Emulators and the N64

I recently came across some Nintendo 64 emulators for a few games. Mario 64, Harvest Moon 64 and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask to name a few. When I found these games I instantly remembered the great amounts of fun on the Nintendo 64; it was the first gaming council that I owned; it introduced me to Starcraft (odd I know since it is a computer game) and it gave me and my friends many hours of fun. I have heard of emulators for the Nintendo 64 in the past and downloadables for other councils and I have been less than excited. For starters when I heard of the Nintendo Wii gave you the option to buy old games I thought it was a stupid idea, since the Wii remote would take an old game and add a motion sensor to the mix.

The emulator that I came across is for the computer so the clunky remote is out, yet so are all controllers, so there is a whole new learning curve as well as new clunky controls. The first few games that I have played had a pretty odd learning curve and I suspect a first person shooter emulator would fare poorly on the computer, since the emulator only allows you to use keys and no mouse. While playing these games I noticed one thing in particular, they haven’t aged well. Now maybe it’s my nostalgia goggles but I remember of games for the N64 like Mario, Harvest Moon and Majora's Mask being a lot of fun with a bit of a challenge, where as playing them now I do not get such an experience. Putting emulator conversion issues aside the games are all kinda mediocre not terrible but not great either. While they were instrumental for giving us the modern games in their respective franchises the games have not aged well. The graphics are blocky, controls clunky (I recall that they were the same on the N64 so I assume the emulator didn’t clunk it up all on its own), the writing bland (Majora's Mask being the exception) and none of the games were all that innovative. At the time they were released these games may have been great but they have been since surpassed by their newer incarnations.