About the drone guns: I believe what has been changed is that the explosion from the drone gun death no longer damages the static model, leading to its destruction. Check and see if the explosion does any damage at all now.
I believe the bit about the muzzle flash. Several rereleased games had lights toned down, like the dark levels of Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2, where the animal buddy that provides light would turn around and flash the screen on the SNES release, and in the Wii U release of the Mega Man Battle Network games, flashing effects were dimmed or shortened.
Mario Kart 64 was changed twice in a similar fashion: The Lightning Item causes the sky to flash in a rainbow on original hardware, but on Wii Virtual Console, the sky simply darkens, whereas on Nintendo Switch, the sky simply flashes white.
They likely dimmed the muzzle flashes due to epilepsy issues especially after the Pokemon shock incident in 1998. Now it's required by Japanese practices to dim an quickly flashing lights. In Mega Man X4 in the Legacy Collection some of the bright scenes and flashing effects in the FMVs were dimmed
This predates the Wii U. I remember they also changed graphical effects in the Wii port of Super Mario RPG. A few attacks that had big screen filling animations got altered so there’s no flashing. Zelda 2 had a strobe effect completely removed in the GBA port and that was even earlier. It’s just a thing they do now. Lawsuits can come in hard and fast regarding this sort of stuff. That’s why there’s always a warning whenever you turn on a Nintendo console or a Sony one that talks about photosensitivity and taking regular breaks. I actually think it’s required by law in Japan
I've got a few thoughts on some of these. >Muzzle flash and yellow on the doors It's already been mentioned in the comments that I've seen but it's probably the same yellow toned down universally, though it might not have been intentional to affect the doors like that. >Drone explosions I don't know why but this often happens on emulator. Drones don't appear destroyed properly for some reason. Another thing that is actually shown in this video at 4:12 is that sometimes they don't explode at all. From what I've noticed when playing myself, it seems to completely skip the explosion if a second bullet hits immediately after the bullet that would have caused it to explode. I don't think this is exclusive to drone guns, but I can't remember for sure what else doesn't appear destroyed properly after exploding, so I could be wrong there. >Draw distance oddities My guess is that you're right about it being an issue with an increased draw distance on the Switch version compared to N64. You know how in Super Mario 64, Mario has a low-poly model that pops in and out depending on how far away the camera is from him? I would assume it's a similar sort of deal here, where certain objects like the dish and the metal crates are loaded in at default brightness levels, and the specific lighting isn't rendered until the camera/Bond are close enough to see them. It doesn't happen on N64 because the objects are properly shaded by the time they enter draw distance, but if the Switch version increased draw distance at all then it could cause this issue. As an aside, I never realized there was a satellite dish on top of that building in Dam. Now the random screen on the back wall that you plant the covert modem on makes so much more sense. Always learnin' new little things about this game... >Laggy Caverns I don't know anything for sure, but the only thing that came to mind is that I remember hearing somewhere that Caverns is actually split into two halves, and in that large upward spiral room, the game unloads the first "half" of the level and loads in the second "half" while Bond is making his way up the long spiral. My only guess is that maybe, for whatever reason, the Switch version always has the entire level loaded all at once, and that causes it to lag noticeably throughout. >Missing flight recorder behind the gate My guess on this one is that it might be similar to that odd disappearing wooden box mentioned at 4:58. The flight recorder may still be there, but unloaded just like that wooden box on Dam because Bond can't get close enough to make it pop in even with the sniper scope. If you really wanna test it out, try seeing how far away you can get from the flight recorder after the helicopter explodes and still keep an eye on it. If it's possible to get far enough away from it that you can witness it popping out of existence like the wooden box, then my theory might be true.
>Draw distance oddity It might be down to a couple of things. Models in the distance, like low poly Mario, are called LOD’s (Level Of Detail). After a certain distance the model will show more detailed textures and poly geometry. With LOD’s there’s an ordering on which ones are prioritised when seeing them from far away. My guess is the metal boxes are more important to be seen from a distance than the wooden ones. Which is why the wooden box pops in-and-out. I think there are items in them sometimes so maybe they were bumped down below the metal because they’re more complex. The fog might be down to primitive volumetrics. If you can imagine a large cube of fog following Bond around to make it look like there’s a fog everywhere. You’re right that the draw distance is really far now and I think you can see objects beyond the fog cube which is why they change colour. This may have been in the original N64 game, but because TVs at the time wern’t that high in detail appeared to be grey blobs so no one noticed. Juat adding my thoughts to the ball. Hopefully someone who knows more than me comes in to rage-comment I’m wrong and we all learn something hahaa!
for the plane: it looks like the shadow pass is incorrectly being applied. instead of being semi-transparent it's a solid texture of grey to black gradient.
To overcome N64's tiny texture cache, Goldeneye uses multi-layered textures and small texture pieces that were heavily clamped and resized to simulate larger and less repeated textures. By softening the muzzle flash, Nintendo probably changed the game's vertex alpha channels (transparency/opacity) values, screwing up most of the multi-layered textures. The plane and the tank textures didn't simply get darker, they became more transparent, revealing a darker texture layer underneath. This also could explain the toned down yellow details on the blue doors, the funky textures in Dam and the brighter text on the chopper.
These minor discolarations, draw-distance discrepancies, and texture duplications will truly usher in a new golden generation of Golden Eye 007 (c) hype and fanfare. One of your amazingly insightful and thought-provoking examples really drives home the fantastic realization that we are truly on the precipice of gaming and world history : "In one of the levels this is a slightly miscolored box."
Does anyone else feel weird that modern reviews are giving the game negative scores because... they didn't update the visuals or add any new content? I was so perplexed, like... yeah it's a straight port, some people actually want that, the original game on modern hardware
The Xbox version promised a remaster of the kind that Perfect Dark got a decade ago. The Xbox version is also so poorly optimized that I seriously hope they patch it. So I can't really say I blame anyone reviewing that version that way
I think the issue is that it's under the "rare replay" banner, which implies it's supposed to be a remastered/polished release. That, and it's subscription-only (for now). Though you might have a point with people being absolute dweebs for wanting companies to spend a ton of money poorly remaking games just so people can show off raytracing on reddit, upset that they spent hundreds on a console to play n64 games again because they know new games are garbage but buy anyway because they have no self control.
@@bigboysdotcom745 I wasn't aware it's under the Rare Replay name, it's not separate from that bundle? That's really weird, I would assume it would be a different version for Xbox
@Arcademan09 it's under a separate option in the store but it's a part of the rare replay brand, iirc. Regardless, subscription-only should mean the game is heavily supported etc, but the port really isnt blowing my hair back, even performance wise running on a Series X. Ive even emulated it pretty well on an OG xbox, which should speak volumes. They didnt have to release the XBLA remake, but they should've at least compromised a bit better. Personally, idc. I went out and bought the X just to play this game and I've got no major complaints. Worth every penny.
About the seams... It seems to be an emulation thing. I've played a lot of N64 games emulated and that's something that pops up again and again. It's something that's just hidden by the interlacing on the N64.
Hey Goose, would love to see how a speedrunner unlocks all cheats. Just a run through of each level showing a relatively easy way to get each cheat. Didn't know Goldeneye was out for the Switch, will definitely pick it up.
What I want to know is if records set on the Switch version would be accepted to the leaderboards in a similar vein to different regional versions being accepted, like how OOT had the iQue versions and Wii-vc etc and they were all fine.
I’ll be interested to see what your take is about the Xbox version Goose. Rewatching your old lore vids from years past has really helped improve my overall knowledge and speed when playing the game. Thanks again for all that you do!
I like that this video shows N64 footage that is actually accurate to the N64 version. I have seen thumbnails that make it look incredibly blurry in purpose just to make some "look how blurry it was compared to these awesome crystal clear re-releases!" point, but the footage in this video is what it would _actuallly_ look like on a real N64.
the seam issue might probably just be floating point rounding. similar to how platform raising in Bowser in the Fire Sea only occurs on Wii Virtual Console.
Gamedev here: The textures and brightness are all glitches based on emulation issues the emulator has. I expect most of those to get patched. The Helicopter text is readable because of the resolution. The texture is quite large, for some reason (probably to make it somewha readable on the N64) so it stands out now. The seams in the environment have always been there, even on the N64. But the resolution was too low to notice. As said, most of the issues willprobably be fixed. What they won't fix is the fact that all N64 games have a different texture filter. The N64 used a tri-point filter for their textures, something 99% of all emulators don't emulate. This is the reason some textures don't align properly when you emulate a game. The best example would be roads and grass in most games. Properly emulating the tri-point filter with a lower resoution would solve the remaining issues that won't get patched. If it were up to me, I'd render at 720p as the Switch does and give us the option to downsample to a lower resolution. That way we would still get a sharper picture than the N64 but also stay truer to its original look. Digital Foundry did a nice video on that^^
What baffles me the most is that it seems to track time differently. I'm no Karl Jobst, but with the modern controls and steady framerate thanks to current hardware, I did a beautiful, smooth run of Dam and got... 1:10 which absolutely bamboozled me. I mean, my personal best on N64 is 0:59, with its choppy framerate and horrible controller, I ought to get at least that. How could this be?
@@goatbone Might this be specific to the Xbox version? I haven't tried the Switch one, and it would be really weird if Goose wouldn't mention it as a biggest change in the game. Maybe Microsoft emulator works a bit different than the Nintendo one?
"The flight recorder could not possibly have been thrown this far from the helicopter" Us looking at the flight recorder right in front of us : mmmmmm press x to doubt
My guess for the visible seams is that it's a floating point precision issue - slight discrepancies in geometry between objects probably wouldn't have been visible on the N64 hardware as they would have got "rounded out", but the higher precision calculations on modern hardware reveal them in all their gory glory. Overall I'm quite disappointed with this release; I was really hoping they'd do a HALO: Master Chief Collection job on it. Just dumping the ROM, throwing in a few patches, and then running it through emulation is lazy - if it doesn't bring anything new to the table you might as well just fire up Mupen64.
I mean what classic game has Nintendo released to the switch that has had major game play changes? The only time they've done anything is the alternate game files in the nes and snes collections. Nintendo seems to only be doing n64 stuff due to people demanding it so loudly and not because they want to.
i really like your ge64 videos. ive seen a couple and some you waffle on a little too long but overall you have a really good approach and are very knowledgable on the topic. this video was straight to the point. and my critism of you waffling on is prolly more a "mood i was in atm" type thing and nothing to do with how you structure your videos. thank you for creating these and reigniting my love for golden eye
The draw distance thing for boxes works interestingly when soldiers are using them for cover. You can use it as a bit of a gimmick to great effect on Aztec.
I posit that the yellow on the doors is the same yellow in the muzzle flash on the AR33 which was made more transparent, so I speculate Nintendo substituted a color game-wide instead of per item when they reduced the intensity
Regarding this at @ 6:40 its due to Alpha textures being used. basically N64 had issues sorting the priorities of them out. This was somewhat addressed in perfect dark, but it did involve using something called "binary separating planes" which was a laborious process that had to be set in the games level editor properties.
The rendering issue with the boxes on the damn I think is because the silver ones blow up and I believe it had something to do with a mission where you had to get on a boat there and travel across the lake where the tower is on the other side of the map and they cut all that out. That don't explain the rendering of the brown box cutting in and out
Does the Switch version have the bizarre audio delay of the Xbox version? When you shoot on that version (at least when I do), the audio is so late that the gun is back to its idle animation by the time you hear the shot. No other game on the same setup has this problem for me. Also, running around, you can see the seams in the landscape's geometry on the Xbox: They pop in and out like bright white spider webs. It's pretty surprising how unoptimized the release on that console is. Also: *So close to 100k!*
I've heard about the audio delay on Xbox but I personally never experienced it, despite playing the game as soon as it was released (or rereleased, to be exact)
A lot of the texture differences, and changes to transparency (alpha) might just come down to shaders. Shaders are the instructions for how to take data and draw it with the graphics card. Graphics cards have changed significantly since the original game came out, and it might come down to differences in how the hardware executes the shader instructions.
the cracks are just due to the impossibility of perfectly replicating the specifics of the hardware, it's more or less a rounding error on some level. It's quite complex to fix. A huge huge thing is that this is not being rendered at its native resolution (this is probably what is causing all the weird texture scaling mismatching), this is invariably going to introduce seems because the math just doesn't necessarily work to that scale.
When playing the Switch version, I actually thought they had replaced the helicopter with a new model on the frigate level-the color of the text on the helicopter made that big of a difference to me.
With the seams with the textures meeting together and seeing the Skybox through them you would think that they would make the southern Skybox black and the northern sky part of the Box blue so when you look down at the ground if not as noticeable. But what do I know I'm just a loyal nostalgic old school fan of this game😅
So I've been playing this on Xbox One X on Gamepass. I love it. It reminds me of being a kid again. I'm actually really glad that they haven't changed much at all. I just wish a couple of things could be a little more HD. Like the ammo count is blurry still no matter what settings I use. That makes sense on the N64 on a SD TV, but not in modern times. Discovering that was my first "uh-oh" moment in the game. The second was when I got to the level Surface 1, where I immediately noticed riffs in the textures like you mentioned on Dam at the end of the video. It was so obvious. I saw a rip before I made my first few steps. But once again, I'm glad they didn't change much. Like I'm glad I can still do a lot of glitches. I learned that in Control, you can take out the last computer terminal (or whatever it's called) before protecting Natalya by throwing a mine towards the wall at a specific angle and looking away quickly so the wall unloads. Then the mine goes through and you can blow it up. Learning I could do that on the new port was awesome. It just does seem a bit lazy on the parts of the developers to have so many obvious missing textures and blurry details. I'm not a video game designer or anything, and I'm sure that's not easy, but def seems necessary before releasing the game. I understand it's mostly just a port and not really a remaster, but I can't help but see the blurry ammo count and not have some sort of bad taste in my mouth. It's just glaringly obvious the game wasn't quite finished upon release. I'm still loving it, just wish a little bit more care was put into the game before release.
I'm fairly sure that there used to be model cars and motorcycles on the desks in some of the Cabins on this level or the first surface level in the N64 version, but they are not present in this re-release...
I have a theory about the plane: I noticed during 007 mode, on DLTK settings, That the plane could take many explosions without being destroyed... i'm talking like, more than ten direct grenades - was that always the case? if not... perhaps the colour palette is becoming confused with an enemy colour palette or something?
This is Probably really stupid - But my possible theory: is that The plane and any "enemy"? Are now on the same Color palette - and I think maybe they tweaked The darkness of certain facial features of the enemy blood, To make then appear more bold or striking I think This texture gets Applied to the plane maybe? This, 'updated' texture(s) :) what do you think ?
2:10 - Best guess is that in the original, the code for its textures isn't correct, but it looks fine. In the Switch version, it reads the code differently and so the textures look different despite likely being the same.
I have said before and I will again This 'version' of Goldeneye really feels like a Beta of the game and not the final release version I had on cartridge.
I just played through the Xbox version. I didn't notice any of the pop-up issues. It was a fun trip down memory lane, but I honestly wouldn't have paid money for it if it weren't on Gamepass.
It seems harder to speedrun the new versions due to the new controller layouts/second stick. I had to really push for every second on streets on Xbox. I'm no speedrunner. But. It seems harder to hit the target times than it used to be.
Definitely lots of texture scaling/blending issues. The N64 was a bizarre piece of hardware, so it's not surprising that they can't get everything 100% on modern hardware. It did things... differently.
N64 is very difficult to emulate properly texture and mipmapping wise, so a lot of modern ports would have issues on textures. Even emulators like Project 64, 1964 and Mupen64 have similar issues
Is there a graphical seam on the warpable Depot door? I wonder if the graphical seams are bound to the hitboxes of the objects and geometry, and thus could hint at potential warps, perhaps OOB.
Knowing a little about 3D models, it looks like the airplane has inside-out normals. Which can cause it to look dark like that. Because the normals have to do with how the light interacts with the surface of the model. Just a theory. Without being able to look at the model myself, I couldn't tell you for sure.
It’s about time we get you to 100k… btw Goose, I have two Goldeneye Top 10s (hardest missions and hardest target times) getting a couple thousand views per day… you are my go to for goldeneye content, and I hope you enjoy the two videos I made. *They’re pushing 98% likes so far!*
@@GamerFolklore come by and see them my Canuck friend! Might be refreshing, if not infuriating, for you to watch something other than optimized speed runs haha
I noticed that in caverns, the enemies don’t wait until the door is completely opened before shooting. They used to wait. Scientists aren’t as receptive as they used to be. They just stand there longer regardless. Maybe it’s just me
One major comment is the Textures were not re-done for the upscaling taking place. Which is why you see alot of texture based colour changes etc. (IE: Dark plane)
The odd few texture problems, the surface 2 helicopter wheels for example, would obviously and has obviously been found today, back when the game released though I doubt anyone would notice or care and this, especially if they played PlayStation at the time too
My two cent using the few knowledge I have. - About the multiple "whale" texture, that's a thing that happens also when you make maps for Doom and you apply a texture on multiple sectors. In Doom map builders there's a specific key combo (Ctrl+A iirc) that "spreads" the texture over the sectors. Maybe they just missed it on those mountains :D - About the lag in Caverns: in the N64 version, Train was laggier because of the amount of enemies and the engine limitations, but this doesn't happen on the Switch. The latter might struggle with Caverns because it's a big level with a lot of textures that have been converted to something with higher resolution than the ones in the N64
10:00 DAMN DAM RENDERING! I never noticed any glitches when I played on it on the 1964 emulator, now I'm curious to go back and see lol since I only play pc. Btw Graslu00 is a true boss at this game! Thanks Goose! ✌
Chances are the brightness differences are accessibility related. There is guidance about how contrasting things need to be in order to meet certain accessibility standards, chances are they updated some of the brightness of the textures that would otherwise be too similar to surrounding textures
My guess for the rendering issues: they're using some sort of "upgraded engine" to run the game and that engine probably had different lighting parameters when it comes to lighting a scene. Also in my expirence of using Hammer to make maps in CSGO, if you decompile a map and recompile it- a lot of times you end up with the transform positions of objects being moved slightly or shifted. Which would explain why the seems of the level are more noticeable. I think that can probably go for textures like the Dam's mountain texture offset.
I wasn't sure when I saw in the plane but after seeing the model changing in lighting. Something has happened or has been changed in the renderer as it pertains to the lighting in the game. The fact that the models change in vibrancy is probably due to the LOD of the model having a different light mapping or different lighting settings from the others. Probably an oversight in translation. It's a lot of models to account for! The plane's model is probably a victim of new light setting too.
The dark plane and Tank is probably because the original version on N64 did not apply shaders to the plane but since the Rom is emulated the shaders may have been applied to the plane giving off dark shadows on the textures.
Great vid Goose! Super curious about your level times and how the new systems affect them. I’m no Eliter on the best of days, but things that I could usually do, like door and ladder warps, I haven’t been able to do on the rerelease. Might be cool for you to cover the “why?” of stuff like that.
I think the plane, the tanks and the doors all look darker because the Switch perhaps renders shadows in a different way, could it be? Or maybe it's for the same reason the muzzle flashes look less bright, that all or some objects are drawn darker.
A lot of these can be boiled down to the Switch’s emulation. In the first example, that’s a 100% intentional change as to not trigger seizures in photosensitive players, Nintendo has been doing that to their rereleased classics for years now. There’s also a strong chance that by lowering the brightness for the muzzle flash, that ended up lowering the brightness for the elevator textures too as they appear to be the exact same color. I noticed at 7:28, you can kinda see through the yellow marker on the elevator just like how the muzzle flash is transparent so that sorta just confirms it. Everything else comes down to the Switch’s weird handling of N64 games. Remember the whole shitshow regarding Ocarina of Time and all it’s broken textures and weird emulation quirks when it appeared on the Switch? It’s most likely the same case here, though nowhere near as egregious as they’ve started to iron out the emulator’s flaws. The Xbox port lacks nearly all of these issues, with the exception of the seam lines being everywhere and some pretty bad texture flickering. Why does this happen? No idea. Might be down to Code Masters handling the port instead of it just being a straightforward rom dump like the Switch version. Who knows.
darker plane-likely an emulation quirk, the switch handles the shading differently dam texture patching-probably a botched attempt to upscale textures? box pop-in errors-noticed this EVERYWHERE on Jungle, again seems to be an emulation error, the boxes have a light system applied to them which got broken? mipmapping error? i can't imagine why they'd need an LoD model, but it looks like the yellow icon disappears, possibly have something to do with the fog system as well? Frigate Rift-the size of the sea in Frigate seems way to big for N64, likely some imperfect skybox trickery was used or something
Regarding the tiles textures it's much likely that they aren't properly emulating the texture LOD properly. You can get the same issue to heppen on glide64 by turning off LOD emulation entirely.
How is he shooting the guards while clicking the like and subscribe buttons ?? Very tastey video. Goldeneye is so solid compared to some newer games where falling through the map is a common occurrence etc
I have a suspicion that many of the textures were traced over so they look better at the higher resolution, and a few of them ended up not mapping to the surface correctly either die to math errors with texture resolution or something along those lines. It would definitely explain the whale texture and the minor inconsistencies with the vibrancy of certain textures.
After playing through the game on Switch I think there's some sort of memory leak, I noticed the frame drops too when i was trying to get the cheat in archives 00 I imagine because I was restarting the mission constantly and found it weird as hell but I restarted the game and it started to run just fine again, weird, hopefully they look into it and fix it but if they don't it ain't that big of a deal only need to reset every once in a while
I'm going to Switzerland tomorrow and am planning on going to check out Dam in the actual movie/game. Let me know if you want me to look for anything interesting and i'll report back.
Excited to see the Xbox one, I have the game and some of the switch oddities aren't present. The seam issue is huge and I've noticed that the automatic weapons feel like they fire much faster, cause lag, and also vibrate the controller inconsistently. Curious if you find the same
my friends this is truly remarkable ! that after 24 years plus we are getting to play goldeneye on modern consoles 😅 on a side note they should of polished up and finished the xbox leaked version from 2007 as that had better graphics and throw in online multiplayer and job done , but no nintendo published the original and the leaked one was an xbox version so nintendo stuck the middle fingers up and gave us the n64 version which has more bugs then the n64 version and no online for xbox
