?” Well Nintendo may have, for this entire time been secretly boosting the visuals which may have caused them to take longer to release their games. This is of course simply speculation, but I find that it makes a lot of sense. I mean go ahead and take a look at the other libraries of games on the Virtual Console. There are tons of games for the NES, SNES, Genesis, Turbo-Graphix 16; all of those have tons of games added. Yet, for some reason not many Nintendo 64 games. That is why I find it highly plausible that Nintendo really has been tweaking the games, maybe they’ve even fixed things that we don’t know about?
But, another reason could be the fact that there isn’t exactly the largest library of games for the Nintendo 64, it wasn’t the most popular system in the world. I mean this could all just be some clever marketing plan that Nintendo has concocted. Or, perhaps these games are harder to obtain the rights to. But, I highly doubt the second option since Nintendo has made most of the Nintendo 64 games. But, there’s also one other thing that comes to mind; perhaps it just takes longer to emulate the games? Maybe this is true, I don’t know a whole lot on emulating, but I’ve learned that it’s not very hard. So maybe, but I find the idea that they are fixing up the games to be much more plausible.
I guess, for know though, this will simply remain a speculation, but I think that with what I’ve discovered, it’s very likely that Nintendo is fixing up the games and that is causing them to take even more time to release these beloved games. But until we get word from Nintendo I guess we won’t really know. So I hope this has given you some ideas, and been an interesting read for you, I sure know it was interesting for me to find out everything I did! So until next time, keep gaming everyone!
