/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6380298
Oooo Ba Na Na

>>6380298
I've never heard of anyone shitting on the genre in general, in fact I'd say they're mostly loved with few exceptions.

People just hate DK64 because it's tedious. The world and controls aren't poorly designed, but the way you go about collecting everything is. The most collectibles of any collectathon and you have to constantly keep running back to switch Kongs. If they just mapped switching Kongs to the dpad it would've been one of the best collectathons ever.

>>6380327
Most of the time i hear that Mario 64 is the only good one, maybe the first Spyro or Banjo-Kazooie, but collectathons tend to be heavily criticized and often called a bad genre.
>If they just mapped switching Kongs to the dpad it would've been one of the best collectathons ever.
Dunno, switching isn't my issue since i tend to swap when im done with a character's item list, and tag barrels are everywhere and always placed near a warp pad so traveling isn't that annoying.
Also if that's the issue then play with the switch anywhere mod.

>>6380298
It’s just a mindless retrospective meme.

“Collectathons” are just proto open world games with smaller worlds and less narrative. But somehow zooms fail to recognise this just because you play as cartoon characters.

I never understood the term "collectathon". Apparently objectives are not a good thing to have if they are items? I don't at all get what this is even meant to imply. I personally think Mario 64 did everything well. The problem isn't the premise of the game. In the case of DK64, yes there is lots of collecting, but how does this being overdone in one game ruin something like Mario 64 or other games? It's nonsense.

>>6380347
Open world games are older than 3D platformers by quite a bit.

>>6380357
>Open world games are older than 3D platformers by quite a bit.
Sure but those are RPGs, not the modern definition of an open world game which is action based.

The point I was trying to make was that if you added a mission narrative cutscene before every golden banana, and replaced every golden banana with a gremlin who had to be killed, then you would literally have an early version of Assassins Creed. That’s all it would take.

>>6380298
A lot of the best collectathon games were made early in 3D platforming, and I think a lot of it had to do with how much of a new frontier designing levels for games like that was. The worlds were usually pretty unique from each other because they would give them the best idea of what gameplay mechanics worked and which ones didn't, and the items like Music notes and stars served a main purpose of keeping track of what a player had done and where they had been, and were given a secondary purpose later in design.

Ironically it might be that the more they learned about 3D level design, the less important it was for them to design levels in those ways in the first place.

>>6380347
Modern open world games are shit, too.

The problem is that collecting was used as a way to pad out the games length. The stages in most of those games are actually fairly small, but they take a long time to pass because you have to hunt down all the collectables and often replay maps after getting a new key/ability so you can collect more.
Theyre not bad games, but its just a flawed genre.

>>6380424
Same poster - they probably designed the games like this because making 3d levels was significantly harder & more time-consuming than 2d, so they wanted to get more bang out of every level they had.

>>6380367
Gremlins are my favourite AssCreed enemy

Was it necessary to collect all 100 notes in Banjo during a single visit to any given level?

>>6380526
Yes, to add a little risk to what is otherwise a very easy game

Stupid question, but are there 2D games that play like 3D collectathons despite of being 2d?

>>6380562
The Banjo GBA game. I liked it well enough, it wasn't bad.

>>6380556
risk of dying and starting over right? It's been a while but I'm remembering Rusty Bucket Bay and dying a lot

>>6380562
Yoshi's Island

>>6380298
I was a big fan of this game especially since DKC 1,2,3 were my favourite games as a kid. I liked how it had this endless replay value of trying to complete each challenge. You would go to a friend's house and be like holy shit how did you beat that one challenge that I couldn't? I remember helping every one of my friends beat the classic DK challenge because I had it for my NES and was decent at it. So many of my friends got stuck at that one point in the game.

>>6380526
A couple optional doors at the end require that you have 99% of the game’s notes.

>>6380298
"Collectathons" are a genre that was beloved back in the day but zoomer revisionism has created the false narrative that they're shit and no one ever liked them. A nonlinear 3D level with numerous secrets leads to vastly superior design than a linear hallway with a few easy challenges.

the only Collectathon level to take full advantage of the genre's potential for deep and complex level design, difficult platforming and requiring a large amount of player skill was Grunty Industries and everyone hated that level.

>>6380298
I think the genre is as hated as it is because it changed mainline Mario for a decade or so. if something like new super mario brothers had come out for N64 and Mario 64 was a separate thing, I guarantee the "colkectathon" genre as a whole would have been even more popular and would still be a thing today.

>>6380327
I think you should've been able to choose any kong you wanted. So you'd play with any style you wanted. Most of the their abilities are essencial the same.

The genre is very difficult to get right and can get extremely tedious if done wrong. It has the problem where it's flaws get dragged out because you're forced to replay small levels you hate over and over to get all the items.

The genre was extremely popular at the time but only like five are ever mentioned. Stuff like Muppets monster adventure are entirely forgotten and even some good ones with movie titles like monsters Inc are. That's how you can tell if s genre was good or if s few very talented people were able to overcome it's short comings. A good genre doesn't need specific titles only to work, like fps doesn't. But collectathons are such a razors edge of a genre that its too easy to fuck up

>>6384315
I don't think most people hate collectathons because of Mario 64.

>>6380578
It's so unfinished though. but it's a good game.

>>6384315
You're a fucking idiot. 2D platformers were dead at the time. They had become oversaturated to the point where they became an annoying meme. Mario 64 refreshed Mario who would have other wise died. Mario 4 would have lost to crash bandicoot because 3d was so big and 2d was so stale. It's the same reason 3d platformers died in the PS3 era. They had become stale after two console generations. 2d had nes/snes and 3d had psx/ps2. There's limited design space and the genre becomes more refined and more generic as it goes on. Which in turn leads to resident evil spinning off to become DMC and re4 leaving survival horror dead while those two new genres thrive

>>6380347
>with smaller worlds and less narrative
Hey gramps, that's exactly the big calling card that makes them different you dumb fuck. When a game strays from condensed linear levels to open world shit, the worse it gets in level design. 3D platformers are the happy medium.

>>6380410
Modern open world games are almost always shit. Other than New Vegas, I can't think of any that are good.

>>6384293
I dont remember nothing particularly difficult about Grunty Industries, and actually had more trouble in its BK counterpart, Rusty Bucket Bay.
The only thing I remember about Industries is how boring it was going up and down the main building to get things done. Thats a problem with most BT levels though, they are just too big.

The problem with collectathons is that exploring isnt a value in itself, its only justified by how much you can collect per exploration time. BK was perfect, because it felt like every tiny bit of the levels had something for you to do and pick up. While in BT and DK64 the collectibles are more sparsely placed because the levels were too gigantic to populate every place with items

Exploring is only interesting when your objectives are loosely defined, and there are rewards in uncovering new things, which is not the case in 3D platformers, where you know that in every level theres a certain amount of items to collect to finish it, and the levels themselves are built around this idea.

>>6380298
DKC 64 is garbage, the first 2 levels are great the problem is after the factory you have to do the entire levels 5 times each time, unless you patch the game to switch chimp anywhere!

I hate this genre. I dont know why youd play game with "exploration" as a "mechanic".
>trying to find the fun
>oh theres some fun
>I gotta change monkeys though

>>6384932
see
>>6384247
You're looking at the genre through modern lens. Keep in mind this was the first true jump from 2D to 3D in platformers, so the exploration of a 3Dscape was already something new and fun on its own. This goes in tandem with how Insomniac approached Spyro, to make sure the movement and exploration on its own to be fun even if you don't actually collect or do anything to progress.

>>6384953
>the exploration of a 3Dscape was already something new and fun on its own
This.

>>6382924
What.

>>6380347
Fundamentally yes.
The key difference is that most open world games has so large game world they haven't even figured out how to do over world traversal or implement good abilities.
But this is also the genre where you got Donkey Kong 64, which has too much shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYisr6GRJH4

Casually as underage its a excellent game, but it has aged due severe framerate issues and the extreme amount of collectables.

>>6380526
You needed to collect 765/900 to get to the final boss.
882/900 if you are bad enough to need the final health upgrade for 2x health.
And getting 100/100 is hard in a few levels due instantkill pitfalls, or running out of enemies that give you honeycombs.
XBLA version makes the game significantly easier, since what is collected stays collected. The same is true of Tooie.

>>6380327
Also its one of the only collectathons where 100% completion, or close to it, is mandatory.

>>6380298
Just live life without thinking too much about the autists in this board or the current videogame press in general. There's an autistic raging minority in here that pretend that everything about the N64 was bad, they will tell you that grinding in rpg's with cringe storys are great but jumpin around beautiful worlds are dated.
Also critics fucking loved Donkey Kong 64 when it came out, my spanish magazine called "Ok Consolas" gave it a 9/10 while drooling over the visuals, the world design and movesets. Even praised there was so much to collect, calling it longer than zelda as a positive thing.

Some youtubers complain about the game with a current mind set... but if you play an old game expecting modern perfection... then you are the retard.

>>6385063
that video is just as bad as that "bad game design" one, it makes the game seems overly complex and tedious when it's not even near that level.
DK64 has tons of items yes, but they aren't ultra hard to find or collect, if you're playing the game like an idiot and swap every single time you find a different item or special pad for a character, you're gonna make the game a chore, thinking about what character to use in a certain order (so the next character can freely explore the area and get his/her job done) and getting all of their items is what makes the game enjoyable.
DK64's biggest flaw isn't color-coded items or too many collectibles, is the overuse of unfun minigames and samey challenges (stomp this/use your instrument/shoot this to open door and play bad minigame), if there was more bonus barrels with stuff like the stealth maze or harder vine swinging challenges or actual platforming challenges to get golden bananas, it would make the game much more enjoyable imo.

>>6384932
spoken like a true zoomer.

>>6380298
I love them as well. They are really relaxing to play and are great to take your mind off a shitty day. Banjo, Mario 64, and Ape Escape are some of my favourite retro games.

>>6380298
Fur Fighters was the shit

>>6384321
I wouldn't even count it as such, you have mission objectives with 8 (optional) red coins, hardly a collectathon.

i love these kinds of games, they encourage and even revolve around exploring everything, which is fun
i for one enjoy figuring out how to get to every spot on a map, like "ooh what's up there?", "dang how do i even get out that far", etc. if you find collecting everything a chore, then the genre just isn't for you i guess.

there's nothing more boring than finding an obscure part of a map in games and there's nothing there
or being told where to go all the time and just taking a straight line from point to point, i don't want to always know what i'm doing! figuring that out is part of the fun! new games just don't seem to get this

>>6384293
the real problem with Grunty industry is this
>press switch so you can press switch so you can press switch to get access a single jiggy

a perfect example of this is the workers that you have to wash their clothes but before you can you gotta do a bunch of other shit, now I'm not saying there shouldn't be puzzles i'm saying the backtracking is really bad made even worse because the washing machine can't use normal warps.

>>6385340
I don't agree. All the shit in the video points towards the final goal.
Which means there is a larger meta progression goal. Unlike Banjo or Mario, where the gameplay loop itself is smaller, so eventually you are just at the final boss.

Still waiting on these to get their comeback. It really feels like 3D platformers and collectathons are a lost art by now.
>>6380562
Would the Spyro GBA titles count?
>>6384320
The Monster's Inc one was pretty good from what I recall. Muppets Monster Adventure looks fun, but the constant yammering would get old.

>>6385340

God the maze games are so fun, and exactly of those they put they least in and made them not even accessible in Snide's HQ. Why?! Just Why?!
How about you took some of the versions of Beaver fucking Bother, two of them in the SAME GODDAMN LEVEL, flushed them down the toilet where they belong and instead put in some even bigger and more challenging mazes to sneak around in? At least one for each Kong.

>>6385167
50% of Golden Bananas to finish the game dummy