Tag: switchonline

Official Mario Paint Videotape

Nintendo’s announced that Mario Paint has been released on Switch Online, a movie that I modestly point out that I called some time ago, although I hoped they’d offer an export option that would let you make easy use of your creations, although one can use the Screenshot button to save your creation probably. It’s not the subject of today’s post, but their announcement’s pretty entertaining, so here it is (4 minutes):

The announcement mentions that one can use the restore states built into the emulator to save your work, which is at least better than the single save file available in the cartridge, or “saving” your work to VHS tape as the manual suggested. Another thing mentioned in the announcement is that, not only can people use the Switch 2’s Joycons as mice to replicate the function of the SNES Mouse that came with Mario Paint and required it, but in an uncharacteristic bit of generosity, it also supports USB mice when used on the original Switch models.

Mario Party is an interesting piece of gaming history. Without it, Homestar Runner probably would never have happened. Five years ago H*R posted bits of Mario Paint work to social media on Thursdays, which they compiled in this video (4 minutes, sadly not able to be embedded).

That’s two videos already and neither are the focus of this post, so what is? This digitization of an official Japanese Mario Paint tape was uploaded by Jeremy Parish, it’s 31 minutes, and shows off some frankly amazing creations that were made in the days where you had to actually use the mouse to make Mario Paint creations, without resorting to outside tools or memory manipulation. Surprisingly, it also bears the logo of APE Inc. Shigesato’s company that made Earthbound! Here here, it is this this:

One more note about the announcement video! It mentions that Mario Paint songs have been added to the Nintendo Music cellphone app. It also shows off “Title Theme 2,” which actually isn’t in the app, but is revealed to be Totaka’s Song! Maybe it’ll be added at a later date?

Goldeneye on Switch Online and Xbox One

Ordinarily this would be the kind of thing that intrepid blob reporter Kent Drebnar would cover here some week, but this is too big to hide as just one of several links in an omnibus post. At long last, one of the biggest N64 games of all is getting a rerelease on Switch Online (oh, and Xbox One as well), even if you have to get the Expansion Pack to play it. It should be playable when, or soon after, this post goes up! It even offers widescreen support and online play!

All images in this post (except for the last one) from MobyGames.

While it couldn’t save the system in the face of competition from the Playstation, there is no denying Rare’s Goldeneye 007 moved an awful lot of Nintendo 64 consoles, and until now, 25 years later, unless you wanted to pirate it, the original cart and system was still the only way to play it. It remains the most iconic James Bond video game ever made, and it may still be the most popular. They got so much right when making it, both with respect to the franchise and to doing a console-based first-person shooter right.

WARNING: the following paragraph will make little sense to people who weren’t both N64 players and internet readers at the time when it was new:

The spirits of countless N64 IGN readers rejoice this day. a golden eye is an eye tat is golden! Sadly, all record of eye tat boy is gone from their current website, Google is of no use at all in ferreting record of it out of the present-day web, and it’s too much trouble to dredge its memory up from the Wayback Machine. So it goes.

The gaming landscape has changed so much since then. When shrinkwrapped Goldeneye 007 boxes first saw store shelves, Rare was on their way to becoming one of Nintendo’s most beloved second parties. People largely came to see them as like a British branch of the company, then the Stamper brothers wanted to sell, Nintendo somehow said no to buying, and as a result the company began largely to languish, until around the time Viva Pinata came out. Since then, the people who made it left Rare and went on to make the Timesplitters games, which are still fondly remembered.

Such is N64 Goldeneye’s legend that Activision once actually released another James Bond game by that name, that actually wasn’t a port or remake of the original but was more of a reboot of it, with the Daniel Craig version of James Bond included.

Goldeneye 007’s twin release on both the Switch and Xbox platforms must have required some deep licensing mojo, but perhaps not even as much needed to wrest the rights for a rerelease of a James Bond movie tie-in game from the Broccoli family, as well as the likeness rights from Pierce Brosnan. With that many owners looking for their pieces of the financial pie, the stars must have aligned mighty right for the game to see the legal light of day again. Someone, please go check R’lyeh! Cthulhu must be about to awaken!

“a golden eye is an eye tat is golden!!!!”
(image source)

GoldenEye 007 Shoots Its Way Onto Nintendo Switch Online This Week (Nintendo Life)