We Zelders are susceptible to nostalgia. Call something retro and we are likely to spring for it – or, as the case so often is with Nintendo, pine for it. Thus, when the wireless Nintendo 64 controller for Switch became (theoretically) available last October, Demelza mulled over purchasing one for all of five minutes before deciding we simply must have it. Unfortunately, that five minutes was all it took for the entire stock of Nintendo 64 for Switch controllers in the United States to be depleted, replaced with a message on Nintendo’s shop that “more controllers will be available in 2022.”
[Incidentally, it must be pointed out that Nintendo keeps referencing 2022, whether it’s for the release of the sequel to Breath of the Wild or for broader availability of retro controllers. Cue the Princess Bride: We wonder if 2022 means what they think it does.]
March is now aging into April, and “more controllers will be available in 2022” has been replaced with a message that the N64 controllers are sold out, please check again soon. (We’re certain that, if we were to telephone, our call would be very important to Nintendo, and so we should please stay on the line for the next available controller. . . for all of 2022.) Thus, we’ve been pining – and not springing – for new controllers.
Perhaps some backstory is necessary here. . .
After we finished Skyward Sword – which, for all we lambasted the game, did keep us entertained for several months – we wondered what to do next. We’ve toyed with the BOTW expansion pack and may do so again before 2022 rides into the sunset. (That is, if we can ever get out of the Rohta Chigah shrine, but that’s for another post.)
We could also try our hands again at Age of Calamity or Link’s Awakening. The experienced reader will recall that Itzal snaps “hard pass” at the first option, because. . . who does all the fighting? And he snaps “hard pass” at Link’s Awakening because, well, he’s not very good at it.
And then there are the Nintendo 64 games available through Nintendo Online: The Zelda 64 lineup includes the classic Ocarina of Time and its sequel, Majora’s Mask.
In the end, we opted to get our Zelda fix with OOT.
We didn’t have a nifty retro controller, but it was our understanding[1] that the N64 games could be played perfectly fine with either a Joy-Con setup or a Pro controller.
Erm.
(And why is it that the British “erm” captures so much more than our own “um” or “er?”)
We are here to say that, erm, it is our understanding that the perfectly fine playing of N64 games with Joy-Cons is theoretically possible, just like the 2022 release of BOTW2 and the availability of more retro N64 controllers. But doing so requires more mental agility than we seem to have: “Wait, the on-screen prompt says to use the C ‘left’ button for the slingshot. Where’s the C button on this, any C button at all? And, do you suppose the ZL and the ZR buttons are interchangeable as plain old Z?”
Mind you, it’s usually the lack of physical nimbleness that troubles us; executing a spin-kick-jump with a side of shield-bashing isn’t in our gaming repertoire. Exacerbating our manual dexterity limitations with additional mental gyrations did not augur well for Link’s progress simply walking, let alone playing an ocarina we had yet to earn.
We had a go at it, of course. But eventually – which is to say, after a lot of shouting at each other – we decided we needed the buttons in our hands to match the instructions on the screen. Thus, Demelza rooted through her storage unit to find a mass of wired Nintendo 64 controllers that collectively looked like a bad tangle of Christmas tree lights. (They must date to the era in which we played four-player Smash games.)
After untangling one such controller from its brethren, we added to its wires and couplings yet another piece of hardware, an adapter to connect the aging controller to the modern-day Switch.
The good news? It worked! The dusty, trident-looking controller was now connected to the television, complete with lots of wires to trip up the unwary, just as we remembered from our salad days!
The bad news? Using the original 64 controller wasn’t a wholesale improvement over Switch’s Pro controller. Which is to say, more shouting ensued. Sure, the available buttons now matched the on-screen instructions. But there were fewer buttons, meaning that, horror of horrors, there was no “capture screen” button to record gameplay for blog post-erity. (Itzal suggested that Demelza target the television screen with her cell phone, snapping away madly in rapid succession, so as to capture all important moments. The regular reader of this blog can imagine exactly what she had to say about that.)
And now we return to our pining and springing story. . .
Eventually, we got a real retro controller. (No, we didn’t pay scalpers from The Website That Shall Not be Named; we have our standards. We, erm[2], ordered one from Japan, very likely paying more in import fees and shipping than if we had paid a stateside scalper, but hey, it was the principle of the matter.)
After a couple hours’ play, we got Link armed and mildly dangerous such that he defeated the Parasitic Amored Arachnid Gohma, earned an extra heart (oh, how we love hearts), and gathered up the Kokiri emerald. And here are our resulting impressions:
- We are grateful for the home button and the all-important capture-screen button.
- We appreciate not having wires to trip over, especially since we are approaching the hip-breaking age.
- And we definitely sigh with relief when the on-screen instructions coincide with the buttons we’re using.
However, it’s still awfully large, this controller; we compared it to the original, and they are of a size. It’s not easy to get our fingers around the thing, and yet our nostalgic memories don’t include carpal tunnel. Were our fingers thinner in our salad days, when we ate more salad than chips? Or is it that arthritis had not yet set in, such that size did not, in this case, matter? And what ARE those controls on the left side doing over there, where we’re not supposed to put our hand (this controller having a middle handle)? It’s like the controller had a stroke on its left side. (Younger readers may not understand this reference, but you Boomers, you get it!)
On balance, however, we like the Nintendo 64 controller for Switch: It made a trip down memory lane more of a skip than a slog. What’s more, it is our understanding that, since we went to the time and trouble to secure one, NOW more controllers will be available soon for everyone else. And our call is very important to Nintendo.
[1] Have we mentioned we used to work in government? It is our understanding is a favorite phrase of those who work in government. The phrase makes clear that one believes something to be the case while not flat out saying “Yo! This is my opinion, but I’m probably right!” The passive construction also neatly deflects any responsibility if one is incorrect in the stated belief.
[2] One wonders what the Japanese equivalent of erm or even umm would be. . .