Handheld Wars #187 - Ocarina of Time 3D Vs. Star Fox 64 3D

I was just trying to fix my 3ds due to the X button being broken but had no luck. Two screws are busted due to me being an idiot and not using the correct screwdriver last time, so I couldn't unscrew them. I'm thinking about buying a new one, too.

Back to the topic: I was never a fan of Star Fox, so I'll go with Zelda on this one, as Ocarina is a great game and this port is solid, even including the extra Master Quest and some updated visuals. What bugs me is why the hell Nintendo still hasn't rereleased this updated port on the Switch, instead choosing the infamous badly emulation of the N64 original (ideally, they would offer both the 64 one with a much better emulation and an updated rerelease with even better visuals).

Unfortunately, Nintendo abandoned the idea of making truly 3D first party titles like these once they realized that the 3DS was flopping hard (the 3DS was considered a financial disaster early in its lifespan, similar to the PS3). outside of these two remakes, Majora's Mask 3D (which was a terrible remake BTW), and Super Mario 3D Land, there really aren't many fully 3D games for the 3DS, which is a tragedy considering that's what the 3DS was intended for. The only other truly 3D first party Nintendo game I can think of is Metriod Prime Federation Force, which everybody hated. A Link Between Worlds is top-down perspective, and Paper Mario Sticker Star, while very pretty, is merely 2.5-D like all the other Paper Mario games. When it comes to 3D platformers, action-adventure games, and flying sims/shooters (sans Pilot Wings Resort), the 3DS really doesn't have much to offer, at least in terms of first party games (i.e. the main reason people buy Nintendo consoles). Even when it comes to third party games, 3D offerings from these genres are rare; the only 3D platformer I can think of outside of Super Mario 3D Land is Rayman 3D, which admittedly looks like a solid port of Rayman 2, but still, one game ain't nearly enough.

Nintendo's output for the 3DS was just atrocious. These early 3D remakes like OoT and Star Fox 3D were SO promising and such great tech demos for the 3DS' hardware. I mean, the 3DS was no PS Vita, but it clearly handled 3D visuals extremely well, so for Nintendo to just abandon support for 3D first party games in favor of budget-titles like A Link Between Worlds and that watered-down port of Yoshi's Wooly World was outright insulting for people like me who bought the system expecting truly 3D titles from Nintendo like these two beautiful remakes for N64 classics. Even the DS had WAY more to offer when it came to 3D games, both first and third party. Proof:












And that was the fucking DS for crying out loud! There's no excuse why a wimpy little mass-produced calculator like the DS should have a larger quantity of 3D titles than the 3DS. Honestly if Nintendo had any brains they would have ported some of these 3D titles to the 3DS, because the analog stick on the 3DS REALLY would've improved their controls a lot. But then, this is modern Nintendo we're talking about. They're not known for making smart decisions. BTW there are tons of other examples of truly 3D games on the DS, these were just a small handful.

This is why I consider the 3DS to be easily the worst Nintendo handheld by a large margin (not counting the Virtual Boy). It squandered the system's competent 3D graphics capabilities in favor of 2.5 shit like A Link Between Worlds, Paper Mario Sticker Star (admittedly pretty, but still), the Pokemon games, that Yoshi's Wooly World port, etc. Nintendo totally missed the ball with this handheld. Even though I own a 2DS I never use the thing outside of playing my one VC game because there are hardly any good 3D games for it. Star Fox 64 3D is the only 3D 3DS game that is on my to-buy list. Literally none of their other games interest me, which is a travesty. Honestly owning a 3DS made me want to buy a Vita because of how badly I craved 3D handheld games during that time.


Cervantes Oddly enough, I played through Master Quest twice for the first time last year, and as a huge OoT fanboy trust me when I say it's a big letdown. The supposed increase in difficulty (which was a huge marketing draw for this remix) is barely noticeable to the point of being non-existent, and the remix fucks up most of the temples big-time; the water temple in particular is an absolute joke in Master Quest. Nintendo responded to complaints about the water temple in OoT by just removing 75% of it entire with Master Quest, to the point where even on my first playthrough it only took me 10-15 minutes to beat. It almost feels like there is no Water Temple in Master Quest because of how little of the temple is necessary to play through now.

The only temples I remember Master Quest objectively improving upon were the Great Deku Tree, King Dodongo Cavern and ESPECIALLY the Well as child Link. The way Master Quest remixed the Well was PHENOMINAL and even legitimately frightening; it practically turned it into a survival-horror experience. I was so impressed by how the devs remixed this dungeon that I don't even want to spoil the changes for you. It's just a shame that the only really stand-out area of this remix was that little dungeon before the Shadow Temple. I SO wish that the entirety of Master Quest had the same amount of thought, effort, and passion put into remixing the game as that one dungeon had. In that case it would have been twice as good as vanilla OoT, instead of merely half as good.

Master Quest is such an interesting case. It's so rare for console devs to make deliberate modifications of their own games as a stand-alone remix. Master Quest definitely had good ideas, like replacing enemies with harder monsters and changing the puzzles up. The problem is that the devs who did Master Quest put zero thought into remixing most of the elements & content, nor did they put any effort into optimizing the source code, either. This is especially apparent in one section of the Fire Temple which replaces hazardous rolling boulders with monsters. Even though I played it on the GC the game still lagged like a bitch despite there only being four enemies on screen. I also hate the overuse of stalfos in this remix. The vanilla game reserved stalfos for the undead portions/temples of the game like the forest temple, the shadow temple, and ganon's castle, but the remix throws them in literally every temple and as a result it messes up the atmosphere of the temples. Stalfos are one of my favorite monsters from OoT but I hate how they're used here. And that leads me to another big complaint I have about Master Quest: the AI was not improved. I mean, how can you expect a remix to be more challenging if the enemies don't have more intelligent scripts added to their programming? I've always wished that certain enemies from vanilla OoT were more cunning/harder to fight, and Master Quest disappoints on that front, too.

So yeah, Master Quest was a big disappointment overall and a HUGE missed opportunity by Nintendo. I would say the only reason to play it would be for The Well, which genuinely surprised me by how much it remixed that dungeon to the point where it was so much more effective as a scary experience. It made me realize that I really want someone to mod OoT into a survival-horror game.

I have so much to say about Master Quest (mostly negative) that I had been considering making a thread for it for months now. Maybe I will one of these days. It's such an interesting subject because nobody ever talks about it. I can't remember even being able to find reviews of it when I search around. It's a perfect example of a forgotten game, although I would say for good reason, seeing as how pointless it was as a remix to a GOTY title.

MeleeMonk - You brought some good points. I've played the Master Quest before (Gamecube version) and even then I remember it being a fun extra at most, like the second quest in NES Zelda, but not very exciting, and I do remember the Water Temple being a letdown as they took the puzzle element out of the dungeon. Besides that, I remember very little of it, as it was 15 years ago or so, so I hope The Well and the other good remixed temples hold up (I'm really warming up to the idea of buying a new 3DS or 2DS).

Anyway, about the 3DS itself, I do agree with you that it could have many more outstanding releases, to the point that one of its best features to me is that it's retrocompatible with the NDS. Looking at my games, it seems I ended up buying many more NDS games than 3DS ones (twice as much), so that tells something about the system. On that list of good 3D games on the NDS that you posted you didn't even include Okamiden, which looks like a true miracle on the NDS, with a very expansive 3d world.

As Bogard said, I think Nintendo shoot themselves in the foot by fragmenting the audience/developers with the New 3DS and 2DS: people with the original machine probably weren't very interested in an upgrade just for a couple of "New" releases (Hyrule Warriors, Xenoblade), people who upgraded never got enough games to justify it, developers probably didn't want to use to extra power due to how few people upgraded and any remaining developers for the machine must have considered the 3D as an abandoned concept as soon as the 2DS was announced, so later releases never even tried to push it. That's too bad, as the games that use 3D well, like Super Mario 3D Land, look really good and the effect does help a bit with the gameplay (I found myself always turning the 3D on for some of the more tricky platforming). I was even sad when they announced the Switch and it didn't have any form of 3D or dual screen, though that ended up working well for Nintendo as the Switch fared much better than the 3DS.

I still love the 3DS, mind you, but I agree that it had potential to be a much better portable if Nintendo just sticked to the original machine. It seems they learned that lesson, as the only upgrade to the Switch is its screen, despite all the previous rumours of a Switch Pro. Nintendo was certainly avoiding another New 3DS situation there, and I think that was the right call.