The team at Playtonic Games are getting deeper into their attempts to produce Nintendo 64 nostalgia from their 3D platformer Yooka-Laylee. After a tease for 64-bit graphics in the summer and a Nintendo Switch Collector’s Edition resembling an N64 release, Playtonic released a trailer showing off the 64-Bit Tonic item.
Conceptually, this Tonic is supposed to give the game a 64-bit aesthetic, with a smaller polycount and lower-resolution textures and whatnot. The trailer demonstrates the final results of Playtonic’s work in emulating this, with jagged edges and even some television scanlines for added effect.
If you look at the comments on the official YouTube video, fans don’t seem quite impressed by the effort. Rather than actually having the environments and character models resemble 64-bit polygons, commentators see this more of the work of a filter to make the colors muddier and the image quality blurrier.
Granted, what these players are requesting is a tall order, and I would speculate that turning everything into true 64-bit would take too much development time and effort—even if these commentators do say that this feature has been promised for over a year. Super Mario Odyssey has a costume that turns him into his Super Mario 64 counterpart, amongst some other 64 easter eggs—but even then, that came from a larger development team and for only a small number of assets.
Be sure to revisit our Yooka-Laylee review here. The 64-Bit Tonic item will be available to players of the game in the coming weeks.
A comparison shot for those who wish to take a closer look! pic.twitter.com/3XLYhL3dzm
— Playtonic (@PlaytonicGames) October 25, 2018
Yooka and Laylee before and after their 64-bit Tonic “make-under”. We think it suits them n-icely. #YookaLaylee #64BitTonic pic.twitter.com/taYd6EQ2ro
— Playtonic (@PlaytonicGames) October 25, 2018