Essentially a battle between the two sides of nostalgia’s collectable coin: on one there’s the ugly and hollow self-perpetuation of “oddjob slappers-only natalya AI bad” that the Nintendo-Microsoft marketing machine is currently indulging in - cravenly memeing about the pause menu music while the game’s original developers call foul of an emulator’s exhumation in the replies column; but on the other side, despite it all, there remains a more sincere evocation of random-access memory here, one that arrives in unexpected moments - on this playthrough I was struck by the sound of Natalya shooting a guard off-screen in the eerie silence of Jungle, the way the cartoon violence suddenly veers towards reality in a rainforest soundscape that thrives upon an absentia of Kirkhope’s otherwise-welcome elevator-electrofunk. It felt good to be reminded of a time when this game felt so real to us and there was genuine fear in Xenia barrelling across a rope bridge with a grenade launcher… I don’t want to go back, but I do like to visit.

Like Pokémon Red & Blue, this is a game that’s ultimately doomed to be misunderstood and maligned by those that came after us. Despite playing this game for days and years on end, I’ve never been able to perceive the all-consuming glitches, bugs and jank these games apparently stink of. A recent Twitter thread recommended switching the control scheme to 2.3 Mode and then using the Switch’s built-in accessibility settings to swap stick and button inputs around in order to get the conventional twin-stick shooter experience; many replies praised the OP for “fixing” the game on behalf of Nintendo - but in what way was the game broken? Why afford yourself precision aiming in a game that is best left in the hands of a frankly glorious Auto-Aim? Why deny yourself the James Bond Musou experience of running down Control’s corridors with dual RPKs on full auto? Why not indulge in a couple of thoughts about how game designers in the 1990s overcame technical limitations that they didn’t even know existed yet? Other gamers in proximity to the thread lamented the fact that the re-release does not include upscaled or redone textures and character models, but I’m not going to get into the Midjourneyification of preexisting art because I don’t like to write mean things about consumers who just want to hitch a ride on a Ship of Theseus that bears the false flag of Goldeneye: 007. It aged poorly? So will you, soon enough.

There’s an initial wave of disappointment here when you realise it’s mostly a value-rebased model/sprite/palette/layout swap of the retail Ocarina of Time rom, but that quickly gives way to a discovery that there’s been significant-enough fuckery with Link’s movement options and item pool to make this worth playing for way more than 10 minutes.

Only True OoTHeads will care about ideas like “what if you could manually control Link’s jump attack with two button presses?” or the ability to passively block while still running, but for those of us who know this game like the Triforce on the back of our hand, it’s just neat to have manual oversight of things like whether Link carries his shield in his off-hand or on his back. I ended up spending a hell of a lot more time just doing the classic Forest Temple Stalfos fight with the new (old, I mean…) control scheme than actually visiting beta map layouts of Kokiri Forest.

Would love for this mod team to refine Beta Link’s handling a bit and then stick him and his new magic spells into the v1.0 finished product for some kind of Ocarina of Time: Professional Edition hack that challenges your ability to make use of these refined gameplay raiments. Why wasn’t this stuff in the final game already, I wonder? I can only guess that Nintendo wanted to simplify things for players of all abilities, at the expense of some finesse that veterans of the 3D Zeldas would no doubt love to have back now. Kinda ironic that an attempt at niche nerd nostalgia for a prototype that was too rough to release ends up feeling like a natural forward progression of the final release candidate… Makes you wonder what wonders we could find in the uberblocky/janky Zelda 64 build.

Also just incredibly pleasant to have a debug menu that lets you load between N64 Hyrule vistas in a matter of seconds. I got to walk around the Chamber of Sages and talk to them! Wild horses roam free on the fields! Awesome!! Check it out!!!

Very fortunate that GoufyGoggs posted this review yesterday, eloquently saving me the trouble of having to write a bunch of thoughts about what it means to embark on the noble endeavour of trying to beat a shmup. Treasure's are particularly difficult beasts to grapple with, because they lure you in with flawless aesthetics and ideals and high-concepts that make you really, truly want to dedicate weeks of your life to learning and surviving a single bullet-beautifhell stage. Try as you might to master one of these things, there's only so many times us mere mortals can scrape past our white whales with x00 ships remaining, breathing in a sigh of relief and then discovering we were floating in the kiddie pool when we're pounded into pixellated dust by the first enemy on the next level. The only other option is to continue plugging fake coins into virtual slots, and that hurts so much more than the indignity of bowing out from Ikaruga at the start of the third stage.

Which is why the inclusion of a Story Mode in Radiant Silvergun is so welcome. There is no fuckin' chance I'm ever beating a shmup that's four times the length of Ikaruga with any legitimacy in this lifetime, so a mode that compromises for casuals by allowing me to play with a 1cc mindset but the gradually-building resources of a veteran is a great way to let me see every sleek sprite, bastard boss and pretentiously awe-inspiring cutscene that Peak Treasure had to offer the world. You almost tricked me into thinking I earned this glory, you mad masochistic masters!

Shoutouts to Microsoft and Treasure for giving this away for free on the first day of the year - a humbling experience that we all needed, a reminder that 1st January 2022 is just another Stage 01 after we all ran out of quarters on the last level last year, crashing and burning out of 2021’s wicked game. Let's get back to it, then... Maybe this run will be different...

I love it when modern games nail the feel of a PS2 hidden gem so perfectly. When I first saw the trailer back in 2017 I knew in was fully in, and Edelweiss didn't disappoint.

Love to be a wee shithead who gets humbled with the power of friendship and delicious rice. Love to grow food with pals, and juggle bad rabbits with my farm tools. Love to have the duck squad come up every morning to protect the paddy from bugs.

Eat Rice Every Day!