Friendly Fire Show: Episode 64

A couple of weeks ago, the guys over at the Friendly fire Show released their 64th episode dedicated to the N64 titled “Nintendo 64 Special”. Let’s have a look!

Friendly Fire Show: Episode 64

No transcript of this episode because fuck it, I can’t be bothered to transcribe what is almost an hour and a half’s worth of podcast.

So the episode begins with the Mario Kart 64 race start and Lakitu traffic light music. Then one of the guys re-enacts the Nintendo 64 Kid video. So far so good, it’s a bit of a silly opening but it’s good to have a laid-back and informal style when making a podcast.

At about 3 minutes in, they start talking about the Nintendo 64 and a bit of the history about its name, saying that ‘Project Reality’ is the worst out of the bunch and was later named the Ultra 64 because that’s how things were called in the 90’s. Now, I have to disagree on both accounts. I think that Project Reality is a pretty good name since that is what the N64 was hoping to achieve. On the SNES, you ere limited to sprites and very crude untextured polygons. The N64 was certainly a large step towards making things more realistic. Also, calling it the Ultra 64 makes sense as it is a step up from ‘super’, the only other option being calling it the ‘Super Duper Nintendo Entertainment System’.

Next they talk about Cruis’n USA and Killer Instinct demos that weren’t running on the Ultra 64 hardware, but rather dedicated arcade hardware. The reason behind this is that the developers were overestimating the power of the N64 since the console was still in development at the time, and later had to downgrade it in order to work on the final version of the console.

The next few minutes are spent talking about how the N64 was released after the PS1 and Sega Saturn and how the whole ‘bits’ thing worked, something about Resident Evil and the Gamecube and the pricing of the Nintendo 64 and other consoles based on inflation. Nothing that’d I consider commenting on.

Next they discuss the Nintendo 64 controller. Ho boy were we go with the hate. They start with how the joysticks tend to wear off and how that doesn’t really happen with modern games. Well of course they sucked! They were the first of their kind, if you exclude the Atari 5200 and the Vectrex. After the N64, every controller included an analogue stick. Or even two. Sure they made a mistake with the design that wore off.

I’ve had enough

After that, that’s about all I can take. I’m 22 minutes into this podcast and I’m finding it really hard to stay invested because these guys are all trying to talk over each other and often about different subjects so it’s really difficult to listen to. It’s also quite difficult to get an opinion to argue against because they already argue amongst themselves and present both sides of a discussion (for the most part). There’s not much left for me to say.

Related articles across the web

• Broken Phones, Nintendo 64, and Bandwidth Hogs
• Alright Hear This Podcast: Retro Nintendo Memories
• Email: Nintendo: Stop chasing third parties
• Retro video game collecting: An industry built on nostalgia but plagued with high prices
• Is This Really the Beginning of Nintendo’s Turnaround?
• Gaming Unlocked: My Wii U is becoming a Ninten-box…and I’m completely okay with that…