This is one of my favorite games of all time. I got it at EB games for $10 back in the day, instantly recognized because I was familiar with the strange trophy that appeared in Smash Bros. Melee as an unreleased title, similarly to how I first discovered Doubutsu no Mori! It‘s weirdness had me obsessed. It’s mysteriousness kept me interested my whole life. I now have a cib Japanese copy as well, which has blood and graphic imagery in the manual and on the disc! I also imported some rare collectibles that were produced for the game in Japan, but later sold because I don‘t need such clutter, and I’m creative as well and can easily create my own cubivore toys!
This may also be the first game I ever 100%'d? I got every transformation in the game. This was before I ever got all 151 in Blue version, or 100%'d the Wario series.
It's a glorious example of my favorite era of nintendo, the blurry era between 64, 64DD and gamecube.
This game was always known to be a canceled 64 game ported to gamecube.
https://www.nesworld.com/article.php?system=n64&data=n64-doubutsubanchou_2021&fbclid=IwAR3j4C4P6mQ5hB0PR1KjxAuBm2usmqPe6YheN6P-PKWRgj-0nzD_qve8UyU
Nowadays, this game reminds anyone who hadn't seen it before of minecraft. -_-
Cubivore did it FIRST! Forget Minecraft!
Let's discuss this awesome era where Nintendo wasn't afraid to get **WEIRD**! Arguably as weird as SEGA was with Seaman!
**Let's discuss this whole era,** the era of MOTHER 3 64DD, Kirby's Air Ride, Majora's Mask / Ura Zelda, Doshin the Giant's weirdness, Doubutsu no Mori, etc! It's safe to assume if something was out on gamecube, it may as well have begun development on 64/64DD! Or, if you don't like such a thought-- we can also *imagine* our favorite GCN titles as 64 games. Heck, a lot of stuff Nintendo releases nowadays with their Mii series started way back during this era as well!
I feel as though the framework for Link Between Worlds and the Link‘s Awakening remake was something they just had lying around. Doubutsu no Mori was clearly built on a 2.5D Zelda engine they had set beside Zelda 64’s fully 3D gameplay.
Just as an aside, here‘s a rare image of proto Doubutsu no Mori where girl player characters could have green hair– something not available in any version of the original games.
People talk about the 2.5D diorama effects of Link Between Worlds like it’s something new– It's totally not!
You mentioned the music from this era in your post on the whistling thread, so I want to talk a little more about it.
Doshin the Giant introduced me to one of my favorite musicians, [Tatsuhiko Asano](http://www.tatsuhikoasano.com). Here are youtube links to his three albums, the [Doshin "OST"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8v_FKonkkM) (only a few songs from it are actually in the game), [Genny Haniver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m96xI6LbABk), and [Spacewatch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEDsKWwyW_M).
I think musically, what stands out most to me about Nintendo's games from that era was this understanding that sound effects are music, music is sound effects, etc. Asano's music (both for Doshin and his other stuff as well) are a great example, but Animal Crossing is probably the peak of this. I think, for me, 90% of my appreciation for that game is in the way all that music and all those sounds make me feel. Gentleness and scariness constantly interacting, sounds whose meanings are complex and difficult to intuit, etc. I feel like with each new Animal Crossing game the music and sound design gets less and less interesting. They keeping filtering out all the idiosyncrasies. I mean, New Horizons still has very good music I think, but to me it's _just_ good game music -- there's not as much depth to it.
I guess what I like about these "64DD games" is this slight darkness they all seem to hide. In the original Animal Crossing every villager, if you talked to them enough, seemed to be harboring some dark secret, an undiagnosed mental illness, or horrible trauma that they're only willing to hint at. Doshin the Giant is (I think) about the horror of society's evolution. And [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHcldNM9fAI) expresses quite well some of the weird melancholy inherent in Pikmin. (I'm not sure if Pikmin was ever meant to be for the 64DD, but it definitely belongs to that era.)
Also curious if anyone has some good sources discussing/analyzing the bend towards simulation that first party Nintendo games took around that time. I know that, for instance, some former staff from Artdink (creators of A-train, but perhaps more pertinently, games like Aquanaut‘s Holiday and Tail of the Sun) had a hand in making Doshin – but I imagine there’s a lot more to it than just that.
@saddleblasters#31943 Kazutoshi Iida was the only Artdink alum working directly with Nintendo on games like Doshin at the time. And he‘s always had that edge and transgressive bent to his works, going as far back as his PS1 experiments. (Frankly, it should be the case that Artdink’s best known for A-Train and their other sims like Neo Atlas, but meme games like Mr. Domino and anything by Iida dominate the discourse.)
Cubivore's an interesting case because the game's designer, Gento Matsumoto, worked at Nintendo before leaving to form Saru Brunei. Their first game, Jungle Park, is a major highlight of Japanese PC-based multimedia games, with only a loose adventure game structure holding a bunch of mini-games together (alongside a glorious indie rock score by Buffalo Daughter and Delaware). Like Iida, he really wanted to stretch simple mechanics to encompass more liminal, often-times bizarre tropes and premises. Doshin and Cubivore both infantilize topics as harsh as cult societies and the Darwinian cycle of life, probably because that creates a compelling dissonance altogether.
I'd argue the same goes for Kenji Eno, whose design inclinations had much in common with Iida's. Something like, say, Enemy Zero or Real Sound directly plays against expectations without overdosing on complexity or any outright gatekeeping. You can hop into the game, play a bit, immediately know how to progress, and still wonder what the hell you're experiencing. That's even a part of classic Animal Crossing, where the locals are inviting to players just as often as they lash out at them. Like you said, these 64DD-era games have an edge to them that Nintendo would later polish out of the IPs that lasted.
I have so much to say about AC, I'm relieved I can now write it here instead of making a whole "my take on animal crossing" thread. Anyways, that's a draft. Right now, here's just some e-card rips I like, in no particular order. [URL=https://i.imgur.com/MekXVRE.png][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/MekXVRE.png[/IMG][/URL][URL=https://i.imgur.com/wHd89Zk.png][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/wHd89Zk.png[/IMG][/URL][URL=https://i.imgur.com/APPiuSM.png][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/APPiuSM.png[/IMG][/URL][URL=https://i.imgur.com/jv443I8.png][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/jv443I8.png[/IMG][/URL][URL=https://i.imgur.com/LQF91wE.png][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/LQF91wE.png[/IMG][/URL][URL=https://i.imgur.com/1UiZkEm.png][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/1UiZkEm.png[/IMG][/URL] [URL=https://i.imgur.com/0U5DbqN.png][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/0U5DbqN.png[/IMG][/URL]
(last one on the watermelon paper is deeply relatable, it might as well be a direct quote from ME!)
There's a weird, anti-consumer bend to the original game too. The games were so ahead of the social media curve, yet, they would end up being shaped by social media consumer culture in the end. More of a reflection of society at large. The first game has a **counter-culture** vibe to it.
I got my first GC version of AC out a while ago, playing on the Village me and my siblings made when the game came out. I forgot how salty a lot of the villagers are! I also feel like it has a much less softer vibe than the newer animal crossings.
I‘ve begun playing the N64 version of Cubivore. My intent is to 100% the game, and then 100% the gamecube version (for the second time, last I 100%‘d it in 2009) I think already there’s a musical theme not present in the original. There’s also different textures on some monsters. I should be streaming this I guess, but IDK. Usually the stuff I stream is too obscure to matter and that‘s why I’m posting here.
@“treefroggy”#p34557 Things Dōbutsu Banchō and Dōbutsu no Mori have in common
Both games started as 64DD projects, too.
>
@“marlfuchs2”#p31971 I also feel like it has a much less softer vibe than the newer animal crossings.
Most of us probably wouldn’t be the target demo to have witnessed this but apparently [much childhood trauma was involved.](https://www.shacknews.com/article/78714/animal-crossings-mr-resetti-makes-little-girls-cry)
I know for a fact the increased pressure from PTAs have had a huge impact on anime & cartoon shows in the past decade. I even had a friend from the anime industry theorizing that’s why the raw violence of Demon Slayer became so popular with kids (as it was scheduled for midnight showings and not intended to become a cult VOD hit among preteens).
I come to say I have bridged the gap between 64DD and GCN. I now have various adapters and dongles that allow me to use gamecube controllers on n64 and n64 controllers on GameCube. I have bridged the hardware gamefeel. I can now curate my own narratives.
@“hellojed”#p31971 my god - apologies for this kinda tangent; i was taking some down time a year or so ago after some new horizons marathoning, and decided to boot up my gamecube save that i'd spent literally hundreds of hours post college with friends on a shared village
fist thing (besides all the roaches!) was villagers asking where i'd been for 20 years 😱
but the real kicker was unread mail from a friend that'd died about 10 years back...that hit hard. this game/series really is something
That’s a great question and I’m glad someone here had one to ask. I don’t have much to ask at the moment, more of a cubivore fan. Though the soundtrack and the DD exclusive pee pee game leave much to be answered.
