Way to Play Super Mario 64: On Apple Vision Pro

Since getting my Frame I think I've spent more time playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 in 3D than I have doing anything else. 3D in a window is much easier to deal with then full VR from a motion sickness perspective.

I think the VR space made an unforced error by focusing a bit too much on VR and not enough on just plain 3D. VR is cool and it has a lot of interesting applications. But I've enjoyed my time with SMG2 in a 3D window quite a bit. I've enjoyed Triangle Strategy on my Quest 3S, which is a tactics game played on a diorama. There are some other applications based on the idea like shared dungeon crawlers modeled on table-top layouts rather than first person perspective. There's a lot of games that need only minimal tweaking or fiddling that could add a bit more visual interest by being displayed in full, true 3D. The space of games that could be improved by just being playable in 3D is much larger than the space of games that can be improved by VR specifically, since the former is a superset of the latter.

Subconsciously it may feel like if you're developing for a "VR" headset, it ought to be "VR", but that's not the case. It's a well-known trap in gaming in general that when some new tech comes out there's a rush of things that feel obligated to "exploit" the tech so as not to be perceived as being behind the times, but it always becomes clear that is not necessarily. Most famously, the numerous Wii games that had to integrate "motion controls" and turned a nice, easy, concrete button press into a vague, nondeterministic "waggle" until just saying "motion controls" with a certain inflection has become a meme. There's no problem using the VR headset to enhance a game... or indeed any application... without it having to be "VR".

My Steam Frame was cheaper than this 57" curved "gaming" monitor: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDQM55C9 If gamers are willing to drop that on nice monitors just to play games, it would make sense to drop that much on a VR headset to play them in 3D too... if there was anything to do with that.

Not fully relevant to the comment, but I've noticed that most motion sickness issues derive from an FOV which is too low.Big companies set it lower for performance reasons I guess, but on PC I always loved to crank it. And it's not about sitting closer or about the distance in itself, it's about the ratio of the size of the screen to the vision field it occupies

Agreed. Back when I used my Oculus a lot, a RTS game called Brass Tactics was my favorite.

Brass Tactics is forgotten today, but it represents a way of playing games that was totally unique and might some day be rediscovered.

Diorama style games in VR/AR are awesome. I remember Moss fondly. You could even high five the little mouse.

Triangle strategy released a diorama version like this on quest 3, and it worked so well imo that it make sort of sad that more top down isometric games don't do it.

Mario 64 is probably the game I have spent the most amount of time playing.

I had never really played any "open ended" games before it; sometimes I would just load up the game to run around, with no goals of collecting any stars or making any progress or anything. The platforming controls were fun even when there wasn't any specific "goal", and to a six year old kid the worlds felt huge.

As a cynical grownup who more or less knows how to write software, I now know that a lot of the "gigantic" feeling you'd have in N64 games was smoke and mirrors, but I didn't as a kid. It felt like if I just swam to some yet-unexplored corner of Jolly Roger Bay there would be something waiting for me. It doesn't hurt that the music is actually really good (particularly in Jolly Roger Bay).

Without hyperbole, as a thirty-something now, I've probably played through the game around thirty or forty times; I have most of the stars pretty thoroughly memorized and I can get an "any%" completion in a couple hours. I will still load the game up every now and again on my MiSTer. Despite being one of the first big 3D platformers, I still think it's one of the best.

yea you should be able to just map out a table surface and play a game of Civilization on it, seems like a no brainer.

Civilization done in this way would be really, really cool. So cool I'm surprised it isn't already a thing. Imagine a City Skylines-style game done like this! I wonder if there is some technical reason this isn't done more, I would be way more into a board-game style approach than the motion-sickness inducing first person perspective most VR games take. I know the Vision Pro's primary MO is this "spatial computing" AR approach, but surely there are ways of accomplishing this without requiring an almost $4000 device, right?

Exclusive to Meta (unfortunately), there is Triangle Strategy: https://www.meta.com/experiences/triangle-strategy/534013047...

Control is a bit dodgy, I kind of feel like it didn't quite commit to either the VR or the controller-like controls, but it's perfectly playable and is an interesting angle on things.

Some Nintendo fans think they know better than Nintendo and deserve ownership of the IP.

>What's everyone's take on the gamers cheering against the Nintendo?

Nintendo is a scourge on the gaming industry. Gary Bowser is going to spend the rest of his life paying them, they illegally send DMCA takedowns on emulators, threaten developers by sending goons directly to their homes, takes away your ownership of games with their game code carts, tries to control and destroy the second hand market. Nintendo can burn.

>Who's going to create this generation's own franchises like Nintendo did?

Nintendo created zero franchises in this generation. Splatoon, maybe ? They're already creatively dry.

> What will be their incentives to invest time and effort in any new IP?

Piracy and emulation have been present for the past twenty years. Does it look like no new IPs came out in those twenty years ? Hell, for the recent recomp projects, it has been people _begging_ to be able to play games on another platform, they would have paid for it. Bloodborne has gotten a decomp that people have been screaming for for years.

Companies that believe they can get you stuck on their platforms are going to crash and burn, and we'll all be better off for it.

(Also intellectual property as a whole is a farce and has made the world worse)

The skill of Nintendo, as game developers, is unparalleled. They produce some of the most incredible games of any generation.

Nintendo, the company, however, are soulless corporate monsters learning all the worst lessons from Disney. Especially nowadays.

That is outdated now. You can run emulators on iOS and you’ll find plenty in the App Store. The only limitation right now is no JIT, which is a problem for more modern console emulation.

Are you Italian?

I'm just curious, since I never heard "Note well" in English, but it kinda sounds like "nota bene"

Curious: You a baseball, or racing fan at all? For those two groups, I do think there are some killer apps for the vision pro.

Have you demo'd one? I use mine a few hours a day...great for pairing with a macbook and working from and awesome for movies too. Bit too expensive though

SM64 is an absolute masterpiece. It controls right, movement is simple and smooth, environments are varied. It's a totally ageless game.

Paper Mario is different and suffers more from being the first of its kind. If you're more into RPGs would be a better pick, but overall still a great game.

Would highly recommend it! The developers spent a ton of time on the movement, making Mario feel snappy and incredibly satisfying to navigate the worlds and maps. The levels might feel a little easy at first, but it gets increasingly complicated and more difficult as the game progresses (I still as an adult have a hard time with Tick Tock Clock).

Given the focus on mechanics, the game holds up super well. I'm genuinely impressed they were able to build such a good first ever 3d platformer!

They're very different games. I'd play 64 first simply because it's a landmark in gaming history, but Paper Mario is one of my favorite games ever.

Absolutely recommend Mario 64. I am of the age and fortunate enough to have the means to have played the flagship Mario game on nearly all of the Nintendos (starting with the NES), and my mind was blown regularly with the leap to SM64 easily being the biggest.

There's a new steam set coming out that looks excellent: https://store.steampowered.com/hardware/steamframe

It varies for each person. Would need to know what you prefer in a device.

Valve's Steam Frame runs Linux that you own, but is not generally available yet if you didn't reserve one already. It suffers from LCD, low pixel density, and awful passthrough, but the software is some of the best and only getting better. In a few years Valve may offer an OLED upgrade (or a new model, but fuck that)

They're all still pretty bad at around 25-40 pixels per degree, with the the higher FoV ones lower PPD.

Depends on your needs obviously :

- cheap Android that can potentially be rooted : Quest 3

- deep into the Apple ecosystem and not a hardcore gamer : Vision Pro

- gamer and Linux tinkerer or just want an open device : Steam Frame

The upcoming Meta headset is also quite nice possibly for remote work but again it's Android and from Meta.

I asked Claude and it told me it should be doable to port this project to Meta Quest 2/3. I plan to give this a try in the coming weeks

Because it’s such a failure, the used pricing on eBay almost looks attractive. The depreciation is very real.

Although it’s possible that the original M2 processor variant isn’t something to invest in.

One must not say something is "best"?

It's obviously not "the best" way to play; seems like even a bad filtering rule is right twice a day.