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The recent Nintendo Direct was packed with surprises, including a new Zelda and our first look at Metroid Prime 4.
Another neat addition was the arrival of the N64 FPS classic Perfect Dark on Nintendo Switch Online. Rare's seminal shooter is about to get another revival on Xbox Series X/S, so now is the ideal time to return to the game that started the whole series.
Sadly, the game arrives on Switch in rather bad shape, with several emulation issues making it a less-than-perfect experience for seasoned fans – one of which is Graslu00, who is one of the internet's leading experts on both Perfect Dark and GoldenEye 007, its spiritual forerunner.
Graslu00 has posted a thread on Twitter which lists the various problems he has encountered. The first is the audio. "It's way too low compared to N64 and this is not a settings issue, as explosions were equally deafening," he comments.
He also points out that the 'dizzy' effect is "broken on Switch" and makes it "unplayable". "This is instantly noticeable when playing the second level. On Switch, it's almost impossible to navigate just with the first levels of dizziness, and it can get to the point of freezing the screen entirely."
Elsewhere, smoke effects, which worked fine on N64, actually cause the Switch version to struggle. "On Perfect Dark, guns would emit smoke from the barrel after firing full auto or fast enough for a bit," says Graslu00. "This causes the Switch version to lag, while the N64 version was mostly unaffected by this. This affects gameplay a lot since... you know, this game is about shooting!"
There are also issues with lighting effects, input delay, music tracks randomly not triggering, texture issues and transparency effects. Graslu00 also criticises the online portion of the game, an issue which was present in GoldenEye 007. "Needless to say that the online part of this Switch emulator is unusable once again," he says. "If you're not in the same continent or even country, forget about it."
He concludes that "there's no point in playing this version, it's the worst. It's like playing on a 2007 emulator. Do yourself a favour and play the PC version instead." He is referring to the unofficial PC port in this case.
We'd hope that these issues can be remedied, but as Graslu00 himself points out, the issues highlighted with the NSO GoldenEye 007 a year ago remain unresolved, so we wouldn't hold out much hope.
What do you think of the NSO port of Perfect Dark? (205 votes)
- I love it
- I like it, but have noticed some issues
- It's a disaster
- I haven't even bothered playing it
[source nintendolife.com]
Comments 15
So, just "Dark", then?
Well, there's the Rare Replay Perfect Dark too. I guess they'll patch it, but as usual its reputation will remain tainted.
Classic Nintendo, giving fans terrible ports while suing those trying to give fans good ports.
Nintendo, what has happened to you? 😢
I'm not too surprised by this. I tried GoldenEye with the NSO controller and it just feels all wrong, the analogue stick just doesn't have the sensitivity and accuracy of a real stick. The N64 experience, more than any other console I think, just can't be accurately replicated without an original controller.
@-wc- you might say they’re full of… imperfections.
Not even gonna bother with this glorified rental.
I got the N64 original and The Rare Replay version.
That will do for me.
@BulkSlash
"... but Nintendo wasn't going to take 'just can't be accurately replicated without an original controller' for an answer!"
i agree with you! they didnt know what they were doing with the analog stick so they accidentally made it special (if flawed.)
I would say, there was a period after Nintendo messed around and perfected/cemented the soon to be standard layout with the SNES controller (BAXY diamond + shoulders,) where what you said applies to everything they did: Virtual Boy, N64, Gamecube, DS, Wii, and Wii U all have distinctive, aggressively creative controllers that can't just be mapped to any ol dualshock controller you have lying around.
This was the best time to be a Nintendo fan and I'm glad I was here for the ride ✌️ (statement of opinion, YMMV, all restrictions apply, see store for details)
@Yousef-
thats a nice way to put it! 😆👍
@-wc- Definitely, controllers are pretty boring these days, there's no wild innovation, just minor tweaks to make them a bit more ergonomic. I do like the idea of the impulse triggers on the PS5 (I've not personally tried them yet) but other than that, we seem to be ossified into a standard now.
Even Nintendo doesn't seem to have an appetite for trying to innovate on the controller front, which is a bit surprising considering they could have released all sorts of whacky controller concepts to slide onto the Switch.
Who is this guy and why do we care about his opinion again?
Didn't NintendoLife post almost this exact same article??
I'll post here what I posted there: I played this for an hour or so the night it released, and had a nice time with it. The only changes I noticed from the N64 game were positives - it was much sharper and clearer than before, with a much smoother framerate. And the widescreen mode works well, without any noticeable stretching or distortion.
Myself, I found the N64 version difficult to play back in the day due to its choppiness. Looking back, this was pretty common with games that used the Expansion Pak and a so-called "Hi-Res" mode. Hybrid Heaven and Command & Conquer come to mind, too. For those games, I played them without enabling the high resolution options, and found they still looked great and played pretty well in their "Low-Res" modes.
I've played the XBLA / Rare Replay version of PD, and yes, it is better than this one. But what we have on Switch, in my opinion, is something I'd rather play than the choppy N64 version.
( Though, to be fair, I'd much rather play GoldenEye, any day ^_^ )
Tons of Switch Online games have issues from the emulation. Even if you use the N64 controller (as although it copies the layout it doesn’t have the same kind of components as the original). F-Zero X is crazy twitchy! But it isn’t alone, the quick and simple Xbox port of Goldeneye was pretty ropey too.
I think it’s why there isn’t an N64 mini. N64 is just tough to do justice to via emulator, ideally you want people to spend serious time on a port to sand off the issue that occur with straight emulation (I’m thinking of 4Js effort on Perfect Dark for Xbox/Rare Replay or Nightdive’s Doom 64 and Turok. Nintendo’s Mario 64 in All-stars isn’t too bad either).
It’s just a strange machine internally with the complex but bespoke functions and that unique tri-point filtering, controller-wise with (essentially) 6 button front and a stick unlike any modern one, and comes from the worse era for the move from CRT to pixel based screens for the graphics too (nasty gaps in polygons, those textures that are tough to filter how the were etc) . Along with emulator lag that inevitably happens, games just end up feeling rough unless someone spends time (and cash) on it.
The Switch runs on a mobile chipset from 2015, and even though Nintendo has the source code in order to create emulators, even the best community emulators have trouble running some N64 games on hardware like the Nvidia Shield TV from 2017, which I believe is similar to the Switch. I remember back then, being able to run N64 games at all was a big deal. We really should have gotten a mid-gen chipset upgrade if Nintendo wanted to do this well, as many handhelds with more recent chipsets can run N64 games pretty well. Either that or these should all be ports. It would have been awesome to get a “Rare Replay Nintendo Edition” or something. The Switch 2 should be able to handle N64 emulation better, and hopefully be able to emulate through the Wii U, with native backwards compatibility to the original Switch.
If Nintendo isn't doing hardware backwards compatibility, then its usually going to suck. Their software emulation is laggy, buggy, unpolished, and generally worse off than fan-made emulation.
Fortunately Xbox 360 has both Goldeneye and Perfect Dark remakes easily accessible with a JTAG or RGH, no need to faf about with this sloppy mess, while having to pay for the privilege to access it.
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