 The year is 1998. You just finished school, you and your friends are jumping on your little pushbikes and you're riding home as fast as you can. Because you know the day before, you and your mom went to Blockbuster and rented a brand new N64 game, Zelda Ocarina of Time. You raced through the door, you shoved that cart into the console, you flicked that switch on and you hear, I can't even begin to tell you how nostalgic that sound is to me. Nintendo 64 has finally launched on the Switch as part of the online service that you have to pay quite a bit extra to get the expansion pack to add in the 64 games as well as Genesis games and then somewhere down the line even Animal Crossing DLC. The big question is, is it worth it? Something I've been asked a bunch since the price was announced in an Animal Crossing Direct and something that I haven't officially made a statement on other than one tweet. The reason why I haven't said anything other than that is because well it hadn't released yet and I feel like before judging it, before you know I say something that I haven't even bought or have experienced is worth it or not, I should probably you know buy it and then find out. It's very, it's very, I have a lot of thoughts here. Let's go over everything you get and how much it costs. We'll get there. Because this service, it already has a lot of issues that have people talking. A lot of people are upset but also a lot of people are perfectly happy. So why this massive disconnect between experiences you might be asking? Hi! Sponsorwood here. I know I look pretty indistinguishable from regular wood but I guess I get paid a little more. First off I need to apologize because usually in my sponsor spots I like to create fun skits or gags but I got two conventions to go to this month and I just don't have time for any of that. So I'm just gonna do this one nice and normal. 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It's the number one rated VPN and you can get three months of ExpressVPN free right now by visiting expressvpn.com forward slash beat em ups or clicking the link in the description below. Alright, back to regular Brokewood. So the online normally 12 months is $20 but you can pay month to month for like $4 a month and this is all in American. I don't know where you are. I'm sure it's different. Hello other countries. For the expansion pack however it jumps up to a whopping $50 which is a lot more. That's kind of right off the bat that was a shock because in the original I mean you get the online service the very average online service which when this whole pay for Nintendo online came out there was sort of a hope that okay well it's been free for a long time so that's why it's been bad so if you're charging us now that means it's gonna get good right? Nothing has really changed. So let's take a look at what you get with the Nintendo 64 online. Now I have gone to settings here and I've switched it to both NA and EU versions which is kind of cool that you can do that. It brings up box art for all the games. Let's turn that off. So this is what you get with the the N64 online. Ocarina of Time. Sick. Star Fox. Awesome. Win back. Underrated. Super Mario 64. Fantastic game. Game changing game. Yoshi's story. It's got Yoshi and then you also have Mario Tennis and Dr. Mario. And apparently this game is really good. Sin and punishment. I'm gonna have to play that. I've never heard of it but everyone keeps saying that it's really good. But on top of this the really really cool part is you can create an online lobby with up to three friends and then you can load up Mario Kart 64 and play split screen Mario Kart online. And my friend Bob from Wolf Den and I played every course or every cup last night on stream and it worked flawlessly. You joined beat em up. Bob has come to play. Let's go. I can move the cursor. Can you see that? Yes. How do I do it? Oh you have to hold. Great job. Great job. Great job Bob. I'm so proud of you. Look at us. This is pretty surreal. Okay. No. Oh everything I was looking for. You're in second. How did you get up there? I was first blitzing it so much. Oh see you. Never mind. Come on. Is this the last lap? No. Come on. Well it works pretty good. I would have went with me. But they did it. Like no lag or anything. No lag. No it was good. It worked perfectly. This is my favorite map. I haven't I haven't missed a beat and I can't get anywhere near them. Oh no. Don't. Yes. Yeah. No. Fair play. Oh no the bus. Get absolutely wrecked. Get absolutely wrecked. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. There's no way I should have got away with that clip. Something else just happened didn't it? Call me Thor because I got the thunder. I started saying that before I got it. Oh my god. Donkey Kong got in front of me. I have to do really good this one and you have to do really good. Chat. I might not even come first. Like I might be. If you win some people in this chat are going to make a lot off of their predictions. No. Wait what? Was that the total? Imagine not even like ending up there. I placed higher than you. I'm like three out of them. That's that's what happened. Top three baby. Somebody in chat explained to me what happened. You're only as good as your last game. Like that was actually a surreal experience. We got in each other's lobbies right away. Didn't have any connection issues. In fact at one point I wanted to switch controllers so mid race I paused the game went out to my switch home screen change controllers went back in and we just kept playing like that. It didn't break the connection or anything. The online is is honestly perfect. We also tried Mario tennis. What? How about you serve me a good one? Are you? Oh this. So all that's great. But then we do start to bump into some issues. Some small some large some depending on who you are. It will matter or not. The first one is just the emulation is sketchy. I would say at best. I mean some people think that it's terrible. I'm a pretty general consumer of games and for me these games work and I'm not really noticing too many issues. But there are some that stand out more than others. Last night while Bob and I were playing Mario Kart half the tracks would just would stop playing the music. Like it was dead silent. The courses had no sound. It was really eerie and weird. In fact on Rainbow Road the sound kept cutting in and out. Where is the music? Yeah. I'm thinking there's like a glitch because we didn't get music on the on the second to last one either. Bad emulation. I didn't break. What's that? Yeah. Just going to say it. Just cut in. I think I think I think the emulation is there. Yeah. And that's not what you want. That's that's a bad one for sure. Like that's that's an upsetting one. There's others like in Ocarina of Time there's no fog which I don't know if that's a weird emulation thing or a weird choice but that was just I don't know it's not there. It's an element of the game that's not there and I'm sure as people play more of these games they might start to realize other things but something that Bob realized and I realized is the first thing I loaded up was Zelda because I love Zelda. First thing Bob loaded up was Mario 64 because he loves Mario. But if we go to the controls they've mapped them really weird and for Zelda it was fine honestly but for Mario it's backwards because it is actually backwards. So they've made B and A, B and A on the pro controller which makes sense. It'd be kind of confusing if they flipped those so that A would be B and B would be A. Like that would that would be confusing but it is actually flipped on the 64 controller like which is fine in Zelda actually it actually makes it better in Zelda because you press A to interact with things you press A to read signs you press B to exit reading signs. Also you press A to roll like it feels really organic and honestly it makes sense with it being that way for Zelda but for Mario it's backwards. I have to press B to read this sign and then A to back out of reading the sign. Jumping is A rather than B which feels wrong in fact if you load up Mario All-Stars another game on Switch you can you could pay for before they removed it the control scheme is the right way round where B is jump and A is so it's it's literally backwards in this making the 3d All-Stars version technically the more correct version and the better version it's weird that they decided to do that and not give like different mapping options like this would be fine if there was a way to switch between control schemes and switch the B and the A so it wasn't backwards. It's also weird they made X the down the C stick down that's that's weirdly confusing but you might be fine with it you can get your head around it but I think pretty much everyone is on the same page with that's a really weird way to do that Nintendo. So yeah the emulation isn't perfect the button layout is weird honestly both of those things I'm not too worried about like I do think it's weird especially when you're charging a lot for the service I can I can get around it I actually haven't even booted up Genesis yet here's something I find strange about the Genesis side of it I think it's great it was added but a lot of people have had a theory that because it's Sega as I was saying Nintendo had to charge more to pay Sega like royalties for having the games on the service which is why it's so expensive that's a theory people have which is a really weird thing if that's true because I don't know if you know this but all these games other than I think two were already on switch either in collections or or just standalone like five dollar releases on the e-shop you could already play all of these on switch so if it's true that Nintendo had to charge more for these to have them free I don't know that's weird that would be a weird business move I think so now that you've seen all of that let's talk about my thought process here on whether this is actually actually worth it it really all comes down to you and what you want from the service if you legitimately want to play most of these 64 games really badly and it's like exciting for you to sit down and play zelda and mario and star fox again then 30 dollars like 10 dollars a pop for these games to have them on your switch sure you know it literally depends on the person I feel you know if you're fine with those experiences the way they've been delivered then sure but I feel like it is a very specific you know person right now that would really want to play multiple of these games really badly to fork out 30 dollars upfront because you can't go month to month you have to pay that either that 50 maybe you don't even care so much about 64 or Genesis but you really excited to get animal crossing happy home parrot I'm really excited that's 25 dollars standalone so if you can reach out and spend this 50 for the online you get that and then you get all the other stuff too then that's a really good deal as well and the drawback with that is you could just buy it for 25 and then have it if you buy the online to get it and then you cancel your online next year you can't play the animal crossing anymore and if you want to keep playing it you have to pay again for another year if that's the only thing you want on the service and now you're paying double what you would have paid if you just bought the animal crossing so with what we have right now I don't know if it is worth it I honestly I might even lean towards it not being worth it but then there's more things to think about like there's more 64 games coming like Majora's Mask and f0 so maybe that depending on who you are would push it over but there's other things to think about like I very much doubt they're just thrown animal crossing in here as like a random thing and this is what the expansion pack is always going to have and that's it period for the rest of all time I think putting the DLC in here is showing us other things will come to this service so maybe you know a year from now we'll have another game get big DLC drop like I don't know Ash let's just say actual chain for something random maybe that will also be in the expansion pack so as long as you keep you know subscribing to Nintendo switch online and their expansion pack maybe you'll keep getting the Nintendo DLC for free and then eventually you might end up actually getting value out of a lot of this so it's really confusing it's not a clear cut answer you know it it totally depends on you and it also totally depends on Nintendo so I don't think there's any shame in wanting this I don't think there's any shame in thinking that it is worth it and a lot of people will and will enjoy their $30 extra worth of what they get right now you know with what's there but there's other people that have no value here whatsoever that don't understand why anyone would pay for this oh there's some people that might really want this but they hate how bad the emulation is you know there's it's so it's so mixed I think my biggest issue you know the emulation aside the weird button layout aside the value there or not aside the only thing I actually have an issue with here is it's an online service I think we're all getting really bogged down in the fact that there's 64 Genesis nests nests what games do they have to offer whatever can we backtrack all the way to Nintendo are making us pay for online now and an online experience that they're still not fixing or adding or changing or improving like the actual online experience that this is all focused around this is it's moved away from being an online service to being just a game pass service and that's what we're paying for now but can we backtrack to like ditching the app and getting like actual voice chat and party chat in the game can we can we backtrack to like easier way to play games with our friends online in all of these Nintendo games having games that actually support Nintendo's online service and not releasing with like half cocked versions of an online experience like what is it we're actually paying for after all this time with their online because nothing has actually been improved and nothing has really changed messaging people on your friends list like how how has it been three years and I know so many of us have screamed at Nintendo to allow us to message our friends I don't know man a lot of the argument has shifted around the price to what games are we getting but for me it's we're up to 50 a month now which is half of what PlayStation and Xbox offer but we don't even have half the features that those consoles offer not even close and sure we have a bunch of games that we can emulate old games that we can emulate but both Xbox and PlayStation offer a series of first party current releases that you can download for free and experience if you sign up to their service and I don't want to sit here and debate values and games and you know PlayStation vs. Xbox but whatever that's not the conversation I'm trying to have just as a service is Nintendo's online worth anything still games aside I don't think so but what do you guys think is this service worth it for you I will say I had so much fun last night playing with Bob and that experience alone was worth $30 so I'm good I liked it to end on a positive note it's worth it for me but is it worth it for you let me know down below is there a bigger issue here surrounding the Nintendo one line maybe let's talk about it I love you all you have a bunch more videos coming soon I hope you're enjoying the games and um yeah that's it bye