I wish that too. John is at his best when doing retro projects or even when streaming with Audie or My Life In Gaming. Realistically though, we know those channels tend not to have much of an audience.
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DF Retro: Dinosaur Planet - Inside Rare's Lost N64 Game + Star Fox Adventures Comparisons!
- Thread starter jett
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I wish that too. John is at his best when doing retro projects or even when streaming with Audie or My Life In Gaming. Realistically though, we know those channels tend not to have much of an audience.
That's my main takeaway from this video. I played SFA when it launched and knew it was a good-looking game, but man... it still looks REALLY nice in some of that footage. The 60fps framerate doesn't hurt either.
Starfox Adventures is such an underappreciated game. I absolutely loved it when I was kid.
What Rare was able to do early on in that generation is incredible. To go from the sub-30fps N64 game to a smooth 60fps game is a huge upgrade.
What Rare was able to do early on in that generation is incredible. To go from the sub-30fps N64 game to a smooth 60fps game is a huge upgrade.
A youtuber did a vid about it.
Seems like Goldeneye is really more about the Bond people not wanting that game to be rereleased more than anything Nintendo could do.
Gorgeous game (even to this day) but an all around unimpressive Zelda on a platform with Zelda. Banjo complimented Mario, being nearly as competent at platforming as Mario itself, and brought some fun and interesting new mechanics to the new genre. Star Fox adventures doesn't compare well to the 3D Zelda at all. Nothing particularly inventive is brought to the table, but damn is it pretty. Best use of the GCN's pixel shaders aside from maybe Rogue Leader. Seeing fur on Fox, and blades of grass on the ground astounded my young mind.
Awesome vid as always John.
Awesome vid as always John.
One thing I really disliked about the final product was just how brain deadly simple the combat was. It was a couple of notches below even the 1998 release of Ocarina of Time.
It looked so good doing it though.
So pretty I played the entire game, even though I wasn't having fun. And the first time I played it was four years later.
End of the gen, and it is still one of my visual watermarks for the gen. Easily as impressive as Chaos Theory on Xbox from a visual standpoint.
There was just something about the level design of Rare's late Nintendo releases that never clicked for me. This, DK, Jet Force Gemini and maybe even Conker. The presentation was superb but there was something not quite right for me in terms of their structure.
I get that.
I think Conker is probably the best game of their descent. But the variety of level themes and mechanics made up for the lacking level design. Something more open, connected worlds didn't have the benefit of. So the unimpressive level design was very apparent.
They really began to focus on the visual spectacle over core design in the last portion of the N64's life.
I was genuinely pissed at the moment that they seemingly forced starfox in it when it was some cool new ip with dinosaurs and a different character.
Also I was yearning for a real lylat wars sequel, so at the end never purchased starfox adventures.
Also I was yearning for a real lylat wars sequel, so at the end never purchased starfox adventures.
Loved this video. I've always wanted to see how the original Dinosaur Planet compared to Star Fox Adventures. So much is different, but so much stayed the same.
Star Fox Adventures gets a lot of hate, but I always thought it was pretty great. It was a competent Zelda clone (with some pacing issues tbf) that had amazing visuals and a brilliant soundtrack.
I started playing it again on Dolphin and was instantly impressed with how good it still looks. Though the controls haven't aged well admittedly.
Star Fox Adventures gets a lot of hate, but I always thought it was pretty great. It was a competent Zelda clone (with some pacing issues tbf) that had amazing visuals and a brilliant soundtrack.
I started playing it again on Dolphin and was instantly impressed with how good it still looks. Though the controls haven't aged well admittedly.
That's pretty much what I remember, Miyamoto was either visiting and saw the game or was reviewing it back in Japan (I think the former but it's been years since I read about it), and he made mention of how the Starfox characters would fit well in that world.
Finished the vid.
Dark1x, thanks for the awesome work as always!
I feel like Dinosaur Planet was even more choppy than any other Rare N64's game...or maybe it's the proximity with the GC version that makes it feels like extra choppy.
I feel like Conker, JFG and the likes were much smoother (and Conker doesn't even use the expansion pack!)
I don't miss the n64 version of DP seeing this vid.
The issues I have with the game would still be there (aside from the abrupt ending I guess) but the game would run super poorly (and I have HIGH tolerance to that kind of stuffs, like out of all the PAL n64 games I played, I think only the more hectic moments of JFG had me wondering what the framerate was, OoT? that was ok, SM64? Smooth. Of course FZero X was the better experience but still).
I knew that SFA was a really REALLY beautiful game but I never appreciated how much it really was.
It also shows how freaking badly most 3rd parties would use the system.
During the n64/GC era, Nintendo was good with the hardware but if wanted the system to shine you had to rely more on Rare or Factor 5 than Nintendo.
I can't find it now but there's a cheat code where you can replace every single stone with darknut in the 1st village.
The game was still running smoothly like nothing strange happen
Heck that's an usused enemy
Twilight Princess's engine is capable of so much more than what the game does with it, it's a real shame.
Dark1x, thanks for the awesome work as always!
I feel like Dinosaur Planet was even more choppy than any other Rare N64's game...or maybe it's the proximity with the GC version that makes it feels like extra choppy.
I feel like Conker, JFG and the likes were much smoother (and Conker doesn't even use the expansion pack!)
I don't miss the n64 version of DP seeing this vid.
The issues I have with the game would still be there (aside from the abrupt ending I guess) but the game would run super poorly (and I have HIGH tolerance to that kind of stuffs, like out of all the PAL n64 games I played, I think only the more hectic moments of JFG had me wondering what the framerate was, OoT? that was ok, SM64? Smooth. Of course FZero X was the better experience but still).
I knew that SFA was a really REALLY beautiful game but I never appreciated how much it really was.
It also shows how freaking badly most 3rd parties would use the system.
During the n64/GC era, Nintendo was good with the hardware but if wanted the system to shine you had to rely more on Rare or Factor 5 than Nintendo.
I can't find it now but there's a cheat code where you can replace every single stone with darknut in the 1st village.
The game was still running smoothly like nothing strange happen
Heck that's an usused enemy
Twilight Princess's engine is capable of so much more than what the game does with it, it's a real shame.
imo theres a difference between caring about the techniques and tech that are used to make modern games and the games themselves
Great video. Its nice seeing Star Fox Adventures finally get its due. That game was shit on so much at release (mostly mixed critic reviews however) . I remember getting it on launch day and loving every second of it. But for some reason everyone had a massive hate boner for it.
As proof of its poor legacy....The gamecube collectors market has blown up, yet Star Fox Adventures, a game stuck on the console...is still super affordable :)
As proof of its poor legacy....The gamecube collectors market has blown up, yet Star Fox Adventures, a game stuck on the console...is still super affordable :)
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It's very possible, but it's a lot of work & just hopes someone takes the time to do right. Right now no one has claimed ownership of doing it.
SFA was my first GameCube game and I really liked it as a kid. Of course it was before I had played many other Zelda games but I actually was sad when Assault had those shitty on foot sections
Man...I would love to play this legit off my N64 on a CRT. Looks like Rare at the height of their powers coming off of Conker's Bad Fur Day.
It was my first Gamecube have as well. I had never played Zelda or Star Fox before and I loved it. It's not a perfect game but I still think it's pretty good. I think it not actually being a star fox game coming off Star fox 64 made people upset and come in predisposed to dislike it.
Just to back up what I said with some actual facts:
Most of Rare's own junior staff members began hearing rumors of a buyout as early as 1999, as the N64 was a disappointment to Nintendo, and the GameCube didn't look like "it was going to change their fortunes", according to Justin Cook, who was working in the testing department of the British developer, at the time.
Martin Hollis, then head of software at Rare and director of GoldenEye 007, said that his company had been looking for buyers for "several years" (at least two) prior to the beginning of discussions with Microsoft.
Nintendo had a 49 percent stake in Rare, and the priority option to buy the remaining 51 percent at the same price as any interested party's bid. Cook claims Activision were in "substantial dealing" with Rare even before Microsoft showed up as a potential buyer, but backed out at the last minute, for unknown reasons.
Yamauchi (Nintendo's late president) "declined to offer more than a fraction of the value Rare was asking; shrewdly, it would seem", as per Hollis, and Microsoft, who "didn't even crop up as a potential buyer until late in the day", as stated by Cook, stepped in putting in a high price. In the words of Ed Fries, then vice president of game publishing at MS, if they drove a hard bargain, Ninty "would have the chance to buy at that low price and probably would".
Regarding Dinosaur Planet, which was supposed to have had a huge showing at E3 2000, in May of that year, we know from Kev Bayliss' recent opinion piece that the plan changed after they arrived in LA for the event: "We were told that we were going to keep a lot of our work under wraps because we had a meeting scheduled with Nintendo to discuss the demo". And when someone owns half of your company, it's not like you can go against what they tell you to do.
Bayliss continues:
Apparently, NCL were very impressed with what they had seen of the game and so during the show we met and discussed the possibility of a 'marriage' between the "Star Fox" and "Dinosaur Planet" IPs to create something really special. The idea was to create Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet (as it was initially known) for the N64, but of course we eventually ended up transferring to GameCube as that platform released.
Ninty had clearly already seen some of Dino Planet and were so impressed by it that I'm sure the change was already being proposed in Japan. In fact, Miyamoto himself already had a title in mind by the time he and Aonuma had an interview with IGN, on June 6, 2000:
IGN64: What do you think of Rare's lineup at the show? How about Dinosaur Planet?
Miyamoto: It looks really nice, doesn't it? I wish they would use Star Fox characters so that they could use the title Star Fox Adventures. Maybe I should call the team and talk about it [laughs].
The earliest report of the rebranding only came in March of 2001, by way of French GameCube site Consoles France. Bayliss' sketch of the logo still had the "Dinosaur Planet" subtitle, but even that was dropped (no plans of developing the series into a franchise, maybe?).
Also, after all that went down, SFA was supposed to be a launch title for the GC, being delayed much later into development. And I can't shake off my mind the notion that Microsoft announcing their acquisition of Rare literally on the day after the game was released wasn't a coincidence.
This is all just speculation, of course, even to this day. But it's fun to find new pieces of this puzzle two decades after the fact. :)
Agreed. Even though I still play the latest releases, I can't be bothered with DF's "analyses" anymore. I basically only watch John's videos. Retro channels (like MLiG, Modern Vintage Gamer and LGR), on the other hand, are my absolute jam, and it's a shame they don't get as many views.
Also, are you the same Yuuber I'm thinking of? :D
I'd already seen that video and thought it was very disingenuous of Matt to downplay Nintendo's mysterious "top level executive's" involvement in the cancellation of the remaster, especially when that bit of information came straight from one of the project's eight original team members (artist Ross Bury), as cited by Ars Technica in a recent interview:
"When it was put to Nintendo, everyone there approved it," Bury says. "Except they didn't check with the one guy who mattered. I believe I was told his response went along the lines of, 'There is no way a Nintendo game is coming out on a Microsoft console,'" Bury adds. (If you're wondering how some of Rare's N64 games eventually wound up on Xbox consoles, remember: Rare took many of its older games' rights with it to Microsoft, but not all of them. 2005's Conker: Live and Reloaded was the first example.)
That had been a rumor since at least January of 2008, when Kotaku Australia reported the following:
Looking for someone to blame over the whole XBLA GoldenEye fiasco? Try Nintendo! Sources within Microsoft who were very close to the project (and who also pointed us towards the above, alleged screen) have told us the game was canned not because of disagreements between the two parties, but because of Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata, who believes that, as a title which appeared on a Nintendo console, GoldenEye shouldn't be made available on a competitor's system. This despite a proposed deal from Microsoft that would have seen not only GoldenEye released on the Virtual Console, but other, unspecified Rare games (Jetpac? Sabre Wulf?) as well. How very upsetting. Before you set your tasers to "hate", though, remember, this is coming from one side of a two-sided story.
I'm sure those "sources within Microsoft" were the same Rare devs.
What Matt presented in his video was his own personal opinion, not substantiated by any actual facts. If you ask me, Kim Justice did a much better job telling the whole story (relevant portion starts at 1:39, if the timestamp doesn't work):
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Except that's not really consistent with either Bond IP owner's behavior from before to now.
Iwata having a problem with goldeneye because it appeared on a Nintendo console makes no sense too considering they didn't lock any other games that didn't feature their characters and James Bond sure as hell isn't a Nintendo character.
Nintendo can be petty (I mean just look at the hoops Squaresoft had to jump through to get GBA or even GC dev kits) so if they really wanted to make things difficult for Rare's publisher to release Rare's own back catalog that they financed (and considering that Nintendo owned like 49% of the company at one time and most certainly funded part of Rare's operation during the partnership) they would have retained legal rights to any number of their old games.
Nintendo's Iwata was also notoriously focused on their home market (DS and Wii direction is a reaction to their fortune in Japan as well as the trend they identified there, their handheld line in particular is absolutely a result of a company focusing on a lifestyle that is absolutely foreign to the US (Europe was irrelevant to them before DS/Wii)).
Why would they care that a game that didn't even sell that well in their home market that was absolutely irrelevant to their current fortune for nearly 10 years when they had no problem letting all their other partners from era do whatever with everything else.
And even then, Satoru Iwata died before MSFT released Rare Replay and that collection has literally everything but the Nintendo character games and Goldeneye and Microsoft is releasing games on Nintendo platform now.
It would make absolutely no sense why that particular chip wouldn't come up when they were negotiating to put stuffs like Minecraft on the goddamn WiiU if Nintendo's Iwata was the choking point.
Meanwhile we know that EON Production had a very direct influence on Goldeneye's look and feel, they mandated all other Bonds cut and had ATVI use Craig for the Goldeneye remake.
If you think ATVI wouldn't want to use Brosnan's face to market a game that is supposed to be a callback about Brosnan, like I know ATVI people aren't the smartest of the smartest but they're not that ignorant of the market they're working in.
It absolutely would make sense for EON Production to not want a Pierce Brosnan Bond game in the middle of their marketing push for Daniel Craig as Bond's face, doubly so if that game was going to be extremely popular as it certainly would be.
I can get that inside MSFT someone said "that's because Nintendo doesn't want to" but it doesn't really make sense in the context of the behavior of literally every single group involved and their legal standing.
Heck Rare Replay contains Snake Rattle n Roll AND RC PRO AM that was published by Nintendo in their incarnation.
And the later one is the inspiration for goddamn Mario Kart and a landmark title for NES !
Another great DF Retro episode!
I was incredibly excited for Star Fox Adventures at the time, but I found it to be a serious bore and I never completed it. John's take on it certainly has me interested to return to it sometime. Maybe I was just too invested in Smash Brothers Melee and Metroid Prime to give it a proper shake?
I wonder if Dinosaur Planet as its own IP would have existed and grown as a franchise on Xbox consoles if they never turned it into a Star Fox game? I feel like early Xbox higher ups would have pushed this instead of Kameo if nothing else.
I was incredibly excited for Star Fox Adventures at the time, but I found it to be a serious bore and I never completed it. John's take on it certainly has me interested to return to it sometime. Maybe I was just too invested in Smash Brothers Melee and Metroid Prime to give it a proper shake?
I wonder if Dinosaur Planet as its own IP would have existed and grown as a franchise on Xbox consoles if they never turned it into a Star Fox game? I feel like early Xbox higher ups would have pushed this instead of Kameo if nothing else.
SFA came out in a perfect storm where this single Penny Arcade comic defined the game's legacy:
These were apparently just called "Dusters" in Dino planet versions, though not sure if they're in this build?
SFA was probably the first game I played that really opened my eyes to the wonders of 60fps. I bought it off the value rack in 2004 not really expecting it to amount to anything but was instantly blown away by how smooth everything was and that feeling stuck with me through the entire experience.
Seriously great game. It may have suffered a bit from its repetitive combat and disappointed SF fans by mostly removing the shooter elements, but the adventure aspect of the game was top notch and the variety and quality of the puzzles and environmental interactions was on par with the Zelda titles of the time. I think it gets its bad rap from that idiotic Penny Arcade cartoon which incorrectly paints the game as a collectathon while ignoring the fact that the items you collect have in game uses, along with all of the other elements the game brings to the table.
Seriously great game. It may have suffered a bit from its repetitive combat and disappointed SF fans by mostly removing the shooter elements, but the adventure aspect of the game was top notch and the variety and quality of the puzzles and environmental interactions was on par with the Zelda titles of the time. I think it gets its bad rap from that idiotic Penny Arcade cartoon which incorrectly paints the game as a collectathon while ignoring the fact that the items you collect have in game uses, along with all of the other elements the game brings to the table.
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