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      Valve request takes down Portal 64 due to concerns over Nintendo involvement

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 12 January - 19:23

    Window open inside Portal 64

    Enlarge / Valve took a look inside Portal 64 , saw itself inside near something involving Nintendo, and decided to shut down the experiment. (credit: Valve/James Lambert)

    Any great effort to generate appreciation for Nintendo's classic platforms, done outside Nintendo's blessing, has a markedly high chance of incurring Nintendo's wrath. This seems to apply even when Nintendo has not actually moved to block something, but merely seems like it might.

    That's why, one week after announcing that his years-long "demake" of Valve's classic Portal to the Nintendo 64 platform had its "First Slice" ready for players, James Lambert has taken down Portal 64 . There's no DMCA takedown letter or even a cease-and-desist from Nintendo. There is, as Lambert told PC Gamer , "communication with Valve" that "because the project depends on Nintendo's proprietary libraries, [Valve] have asked me to take the project down."

    Ars contacted Valve and Nintendo for comment and will update the post with any new information. Lambert could not be reached for comment.

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      Portal 64 is an N64 demake of Valve’s classic, now available as a “First Slice”

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 4 January - 20:45

    The Portal Effect, or seeing oneself step through sideways.

    Enlarge / Remember, this is the N64 platform running a game released at least five years after the console's general life cycle ended. (credit: Valve/James Lambert)

    James Lambert has spent years making something with no practical reason to exist: a version of Portal that runs on the Nintendo 64. And not some 2D version, either, but the real, blue-and-orange-oval, see-yourself-sideways Portal experience . And now he has a "First Slice" of Portal 64 ready for anyone who wants to try it. It's out of beta, and it's free.

    A "First Slice" means that 13 of the original game's test chambers are finished. Lamber intends to get to all of the original's 19 chambers. PC Gamer, where we first saw this project , suggests that Lambert might also try to get the additional 14 levels in the Xbox Live-only Portal: Still Alive .

    So why is Lambert doing this—and for free? Lambert enlists an AI-trained version of Cave Johnson's voice to answer that question at the start of his announcement video. "This is Aperture Science," it says, "where we don't ask why. We ask: why the heck not?"

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      Perfect Dark finally gets the full-featured PC port it deserves

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 3 November - 15:57 · 1 minute

    It's hard to go back to the N64 original after seeing the smooth visual and control improvement of this PC port.

    For decades now, PC players who wanted to check out Rare's seminal 2000 shooter masterpiece Perfect Dark were stuck with the compromises inherent in emulating an aging title designed for very different hardware. Now, over 23 years after its release, Perfect Dark has gotten the full PC port it so richly deserves, complete with graphics and control updates that make the experience much more enjoyable for a modern audience.

    The "work-in-progress" port from GitHub user fgsfdsfgs is described as "mostly functional," with "minor graphics- and gameplay-related issues, and possibly occasional crashes." But those are a small price to pay for a version of the game that comes complete with full mouse-and-keyboard controls for the first time, alongside a 60 fps frame rate, support for modern widescreen monitor resolutions, and even the ability to load custom levels.

    After some quick testing, we can say this is easily the best way to play Perfect Dark today. The mouse-and-keyboard controls in particular make this version of the game stand out from the quality 2010 Xbox 360 port . And while the character models and level designs can feel a bit repetitive and blocky from a modern viewpoint, the added resolution and upscaling represent a big improvement over the muddiness of the N64 original (despite the improvements enabled by the then-massive 4MB RAM expansion pack ).

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      Analogue’s next project is an accurate, hardware-emulated Nintendo 64 replica

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 16 October - 16:06 · 1 minute

    The Analogue 3D is the company's next FPGA-based retro console, but the company isn't showing the whole thing off yet.

    Enlarge / The Analogue 3D is the company's next FPGA-based retro console, but the company isn't showing the whole thing off yet. (credit: Analogue)

    Retro game enthusiasts will know Analogue for its consoles’ dedication to accuracy. From the original Analogue Nt , which used chips harvested from broken NES consoles, to the Analogue Pocket , which uses an FPGA chip to accurately emulate handheld hardware, the company has always focused on modern hardware that can play actual game cartridges while preserving the idiosyncrasies of the original game consoles.

    Today Analogue is announcing the Analogue 3D , a console that will use an FPGA to run games made for 1996’s Nintendo 64. Because FPGAs emulate consoles at a hardware level, they're much better at replicating all of the specific quirks of the original hardware, making games look and run like they would have on the original consoles without any performance problems or rendering inaccuracies. Like Analogue's other home console replicas, the Analogue 3D is designed to play original cartridges and not ROM files, and the cartridge slot is region-free, so it'll work with games from all over the world.

    Analogue didn't reveal a price or a specific launch date for the Analogue 3D, just that the console will show up at some point in 2024. It also didn't show off the design of the console itself or the controller, though it did tease both—if you look closely, you'll see an 8BitDo logo on the controller, the same company that made Analogue's replica controllers for its Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and TurboGrafx retro consoles.

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      GoldenEye 007 re-release finally confirmed—but it’s not the leaked remake

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 13 September, 2022 - 16:07

    It's back, "soon."

    Enlarge / It's back, "soon." (credit: Danjaq / MGM)

    One of retro gaming's worst-kept secrets has finally been confirmed by a tangled web of game publishers and license holders. GoldenEye 007 , the legendary 1997 first-person shooter that changed the genre on home consoles, is coming back.

    This Nintendo 64 game's revival is a case of "mostly good news, some bad news," as we're left reading between the lines of two vague announcements from the two biggest companies involved. The best news, at least, is that we now have two announced re-releases for the game, each covered in copyright notices from the Bond license holders at MGM (now wholly owned by Amazon) and longtime Bond series handler Danjaq.

    Switch: “Coming soon with online play”

    The first confirmation came from Nintendo itself as part of its latest Nintendo Direct announcement frenzy (which, among other things, finally confirmed the next mainline Legend of Zelda game's name ). One portion of the showcase focused squarely on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack subscription service, which costs $50 per year and includes a number of downloadable N64 games.

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      Switch Online : un jeu culte de la Nintendo 64 fait son arrivée sur le service

      news.movim.eu / JournalDuGeek · Wednesday, 17 August, 2022 - 08:00

    template-jdg-52-158x105.jpg Personnages sur des jet skis

    Afin de clôturer la saison estivale en beauté Nintendo réserve une surprise aquatique pleine de nostalgie pour son service d'abonnement.

    Switch Online : un jeu culte de la Nintendo 64 fait son arrivée sur le service

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      How to play multiplayer GoldenEye on four TV screens with only one N64

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Sunday, 8 May, 2022 - 12:00 · 1 minute

    One console, four displays, zero "split-screen" antics

    Enlarge / One console, four displays, zero "split-screen" antics (credit: B&H Photo and Video )

    Anyone who remembers playing GoldenEye 007 on the N64 likely remembers having to account for the "screencheaters" that would glance at another quadrant of the split-screen shooter to gauge an opponent's locations. There's even a modern game that forces players to rely on the tactic to track invisible opponents.

    Now, 25 years after GoldenEye 's launch, a museum has managed to do something about those screencheaters, rigging up a way to split a game of GoldenEye across four TV screens without modifying the original cartridge or N64 hardware.

    The multi-screen GoldenEye gameplay will be featured as part of the "25 Years of GoldenEye " event at Cambridge, England's Centre for Computing History this weekend. A proof of concept for the unique playstyle (with all the monitors awkwardly facing the same direction) attracted some attention via a tweet Wednesday , leading Ars to reach out for more details on how the museum pulled it off.

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