Welcome to Remember 64, where this week we're remixing a smash
hit. See what they did there?
I'm so clever. Very good.
Welcome to the show, everyone. My name is David Betrangelo, and
look, I love me some deadly pink marshmallows that can suck up
anyone else's ability. Heck, I'll even mess with a
Pokémon that conjures lightning every once in a while.
But now I think I found my true calling.
I found a niche Japanese hero with a name I didn't even know
how to pronounce my entire life until last year.
That's my go to. Oh man, I'm jiggy, look back and
I'm here. I'm ready to bang.
I mean, smash, let's, smash let's.
Do it Sir. We are talking Smash Remix and
if anyone has not heard leading up to this episode, this is our
first venture into playing a mod for a game.
So if anyone doesn't know, Smash Remix is a mod from a group of
creators that got together over the last several years, I think
it was 2018 or 19. And they've built new levels,
new characters, new items, all for the original N64 Super Smash
Brothers. And it's available.
It's in 1.5 now and we thought, you know what, we're going to
give it a shot. What a place to start and
something like Smash, Remix, Jiggy.
This is fun, man. I like, I I still like.
I know I've said it before, but this idea is just fun to go
through mods like this. Yeah, and you better, you know,
watch your eyes because all the characters and cosmetics and
stages and everything you're about to see or hear, I guess,
because technically it's a podcast, but you will see at
some point it's going to burn your retinas out.
It's it's it's overexposure to Pure awesome.
It's it's amazing. The overexposure of awesomeness.
There we go. Yes, it's really cool.
We're we. It radiates awesome.
It's damn, damn you got you're bringing the fire.
I like it and and one of the reasons or one of the one of the
bonuses about this episode, not only are we talking about
something different, we are going to talk about the original
Smash Brothers a little bit and then we're definitely going to
dig into all the different things that go on with Smash
Remix. But we have a special guest that
we're going to be cueing into the show in just a moment.
Here he goes by the Smash Father.
That's right. He is the the lead project
manager I guess you could call it, of Smash Remix.
So one of the main, you know, creators, one of the main people
that made this a reality. So he's going to sit with us in
just a moment. We're going to talk about Smash
Brothers itself, Smash remix and toss a few fun ideas around and
and talk about our time playing it because it's it's been pretty
cool to to dig into this and I think we got lucky 1.5 just came
out yeah like a couple weeks ago.
So we just, we had this idea anyways and then we saw the 1.5
game and we went, well, it's a no brainer, we have to do this
now, yeah? We're doing it right now.
It it, it made it up. The list.
It was it was down. I don't know, it was still at
the top. It was still like top five of
mods we were going to do this year.
But the second that dropped with the intro and the special
character that got released, Yep, we're down.
And and that's just a little tease.
We will talk about that video. We will, if you're watching the
video version, I will be showing that video as well.
We'll talk about it because that video is, it's not just a
trailer. It's not just like 3 minutes of
like you know, like a movie trailer or something or a game
trailer. It's like 12 or 13 minutes of
just awesomeness. It's so cool.
There's so much going on. Lots to talk about in our chat.
So you know what, Jiggy? Let's just get right into it.
Let's get our guests in here and we'll talk some Smash Remix.
We have our special guest. We have project leader for Smash
Remix. The Smash Father is joining us
on Remember 64. Welcome to the show.
Thank you. Hello there.
Hello, Hello. How are you this fine evening?
I'm doing good. I'm doing good today.
How are you all? Yeah, we're hanging in there.
We're hanging in there. Yeah, yeah, pretty good.
Yeah, just just your average evening, but but with a decent
amount of Smash Brothers in the last couple of weeks, which is
awesome. So that's a that's a good bonus.
Just so we can sort of start from the beginning, I guess in a
way you can kind of put it that way.
Smash Brothers, let's talk about your experience with Smash
Brothers, the original Smash Brothers on North 64 and maybe
even the the franchise moving forward sort of from there.
Did you grow up with it? Did you play it later?
Was it one of those like main Ted pool titles that you have
with the N64? What?
What's? What's your story with the game?
So I think I would have started playing when I was like 1/4
grader, which would have been in the 90s when it came out,
immediately when I saw it, I was enchanted.
It was like right up my alley. And we we just play it so much
as kids. I mean I was like 10 or
something like that and it was super fun and I loved it.
And then you know, you know, I I was always in the smash.
So I got like, I think I got Melee for my birthday and we
just played that all night. And you know, that was a blast.
And then, you know, Brawl happened.
We still played it. Brawl happened, you know, and
you know, then I kind of, you know, personal history.
Like I, you know, I got busy with other things.
I went to law school and I didn't really play Smash for a
while and then, you know, so I kind of settled into a new
place. I turned back to 64 and started
running tournaments if you want to and stuff.
Like that. Nice, nice.
I mean, I I like the game, but I definitely didn't play
tournaments or get into tournaments.
But that's awesome. I definitely did play
tournaments, but I didn't play tournaments until Wii UI started
with Wii U and then moved into Ultimate, and then kids just got
too good and I'm out. It's.
Tough, Yeah, it's a tough racket.
Honestly, online games, I I can't anymore.
It's like just it's not fair. It's not fair, man.
I can't. Do it.
You know what's interesting? So first, actually I do want to
ask you, what is your favorite Smash game?
If you had to say which one was your top one?
Is it 64? Is it Melee?
Is it Ultimate? Which one do you think stands at
the Pinnacle, aside from Smash Remix?
At this point, it's definitely 64.
There were times I might, you know, kind of go back and forth
between 64 and Melee, but at this point I've committed so
much of my time and just gotten so kind of enamored with 64.
I'd say it's definitely, it's like it's the one on best tech
competitively for sure, But I think Melee is a great game too.
I had a lot of fun with Ultimate, you know?
I thought that was fun too. Even this got its own things
that I I don't necessarily love, but it's it's, I think it's
still really fun games. So I mean, I like, I've enjoyed
every Smash I've played. I didn't really play Smash Four.
Sorry Wii U fans. You know, Smash 4, you played
ultimate, you played Smash 4, roughly.
People are going to hate that I said that, but it's, you know,
it's very similar. Ultimate's just the better
version of four in my opinion. Granted, there are a few modes
that I did like in four that didn't transfer over.
I spent a lot of time in four, actually.
But interesting enough, I did a poll on my YouTube channel and
had I don't know how many 100 hundreds of people voted in.
In this poll, Brawl was a big contender.
Really. Which actually, I agree.
Brawl is probably my least favorite.
The Subspace Emissary was a cool idea, but tripping like, Oh
yeah, freaking hate tripping. I freaking hate The Hammer.
Losing its top. Like just the dumbest, the
dumbest editions. It had some of the smartest
editions, but. And Attic King DDD.
That was nice. That was cool.
We were all. Happy about that.
And Sonic I mean. You know, that was cool.
Yeah, it it's not. It's not all bad.
It's not it's not great, but it's not all bad.
Yeah. It's not all bad.
Still was fun. You know, it's not, it's not not
fun, but it's. Like, well, you know.
I have a downgrade but. Yeah, I mean, so, so now there's
like there's such a massive roster.
I'll, I'll go first on this question so I don't have to.
So you guys can think about it if you have to.
But just on the 64, the original 64 version before Remix came
around and and really expanded things here, I'm going to ask
you guys what your favorite character was or who your go to
was. Sometimes that's different, you
know, especially competitively for me, I was always comfortable
with Kirby. I don't know what it was just
always the case. Going back and playing it over
the years. He's still like probably just
what I'm comfortable with because I always played Kirby
back then, but I've gotten used to playing quite a bit of Mario
as well. Jiggy, what about you?
What's What are your go? To I'm 64 exclusive.
We're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My main growing up was probably, it's a tough one.
I think I'd say Fox. I think I was a Fox player.
OK, I did play a lot of Kirby as well, but going back to it now,
I'm a Donkey Kong player. For sure.
Actually, Samus is one that I actually got used to too as time
went on. I like Samus like I like her
move set. Yeah, I just like the combos and
I feel like I can do pretty well as Donkey Kong, yeah.
But yeah, what about you, Sir? For me, it's always been.
I mean, since I was a kid, Pikachu has always been my my
favorite character in 64 and makes sense.
I'm still still my pretty much only character.
I can play well. So it's that's, yeah, it's a
Pikachu. Yeah sometimes it's muscle
memory too right. I think that's the thing with me
and Kirby where it's like every time I press down BI know what's
gonna like. I I get it you know it's so
simple and and most characters like that too but something
about his where it's like Nope it's just a straight drop and
you're turning into one of several different items.
OK, let's let's dig into into Smash Remix.
Before you we brought you on the show.
We were just talking about how the fact that we wanted to
explore mods on remember 64 this year, we wanted to get into a
couple of games. Every every couple of episodes
we're gonna sort of dig into different mods and try it.
And then the second we saw that 1.5 was released, we said this
thing is hitting the top of the list.
We're doing it now. Not only that but but Smash just
had an anniversary a couple of days ago as of this recording,
which is great as far as. Yeah, as far as its release
goes. So that that that's awesome.
All right, Mr. Smash Father, how does something like this even
happen? 1.51 point O 0.5 whatever the
version is, How How do you even look?
I I don't know how to make games.
I don't know how to make mods. I don't know.
I am. I love games.
But I I am so far out of the realm of understanding.
I'm so impressed with the fact that anybody can make anything
like this. How does this get started?
And how do you get to be, like a project leader on something like
this? Well, it happened pretty
organically and some of it is a little bit of fortune on my
part. So, you know, I started running
tournaments here in Houston and I just wanted to find a ways to
attract people to my events basically.
So I started off with doing like cheap game shark stuff like oh,
we can play with like Metal Mario or like Final Destination,
you know, just doing random stuff and then like suddenly sub
drag who's made something called the Goldeneye editor and you
could make stages for Smash 64. And so I started doing that.
I made a Houston themed stages like you could play like the the
Astrodome and stuff like that just to get people to come out
to my events for my tournaments. You know, I started digging into
things and getting more interested in modding more and
doing more than just the stages and seeing what had been done.
And I saw there had been people who kind of had tinkered around
with making characters but never, never went all the way.
People had experimented, People thought about people had write,
wrote, wrote things up, but never really went all the way.
And I thought, well, I'm going to try now.
I had no form, I had no experience.
I had never coded anything. I have no artistic ability.
I was just a guy. It was.
Just a guy with a dream. It's just yeah.
And I was. I just started working on life.
I got some pieces. I I was connected very early on
with a person named Frey in the 64 community who's a very big
name. And he was just.
I couldn't have done it without him.
He was he advised me on how. He basically taught me how to
code. He kind of really showed me how
to hack things and I get into the code and all that.
And he helped me work with the original system with which we
coded. If you ever watched the old
trailers, the way we used to make models and everything was
very rough and it was very hard and didn't look very good.
But he helped me work through that and through that.
You know, even though it wasn't beautiful, you know, it just
attracted other people to actually work with me, you know,
I reached out to different folks, which, I mean, I became
AI was just a guy making it at first.
But once I had an actual work product, you know I can reach
out to people like our lead artist Soap, who is insanely
talented and we're fortunate to have well, as many other of our
artists, coders like. Yeah, it's a big all.
These people helped. Us it's a it's a big team like
for obviously it's it like you said it, it grows over the years
but it's like yeah, you can be you can be a project leader but
but this is a huge team effort. It's it's amazing.
Yeah, that would be nothing without my team.
Yeah, yeah. To piggyback off that I was
watching or I had just just before we hopped on, I played
through Smash Remix again and got to the credits.
And once I got past all the original credits, I was like,
OK, I want to see how many more come on.
And it went forever, man. It's like, but what I loved
about it, OK what I loved about it is I did click on them and a
lot of them just say funny things.
Oh. I didn't do that.
No way really. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was clicking through one of them.
I I wish I could have. I wish I was recording or could
have gone back because one of them had like.
I don't know if it was it was like a code or something and I
was like. And this has has his in Morse
code I think. Yes.
I forget what it's I honestly don't remember what it says.
I saw it and I was like no I needed.
I needed to figure that out. But.
That's amazing. I have to, yeah.
It's a clue for fans. If you want to look into it,
it's in Morse code. I'm sure you know so you could
figure it out, but it's it's in Morse code.
Amazing. Yeah.
So it's it's, it's this, it's this amazing group of of artists
and coders and everything. And I mean this isn't something
that we just said like you know, 1.5 was was just released in
early 2024. This has been going on on for
years. How do, how do, how do things
progress? Like, is it just, I mean, you
sort of mentioned how how things get started as far as working
with the team and all those types of things.
Also, the video that I'm showing, if anyone's watching
the YouTube version, I just got shot with a golden gun.
So they're like lots of really cool ideas.
And that's by the way, So we'll get to that.
But I thought that was hilarious, A great addition.
How do you. Yeah.
How, how does how do things get going?
Like how do you decide like, Yep, this is ready to to to get
released. Let's, let's do this, Let's add
this character, Let's add that stage.
Like obviously it's a group effort and stuff, but how does
that sort of thought process happen with something like this?
Well, the the nature of that really evolved over time as far
as getting this stuff together. I mean, honestly, you just ask
people, right? People don't realize if you're
trying to build something, it's just like ask for help.
I I seriously will work as long as you show that you're willing
to work yourself. I mean, just ask people for
help. And I mean a lot of the people
on my team, I just literally rip one up to them is like, I like
your work. Would you like to work with me?
And that gets easier. The more credit you, you know
the more your stuff you do. But yeah, I was, I was working
on actually getting a mod like how much you want to do with
this, like at the with the getting out like 1.1 or 1.5,
like what do we want to put in there.
You kind of, you come up with a game plan and you know it's not
going to end up exactly how you originally envision.
And you think of like you obviously want to have a
character because that's like that's like you know, that's
what gets people gone. That's what's get the people
wild. They want their character, But
you know, you add other things too.
They kind of support that and make it interesting.
And it's challenging because you want to give yourself a
realistic goal, right? Because a lot of times with mods
you give yourself unrealistic expectations and you don't and
people won't keep themselves accountable.
You want to be like let's get want a good pace, get things
done. This is our timeline.
That's the challenging part. So but you try to have like you
don't want to go too far, so like a character to is good.
You start adding all this stuff it's way out of your skill zone.
You're going to find yourself in murky waters.
Right. So interesting to to play off
that. So as far as content wise, in
this game we have new characters.
I didn't count out exactly how many, but we have new characters
we have. There are even more new stages,
like I was really blown away with stages like you have to go,
you have to cycle through the right there's there's so many,
you got new items, new music tracks, just so much new modes,
new game modes entirely, just so much is packed into this.
So my question on that, we did an episode, specifically an
episode about Goldeneye and how people are going to ring me out
for this because I don't remember what the number was, 17
megabytes was the totals like capacity of the game, that's how
big the game was. Is that something you need to
consider as far as because it is a mod it is running on like you
know emulators or ever drives or what what not it?
Yeah, we're we're, I think we might be bumping up against a
limit, possibly. People have been mentioning it
cause like I said, we set like a size for like the ROM, right?
So when you get the ROM, well, we don't, we don't give you the
ROM, but we give you like the little, yeah.
It's like a patch. Basically when you get that it
tells you all the changes you need to make and you know one of
that is a setting the ROM size. So I think currently I think
ours literally says like 64 MB. It's exactly 60.
Four, yeah. Yeah, that might be as big as
she can go. I'm not don't quote me on that
one. But that might be that might be
as big as it gets. And after that it might you.
Right. Run into hardware issues with
like how big the 60. It would just be random.
You know, like 6064 megabytes isn't a real it's only to do.
I know it's a Nintendo 64, so it sounds like it should be how big
it should be, but it's entirely irrelevant.
But it might actually be the maximum size we can get our our
file system to do. So it hasn't been really a big
concern and if we ever really were concerned we could find
ways to work with it. But yeah, I mean there's there's
an upper limit to how big these things could be on on if you
wanna stay on hardware. Which we do right.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's, I think
that's the charm, right? That's that's the cool thing
about this, is that it can run on the actual hardware.
And like, I play it on my actual 64, and there's just something
about it, it it almost provides legitimacy to it.
You know what I mean? It's it's got this, this aura
about it that you're like, wow, this is exactly what I wanted
Smash Bros to grow into. Like, it's how I imagined the
sequel before Melee was a thing. You know, under my head.
I'm like how much more characters, like, conquers in
it. Like conquer?
Oh my gosh. I you know what?
That's actually a good way to put it too.
Because like I I did the same thing.
I I had it on an actual hardware with the controller, every,
everything. It felt like, sure, I'm sitting
in front of a different screen than I used to.
It's not acrt that I'm that I'm playing this thing on, but it
it's just it just feels like the the real game.
It doesn't feel like this is like I I think it's impressive
on its own that it doesn't feel like it's a mod.
It doesn't feel like it's something that was made, you
know, 20 years later, 20 plus years later, Like it just feels
like the game and what it is supposed to be.
And I think that's a testament to to yourself and everyone else
that's been that's been creating this over the years.
It's man, it's it's it's so it's so crazy because like you said
before, jiggy, there's also all these different modes.
Is it All Star mode? I keep forgetting the name
exactly of what it is. There's remix.
There's All Star. Yeah, there's a bonus.
The race to the finish is different.
Yeah, I love that. That's cool.
All these things are there like for example the All Star mode is
you're going through the roster of of characters and you're
fighting all of them with only a couple of chances to heal up and
and eventually you're you're fighting in pairs and all that.
All this stuff would be so crazy back in the day to just be like
OK, who can get the furthest? And I'm just sitting here on my
own just you know sucking at the game.
Honestly, I'm not. I'm not that good at it.
But but having a great time with it, it's I are are these modes
like what? What's sort of like the largest?
My question sort of around this, my long winded way of asking it
is like is it challenging to create new modes as far as
things go or is it more like the characters and balance and
things like that? What's sort of like the the
biggest challenge I guess hurdle.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So modes like, so the first time I made a mode probably was kind
of difficult every like just getting into the weeds,
understanding first time you do anything, it's challenging.
Sure. And all subsequent modes I'd say
aren't honestly that hard but are more.
It's more frustrating. It's the nature of the code is
like it's it's like gosh if it feels like when I'm making a new
mode it's like I have to like fight through.
You're fighting yourself because you make code that when you were
when you first start writing code your your code isn't quite
up to par and so you get to fight your old code and revise
it. You learn new things you didn't
know about the general code and you know so the the modes I'd
say they're not the hardest thing I mean the most time
consuming. The biggest feature that takes
the longest, most drain on our resources would be animations.
Making nice animations that look good that feel era appropriate.
It takes a long time, takes tons of revisions.
That's going to be the longest, the biggest.
That. And of course just coding takes
long too, because the coding also is you can make moves that
feel really weird and don't don't feel good, don't feel up
era appropriate, but you got that, you got to make them feel
right. Makes sense.
You know, like we have, I'm, I'm soon going to be making a a kind
of cut content thing for Remix and there's a lot of moves we
just had to cut because like they didn't feel right or they
didn't work with 64 as well as we hoped.
I was like, yeah, you know, I would say, you know, the biggest
time sync is animations, most challenging thing.
The biggest commitment is just making the character.
Making a character is probably the biggest task.
There's so much to do, so much love and hard work goes into it.
The character's the biggest thing.
Yeah, yeah, animation's the biggest part of.
It I could see that that that makes sense because like what we
were just saying is is like it feels like you're playing this
game, like this is this feels like what this game was supposed
to be. You know, whatever supposed to
be. It's not like they did a bad job
originally. We're not you know, sliding the
actual original title. But it's but it's it it just
feels right. So whatever effort and time that
everyone's put into it, it's I I think it's paid off.
So sorry. Yeah, for sure.
And the the whole, as far as the character models themselves,
like they feel like you you mentioned and I love that
they're era relevant, right? So they look how I imagined they
would look if they were running on the original Smash, not
necessarily from their game. Banjo being released was very
interesting because I looked at him and I was like, yes, this
seems like the perfect translation from Banjo Kazooie
to Smash Bros on the N64 because you think the models get a
little more low Poly. Like it just it meshed so well.
It does. None of the characters stand out
like, oh, this one's really high Poly.
This one's, you know, this one looks significantly better or
more detailed than any of the others.
They all feel genuinely like they could have been on the
original 64 version of Smash, which is awesome.
I love that is there. It's not.
A deal. It's a really challenging
balance because obviously one thing is to look good, but you
you you had to not only make it look good for the 64, but like
there's a specific style to the way they make things look in
Smash Bros And of course it is a lower Poly because you you have
to, you do have to deal with the console's limitations.
If you make a high Poly character, they're literally
going to slow down the game. Like Bowser, when he first was
released, he was a little bit too high Poly, so we'd had
competitive players complain about him.
So we had to work on his model. So like, there's a lot of things
to balance when making the models.
And you know, models aren't the hardest part, but they are a
part that requires a lot of work.
We always joke like when the models don't, we're like, well,
guys, we're halfway there. Because the model is honestly,
people who don't know will think like, here's the model, like we
can just make a character. It's like the model is probably
the least important part, but it is.
We do have to put a lot of effort into that too, to make it
look right and make it function right within the game.
And Banjo was a challenging 1 because the way the textures
work and Banjo Kazooie, the way that looks, it just, you know,
it wouldn't work for 64, it wouldn't look right.
It it, it's too complicated. So we kind of looked at how D KS
fur works and we kind of looked at that, but like we didn't
obviously just make D KS fur, we we made it.
So it's banjos and it was unique.
But you do, you have to look at what exists in 64 and what would
work and it's it can be challenging to balance all those
things and balancing what you want, you know, because you want
everything to look good but also play good.
So it's it's it can be a balance.
What's what's interesting too is the fact that some characters
it's it's really obvious when you felt like their move set in
a future game like an ultimate or Brawl.
I'm I'm thinking of Wolf in particular like the move set is
fairly similar but then you have Banjo who I actually main Banjo
in ultimate. So going to this he was
dramatically different. His move set was more Kazooie
based I'd say than Tui. Although he does have the not
the beat Buster but the drill I I don't know why I'm blinking.
Yeah, I. Don't.
Yeah, but it's. Just the.
Drill, drill. Drill, yeah.
Drill bill, but that's it. Thank you.
But it's just, it's just really interesting how it's kind of
like you pick, you pick and chose elements that you're like,
yeah, that works, that feels good.
And then you completely changed others and I think you made
Sonic way better. Like Sonic feels way better in
Smash Remix than he does in any other Smash game.
His he has more than just spin, dash and homing attack.
It's amazing. I I.
Felt I wasn't big into his kit because Sonic is usually viewed
as annoying. Yeah, a lot of people always
complain about him. So our our main you know game
designer Frey, he took all, you know he really worked to make
him not annoying but also still good character, which he is.
Something that took that took some time and we didn't want to
make him be a nuisance with his homing attack and with you know
just doing stupid stuff that makes people annoyed with him.
We we we avoid that as best we could.
He's got the best, best meteor smash.
Oh yeah, That thing we like? Yeah, that's.
That's a long thing. Yeah.
He's good, Yeah. I I wanted to add that now
people will say we we took that from Project M, but it's not
true. Sonic battle.
Yeah, I I played Sonic Battle, you know, and I was like, I know
we should add this move as to be so great and like and everyone's
just like, oh like Project M and they're like, gosh damn it.
People don't know. Project MI don't know if you
guys have watched the episode of South Park where like Simpsons
did it every time on the episode of South Park, they're like, oh,
The Simpsons have already done that.
Kind of state, right? Project M is The Simpsons to us,
where it's just like, oh, Project M did that, It's like.
Gosh, damn it. Come on.
Yeah. He's he's very good.
I I had a good time playing around with Sonic for sure.
I played him a bit in Ultimate but but he I I couldn't actually
couldn't couldn't tell that it just to try.
I mean it's such a huge roster I got to try everybody as far as
the as far as the characters go I mean it's it's impressive how
many are added over the last. I guess it's been about five
years now that that things have been going but are are the
decisions just like, hey, we like this character, let's,
let's try and explore that. Is it coming from outside And
like, oh, this one seems like it's getting the buzz.
Let's, let's try. We got to get, we got to get
Banjo Kazooie in there. Oh, we got to get Sonic in
there. Like, is that decision again,
like you said, is it just organic like other stuff has
been? Or is it more fine-tuned than
that, if that's the way to say it?
So it's evolved out of the time. Originally it was really limited
to what was our capabilities, which were far more limited
originally. So, you know, we were doing
clones and it was kind of like, you know, I couldn't really code
that much and you know, we couldn't, we didn't have
animators really at the time, like you were really limited.
And as we've grown gotten better and more skilled, it's like less
about our capabilities because we can kind of do what we want.
So it started off being like very capability based, like, OK,
I'm making Endor if he's a clone, I could do that by myself
or like, you know, Doctor Mario and those kind of characters, it
was kind of like, well, this is where we have capabilities.
Your capabilities are always a factor.
But now is later on it became less of a thing we really had to
worry about. And then it kind of became about
like, well, you know what, once we narrowed in on that we wanted
to be. It wasn't always that I wanted
to be kind of a ode to the Nintendo 64.
Originally. I just wanted to make it like
cool competitive characters. That was my original thought,
like good competitive characters for 64 or something kind of like
that just make it more interesting.
But as time around, it's like, well, OK, there are mod is kind
of an ode to the 64 and what characters do we need to add.
So, you know, getting where we're getting our roster now,
we're kind of, you know, at the end of things, I, you know, I
feel I was like, you know, we need to do banjo.
This is a character that personally I did not play a lot
of Banjo Kazooie. I'm sorry folks.
I know I should have. I played it a little bit, but I
didn't own it. We didn't have a lot of 64.
We didn't have a lot of games back then.
I had to rent games. I was not rich.
I'm sorry. We played like insane games
50,000 times over. But I played a lot of smash for.
I was in Mario 64, but you know, I knew Banjo had to be done.
It's like Banjo is a must have at the end and like there are
other ones that I just thought like this is a 64 character,
Conquer is just so 64, he's 64. He had to be done.
And plus he had so many different things.
You gotta think of like does this character have a cool move
set that we could make interesting?
Conquer had so many things available to him with his all
his weapons. His stuff is so he can pull.
Something out? It's so fun.
You think I love it? So like characters like going on
and Marina and Banjo, just like, wow, that character feels so 64
and so of the era and we can think of a creative move set
that let's do it. That's what it became at the
end, where originally it was like what do we have the
capabilities for? And ultimately, as a team
leader, you got to think of like what?
I can't just be unilaterally. Well, there have been times, but
even I can't just be like, I wanna make this.
So we're gonna do it. I have to have the support of my
team. If if my artist doesn't wanna
make it or my animators don't wanna animate it or my coders
don't wanna code it like it's it's not gonna happen.
So it is kind of organic in that sense.
We don't really care what other people want, you know, if you
ask for characters, it's not something we're considering, but
we do think about like, what makes sense, you know, if it if
it's gonna make people happy, that that's always nice.
But we really make the mod in a sense for ourselves, to be
honest. But we just think about what
would what's an ode to the 60 fours, what we've been doing
lately, what's what makes sense there, and what what's fun,
what's gonna be a fun character to play?
So then the question turns into are there characters that you
wanted to put in and decided against?
Because you mentioned cut content.
You don't have to spoil it if that's something coming up, but
if you want to name like one or something if.
You want to like, you know, if you want to, yeah, if.
You want to just throw something out there and then the other
thing is there, you reaching the limit, you're at 64 megabytes
Max capacity here, right? Is there plans for any more
updates? Is this the end?
Is this like everything minor after this, like no more
characters or is there a a stance on that?
Just what are your thoughts on those?
Yeah. So we kind of leave it open
ending and if there's going to be any more updates, it's just
going to be one of those things like it it could happen, it
might not. Right now I feel fulfilled where
I am at. I'm I'm kind of going to be
taking the step back from things and more have a more of a, I
don't know, an ownership role, ACEO type role.
I have kind of put some other people in charge and I'm kind of
letting my team decide how they want to continue.
So will there be another you know, addition, you know they'll
be bug fixes for sure like that. You know they'll be like you can
count on certain things being fixed.
You know, there might be a 1.5. There will definitely be
something beyond 1.5 right now. Will there be, you know, new
characters, new stages? You know you'll have to wait and
see. I can't.
I can't give you an answer there.
That's just gonna depend on what the team's feeling and if I feel
it's appropriate. Can't wait till Rayman's added.
We'll we'll see about that. Now you mentioned the cut
characters. I was thinking what's a like a a
small one? I could throw one that I, you
know, I'm going to speak on this in the in the video, but like
one that this is, it's gonna be random for people that we really
wanted. The early days was Raichu.
Me and one of the artists on the team are just big Raichu fans
and we were doing clones, so we thought it made sense.
And he had this model for Raichu that was just so good.
And you know how Pikachu has those birthday hats.
Julie Puff has the bows he made. We we went since.
He's kind of like Lieutenant Serge is kind of like a
Lieutenant, right. You know, there's a military guy
and Raichu's kind of associated with Lieutenant Serge.
We gave Raichu A beret and it looks so cool.
He was this like special operations Raichu.
And ultimately, we didn't go that route because tail would
have been such a thing to animate.
You make a clone, you're hoping to reuse animations, right?
That's the big benefit. But with ride shoe with his
tail, you really don't get much of A benefit 'cause you have to.
That tail is so different from Pikachu's tail, you have to
reanimate the whole thing. So it wasn't very valuable.
It wasn't like a value add to do ride shoe and ride shoe just
never came to be. Although I one of the melee mods
made Raichu afterwards which I thought was was pretty cool.
I never, I never played it but I I was like oh someone else made
Raichu. That's that's cool.
Nice. We shared shared love for the
Pokémon. Yeah, why not?
Yeah, I guess that's that's something too, right?
Like Pokémon in general. I mean, yeah, there's there's a
few and there's definitely more than a few at this point in the
in the later smashed games. But like there's literally
hundreds you could choose from like, but, but but like you
said, it has to make sense for the 64, has to make sense for
that era. All those decisions that you
guys have made that the team has made as far as making it a
reality is, is it's awesome that all of that stuff is taken into
consideration is what I gotta say.
I guess basically I man, I suck at this game so bad.
I'm watching like. I'm watching your game play too.
I'm so bad that I think this was like one of the first.
This might have been the first time that I picked it up.
I I want to say about the characters too.
I'm I'm very there's something about the fact that Goemon is in
it and Marina something about those two feels even extra this
era because we haven't seen either of those since.
If I'm not if I'm not mistaken so.
And I I think Marina has one of the most unique move sets
because like in her game like in mischief makers and in this
there's a lot of like grabbing you know or you can you know the
way the projectiles were And she has like she has the pot and she
has her. Her jumps are different like all
of that stuff feels so her which is amazing.
And I really got used to playing Goleman.
He is now probably my go to I don't know what it is but his
move set just clicked with me. I don't know if you had like a.
A favorite GUI. You're playing through it and
and as far. As Oh yeah, Sonic.
So it was Sonic for the new ones.
Oh yeah, I loved his his meteor kick.
Every time I landed it, I was just like, hell yeah.
Yeah, it Gorman's thing felt, I think he felt a little bit
familiar in some ways. Like he has some projectile, he
has some close quarter stuff. He has, you know, his his cloud
that he can fly on that saves. I use that quite a bit because
again, I'm not very good at this, but but he's fun and he's
such a goofy character. Like he's such a a randomly
goofy character. I find that it's always fun to
sort of embody that Mister Smash Father, is there a particular,
do you you don't have to say favorite, 'cause I'm sorry, it's
hard to pick a it's hard to pick a favorite kid, you know what I
mean? But was there or is there a
favorite in the in the new group at least?
It depends on what you're looking for.
So I have, Nah, I was never a huge Gandorf fan.
Like people, I've heard people say like, oh, there's some
Gandorf fanboy runs Smash 64. I was not a huge Gandorf fan,
but I became one just because he kind of has emotional
significance. He's the first character I ever
made that was such a triumph for me.
And he's kind of to me, he's our mascot.
Gandorf is is the mascot of of Smash Remix.
So I have a deep affection there as far as who I'm gonna playing
with. Who's you know of the remix
cast. I you know I not bad with going
on I guess but like Bowser and DDDI like the big guys so I can
play with them pretty well. Surprisingly well, considering I
I barely have time to play. But you know, those are really
good. I'm a huge Sonic fan.
It's hard to yes. Once again, I'm not really.
I'm not going to give you a true answer, Yeah.
No, that's that's totally fair. A huge Sonic fan.
That was a huge thing for me to add him.
I was definitely, you know, vehemently I I forced us to have
Classic Sonic. I was, I know members of team
really liked Sonic Adventure. Sonic, and that's fine.
Sonic Adventure came out before Smash Bros, which like I was
there. Like, I literally, I was live, I
was experienced it, and it doesn't seem right to me.
It didn't seem like it was real, but it happened, you know, like
it came like Sonic Adventure came out before Smash Bros and I
just, I don't believe it. But that's what history is, I
guess. And so I was like, fine, we can
have Sonic Adventure, Sonic, but we have to have Classic Sonic.
Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I love
Sonic too. There's there's a lot of
characters to love and going on was big for me.
Going on was kind of the one where I was like we're making
going on. Nice.
And but then all everyone started playing his games and
fell in love with them along the way, right?
And that's that's how we got ABC Morrow.
Like I had no interest in having ABC Morrow, but the team fell in
love. With such a goo.
It's amazing. ABC Morrow.
So ABC Morrow, you know, came into reality, Yeah.
Especially in the 64 games, that guy is just hilarious.
He's just so goofy. It's amazing.
I I know, I know the gome on characters from, I think it's
called is it called Legend of Mystical Ninja for Super
Nintendo? That I had that game growing up,
not not knowing anything about it, not knowing it was even a
series. I had no idea and it was Co-op
so me and my brother could play it together.
We probably never really knew what we were doing 'cause it's
not a simple game for like a A5 and A and an 8 year old to be
playing. But but I was like oh, I know
this, I know this guy. Like when I got a 64 and
realized that there was more characters and it was still the
same. I I just there's something about
it about that about that franchise about that series that
it was it was it was a it's a very charming addition in my in
my opinion to to smash remix so. Yeah, I also think, I also think
that the characters having alternate skins that just
changed them completely is awesome.
I love that you can do the entire Starfox team.
You can be slippy. You can be Falco, you can be
peppy. The fact you can switch between
Giga Bowser and Bowser, even that's super cool.
Supersonic Sonic to Supersonic. I love, I love stuff like that.
And I feel like you really gave quite a few options for every
character. Like, you can even do like the
Polygon versions. The Fighting Polygon team just
really cool. And Bowser's Fighting Polygon
team looks like Godzilla. And it's really it's really
sweet. Oh, that's the intent.
Yeah, it was. That was definitely an intent.
Very good, like Godzilla reference in there.
And yeah, I almost wanted to give people, you can see that
with the character. You've seen the character menu
where you have so many options. You can play the giants, you can
play with random hit boxes. To me, it's just like it's all
about letting people play the way they want to play.
Unless that involves turning on tap jump, but.
That's the one. That's the last thing.
No, not. Happening.
Yeah, it's never gonna happen, not as long as I'm alive.
But we just wanna give options to people to play the way that
they wanna play. And so we have all these zany
options. Honestly, an overwhelming amount
of options. It it is, it is.
It'd be fun. Yeah, yeah, I I was never a kid.
You mentioned Gameshark way at the beginning here, but you
mentioned, you know, Gameshark and those types of of products
that were out back in the day. I never had one of those.
I had a couple friends that didn't.
That was it. But I was never like the person
to even just have a strategy guide for a game.
I just played the game and like that was kind of it, right?
But you don't need a game shark with Smash Remix.
You can just, you can play it and it's got, like you said an
overwhelming amount of options And to sit down like we played
this solo. But to sit down and play Smash
Remix with friends, which I fully plan to do at some point,
is just going to be it. Like they probably won't even
they, they don't have, you know 64 ROMs available or an ever
drive like I do and definitely don't have an N64 podcast.
So they're not sort of watching all these things like I am.
But I'm gonna show this to them and they are going to be blown
away. I I still have a couple friends
that I played this game with back in the day and I know that
they're gonna just, they're gonna, they're gonna lose their
shit. Just plain simple.
They're gonna lose their shit. I know they are and it's.
Gonna be you definitely should do is.
I don't know if you guys know know this or not because this
has been for like a patch or two is you want to do one player
mode with one of your friends playing it as ACPU and if you've
seen that option. No, I did not see I.
Did if you press, yeah, basically I think you press Z.
This is a mode I designed. If you press Z when you're on a
1P mode, it could be regular 1P, could be remix 1P you'll get.
You'll hear the laugh of Master Hand and your opponent.
Your friend will be able to play as ACPU in A1 player mode and
like that's a blast for people to play through.
That's. Awesome.
Wow. If one you know, I would advise
against doing very hard mode, you know?
And your friend's gonna be a lot better, most likely than than
the CPU. So don't make it too hard on
yourself, but it's it's really fun to play as.
Actually, Jiggy, that's awesome. You were saying before that you
found the game to be to be fairly difficult.
I don't know if it's just muscle memory is not there in the same
way I Me too. I mean, I said I I stink at this
game, but I think I was kind of always not that great.
I I. Was particularly like one-on-one
I was having no problem like all the all the fights were were
fine. But going up against Giga Bowser
specifically and the Giant and I had a giant variation of Sonic
playing through the remix mode. I found it very hard.
Like very hard. Like.
I mean, I was getting obliterated.
Yeah, the intention with Remix 1P was to make a a harder mode
than the original like 1P mode was to give people more of a
challenge. So like it's at least scaled up.
We've tried to balance it more and make it a little bit more
less brutal, but maybe there's some more room to gain there.
But yeah, the goal is to make remix 1P, like loose a stage or
two up from the difficulty of the original game, just to give
people who've been playing forever an additional challenge,
basically. So yeah, if you're on very easy,
you know, don't, don't feel bad because like, it's more like
you're on, you know, easier normal mode.
I was. Don't feel bad.
If you play Very Easy on Remix 1P, you're really playing what
would be like the equivalent of like easy or normal mode on one
P mode, the regular 1P. So that makes sense.
The intent was to give a new challenge there.
Yeah, I think I it's not that the the game definitely does not
feel unbalanced at all. For me, I felt like, Oh my God,
I forgot how to do this the way I'm supposed to.
Like, it took, it took me a few rounds to really be like, Oh
yeah, shit, like I'm not playing Kirby, you know, like that's.
That's kind of like, I think. I think part of that too is you
have to get used to what when you're playing the newer games
there's a, there's a lot of frame buffer between your button
presses your input presses and I feel like you go back to the 64
or even melee like you. It's probably even more
particularly melee. It's just things are so tight
and there's no, there's no buffer for that.
It's like you got to, you got to nail it, right?
Yeah, I mean it's it's the it's this, it's the original game.
That's what this is. That's what remix feels like.
Like we've said and everything. So it's yeah, you just.
Got to get good. Just got to get good which which
I I you know I probably won't I'm.
I'm not. I'm not.
I'm not I'm not in that skill set anymore man.
Kids these days and their reflexes.
Let me tell you, kids these days know nothing, because I just
went back and I played Earth from gym and I played it as a
kid, but I recently just replayed it.
I don't remember it being that hard.
I always. Like I always remember those
games being difficult. I I.
The second one was fine, but the first one I was like, I was, I
was so mad. I was so mad.
I kept dying and it was like the stupidest things.
And then later I'd be like, oh, I forgot that's how you do that.
But it was just it's so unforgiving.
Yeah, those those 2D games would always be like that.
All right. I I think, I think that if
anyone has a chance to play Smash, Remix 1.5 is out now, we
have some new characters. There's obviously updates that
are going to be coming. Just a few, just a few.
What I'm saying is it it it, it might continue, but even if it
doesn't, even if nothing else is added to this, it is an
exceptional feat of programming and creation.
Smash Father, honestly Congrats. This is amazing.
I I just I just have to tell you that you know if if the team
isn't hasn't listened to this or or if if they haven't heard it
recently they deserve all the all the credit as well because
it's just it's such a good it's such a great game and it's not a
great just a great mod it's a great game and I think that is a
huge difference. It doesn't feel like, you know,
a few people got together and just decide, yeah, let's slap
you. There is work put into this.
There's creativity, there's craft.
It is really, really something special.
It's hard, I think, to make something feel like you are
sitting on your couch only four feet away from your TV with your
original console back in the day, yet it's you're not doing
that at all. Like, it's it's it's very
impressive. So, so kudos to you and and the
team. Thank you very much.
Love it? Yeah.
So I got to. I got to address this.
So do it.
We had the YouTube thing was figured out, right?
That whole spiel. Because I was.
I was mad for you. I was so mad because that Banjo
Version 1.5 trailer was incredible.
Oh my God, it's amazing. Oh my.
God, I went back to re watch it and then saw it was down and
then followed the whole Twitter spiel and I was just like, what?
What? Why?
It makes no sense. I can give a brief summary of
the situation, sure. Basically now this start most
people don't know is a few months ago randomly our Sonic
trailer just got taken down and we tried to appeal it.
And we also kind of did like a Twitter push where we asked
people and they just said, no, it's no big deal.
Like you just, we we reviewed your appeal and like basically
it's like they out of nowhere said like, oh, this is like,
what did they say? Oh, dangerous.
It said it was like dangerous content.
And then we appealed that and they instantaneously, they
rejected it. We did the Twitter push for
Sonic to come back and they said, like, no, we were right.
We're totally right. They did the same thing with the
banjo trailer and say, like our whole channel gets taken down
and like you've been, you know, two strikes, you're out
everything. You're just totally booed off
YouTube, your dangerous content. And we we appealed once again
instantaneously rejected and then we were left with no other
options to really to complain. So we just took we, I even, I
didn't go to Twitter to get a movement going, but I tweeted
out like, hey, this is what happened.
Like, we got our channel taken down by YouTube and enough
people like yourself complained and retweeted.
And what got into YouTube's eyes?
That they actually did something.
Which is sad to think that the only way you can get YouTube
because like Nintendo, let me tell you, Nintendo did not care.
Nintendo does not care. They didn't.
Nintendo did not, was not upset with us.
They don't care. Nintendo doesn't care about us.
They did not. There's no strikes against us.
Nintendo has never given us any issues.
We're very respectful of Nintendo and they have not
caused us really any problems, but it was all YouTube just
goofing up and they because we got enough social media
traction, they put our channel back up and Sonic came back too.
So that was nice, but yeah, it was.
It's sad that YouTube requires you to cause a a a bunch of a
furor on Twitter. That's your best resource.
So. Weird.
So small creators, you're just doomed.
Sorry. Yeah, that's so that's so crazy.
I mean, I'm glad it's back. If anyone hasn't.
I should have said this off the top, really.
But you're right. If anyone hasn't watched the
trailer for 1.5, even if you don't have a way to play this
game, totally fine. Watch that trailer.
Watch. Watch that 1213 minutes of a it
is. It's it's so good.
It's like a it's like a a a short film.
It's amazing. It's.
Crazy. I was calling it Citizen Banjo.
I mean, many sleepless nights were given to make that a
trailer. I've never seen them work harder
than when they worked on that that damn trailer.
I was like, guys, are we done yet?
Like, how long is this gonna be? So it was a heck of a trailer.
So I would recommend. It's very good.
You can watch the all the trailers, they're all thrilling.
Yes, even the original one I made in 2019.
Oh, I went back and watched It's, it's I went back and.
Watched it. It's it's a thing of beauty.
Yeah, I agree. But.
It's it's great. So if anyone wants to keep
track, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Twitter, whatever
it might be, where can everybody find everything?
Smash remix in yourself. Depends on, yeah, we have a
Smash Remix, Twitter, Smash Remix, YouTube.
We have a GitHub. As far as like downloading Smash
Remix, there's a special sentence is going to kill me
because I don't know. I don't know that URL.
I'm trying to think what is. The URL?
Yeah, we'll post in the description for sure.
It's also POST. It in the description for me, so
this doesn't kill me because. I think I grabbed it from your
from your Twitter. Post Oh wait, I got it guys.
I got it. OK, it's smash 64 dot online
slash remix. OK, that's the best way to
download it. Don't go anywhere else.
Do not pay for remix. If you pay for it, you're
putting us on the line. We get in trouble with Nintendo.
We never want Remix to be sold. If you're getting, it's sold to
you, You're getting robbed. Nobody owns Remix like you
should get it for free. Never buy a cartridge with Remix
on there. Get never drive.
You know it's always free. Never pay for Remix.
The ever drive ran this thing beautifully.
It was. That's what we designed it for.
If it doesn't work on console, it doesn't.
It's not real. Yeah, that's our viewpoint.
It was awesome. I I totally just ripped my ever
drive out to like flaunt it. And then I realized I had Smash
Remix running. I might think of it.
So I just ripped it out of my live 64 to to prove this .0
fancy. There you go.
Yours is red. Mine's just Gray.
Fancy. Yeah.
I like the red. Yeah, OK, that's awesome.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
This is very exciting. Check out Smash Remix if you
have a chance to play it, play it.
At the very least, watch a lot of amazing videos that are out
there, watch the trailers, and support this awesome group of
creators. Because as we said, it is just
an insanely impressive feat and a whole lot of fun.
So thanks again for coming on the show and and hopefully we'll
chat to chat to you soon and good luck with the with the
future endeavors and being the CEO as you say.
Thanks so much for having me. All right, everybody.
Thank you so much for listening to Remember 64.
This week. We are back to our regular
schedule programming of an N64 game on the next episode and
more mods to come in the rest of the year.
So thanks everyone for listening.
We will talk to you soon on Remember 64.