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The forum has now been updated so blue sky posts now embed. Will look at the release notes shortly and see if there's anything else of note.

So they came through! Nintendo have sent me through a black NN3DSXL, along with my original faceplates. They’ve successfully transferred over my account, so I’ve still got my games too (they also threw in some Zelda stickers which my daughter’s happy about!). The only two issues I’ve found, which aren’t the end of the world, are: 1) Some games froze on the 3DS loading screen. Deleting & redownloading them has fixed the issue though. 2) I’ve lost saved games from downloaded titles along with my Wii Plaza Puzzle pieces. A shame but if that’s the only thing then that’s a relief and I have a working NN3DS again! I wasn’t sure if Nintendo were going to be able to help, but great respect to them they’ve really pulled through for me. I’m happy with the outcome. Now, to finally finish Chrono Trigger!!! 😃

Wario Land 4 is headed to NSO on February 14th

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 on the N64 was my first frame of reference for the game, and probably the last title that I got from Special Reserve... except I didn't buy it, I won it in a competition. The subject of which, was to write an article about the impending launch of the GameCube in the UK, and I ended up winning. The prize was a videogame of my choice, and being that it was new out at the time, and expensive... I went with THPS2, as there was nothing else out for the N64 at the time that I either wanted or didn't have, so for me, it was a solid choice. I played this game for hours, me and my brothers loved taking turns trying to go for high-scores, or playing the various multiplayer modes such as "HORSE" which was a favourite, particularly when one of you would look away from the screen for a moment, while the word in place of the default of "HORSE" was being changed, and then gradually finding out what choice word had been selected for the unfortunate lesser player of that particular match. I'd never played a game like it at the time, and I never have since, though these days, I'd probably default to the superior Dreamcast version, or the Xbox port, which was NTSC exclusive, though I might be able to play it on my Xbox Crystal, so I should probably check that out when I next decide to play the console.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 NA release: 21st August 2001 EU release: 12th October 2001 NA release: N/A Developer: Neversoft, Edge of Reality Publisher: Activision N64 Magazine Score: 90% Most of what I said about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 still applies here: while this is a perfectly functional port of a PlayStation game, some of the cutbacks – especially the heavily reduced soundtrack – make this more of a “it’ll do if you don’t have a PlayStation” kind of game. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 does bring some new features, such as the manual move to better string combos together (although I found it rarely actually continued a combo when I played) and more consistent levels across the game. You could also unlock Spider-Man in the game (made possible due to the developers also making a Spider-Man game). It’s interesting to see how licensed characters could be handled back then – he isn’t mentioned at all on the box, he’s just a secret unlockable in the game, just a bit of a bonus, rather than something purely done for marketing reasons. One thing of note is that this was the N64’s final game in Europe, and the last N64 game reviewed by N64/NGC Magazine. Fun Remake or remaster? The remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is the best way to play most of the game, but if you want Spider-Man (plus some bonus levels), you’ll need to check out Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2x on the original Xbox. Official Ways to get the game The remake is available on most platforms.

Game two done and dusted. I had heard it was short so I went and did this one next. And yes, it was done in just under 7 hours. But was it worth it, yes. It's not a taxing game, it's not going to rack your brain, but sometimes you just need a game that you can put on and enjoy for what it is. I likened it a lot to games like Limbo, Little Nightmares. It's a fairly simple point to point game with a few open areas in-between. You start out with a group of other cats and start to wonder off across the very simple "tutorial stage". And then after trying to follow the rest of them over a larger gap, the pipe you are on breaks and you fall into down into the dark of the sewers. From there you are going from point to point really traversing the ground and rooftops, railings and other assortment of stuff on the sides of buildings. You eventually get to the first main area where you get your first idea on what the story is about and why things are the way they are in the underground world. You meet a little robot buddy that helps you talk to the inhabitants and helps you collect stuff along the way. There weren't a lot in the way of side quests or alternate stuff to do outside of the main story, collecting memories of the robot buddy is pretty much it but this didn't bother me. You can still spend time finding all the memories in each chapter by exploring every little side street or house and room. There's a nice little twist halfway through which has you do some stuff without the robot buddy. I nice change of pace but nothing taxing. It's fun to just walk around as a cat jumping up on things and knocking stuff off. As cats do. The ending seems to creep up a bit quicker than I thought whilst playing. I knew I was at the point where the end was in view, but it seemed to just end when you did that one thing you had to do. Little disappointed there. Was hoping you'd get to see a bit more. there are many spots on the game that just allow you to lay down and go to sleep as the cat. Adds nothing to the game and doesn't move things along but is just quite cute. It wasn't all great though. This may just be the Switch but I on a few occasions the game started to stutter along like it was chugging at 5fps. It just seemed to crawl. At one point the game just straight up froze. I wasn't even doing a lot in the game at the point it did it. It just stopped. I also came across a number of glitches and visual glitches that whilst were funny (one shown below) didn't harper the game. I did have to reset when I got stuck inside some tires though. Overall a lovely little game, I got 21/27 memories as shown on the game select screen, so it maybe worth another play through in the future. 8/10 I got stuck Visual Glitchiness fun. Updated pledge

I was forced to remember last night why I stopped playing PC games and switched to consoles. Due to me not getting a PS5 (as I could not justify the cost given how much time I generally spend gaming), I was extremely excited that Spider-man 2 was finally announced for PC! I spent a while clearing out the space to download it (140GB hard drive requirement!) Last night I finished downloading it, and tried playing it. I was using my PS4 controller on my laptop (which was surprisingly easy to set-up - bonus points there). Bear in mind that my laptop has a RTX 2060 graphics card, so it's firmly in the middle of the minimum and the recommended hardware requirements. It auto-selected the medium graphics settings, which looked ok to me, so i was happy with that (i'm not a graphics whore particularly, as long as i can see what's going on, i'm happy. I don't really give a shit about frame rate either to be honest. i can't really tell the difference between 30 and 60fps, as long as it isn't turning into a powerpoint, I reckon it's playable.) The first cut-scene featured an invisible character, holding a clipboard. Bit of a weird start, but then i knew that Miles Morales can turn invisible, so not out of universe....however, the next character that turned up was also invisible...except he wasn't - he was represented by a small ball of hair floating at around head height, that buzzed everytime he spoke. The next scene featured loads of floating heads and other strange glitches. Which was when i twigged that perhaps something wasn't quite right... I read online that one way to fix it was to turn your settings to 'Very Low', save, restart your computer, and then load it up again. Once you're in, you can bump your settings back up again and Ben's your uncle. So I tried that, and sure enough, all the character models came back in (with horrendously low res hair - all the characters have dreads). I played again for a few more minutes, and actually got to web swing for a bit, until I realised that a couple of buttons on my PS4 controller weren't working, the 'jump' button being one of them. Now I don't know if anyone here has played a Spider-man game, or encountered the character before, but jumping is kind of his thing - I'm running down the streets of New York, trying to keep up with Miles, until I realise that this is silly. So it's another save, close, restart, load it up. Now my controller is working! Yay! I can jump! I can swing! I can save the city! So I'm swinging downtown, looking for Sandman, and I see a huge sandstorm. Get a bit closer, and Miles is talking about how we've managed to find Sandman, but I'm looking around trying to see him amidst all this sandstorm, but I can't see him. And then it hit me. The giant invisible hand of Sandman hit me. Damn it! The Sandman model hasn't loaded in, because I forgot to turn my graphics settings down to Very Low before I quit the last time. While it was amusing to see Spider-man clinging onto an invisible giant, I knew I couldn't play this section if I couldn't see the enemy, so it meant another save, close, restart laptop. I finally get back into the game, Very Low graphics settings (which I leave on because I can't be arsed having anything else go wrong), and I complete the opening sequence of the game. The whole thing has taken maybe an hour and a half, at which point it's time to go to bed because the kids are going to be up in 5 hours. Still, 10/10 fantastic game, no complaints.

I never really had any issues with the controls in CBFD. Yes, Conker isn't as graceful to control as Banjo, but the levels are designed around his more limited moveset. What CBFD doesn't get enough credit for is just how many different styles and genres of gameplay are represented in this game. One moment it's a 3D platformer, the next it's a hoverboard racing game, then it turns into a 3D Tank Shooter and then into an over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooter (Long before RE4 popularised the format; hell, RE4 even stole CBFD's laser sight! Let alone its camera perspective!) May well have been the first of its kind! There's at least 6 entire game's worth of gameplay mechanics and gameplay engines crammed in here. CBFD isn't so much a 3D platformer as it is a huge mismash of different genres in one. It feels like a game that took 5 odd years to make, and that's because it did! It is, without a doubt, the single most impressive game for the console from a design and technical perspective. Anyway, I have to shout out the incredible Director's Commentary series of gameplay videos put out by Chris Seavor around 10 odd years ago. Some really fun game design insight and a great laugh as you watch how shit he is at playing his own game More than 10 years on, and he still hasn't finished his playthrough! The part where they all rant on about the Xbox One always-online debacle at Robin Beanland's expense (who was still under Rare's employ at the time and couldn't say anything) always cracks me up

I really enjoyed Cubivore on GameCube. It looked bland and uninspiring back actually the simplicity of the blocks made it easy to tell how ‘large’ each creature was and meant it couldn’t be challenged that said creature didn’t look like it’s real-life counterpart, as it quite clearly just gave a suggestion on what the creature was and wasn’t trying to accurately portray anything. Great find in playing an N64 prototype! It’s quite clear I’m a Conker fan, and how this made its way into the N64 in the form it did I still can’t quite believe. It’s very Rare-esque with its humour, just dialled right up! I still recall this having a room full of students in hooked and in fits of laughter when played in single player at my school(!). I can recall very few games getting such a captive audience! I agree with your thoughts on some of the gameplay issues. I recall the camera being frustrating at times, and despite most areas being fairly linear in nature there were a few times I couldn’t work out where I was going. It was so much about the variety and set pieces though. I enjoyed the switch about halfway though as well, where it suddenly got a lot darker. All the time still not for kids, the first half felt more juvenile compared to the humour and tones of the second half. Would love to see this on NSO and a proper sequel at some point in the future.

Right, finally finished the first game of my pledge. Mixed feeling through this one. Overall a good game but shows its age in how we have become accustomed to so much in games today. I'll get to these in a bit. The game starts off with the usual training level, all characters present (you get to play as 6 in total, one being in a team environment and not solely alone) and each one gets a short introduction into what they can do. Apart from Willow all characters use their fists and feat to attack, along with getting weapons along the way. Willow uses magic. Once the training level is over the main game starts and you are playing as Buffy. The main part of each level will see you just kicking vampire butt. over and over. This is then padded out with some puzzles, though not lengthy one, that task you to either move on to the next part of the level or activate something in the level. From the first main level you start to see the issues that I started to hate. First up, fighting can be OK when it's 1v1, punch punch kick stake! However later on you'll get a vamp and his friend attack you. No worries it's just two, ah but there is no way to target one and stick on them. the best thing you can do is line up to one and then go in fighting, and hope the other one doesn't get too close. kill that guy, then you can focus on the other. Again though just focusing on a bad guy was a pain as you don't always face them head on and punching will not auto focus to them, so again you have to kind run away a bit, turn, then go attack. Like I said, when there are two guys this makes fighting a bit of a pain, especially when they are both together and you can't really just focus on one guy. first 20 minutes or so when there was more than one guy I found myself being killed a lot until I started getting used to things. This is where another small factor comes in. the Y button. It's a do all button nearly. It acts as the button to pick up items, button to open doors, interact with objects, and the final stake to kill enemy button. Whilst it doesn't cause too many issues I feel it did when I wanted to pick something up off the floor and others where around me. Sticking with the Y Button. OK, so this all joins into my next gripe about the game. Length of levels. Oh dear lord they take ages, and I mean ages. Now maybe it was cause I've never played it but the average time to complete a level was probably 50 minutes. this comes down to a number of factors. Not knowing what I was doing is of course one, but your objectives just aren't clear. You get the main objective and maybe parts in-between, so you may not know what you need to do to get somewhere. Whilst the first few levels weren't too bad, I started to resort to a guide as some things just weren't clear on what to do. Example: High School level. You are having to ward off a spell by placing bunnies on a number of pentagrams around school. in the library there is one of these locked behind a door. Xander says, "now where was the key kept". That's it, no more info, no clues as to what or where it is. Where was it, it was in a safe in the principals office. Easy enough. Well first you have to find a computer that gives you the code. Now you may have already come across that computer and it did nothing, but you wouldn't think to to go back to it. So I spent ages to walking around, going to the guide, I found which computer it is (and yes it was a previous one I'd checked which did nothing at the time) so got it. Headed to the office and just couldn't see any safe. Well it was a tiny square on the wall that is so easy to miss. Which adds that these parts you interact with, there is no button prompt like we are used to today. You just have to hope you are in the right place in front of it and press Y. A lot of the time later in the game when I was stuck, I'd just go around walls pressing Y incase it did something. there were a number of other situations like this that I came across. Anyway because of all that my time on that level was over an hour. Well over an hour! After that level I decided that I'd play blind up to where I just couldn't see what to do, and this happened on each level after a number of times. From where to go next to what something opened or operated. It just wasn't always clear. Each level gies you plenty of weapons along with stakes to kill but I found myself just kicking and punching then staking. On occasions using a hell fire or holy water item to clear a few enemies at once, but these items are just not seen enough to waste. As such most were never used. Oh an on the fighting, there a "handbook" in game that shows you a list of all the moves you can pull of when fighting. The simple AAB or BBA combo, to others that you do by aiming towards the enemy then BBA or something. But when it comes to it, you just end up using the easy AAB, ABA, BBA types and it seems to do the trick. The boss of each level, well kind of a boss, as you are tasked to collect body parts of an accent demon or witch to help you get the final weapon to defeat the final boss. Each level boss has a part of the body. Most of these fights weren't too bad, one gave me a bit fair bit of bother but was done eventually. And the final boss, well a few attempts and he was done. Didn't put up much of a fight when you get used to it. One good thing is the game is fully voiced acted by the cast (90% of them probably) it seems Willow is done by someone else and whilst she does a good job, you really can tell it's not Allyson Hannigan and it does get to you, lol. I believe everyone else was voiced by the actor who played them. Also the game has small videos you unlock from beating the levels which show interviews and VO sessions with the actors, a nice touch which I think a few other games did but you just don't see any more. So even with the downfalls or level length, poor fighting, and puzzles that shouldn't take that long just because you can't actually find what time you need to interact with, I think the game was good enough. Id love to see this game given a modern treatment making some aspects easier and generally making QOL changes to help the player. 6/10 Right. Updated image for front page. Think I'll be playing a Switch game next. I did purchase Stray so may play that.

Animal Leader NA release: N/A EU release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: Intelligent Systems Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: N/A I won’t be delving too much into playing this game. Animal Leader was a curious game that kept coming up in N64 Magazines. However, as it was nearing completion, Nintendo were deciding which N64 projects were going to move to the GameCube, and Animal Leader ended up being one of those, being renamed to Cubivore. I wonder if the whole cube aesthetic was what made them pick this game to be moved over. A prototype N64 version of the game was found, and it was almost finished. As not a lot has changed between the two versions (other than making the cubes a bit smoother, like dice, and the main character’s head being more of a cube instead of having a snout), I’ll be playing that version properly, as it also happens to be in English. I think it’s still interesting to see which games were moved and working out why – some games (like Eternal Darkness and Dinosaur Planet) likely needed the extra development time, while Animal Leader was moved for other reasons. The game has you controlling animals made up of blocks. You roam each level in order to kill animals and absorb a block from them that gives you a power, sometimes just affecting how you move. You’ll also need to find mates to produce more powerful offspring. It all seems fascinating, and I’m looking forward to trying out the GameCube version. Fun Should it be finished? It was, just on GameCube instead.

So a further update, Nintendo contacted me to say they’d need to replace my console, but they don’t have any white NN3DS models like mine, so would I be happy to receive a black New Nintendo 3DS XL instead. I’ve asked them about transferring my account and they’ve assured me I can redownload all my existing software into the new device. I’ve accepted (not that I had much choice) but the upgrade seems like a good alternative!

It's not the movesets that are the problem, Pokémon HOME actually keeps track of every moveset your Pokémon has between each Switch game. So if you transfer something from, say, Scarlet to Sword, then HOME will change the movesets to match what it is in Sword, and if you transfer it back, it reverts to the Scarlet moveset. It's pretty slick! Theoretically, it would be no problem for it to save another moveset for a hypothetical NSO version of Red/Blue. The actual problem is the stats. Effort Values, or EV's, function completely differently to all the other games. That's why getting Pokémon from the 3DS Virtual Console games to the other 3DS games was a bit of a faff. They needed a program to recalculate it all. Now, they did do it, so having it be able to transfer Pokémon back to the Game Boy should be do-able. But it all depends on how difficult it is to edit a game on the NSO via a third party app (HOME). And as you mentioned, whether GF sees it as worth the effort.

As I setup the Mega SG again this morning I decided to rearrange my Mega Drive drawer so I can actually see the boxes when trying to pick out something to play

Dinosaur Planet NA release: N/A PAL release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: Rare Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: N/A Towards the end of the N64’s life, Dinosaur Planet was looking extremely promising – it was going to be Rare’s take on Ocarina of Time, then all of a sudden things went quiet until it resurfaced as Star Fox Adventures on the GameCube. The original story and design of the game had been altered to fit Star Fox, with one of the main characters replaced by Fox, and the other turned into a damsel in distress (as well as getting redesigned by Nintendo to be “sexy”, to appeal to more mature audiences). For ages, fans wondered what the original design would have been like. Then, a late N64 build of the game got leaked. This was part way through the transition to Star Fox Adventures, with Fox replacing Sabre, but the original plans for the game were still much there, with the key element of swapping between Sabre and Krystal very much intact. Fans have restored the original Sabre model and removed references to Fox, and are still trying to fix as many glitches as possible. This gives us a decent look at the original plans for the game. Dinosaur Planet starts with Krystal trying to rescue Princess Kyte, a flying dinosaur who turns out to be a significant part of of this version of the game. In Dinosaur Planet, Krystal ends up being separated from Kyte when she seeks her adoptive father – a wizard called Randorn, who was cut from the final game – for advice to open her cage. He’s wounded and passes on his remaining magic spell to Krystal, who must carry on the quest. I found it interesting that it’s not the staff that provides the powers, but seems to be more of a way to focus the magic fireballs, I think it makes the game feel more majestic. Not long after this, you encounter the SwapStone, who breaks the fourth wall to talk about Sabre, you get to swap with him for a bit as he rescues Prince Tricky (who was based on the dinosaur boss from Diddy Kong Racing). Sabre controls the same as Krystal, and his sword acts in the same way as Krystal’s staff for using spells. Sabre is the biological son of the Wizard Randorn. There’s a rather deep history on how the characters are linked, but we only get a few snippets from what we see in the prototype. From the feeling of the lock-on combat, movement, and jumping, the Zelda inspiration is very clear. But, despite this, Dinosaur Planet still feels like its own thing, due to a different level design philosophy. Items are handled differently, as you swap between various spells, items, and companion abilities with different c-buttons, so it’s quick to swap and access abilities without needing to pause, a system that works well. Tricky is still annoying in this version of the game, and where you use his digging ability isn’t telegraphed very well (but only at this part of the game, it’s better later on). Once you go back to Krystal, you do get to finally rescue Princess Kyte, who becomes Krystal’s dinosaur companion. Her abilities are similar to Tricky, with digging replaced with activating unreachable switches. As she flies around, she’s not in the way as much, and is a far more charming character, with some surprisingly emotional moments throughout the game. I checked how one particular moment changed in the final game, and it was changed to be rather tame and unremarkable. It’s a shame Kyte couldn’t have been Fox’s companion with Tricky taking a back seat instead, she’s one of the standout characters in Dinosaur Planet. In Star Fox Adventures, her character just told you to use the A button to interact with things, you never actually rescue her. The first five or so hours of the Dinosaur Planet (with the latest fixes) go quite smoothly. I got to CloudRunner Fortress before I had to use debug tools. From then on, my progress of the game was a method of getting as far as I can, then checking some videos to see if I’m doing something wrong, or the game isn’t activating or loading something properly. I had to start using the noclip option to get through some areas that should have been open, and then eventually the warp to location to get to areas that aren’t fully connected to the main game world. I still mostly went through the game in what I think was the intended route, getting the six spellstones and eight krazoa spirits (quite a bit more than the final game). The areas vary a lot in terms of how much they are completed. For the most part, the actual levels are built, but many elements are missing. There are a few places where the Spellstone is just out in the open, with an empty area to explore. Other places have all the elements, but don’t fully work (such as the Walled Garden, which was fully completed for SFA), while others are near complete, other than a bit of bug fixing. Luckily, there is a large story outline that leaked in 2012 which explained what happened in these places, and it sounds fascinating – especially the time-travelling in the original Krazoa Palace (with Warlock Mountain getting renamed Krazoa Palace in the final game). One fascinating thing about the world is how well connected it is, using short tunnels to mask loading times, so that there’s only very few instances of the game fading to transition to a new area (other than swapping between the two characters and warping to Warlock Mountain). This is a very common technique now, so it’s interesting to see it done on the N64. The end of the game in the prototype is a tease. We find out more about the Krazoa and Drakor, the main villain in this version of the game, and the ancient war between their species. A lot of the actual things are missing from the prototype, especially after Sabre gets attacked and Krystal needs to rescue him, which leads to a final confrontation between Sabre and Drakor. Although with the Krazoa revelations, we don’t know if there was going to be a final twist of if something was being left open for the sequel. Dinosaur Planet could have been the N64’s swan song, a final outstanding title just before the GameCube. Even if it had moved to GameCube anyway, I feel like there’s a ton of great stuff in here that had to be gutted to fit twhat Nintendo wanted from the game, and Krystal was even completely removed for a while, until Nintendo wanted a sexy character added. With Star Fox Adventures getting some criticism for not being a Star Fox game, I really think that this would have been much better off, left as Dinosaur Planet. I look forward to seeing what fans do with the game in the future. Great Should it be finished? We can already see what the game was transformed into, but I would love to see a recreation of this version of Dinosaur Planet, with the original story intact.

Bit late to the party, but this thread needs more posts. After much deliberation, it's time to throw my hat in the ring. Shoutouts! Let's start things off with shouting out some of my highlights of the year which maybe don't fit into the typical GOTY categories we do here, be it multiplayer games (which I generally avoid considering for GOTY, especially if there's a heavy single player component), certain replays, or games I dropped for whatever reason. I kicked off the year with some replays, starting off with Chrono Trigger, which remains one of the all-time greats, and followed it up with revisiting The Last of Us Part II for the first time with its Remastered re-release. It's a game I greatly enjoyed back at launch in 2020, but wouldn't say I truly loved. While after this replay I'd actually double down on what I perceive to be its greatest flaws - namely some weird pacing which I purposely leaned into when structuring my playthrough, as well as trusting players too much at times while too little at others - this replay was worthwhile because it cemented Part II as one of my favourite experiences in gaming, because in spite of all of those flaws, it swings for the fences in ways it easily could've avoided. It's scratching at the seams of what a video game story can achieve. What's more, it's genuinely a brilliant playing game, with what is probably my favourite modern take on stealth-action - also, notably, probably one of the only interesting modern AAA takes on stealth-action, in my opinion - some beautiful visuals, excellent writing and some great character moments. I loved it so much that, retroactively, it's taken the crown as my 2020 GOTY (sorry to Final Fantasy VII Remake). Let's shout out some multiplayer hijinks while we're here, because me and my friends spent 104½ hours together across the latter months of 2023 and early months of 2024 completing Baldur's Gate III together. It was a frustrating cacophony of scheduling nightmares at times, and the entire ending sequence makes me want to scream at every person in the world that the ending needs to be experienced solo first because it falls so incredibly flat in a multiplayer playthrough because of how it awkwardly wraps things up, but damn, despite all that, I still loved it. I'm the RPG guy in my group - regardless of what PlayStation Wrap-Up wanting to suggest otherwise - and I've also listened to a number of D&D podcasts in the past, so it was a great way, weirdly, to introduce my friends to the world of the turn-based RPG. I'll be honest, for my own sanity and to know where I truly stand on it I need to play it a second time all the way through by myself at some point - which I've tried a few times at this point, and we've also dabbled with some 20+ hours of another co-op playthrough or two since our first playthrough ended - but I'm not in any particular rush to do that, as the story and its characters still feel so fresh and familiar at the time of writing. And yeah, in case you're worrying, I'm still gutted there isn't a height slider which meant I couldn't be the dwarf-sized Dragonborn bard I wanted to be. Elsewhere me and my friends threw time into PowerWash Simulator together - a great way to just chill and chat - and there was some Ghost Recon: Wildlands stupidity too, as well as 30 hours more put into Monster Hunter World via a fresh save file which ultimately fell down the pecking order and unfortunately put of our weekly rotation of games; at this point I'm 45 hours into Monster Hunter World across two saves and still have no idea where I stand on it, so if and when I get to Wilds, I'm adamant that I'll be doing so solo. Gran Turismo 7, meanwhile, managed to keep me somewhat sane during even the trickier times of the year, which I'm very grateful for. Some games I wish I put more time into this year would be Helldivers II - which I picked up at launch but only put an hour or two into, but an awesome and fun two hours at that! There's also Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, which I actually got early having backed the game on Kickstarter given my love for Suikoden and Suikoden II, enjoyed the early going of immensely, but just played at the wrong place and time this year, through no fault of the game. Maybe it's one I get back to this year? I'm in no rush, but when the mood strikes, I'm glad it's on my shelf and ready to go. I've also got to shout-out Persona 3 Reload, which felt like a huge gaming lesson in and of itself to me, as it's the first game I've pumped a serious amount of hours into - over 35 hours, to be more precise - and subsequently dropped in a very, very long time, and I was probably around the halfway mark before my interest just tailed off. As much as I loved the game's sense of style, music, and snappy combat - with the integration of so many wonderful systems which stack on top of each other, such as Shuffle Time and Theurgy - it just did so little to make me care about and connect with these characters in the way that Persona 5 did. While it's true that comparison is the thief of joy, I realised that the only thing being stolen here was my gaming time given that I wasn't all-in on the game and would often find my mind drifting to the idea of what I wanted to play next. It's a game I'd love to return to in the right mood and see through to the end, but when I feel like Persona 5 did a much better job of getting me into the swing of things and keeping me in that place, it felt important to realise that I was forcing myself through a game which I owed nothing. In the Year of JRPGs that was 2024, this was the only turn-based JRPG I put any time into, and I think that hurts a bit given how much more excitement I had for some of the other turn-based JRPGs released throughout the year. Lastly, I know this is a positive thread with a focus on favourites, but I've got a call-out rather than a shout-out to round this section off with: screw Star Wars Outlaws. That is all. 2024 releases I wish I made time for Easy section, really, and I touched on it before: I am a TOTAL FRAUD, as I didn't complete a single turn-based JRPG in 2024. More seriously though, I'm not going to be too harsh on myself about the games I didn't get to in 2024, but yeah, it's true, this list consists of mostly turn-based RPGs, some of which I feel like I've been waiting on forever. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Dragon Quest III HD-2D, Metaphor: ReFantazio, the Switch release of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, obviously I mentioned Eiyuden Chronicle before which I think probably belongs here too, simply because I only got a couple of hours in and will likely restart it if and when I get back to it. As for other games? It's more RPGs, but this time with action! Granblue Fantasy Relink and Black Myth: Wukong are two action-RPGs I followed for ages ahead of their respective releases and have been so excited to get to and see how they've turned out, but I just didn't find the time for them in 2024. Wukong is getting DLC now in 2025 so I'll probably wait for news of that to drop before I take the plunge, whereas Relink doesn't sound like it would be the craziest time investment in the world because of what I know about its structure and length, and so maybe that's one I'll find time for sooner rather than later. Dragon's Dogma II also seems like somehting I'd be really keen to try, given the time, but the vibe and response to that game following launch was so strange that it quickly fell to the wayside for me - the character creator looked insane, though, so there's that. Also wish I got to the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection. I'm not going to get as in-depth as I did last year on the particulars of why certain indie games were on my radar and open that whole can of worms - because, come on, 2024 was the Year of JRPGs and Indies and I didn't really get to much of either, so that list would be LONG, as you'd probably figure from my non-exhaustive list of indies I wish I got to last year in the 2023 edition of the Favourite Games thread - but there are quite a few where I want to get around to them and see what the fuss is all about, the biggest ones of all being Arco, Balatro, UFO 50, and Animal Well. Some others worth shouting out would be Anomaly Agent, Loco Motive, Tcatical Breach Wizards, Thank Goodness You're Here!, Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami, Indika, Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, Minishoot' Adventures, New Star GP, Until Then, Dungeons of Hinterberg, Crypt Custodian, Shogun Showdown, Shadows of Doubt, Parking Garage Rally Circuit, Last Time I Saw You, Neva, Caves of Qud...the list goes on and on, but I'll stop myself there. I think in 2025 one of my aims is to get to indie games as and when I'm interested in them/they release, because they quickly fall down the pecking order when bigger games are easier to structure my time around. There's also one more big release I have some interest in playing at some point, but this was one I avoided more because I'm still weighing up if I'd want to play the remake or original first, and also just because I need to be in a good and strong place mentally before taking the plunge, I'm aware, and that is Silent Hill 2. Not much to say about it, but glad to see it be successful and glad that I've managed to avoid having anything spoiled despite it finding success. Between all of the games I've listed - and the many I haven't - as well as the games included in my 2024 GOTY rundown a bit further on, I'm aghast at the narrative I heard time and again throughout last year and the start of this one that 2024 was a bad year for new games. To anyone who remotely thinks that: you're clearly playing the wrong games, or looking in the wrong places for new games. 2023 and 2024 back-to-back is easily the best back-to-back set of years for new releases, we've had, I'd very strongly argue, since 2017 and 2018. Favourite New-to-Me Games of 2024 (games released prior to 2024) Well then, it's time to get down to business, isn't it? This year I'll be starting out with my favourite games which were new to me and released prior to 2024. Honourable Mentions A bit of an awkward one for me this year, where I was planning to narrow down my Favourite New-To-Me Games down to 5, but I simply couldn't decide on a 5th, and I had some trouble even trying to rank these games in the first place, so stretching it out to a Top 8 for the sake of doing so seemed a bit disingenuous for my rundown. So, my honourable mentions for NTM 2024 titles are: The Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening (2019) | Deceptively vibrant with its colour palette, I completed my first 2D Zelda game this year and it was a blast. Some great dungeons, fun bosses, memorable and hilarious NPCs, Grezzo knocked it out of the park with this remake and its visual style, though perhaps some technical hiccups still linger and I'd really have loved for this game (and, I mean, just in general more Nintendo games) to come with a greater list of accessibility options, because not being able to control the depth of field which is probably a bit too strong is just straight up weird. Going to find it very hard to go back to the original purely because of the QoL changes this remake brought about, namely how easy it was to manage inventory, but I have no doubt I'll find myself back there at some point, if nothing else just out of sheer curiosity! Lost Judgment (2022) | Look, it's another RGG game, and if that's not for you then that's fine...but this game tackles a bunch of important topics like bullying and how rigid school systems can get in the way of actually helping someone in need, and the inevitable results of an extreme mix of both. It also has one of the best action combat systems in an RGG game that I've played, obviously substories are great and so are the side activities as always, and that cast is excellent too. I think right now it would round out my Top 5 of Yakuza/Judgment titles. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003) | This is one of those games I've meant to get to for such a long time, and weirdly enough, Baldur's Gate III serving as an intro to more in-depth Western RPGs was the gateway game to me getting here. It's aged a bit roughly and might be a bit archaic in a few ways today - its visual, its maps, the UI can be a bit clunky at the best of times and so can the combat - but the core story and themes, the characters and writing, the emphasis on puzzles at times, the music, they're just all great and still hold up. Also, Pazaak is a simple and wonderful in-game card game which has been something of a gateway into me enjoying them more in other games. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (2017) | This is probably my second favourite Uncharted game at the time of writing, albeit some 7 or 8 years now removed from my most recent playthrough of the original trilogy. The writing is super tight, Chloe and Nadine are excellent leads and have great banter, the puzzles are fun, its open world section is handled delicately but is such an interesting approach to an open world section in a game made by some of the strongest linear level designers in the industry right now, the twists and turns along the way are great too, as is the action and chaos that ensues. One of those shorter games which has you scratching your head and wondering why we can't see way more of these on a AAA level than we do. #4 | Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (2010) Despite an incredibly frustrating and confusing post-game experience to unlock the game's true ending, Peace Walker feels like a pretty dazzling follow-up to what is, in my eyes, pretty comfortably the best game in the series (that I've played so far) in MGS3: Snake Eater. It feels like such an interesting cocktail of the simplicity of the first Metal Gear Solid combined with the concepts of Snake Eater with a base-building experience tacked on for good - initially portable - measure, featuring Monster Hunter-style boss fights, because why not? Its cutscenes are wonderfully handled too, with its Shinkawa graphic novel style, but what really blew me away was just how emotive the game was despite its technical limitations; playing the HD version of the game on PS3 it felt like a side step from Snake Eater rather than a true step behind, and then its soundtrack is just there to blow you away at the best of times, in classic Kojima fashion. This time around it was with Heavens Divide and the game's main theme. #3 | Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010) Let's get this out of the way: Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a brilliant game and is the only game I would personally vouch for on my New-to-Me list - yes, even including the two games I placed above it - as being a 10/10. It builds on the foundational excellence of the first Galaxy game and then kind of just throws a kitchen sink of fresh ideas and concepts at the game's mechanics, and they all kind of just work perfectly. Easily the best soundtrack of the New-to-Me titles for me this year, so you're probably wondering why this is only coming in at third? The answer is simply that the two games I've placed above it have seriously burrowed their way into my head in a way that Galaxy 2 hasn't, perhaps owed a little bit to it being a sequel to what is functionally and visually a very similar game, but it needs to be said that I've never felt the way I have playing a platformer before Galaxy 2 - which is something I won't be taking for granted. It's pretty comfortably my favourite of the Mario games I've played so far, and was an awesome next step on my 3D Mario adventure. #2 | Resident Evil (2002) If you told me that this game would be my second favourite New-to-Me title of 2024 after an incredibly frustrating second session which had me questioning seeing the game through to the end, I would have laughed you out of the building. But my goodness am I glad I stuck with it, because oh boy does it deliver one hell of an experience once it clicks! From the inventory management which forces your hand at every turn to treat the game and mansion like a puzzle in its most basic combat encounters to S-tier puzzles to some corny dialogue to an incredibly oppressive and dense atmosphere and one of the best combinations of level and world design besides perhaps Dark Souls, for me - yeah, this is one hell of a game. While a frustrating introduction at times to Resident Evil, I haven't felt this challenged to get to grips with a game since Demon's Souls back at the end of 2020, so let's see if this series sticks for me in a similar way in 2025 when getting to later games in the franchise, shall we? #1: My New-to-Me Game of the Year | Katamari Damacy (2004) There aren't just few experiences in gaming like that which is presented to players in Katamari Damacy, there are few experiences in life I could earnestly say are similar. It takes a while to get grips with rolling this ball around picking up a random assortment of increasingly large objects and beings - heck, just writing that, I say that like you can fully get to grips with this game's controls, but the fact that you can't in a short playthrough adds this level of chaos and expression which few games can. The game's final level - and the escalation throughout - is Tetris levels of "oh, wow, how far can this go?" levels of perfection, and I have thought about the game at least once every couple of days since I rolled credits on it back at the end of August - it is one of those experience which immediately sticks with you. It is deliberate in its silly and wacky tone and nature, and yet when the simple (on paper) action of rolling a ball around is combined with this particular colour flat palette in a 3D space, and that wonderfully and weirdly emotive and varied soundtrack kicks in, for me the highlight of which is Cherry Blossoms...this is one of those new examples I will point to that transcends the medium of video games: this is art. Katamari Damacy is something anyone and everyone should experience, I think, purely for how grounding it is in how it so effectively and simply relays this undeniable, underlying connectivity we all have to what surrounds us in our day-to-day lives, and how easily rolled up in the chaos of life we can so easily become. This game was so much more than I thought it would be, one of those rare "more than the sum of its parts" games, and it's for these reasons why it is my New-to-Me GOTY of 2024. Favourite Releases of 2024 We're about to add deliberations on some of the biggest heavy hitters of the year to this page, as the next three games are the reason I'm coming to you with this post at the start of February and not much sooner, because these are my three favourite games I played in 2024, and they're just so difficult to compare purely because of how varied and different they are, be it in style, tone, or gameplay. On any given day I thought I could choose a different one of these to be my personal GOTY, and could absolutely justify whatever choice I made, and while there's an argument that one or two games on the list of games I didn't get to this year could break into the Top 3, I feel so strongly about these games that I'd be pleasantly shocked if they do; at this moment in time, and over the last few weeks, what has compounded is a sense of certainty when it comes to my favourite new title of 2024. With that preamble out of the way: let's mosey, shall we? #3 | Astro Bot Team Asobi built on the incredibly fun and interactive Astro's Playroom here with a Mario Galaxy-styled game which delivers on just about every front: incredibly charming and witty with no spoken dialogue throughout the entire game, down to the toddler/cat-like nature of Astro and friends, I had an absolutely amazing time blasting through this game over the course of its release weekend. It does what very few games aspire to do outside of Nintendo, these days, I think, in how it implements the controller as an element of gameplay and reaction to the game world, but also just narrowly focuses so much on that feeling of delivering a sense of joy. It so smartly pokes fun at PlayStation's history and catalogue of first-party and associated third-party IPs across the platform's 30-year history, but it is clear that it is all done in good fun, and some of these levels will convince you that Asobi perhaps understand PlayStation's strengths and weaknesses perhaps better than any other team under the platform's umbrella today, because some of these levels deliver on an absolutely fundamental understanding of certain gameplay elements and tropes which I think get lost in the shuffle so easily in the wider AAA landscape of today that them being folded into and incorporated in a 3D platformer is such an excellent way to highlight that, no, these games are different, play differently, and deliver totally different and varied experiences, while also serving to further highlight the obvious gap outside of Nintendo when it comes to AAA 3D platformers. It even comes with the strange lack of accessibility options most of those Nintendo games do, too. A lot has been said about the game playing on nostalgia, and while that's obvious with the VIP Bots you're saving in some levels, it's such a flawed criticism from my perspective: the game is strengthened by its celebration of PlayStation's 30-year history, and not at all weakened because of it. It is the only standalone title of 2024 I can say I'd score a 10/10 - and yes, you're right with what you're probably thinking at this point, this was a HELL OF A YEAR for me and 3D platformers, between this and Galaxy 2. Astro Bot was a worthy winner at the 2024 TGAs and, as I've noted elsewhere, I hope forces PlayStation's hands for the first time in a while to focus on delivering more games which put that pure sense of joy and fun ahead of story or plain attempts at trying to deliver a Fortnite-level GAAS success. I will be waiting with baited breath for whatever Nicolas Doucet and Asobi have in store for us next, because I have no doubt that they will once again deliver. #2 | Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree While I will continue defend my stance that Shadow of the Erdtree shouldn't have been considered for GOTY at as major an event for the casual-facing side of the gaming community as The Game Awards - which, I'd argue, is the de facto GOTY decider for any given year at this point - given just how strong a year 2024 was for new releases and how Elden Ring absolutely doesn't want for more lip service, something really strange has happened over the course of the last few weeks and months when it comes to even people's personal GOTYs, perhaps overcorrecting for the release getting a TGAs GOTY nomination, where it's being considered "just" more Elden Ring. You know -- "just" more of what is widely considered one of the best games of the last decade? For my own personal GOTY deliberations, I am considering anything which was newly released as being a "game" - the question I'm asking myself is "this year, what was the best gaming experience I had?", and with no such large casual audience to consider when constructing my own personal list, newly released DLC is absolutely something I'm going to consider. Hell, there's precedent for me doing this: Ghost of Tsushima's Iki Island expansion was my 2021 GOTY. This is all to say that, oh boy, Shadow of the Erdtree is certainly more Elden Ring -- and it's even more than Elden Ring, at certain points. The entire concept of a shadow world is nothing new in games, but there's certainly an argument to be made that the Land of Shadow is home to one of the best examples of one. The unique approach to level-scaling in this new world which doesn't impact your journey through the Lands Between (besides basic levelling up through the use of runes, as wat the case in the base game) compels you to explore and find Scadutree Fragments rather than to grind endlessly when you meet an obstacle in order for your stats to improve, and there is a focus on vertical exploration where, rather than being met by a seemingly endless plain in the base game, you'll instead be met with a set of sheer cliffs to scale or a mountain to conquer, and the variety of ways in which the game lets you accomplish this is truly unique, whether it be carefully jumping from one spot to another on your trusty steed Torrent, exploring a nearby cave only to find there are layers upon layers of depths for you to overcome, or feeling like a legendary hero scaling a jagged mountain infested with dragons and circled by red skies under the constant threat of lightning strikes. The game feels like a saturation and maturation of the open world offered in the base game, with a smaller land mass to explore, fewer dungeons and fewers caves/catacombs/etc. to explore, but the upping the ante - and rightly so - by adding so much more depth, nuance and complexity to these places you find yourself exploring, and this is even true for NPC encounters, with so many more to be had a faster clip than in the 2022 release. There's an argument to be made for the Shadow Keep being the best dungeon in the entirety of Elden Ring and one of From Software's best and most memorable dungeons to date. The expansion's bosses are brilliant, though perhaps for the first time occasionally feel like a step too far when it comes to From's current camera approach, as larger enemies can dart around the screen and blast you with blinding lights which make it seriously difficulty to keep track of what's going on outside of raw instinct, which can feel a bit unfair at times. The last boss, while brilliant to overcome, was also a bit frustrating at times, and though SotE delivers tremendously on its promise of offering answers to those who seek them, the first time I've really really been able to blindly uncover so much lore while going along with one of these games at launch - in a myriad of ways, and some of which had me grinning with glee like a child, with one or two making me tear up for what it represented both in the game world and as a concept - the final cutscene does leave you going "uh, is that all?" and with some new pretty big questions to field. The game's soundtrack is also a good step up from the base game's, a return to form from my perspective with how forgettable so much of the base game's OST was outside of certain boss themes. As a 30+ hour experience, if released standalone, there's no doubt in my mind that Shadow of the Erdtree would be a serious contender for GOTY, and rightly so. For me, this matches Bloodborne's The Old Hunters as the best DLC I've ever played - this is a 10/10 expansion for how it builds off the base game, there is no question in my mind about that. It is absolutely at that GOTY-calibre level: if you've yet to play Elden Ring then there'll be even more to overcome when you do; and if you have, but haven't played Shadow of the Erdtree, I can definitively say that you're doing yourself a disservice and are missing out on one of From's greatest adventures yet. #1: My 2024 Game of the Year | Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Make no mistake: I would say that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the most flawed game of the three I've deliberated over for my 2024 GOTY; in fact, it's the only one I wouldn't score a 10/10. There's arguably too much at times: the open world is too big to reasonably explore; there are too many mini-games of varying quality; there are too many weird ass things going on with this story. They didn't heed all of the feedback about the combat in Remake, whether it be being able to make Materia profiles to switch between, or the pain of losing an ATB charge or item to a phase transition you'd have no way of knowing was coming. The open world and so much of its contents feel almost entirely optional, like very, very expensive set dressing. But this game falling short in spots only happens because the game goes for broke with what it is trying to achieve, and is perhaps overly ambitious at times, missing the mark at points...but then blowing them away and then some at others. That the open world truly feels optional to engage with feels odd in an RPG such as this, but it also means that this is one of those rare few open world games where so much of the busywork associated with open worlds doesn't need to be touched if all you want to do is see the story through like I did, and so while it is very expensive set dressing, it is incredibly impressive set dressing which will constantly make your jaw drop at the sheer scale of it all and which doesn't actively detract from the gameplay experience in a way that many other open worlds in other games do; this is one of the rare few games we've since this generation which feels like it is pushing the hardware to the edge, and I'm so happy that they went all-out with this approach, because there are times where this game conveys the scale of the world in the same way the original did, and feels like a throwback to those Final Fantasy games with massive world to explore which you supposedly can't make at a AAA level today; this game proves that wrong. While the mini-games can be hit-and-miss, the best of them are easy to sink hours into: namely, there's Queen's Blood, a brilliant in-game card game which is simple to pick up but tough to master. The combat has so many new ways in which it is fleshed out and innovated over from Remake, and look, consider how big a fan I am of the combat and bosses in From Software games when I say this next part, to highlight that I don't say it lightly: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has my favourite bosses and combat of 2024 in, hands-down! Square Enix, you're sitting on a gold mine, I've said this elsewhere but they really need to use this Active ATB system in other new Final Fantasy games (perhaps exploring it in new ways when doing so) because it feels like a perfect combination of the series' legacy (in ATB) and their desire to have modern titles be these action games. And, if we want to talk about excess and ambition, there's that soundtrack, which is hundreds of tracks long and doesn't skip a beat for a moment; when all is said and done, this Remake project is surely going to be looked at as having one of the greatest soundtracks in gaming. It is ridiculous how they've managed to make it live up to the original, and in some tracks, even surpass it. While the story is messy when it comes to where it tries to differentiate itself from the original, it never got as crazy or messy as I was expecting going in? Maybe it's because Remake perhaps went a step too far with its ending to the point that I expected something entirely bonkers in Rebirth, only for it to be tame by comparison? The real highlight is so much of what they kept the same when it comes to the story, and the way in which characters are written, express themselves, and interact takes this already legendary cast and further cements them as one of the best parties in gaming. I genuinely miss these characters, and I cannot wait to see them again. For its combination of ways in which it emotionally resonates, a wonderfully realised cast, its optional approach to its open world, delivering best-in-class action RPG combat and pure drive and ambition in its soundtrack and what else it aims to deliver, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is my overall favourite game of 2024 and my 2024 Game of the Year.

My base speed is obviously higher than yours

Bomberman 64: Arcade Edition JP release: 20th December 2001 EU release: N/A NA release: N/A Developer: Racjin Publisher: Hudson Soft N64 Magazine Score: N/A In Japan, the Bomberman 64 games were called “Baku Bomberman”, so when this compilation of Bomberman games was released in Japan, it was simply called Bomberman 64. To distinguish them, fans have dubbed this as “Arcade” edition. This Bomberman game is a collection of four games. Bomberman The main mode is a traditional Bomberman campaign. Blow up all the enemies and find the up and down exits to choose the next stage to progress to. It’s as fun as ever, and also features the classic multiplayer with a few options (although not a massive number of stages). It’s a really good version of classic Bomberman. Panic Bomber Panic Bomber is a colour match minigame where you place blocks (consisting of different colour Bomberman heads) to clear lines, and has been released on various consoles, including the Super Famicom and Virtual Boy. This version just features a score attack mode, so no story or multiplayer. SameGame SameGame is a puzzle game which originally released in 1985 under the name Chain Shot!. It has no previous association with Bomberman, so its inclusion is a bit random. You click on sets of coloured Bomberman heads to remove them from play, with the main objective to clear as many as you possibly can. Bomberman Park Bomberman Park is sort of a port/epilogue to the PS1 game Bomberman Land. It’s set after Bomberman has saved the park, and he has simply returned to have some fun. You get to explore the park (with some areas locked behind needing medals) and take part in a load of minigames. The series has had multiple games throughout the years. The minigames are all quite simple, but most are also enjoyable. There’s some duds, like sliding jigsaw puzzles and following a ball in a cup (or a bomb in a pipe for this version), but ones like sorting bombs or having to slice targets (and dodge bombs) are a lot of fun. This was the last N64 game in Japan, and also the best Bomberman game on the system, with a well made classic Bomberman mode and a great selection of extra games. Great Remake or remaster? There’s a finished fan translation that helps with the language issues, although an official English re-release would be nice. Official Ways to get the game There is no official way to play Bomberman 64: Arcade Edition.

The Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Traction NA release: 19th September 2001 EU release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: VIS, Asylum Publisher: BAM! N64 Magazine Score: N/A From the same developer as Tom & Jerry: Fists of Furry is a very similar game with the Powerpuff Girls. The gameplay is just as monotonous, a few punches, kicks, and a focus on throwing objects, although I found that by getting in the air and attacking, I could combo my opponents indefinitely for some easy wins. The presentation is abysmal. The short loop of the main theme is on continuous loop from the game booting, never stopping as you play through the story. In the main story, you pick one of the Powerpuff Girls and fight each enemy. You then have to repeat this with the other two to be able to defeat the final boss, Him. The entire process takes around 20 minutes, and none of it fun in the slightest. Oh, and the opening and ending are just one page of white text on a black background with clip art of a pie and a Chemical X bottle. Worst Remake or remaster? No. Official Ways to get the game There is no official way to play The Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Traction

Pikmin 4 (Switch) A game that really tries to cater for both new and existing Pikmin players. It doesn’t reinvent itself, but Pikmin 4 provides more gameplay, more Pikmin, more pilots, more ‘treasures’, more enemy types, and more luscious garden landscapes! I’m unashamedly a big fan of the core Pikmin games (sorry “Hey! Pikmin” and “Pikmin Bloom”), and everything seemed instantly familiar, almost too much so. Being able to customise your pilot is a neat touch, and then you’re thrown straight into the usual Pikmin routine. Of the new aspects, Oatchi is a welcome addition, albeit quite powerful at times. It’s a pup who acts a companion to your character. I assumed Oatchi would simply be a replacement for a 2nd pilot ala Pikmin 3, but your pilot and Pikmin can leap on his back, it making traversing the ground so much quicker and easier. It can be made into a 2nd pilot, vital for some of the later gameplay, but it’s also powerful in battle and is equivalent to multiple Pikmin when used to carry objects. The above ground levels felt quite relaxed, with explorative environmental puzzles. The enemies here never really felt too threatening and despite the fairly low difficulty of them, I still enjoyed the thrill of opening and exploring new areas. The underground levels were more challenging, restricting the amount of Pikmin and forcing you to battle and find treasures down a varying amount of floors. Many of the new enemy types are located here, with a lot of the ‘boss-style’ ones only appearing as one-offs. Despite the larger volume there were only a few stand out ones for me (my favourites were variations on the ‘Beady Long-Legs’ enemy). I did find that much of the time their threat was somewhat lessened by saving up nectar from previous floors and using it to power up my Pikmin before swarming the boss, who often wouldn’t last long being pummelled by the abundance of powered-up plant creatures. This does lead me to my main gripe - the amount of nectar it’s possible to accumulate to power up the Pikmin. I was able to collect a lot, and it did mean that I could use a similar strategy on many of the enemies throughout, as opposed to tactically defeating them. There were also timed challenges, split between ones with a set goal (e.g., defeat all enemies) or trying to score higher than another character. Getting platinum on the timed challenges was probably the greatest challenge, as you really do have to strategize and prioritise what to do when given goals and only a tight time limit to do so. I enjoyed working out the quickest routes and tactics, even if sometimes things felt a little hectic. New to the series were short night levels. These see you trying to keep your base intact while creatures march towards it. It didn’t feel necessary, but I quite liked it for the variety it provided to the usual gameplay and just breaking things up a little. That they were each fairly short was also good. As I can’t get the spoiler tags to work, I won’t say what unlockables there were, apart from I enjoyed them. I think it’ll prove to be a great introduction to those new to the series. It provided everything I expected, and I did really enjoy it. It provided small QoL improvements too, such as being able to rewind time, a great addition. For a game I spent over 30 hours playing it seems strange to say I wish it was longer, but I do. The challenges and trying to earn medals extended the length of the game. Unlike previous games in the series, I’ve no inclination to go back to this, but I do look forward to the future Pikmin 5, and hopefully Nintendo see the sales figures as making it worthwhile to make. Here’s my 70-second video review.

Awwww yeah! Nerdy Pokémon thread time! The mainline Pokémon games have a thriving competitive scene. The official one, the VGC (Video Game Championships) is the one you likely have heard of. It uses Doubles format (Each player brings 6 Pokémon, they choose 4, and send them out 2 at a time) and doesn't really have restrictions for most Pokémon. Legendaries are sometimes banned, but not always. You can make the argument for a few Pokémon being really overpowered there, but there's no official consensus on what those Pokémon are. For the sake of this thread, I'm going to Smogon. What the hell is Smogon? Fair question. Smogon is the de facto unofficial competitive Pokémon scene. Unlike VGC, they focus primarily on Singles format where each player uses all 6 Pokémon. They dabble in Doubles, but Singles is what they usually focus on. These days, the attempted balancing of Pokémon that Game Freak does is focused on the Doubles format. It's weird to think about because the casual player won't see many Double battles in-game. If you ever thought a Pokémon game is too easy, that's probably why. Doubles format is a lot more complex, it's my preferred format. However, this has had the side effect of inflicting Smogon with various Pokémon over the years that are way too good for Singles. Whenever this happens, the Smogon community get together and debate on whether that Pokémon should be banned to the "Ubers" tier. What the hell is Ubers? Another fair question. Smogon has numerous tiers that Pokémon are sorted into. The Ubers tier is the tier that allows almost all Pokémon in them. If a Pokémon is banned to Ubers, it's because they're such a dominating force in lower tiers that they make almost every other Pokémon non-viable. The majority of Pokémon that can only be used in Ubers are Legendary Pokémon, like Mewtwo. But those Pokémon aren't very interesting to look at because legendary Pokémon are designed to be overpowered. What I'm doing is looking at the much rarer case when a more common Pokémon, for whatever reason, is or was overpowered at some point. Some of these are quite unexpected, some are hilarious, and some were definitely a mistake. Our first example is all three! Oh no! It's Wobbuffet! And also Wynaut. Wobbuffet is most well known for being one of the Pokémon Team Rocket had in the anime. Funnily enough, it barely ever battled, it just kept escaping it's Poké Ball to shout its name at people. That's a far cry from it's competitive career. This thing is scary! I mean, even the unevolved form of Wobbuffet was so broken that it had to be banned. Here are their base stats: Those stats on paper are absolutely dreadful, but these two Pokémon are weird in that they have no way of doing direct damage to the opponent. Instead, Wobbuffet and Wynaut primarily use Counter and Mirror Coat to inflict double the damage of the attack they just took back on the opponent. When Wobbuffet was first introduced in Gen 2 (Gold/Silver), it was not a threat. It's easy to predict, just switch something else in and start using stat boosting moves like Swords Dance, and knock it out in one shot. Instead, these two Pokémon are banned to Ubers specifically in Gen 3 (Ruby/Sapphire), and Gen 4 (Diamond/Pearl), and that's because of the introduction of Abilities. Abilities are passive effects every Pokémon has, and these two have the Shadow Tag ability. Shadow Tag: The opponent cannot run nor switch while this Pokémon is in play. The opponent may still switch by using Baton Pass. That ability make these two Pokémon amazing trappers. Send them in against an offensive threat, and use basic knowledge of what the opposing Pokémon will do to force them to effectively knock themselves out. There's nothing the opponent can do against a decent player sending this out at the opportune time, and with that monstrous HP stat, you won't be knocking out Wobbuffet in one turn. Wobbuffet is basically a delete button. Hell, it's more likely then not that it'll KO two Pokemon before finally fainting. So why bother with Wynaut? Well, you're not allowed to use two Pokémon with the same Pokédex number on the same team. Discount Wobbuffet is still a great trapper Pokémon, so you can effectively have two of the buggers! By the way, in Gen 4, if you give Wobbuffet or Wynaut the Leftovers item (At the end of every turn, the holder regains 1/16th of their maximum HP), and send it out against another Wobbuffet/Wynaut with Leftovers, the match will never end because the recoil damage from the eventual Struggle (An attack a Pokémon that runs out of PP will use) attacks is less then the recovered health from Leftovers. For this reason, you're not allowed to give these Pokémon Leftovers in Smogon. So why aren't these Pokémon in Ubers anymore? General power creep, really. They haven't changed much from Gen 5 onwards, but there are a lot more options to switch out, even with Shadow Tag. Pivoting moves like U-Turn, the Shed Tail item, or the change so that Ghost types aren't affected by trapping strategies make Wobbuffet less universally effective. It can still blindside an unprepared player, but there are better options these days. At the end of these sections, I'm gonna talk about whether these ridiculous competitive strategies can be applied to the kind of gameplay most of you normies will see in Pokémon games; a normal playthrough of the games. Does that mean it's good in casual play? Nah, not really. CPU trainers are a lot harder to predict, so you can't really use knowledge to make reliable plays with Wobbuffet. Don't use Wobbuffet.

About that… according to the TCRF page, the characters were originally going to be more traditional; but seem to have been all changed to Wario Land 3 characters rather late in development… for some bizarre reason. To be honest though, that’s the most notable thing about this game; because it is a very poor version of Dr Mario otherwise. Also, fun fact, this game came on the smallest cartridge to ever grace the N64 (a mere 32mbit/4MB, the same size as DKC on SNES). This was a budget release in every sense of the word.

Worth noting that Cubivore also has the distinction of being not only the rarest and most expensive game on the second hand market for the Gamecube, it also has the rare distinction of being a first party title that was not published by NOA/NOE outside of Japan (with Atlus choosing to do the honours instead). Not only did it never get released for the N64, it barely got released for the Gamecube!

Roses are red, garlic is white, Wario Land 4 is available on NSO now you little shite.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine NA release: 15th December 2000 JP release: N/A EU release: N/A Developer: LucasArts, Factor 5 Publisher: LucasArts N64 Magazine Score: 81% Looking back at N64 Magazine regarding this game is a bit confusing. In Europe, this was due to come out in September 2001. THQ then informed N64 magazine that the release date was pushed forward to June 2001, which is what issue their review was posted in. Yet, despite the PAL version being finished, it never came. I quickly checked the following few issues for a mention of the game not appearing on shelves, but there’s no mention of a delay or cancellation – there was even a guide in their August 2001 issue. It was a game I was interested in, but in, but wasn’t on my list to buy – although it turns out that I wouldn’t have been able to buy it anyway. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine was a mixture of a Tomb Raider style platformer and a point and click adventure. It’s a nice idea, but the flaws of each part of the game really work against each other. The original PC version of Infernal Machine used tank controls, but Indy is given proper analogue control for the N64 port, while the “place camera behind Indy” button also allows for strafing to line up shots, which does feel a bit awkward. While generally moving around feels much nicer on the N64, you still need to be immensely precise, which can lead to a lot of frustrations – Indy really needed to be able to grab ledges even when he’s slightly to the side. Incidentally, the modern control options in the Tomb Raider remasters also faced the same criticisms, as those games were designed around tank controls. What makes the platforming even worse is the camera. It’s very, very close to Indy and points straight forward. In a great many rooms and areas, platforms you need to jump up to are just out of view. You can stop moving and use a slow first person camera, but even then, ledges can blend in with the ceiling. I had to keep looking up videos, as I was constantly missing things that really shouldn’t be part of the challenge. Infernal Machine also employs point & click puzzle elements, where you have to find objects and work out what to use them on. One reason this mechanic works really well in puzzle games, is that it’s easy to identify what objects you can interact with, and it’s easy to test out objects on other objects. But not in Infernal Machine. The “take” button is often a pain to make appear – interacting with objects as a whole requires you to be standing on the exact pixel the game wants you to be on. This isn’t just a faff in picking things up, but using items to interact with objects. You can use the right thing, but because you’re slightly at the wrong angle, it just seems like you used the wrong item. Take the lagoon level. It’s set in a place that had some WWII conflict, with some boats and planes crashed. After a few lengthy puzzles and an underwater maze, you unlock a secret tunnel to some kind of underwater temple. When you get there, the door is shut. However, there’s no switch. Hopefully you found a rusty hammer in the underwater maze, as you’ll need to use it on a sunken plane to break off a part of the propeller, and then use the propeller on the door. While doing this, I also found another annoyance with items: on top of needing to be in a very precise location, you also need to remember to holster your weapon, as if you use an item while you’re holding something, the game will act in the same way as using an item in the wrong place. Incidentally, I was holding a machete, which seems like a much better instrument to use to pry open doors than a propeller you smashed off a wet, rusty plane with a rusty hammer. These obscure puzzle things work fine in 2D point & click adventures, because you can easily highlight objects that can be interacted with, you’ll be given hints as you interact with the various items, and if all else fails, it’s easy to test every object with other objects. In a 3D world like this, it’s just frustrating. Combat comes across fine, with Indy automatically targeting enemies. Your revolver is your main weapon due to infinite ammo, but you can also find other weapons to use. Your biggest threat isn’t other humans, but small wildlife – particularly spiders. They’re small, hard to see, come out of nowhere, and will poison Indy, so make sure you get loads of anti-venom kits. I also found it amusing that the water sections don’t just have mines and sharks, but they had to add piranhas as well. All of this is a great shame, as buried beneath this frustration is a great Indiana Jones adventure. The story is intriguing and fully voice acted (although, due to the compression, the lack of subtitles is a hindrance), and you can tell that, if some parts were smoothed out, it could be a ton of fun. A few of the later levels add vehicles to the mix, such as using a jeep for a chase, or having to hop in and out of a minecart to adjust its route through the level, and it would be nice to see this in a tidied up package. Fine Remake or remaster? This would benefit massively from a remaster. Camera control would help massively along with widening the area for grabs and interacting with items – and perhaps add something to highlight what can be interacted with. Perhaps an “intuition” button that highlights objects that can be used. Official Ways to get the game The original PC version is on GoG, with some support for higher resolutions, but has no proper upgrades. It also includes the latest official patch, which breaks the game on level 7, so you still need to track down an unofficial patch.

Seems only fair my Snes collection gets some love as well. Only other game I forgot to add to the photo was NBA Jam as it was in the console.

Golden Sun has been added to the service today.

Update on first pledge game, Buffy: Chaos Bleeds. I believe I’m nearing the end of the game, possibly two more levels to do. Bit of a mixed bag when it comes to liking the game or not. Will go into it a bit more when I’m done but there’s been some moments of pure frustration. It has its moments of being a good game, I just feel it needed some polish to make it great. Hopefully will don’t done next weekend as I’m only playing this at the weekend due to another aspect that I’m finding a bit annoying which will be expanded on and that’s level length.

Imagine having been on a forum for that long...

Star Fox Adventures suffers from some severe design issues, pertaining to some iffy level and quest design; as well as a restrictive and very basic combat system (very much Mash-A-To-Win) and locomotion gameplay. From what I’ve played and seen of Dinosaur Planet, it was originally planned to be a much more interesting and complex game than it eventually became. Whenever you see interviews about this game, an overarching theme emerges about the game being rushed out the door in time for the impending Microsoft buyout. You can certainly see that a LOT of stuff ended up being cut, likely due to time constraints. But I can’t help but feel that Dinosaur Planet was always kind of doomed to suffer this fate. Had it stayed on the N64, it would’ve inevitably have had to be rushed out the door before the console was replaced by the GameCube, and had it been moved? It would’ve been rushed due to the Microsoft buyout. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I think the most shocking revelation about this game’s development from the leak was that the transition to becoming a Starfox spinoff actually happened well before the game was moved to GameCube. I had never imagined that the decision was already made that early on! It changes a lot of the narrative around the game’s development. The need to rush through development ended up having little to do with Nintendo’s decision to make it a Starfox tie-in, and everything to do with the Microsoft buyout. I never believed the idea that the game’s core issues stemmed from the Starfox characters being shoved into the game, and it turns out that I was right! That decision was made long before the game had to be retooled for the next console, so it never resulted in the staff having to throw out their work on the GameCube as many suspected. Ultimately, the decision to move it over to the GameCube was probably the right call, as it simply would’ve come out way too late in the console’s life (the console was dead and buried in all regions come January 2001, which essentially sealed CBFD’s fate). It’s just such a shame that the game turned out the way it did, ultimately ending up as a bit of a sour note to end Rare’s Nintendo console history on. Dinosaur Planet remains a tantalising prospect then, as you can feel all the potential in the world with this prototype; tragically unrealised. I’m still hoping that the other N64 Rare Holy Grail prototypes eventually emerge. Would be SO excited to see Twelve Tales and the various Project Dream/Banjo Kazooie prototypes get leaked some day!

A few days late, but I'd just like to say that I have really fond memories of this game. A friend of mine had it on PS1, and it was one of those games that had a ton of cool details and easter eggs to find, especially on a second playthrough. Plus, surprisingly varied levels and set pieces (the fight with Venom being a particularly memorable one). And the final boss was a heck of a creative decision. A shame that the N64 version did away with the 2nd playthrough. I remember just suddenly seeing new characters like Lizard, Human Torch or Namor in the playthrough, or having certain cutscenes just have random new dialogue for no reason at all (they were probably bloopers, too). So yeah, rooting for this game to see a rerelease someday. If MvC can do it, so can this game (and its sequel, which I never played).

There was a DDR game for the N64!? I legit had no idea! That must mean there’s an official dance mat then… There is one! I need to see some Mario 64 speedruns done on this thing! There is a modern version only available for Japanese PCs released in 2021 called Dance Dance Revolution Grand Prix. There’s also a mini DDR machine (compatible with DDR GP dance mats) that contains the first three DDR arcade/PS1 games. Why these aren’t available for consoles? I have no idea.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 JP release: 20th August 2002 EU release: N/A NA release: N/A Developer: Neversoft, Edge of Reality Publisher: Activision N64 Magazine Score: N/A The final official retail release for the N64 is strange, due to how late it was. Not only was the previous retail game in America released 9 months earlier, but Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 came out on the PS1 and PS2 before that. Even the GameCube version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 was 9 months old by the time this came out. So this time around, this isn’t just an acceptable port of the main game, but it’s an acceptable port of a downgraded version of the main game, released much later than other versions. This uses the smaller, static level variants of the PS1 version (which are very different to the PS2 levels) while keeping the engine from the N64 version of THPS2. The next gen THPS3 was loved for its much improved trick system, but the revert is the only new addition here. All the new trick types, more interactive environments, NPCs, and the like are gone. While it’s an interesting curiosity that this came out so long after any other N64 game, there’s also no reason to play this version, especially as it’s also rather buggy and I fell through the level multiple times. Fine Remake or remaster? Having the PS1/N64 level variants as a bonus for the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 remake would be great, but I doubt it would happen. Official Ways to get the game There is no official way to play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3.

I'm an old fucker, and it's my birthday today! So my sister got me something awesome... OLED, since 2025 A modded GBC with an OLED screen! Man, this thing is cool! The custom shell is very nice too. Only thing is that the buttons aren't that great (that's always been a pet peeve of mine with all these custom GBCs, they never get the buttons right), so I've gone ahead and bought a "broken" GBC from eBay for about £30 and will be swapping out the buttons for Nintendo OEM originals when it arrives (I ain't cannibilising my existing working GBC, but I'll gladly harvest from one that's already busted). Otherwise, this thing is tits! I've always loved the original GBC form factor, and the blacks are so black that the game image just melts into the surrounding bezel. Also, the GBC logo can have its colours changed to whatever you want from a choice of 31 different colours! So cool!

I made it to my second game: P.N. 03 The gameplay is decently enjoyable (once you get used to it), but it's very lacking. The whole dancing part of it turned out to have pretty much no relevance to the game and only exists so the main character wiggles her butt. It's just not part of the gameplay or style of the game at all, not even the music is particularly strong, instead oddly muted. You can't move while shooting, but dodging works well but there aren't that many enemies and you can figure the patterns out quite easily (again, they aren't linked to the music - there's just no rhythm to the game). The roll move is completely useless because the developers made sure she crouches with her butt in the air before she can roll. The game actually feels a lot like an on-rails shooter (even though you can move freely), in terms of having to mash A to fire (you can unlock automatic fire), the combo system and it's a fun shooter in this style. Unfortunately, it's lacking in the spectacle that shmups have, with most of the game taking place in a load of lifeless grey rooms (which are often repeated) or a brown wasteland. It's a bit disappointing, really. It needed to delve into the whole dancing thing more in terms of style, movement, music and enemies.

Right, I wasn't around last week, so already behind a week more then I would've liked. Huh? Oh no, you're not getting two posts now. Don't be stupid. There's only one non-legendary Pokémon that was banned to Ubers in Gen 3 (Ruby/Sapphire), so we're moving to Gen 4 (Diamond/Pearl) now. Wobbuffet/Wynaut is a weird case of a Pokémon most people wouldn't expect to be good enough to be banned to Ubers actually getting there. This time, anyone with even a basic knowledge of how strong Pokémon can be can tell you this next one is good. In fact, @Jonnas already did. Garchomp is a Ground/Dragon Pokémon introduced in the Gen 4 games. It's our first example of what is officially called a "Powerhouse Pokémon". Powerhouse Pokémon all have a BST (Base Stat Total, the total of a Pokémon's base stats) of 600. The Powerhouse Pokémon most of you know of is Dragonite. So they're designed to be strong, but not quite as strong as Legendary Pokémon... In theory, anyway. Garchomp is a land shark, it's also a jet, apparently. Yeah, the thing can fly, somehow. It's most famous for being the signature Pokémon of the Gen 4 champion, Cynthia, probably one of the most difficult battles in the mainline games (there have been harder since). She has a lot of very good Pokémon, and Garchomp is only one of them. Here are it's base stats. See? They add up to 600. That's why the BST is 600. That's a really nice stat spread. Special Attack is not important for Garchomp, so that being the lowest stat is no problem. What makes Garchomp so much better then it's other Powerhouse counterparts of the time? Well, multiple things, but the main thing is it's speed stat. The speed stat in Pokémon determines the turn order in battles. In normal circumstances, the Pokémon with the higher speed stat will go first. It doesn't matter if you have 1 more speed, or 100 more. So ideally, you want your Pokémon to have just enough speed to outspeed your opponent, anything more then that is kind of a waste. Funnily enough, that clip @RedShell posted above is a good example of this, doesn't matter how big and strong you are, if someone goes first and ends the fight, you don't get to do a thing. A lot of good Pokémon in competitive battles have a base Speed stat of 100, this means that Garchomp outspeeds most Pokémon with minimal stats invested into it's Speed. That kind of min-maxing made it an absolute menace. As well as that, Garchomp's diverse movepool means it can fulfill a good variety of roles, which means your opponent needs to guess at what you plan to do with Garchomp. If they guess wrong, or aren't able to counter your plan, then you get an immense amount of momentum, and there's a real chance that you will procced to destroy the opponent. Oh, but that's not all. Because Garchomp has an absolutely killer ability in Gen 4 in the form of Sand Veil. Sand Veil: Raises the Pokémon’s evasion during a sandstorm by one level. So let me tell you something about the Smogon community. They absolutely loathe anything that affects evasion. If a Pokémon has any method of changing this, Smogon will go out of it's way to ban it in some way. This is why Bidoof was once banned to Ubers, BTW. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case, so you won't be seeing that Pokémon here. But you know what the most surprising thing about Garchomp is? It's only in Gen 4 that Garchomp is actually banned to Ubers! One of the most famous examples of what this thread is about is actually only relevant in one generation. After that, it got an alternative ability that's nowhere near as good as Sand Veil, so Smogon only allows Garchomp to have that not-as-good ability. For almost every other generation, it's actually in OU (OverUsed). Well, except Gen 9 (Scarlet/Violet). It's actually fallen lower there! It's now in UU (UnderUsed). The power creep has not been kind to ol' Garcho. Now, I know what some of you thinking, didn't Garchomp get a Mega Evolution? Well yeah, it did. But unlike every other Mega Evolution ever, Mega Garchomp is actually worse then the regular one! For reasons I can only imagine as balancing attempts, Garchomp's base speed goes down by 10 when it Mega Evolves, which if you've been paying attention, puts it below the ideal 100 speed threshold. Which means that most people just used their Mega Evolution on a different Pokémon instead. Does that mean it's good in casual play? Oh boy, is it ever! To be fair, most Powerhouse Pokémon are good. The big downside is that like all Powerhouse Pokémon, they're hard to find, take a while to train, and tend to evolve quite late. Put in the effort though, and you've got a ridiculously good Pokémon. You can't go wrong with Garchomp here. And remember, casual playthroughs don't have to follow Smogon's rules, so feel free to be an utter degenerate and use Sand Veil.

Yep, I already talked about Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia before. I played it again. Not exactly the same way, mind. Here's my original write-up for this game. The DS Castlevania games all have at least one alternate mode you get for finishing the game that has you play through the game as a different character. The locations and enemies are mostly the same, but the tools available to you are radically different. In Order of Ecclesia, this is called "Albus Mode". Albus is main character, Shanoa's, brother, he can't absorb any Glyphs, he can't use items, and he can't get any equipment. He doesn't need them, because when it comes to evil vampires and the many horrifying beasties said vampire employs, the real question we should be asking is "Why don't you just shoot them?" That enemy is normally really scary. Albus has a pretty sweet gun! It's really powerful, even against unliving things! Albus has about 5 different attacks he can do with that, and he's really OP! Do it right, and you absolutely melt through bosses. There's something cathartic about fighting these bosses I struggled with in the main mode, and breezing through them with a gun. That's not even the end of it, the dude can immediately snap to any location you touch! Suffice to say, this is very useful! I have a soft spot for games that give you an unlockable mode that lets you play as a completely different character, especially if they're far too powerful. Kirby games like to do this as well. I had a lot of fun with this one, and I'm looking forward to giving the other alternate character modes a go. Even if @Dcubed has informed me that they're nowhere near as ridiculous as this guy. Albus was right, he could've taken on Dracula himself.

Hamster Story 64 JP release: 6th April 2001 EU release: N/A NA release: N/A Developer: Culture Brain Publisher: Culture Brain Original Name: Hamster Monogatari 64 N64 Magazine Score: N/A Hamster 64 uses a very fancy Japanese font. As a result, Google Lens really struggled to detect the text a lot of the time. I managed to get the gist of the opening: a girl is wondering about owning a hamster after seeing one on TV, when a creepy old pervy man starts chatting you up, leaving behind his hamster as he heads off. She goes to the shop he recommended, and they happen to have a cage for free, as an old man left it behind. The stranger danger vibes were immensely high, and she really should have stayed very clear. When you do get to the game, you have to decide a training regimen for your hamster, with the goal being to raise multiple hamsters, and have them participate in competitions to earn a lot of money. There are massive amounts of options regarding customising the cage, different foods, and different ways to discipline your hamster. From the difficulty Google has recognising the text, and the vast amount of options, all I could do was pressing random things and seeing what would happen. It does seem like a decent pet simulation game, but I can’t really go into more detail than that. ? Remake or remaster? I don’t understand enough of the game to comment. Official Ways to get the game There is no official way to play Hamster Story 64

Conker’s Bad Fur Day NA release: 5th March 2001 EU release: 13th April 2001 JP release: N/A Developer: Rare Publisher: Rare (NA), THQ (EU) N64 Magazine Score: 89% During the course of the N64’s life, Rare showed off Twelve Tales: Conker 64 , a cutesy 3D platformer starring the squirrel from Diddy Kong Racing. With Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 already announced, people noted how many cute 3D mascot platformers Rare were making. Due to this criticism, Conker’s game was transformed. It was still a mascot platformer, but not a child friendly one. Instead, it was full of gore, swearing, and obvious sex references. The plot is wonderfully ridiculous: a panther king spills his milk due to a broken leg on his table. His insane scientist deduces that the missing height perfectly matches a squirrel. That said, it takes a while for this plot to reach Conker, who goes the wrong way on a drunken stumble home and gets caught in all sorts of things, like hatching a dinosaur, becoming a vampire bat, making a shy sunflower giggle to bounce on her breasts, and fighting an opera singing giant poo. All mixed in with a ton of film references from the era (luckily, for the game, extremely memorable films that are still notable today). The biggest flaw of Conker’s Bad Fur Day is, sadly, the gameplay. The moving and jumping isn’t as refined as Rare’s other platformers in the system. The game does alleviate this with the large variety of things you’ll be doing in the game, so you’re playing the game in slightly different ways all the way through. The last few chapters are shooting segments, and these are, unfortunately, the worst parts to play as they don’t utilise the N64 controller well at all. Conker’s Bad Fur Day is a hilarious and amusing game, which makes it even more of a shame that it’s so clunky to actually play. Fun Remake or remaster? The Xbox Remake refines the gameplay, and I would personally recommend that version over this (unless you want the multiplayer mode from the original). The shooting sections are proper third person shooter sections as well, which is a big improvement. The downside is the increased censorship, but there’s really only one moment where it is noticeable. With people accusing the Rare Replay version of extra censorship, I think people forgot how much was bleeped in the original. It looks great, running in HD on newer Xbox consoles, although a widescreen update (with the original amount of bleeping) would be very welcome. Official Ways to get the game The original can be purchased on Xbox One/Series as part of Rare Replay, and the remake, Conker Live & Reloaded, is also available on Xbox One/Series.

I’m 99% certain that Switch 2 will not only use SD Express cards, but that it’ll require one for native Switch 2 games. I suspect that it’ll follow suit as seen on PS5/Xbox Series, where Switch 1 games can run off of standard MicroSD cards, but native Switch 2 games will require the faster SD Express cards. The gulf in read speeds between the two is enormous (you’re jumping from around 65MB per sec to almost 1GB per sec), and Switch 2 games will no doubt be built around the faster speed requirement. So I would hold off unless you need it for your existing Switch 1 right now.

The demo wasted no time reconfirming it.

Pokémon Stadium 2 JP release: 14th December 2000 NA release: 26th March 2001 EU release: 10th October 2001 Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: 90% Pokémon Stadium 2 is, once again, a great companion piece for the handheld games, this time for Pokémon Gold & Silver. All the Pokémon are lovingly rendered and animated in 3D, with some great tough challenges to take your ultimate squad through. Stadium 2 takes this one step further with the Pokémon Academy, which teaches you how to be better at the main games. For people who liked the handheld games, Stadium is a wonderful thing to dip into as you work your way through Gold & Silver. There’s a bunch of new minigames, which are all decent. I quite like the Beyblade minigame, as well as the Furret minigame where you franticly use the D-pad to move balls into your goal. There’s also a quiz with a few difficulty levels. The easy is more about how fast you can be with simple questions, while hard goes in for technical details like asking you the weight of Doduo. All the organising features also return, making this a wonderful companion – it’s just a shame that it suffers the same rental Pokémon issue for those that just want a standalone game. Fun Remake or remaster? You don’t really need companion pieces to Pokémon games now that there’s no console separation. Although a repackage of the various Pokémon Stadium games with better compatibility with currently available, or just greater options for selecting Pokémon would be good. Official Ways to get the game There is no way to buy a new copy of Pokémon Stadium 2, the only official way to play is to rent it via the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pak. It should also be noted that it has no Game Boy compatibility, so you’re stuck with the rental Pokémon.

I never played this game, but Matt McMuscles did a video on it a week or so ago (impeccable timing) The most fascinating bit was how moving the fighting away from the ring really messed up everything the developers knew regarding AI behaviour, pathfinding, etc. You'd think experienced developers would immediately expect these to be issues.

WCW Backstage Assault NA release: 12th December 2000 EU release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: Kodiak Publisher: EA N64 Magazine Score: 46% The concept of WCW Backstage Assault is fine: take the backstage fighting that was a bonus in other wresting games, dial the craziness up, knocking things off the wall, letting you smash your opponent into urinals, or smacking them on the head with a CRT television. It can be something silly and a lot of fun – but Backstage Assault is just a clunky mess of a game instead. The graphics are atrocious, with distorted and badly animated fighters, and terrible looking areas. In the first area, the main focal point with the main part of the action is the back of a truck that’s merged into the side of another truck (which acts as a wall). It’s bizarre to look at. The game also uses mostly-static cameras. They move left and right slightly, but will jump to different fixed locations as you move around the room – including some places where you get an awkward overhead view. The graphics could be overlooked if the game was fun, but it’s not. Fighting is just slow and clunky, and the various objects you interact with don’t feel very different – a picture frame and a ceramic sink feel no different to swing around, and very few have any kind of effect, such as electrical equipment that causes a short stun. This causes two major issues for the game. For starters, it isn’t funny, which is the entire purpose of the game. You’ll hear a repetitive “comedic” pratfall music cue every time a wrestler ends up on the floor, but nothing on-screen is worthy of even a slight snorted chuckle. Secondly, it makes the levels really boring, and the arenas themselves are less varied than the backstage areas in No Mercy, which were just a bonus. Adding to the issues are very few modes, there’s no tag team or playing with more than two people (which is where a good silly take on wrestling would excel), the create a wrestler is incredibly basic, just swapping parts of other wrestlers in this roster of mostly unknown people (with a few oldies who had left the big leagues). There’s really not a lot to this game. Poor Remake or remaster? This should just be a bonus mode in other wrestling games. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to play WCW Backstage Assault.

F1 Racing Championship EU release: 8th December 2000 NA release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: Video System Publisher: UbiSoft N64 Magazine Score: 72% F1 Racing Championship is often said to be one of the few PAL exclusive N64 games, but that’s not entirely true. F1 Racing Championship also got a release in Brazil, which is where things get interesting. The name of the TV signals in Brazil is PAL-M, but is actually far closer to NTSC than PAL. Brazilian consoles were made so they outputted in PAL-M, but their cartridges just contained the North American NTSC version – so the Brazilian release of F1 Racing Championship is actually an NTSC cartridge – probably one missing from many “complete” NTSC collections. As for the game itself, it does the same as F1 World Grand Prix II: stats changes. This is a sequel to Monaco Grand Prix: Racing Simulation 2. The only significant change is that they now have a license for the racers and cars, so you can see the real names instead of the slightly altered versions. They don’t seem to have the rights to use the names of tracks, and I noticed an oddity in that there was one called “Europe” with a flag of the Netherlands. I looked it up, and while there was a race called the “European Grand Prix”, the track itself is the Nürburgring in Germany. Poor Remake or remaster? Formula 1 games would continue to evolve. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to play F1 Racing Championship.

Perfect Dark on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack - N-Europe Multiplayer (06/02/2025) Thanks for the games.

Donald Duck: Goin’ Quackers EU release: 8th December 2000 NA release: 20th December 2000 JP release: N/A Developer: UbiSoft Publisher: UbiSoft N64 Magazine Score: 69% Donald Duck: Goin’ Quackers (or Quack Attatck in Europe) is a Crash Bandicoot-inspired platform game. While a few N64 platformers have used the Crash style for a single level (such as Tarzan or Blues Brothers), this is the first out-and-out Crash Bandicoot clone, with a mixture of 3D levels where you go in a long and straight line, and 2D levels which offer a bit more in the way of navigation. For a cheap kids tie-in platformer, it’s interesting to see that the developers cared about the overall product. The PS1 version was developed separately and, while built around the same design ideas, features different level designs (with the same themes) and FMV sequences. Instead of slapping screenshots of the FMV onto the N64 cartridge, UbiSoft decided to re-do the cutscenes in-engine and retained the voice acting. Incidentally, the Dreamcast and PC versions are the N64 version with the FMVs added (and I’ll look at the PS2/GameCube version, which seems to have more differences, when I play all GameCube games). As you would expect, Goin’ Quackers is fairly basic and easy, but it manages to avoid two big things that plague a ton of licensed platformers: frustration and boredom. Instead, the levels are interesting enough (if nothing special) and the controls work really well, and judging where you are in the level is never an issue. There is some hidden stuff to find in each level, and then a timed version to complete after. It’s nothing mind blowing, but it gets the job done. You do get a few bonus levels for finding these, such as one where you have to escape from the city, and from a large truck. In these, you can’t stick around and have to keep moving on, but as you’re heading towards the camera, you have to guess what lies ahead as there’s only one way to find out. So, while this is aimed at kids and is a shameless copy of Crash Bandicoot, it’s still a decent effort and fun to play. Fun Remake or remaster? It would be worth including in a collection of Disney platformers. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to play Donald Duck: Goin’ Quackers

Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers NA release: 30th November 2000 PAL release: 30th March 2001 JP release: N/A Developer: Terraglyph Publisher: THQ N64 Magazine Score: 23% I had no idea that there were so many games for kids at the end of the N64’s life. It makes some sense, the consoles were cheaper or handed down to younger children. What’s more baffling is why a publisher and developer would choose to make a game just for the Nintendo 64, due to how successful (and at this point, cheap) the PS1 was. This was also the only finished N64 game from Terraglyph, who had previously made Tiny Toon Adventures games for the PS1. A PlayStation version of Classic Creep Capers was supposedly in development, but was for some reason cancelled to focus on the Nintendo 64. Classic Creep Capers takes half of a point and click adventure and mixes with half of Resident Evil, but the end result doesn’t make a complete game. Like Resident Evil, the game used fixed camera angles. But the enemies in this are humorous – spiders, bats, moving dinosaur museum exhibits, wood, and people in costumes (you also can’t fight them). The fixed cameras in Resident Evil were used for the horror aspect, as well as being able to use pre-rendered backgrounds. The areas in Classic Creep Capers are fully modelled, and widescreen hacks not only work, but reveal doors that should be obvious, but are just off-screen. You can also choose between two terrible control schemes. The first is Resident Evil-style tank controls, the other is for more analogue movement. However, the fixed camera angles make it annoying to use. As you move from one screen to another, Shaggy will keep walking based on your starting movement. Let go, and the directions will reset based on where the camera is now. It’s particularly frustrating when you have to run away from enemies, especially as the camera can snap to other positions many times. You play the game as Shaggy, with Scooby following you along most of the time – although he doesn’t do anything at all, he’s just set dressing. You have to explore the areas to find clues, and parts that can be used for traps. However, the game sticks a bit too close to the show, as you hand over all these parts to Fred, and he works everything out and comes up with a plan, all you get to do is backtrack through the level to get the ghost to follow you to the capture spot. You don’t get to solve the mystery. As a result, this has the “finding items” part of the point and click adventure, but none of the resolution of using the items. Across the four campaigns, there are a couple of moments where you actually get to use items, but they’re extremely obvious. What makes matters worse, is that finding the items themselves is annoying. There’s plenty of nonsense that you can’t interact with, and what you can interact with is often difficult to see, and can be hidden by other objects due to the bad camera angles. There’s a slight sheen on objects that you can barely make out, but it’s not enough. It means you go through the game tapping A until something works. Why not have Scooby point out objects, with his famous point pose? Even though there isn’t much to the game, and it contains some tedious stuff, there’s still some charm here. The visuals are nice and capture the show well, as does the music (with a few good renditions of the classic theme). There’s only a few small snippets of voice from Shaggy and Scooby, but the tropes in the dialogue (like Fred and the girls checking somewhere safe) are part of the charm of the show. There’s even a corridor full of doors that you can use to escape one of the villains in a cutscene, and you can play with them yourself. At the end, we have a game that is entirely full of awful ideas, but manages to be somewhat enjoyable due to capturing some of the charm of the original cartoon. A point and click style game is perfect for Scooby-Doo, it just needs to have more of the puzzle solving elements, and a camera that works with exploring the levels. There was even a decent LucasArts-inspired point and click game on the Genesis (it was exclusive to North America) called Scooby-Doo Mystery – not to be confused with Scooby-Doo Mystery on SNES, a 2D platformer. Fine Remake or remaster? There’s not much to the game, but a good Scooby-Doo game should be possible. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to play Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers Edit: I just remembered I took a picture of my very chaotic lounge when I played DDR Disney. It did the job.

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2025/250204_3e.pdf Just 10 million left to go until Nintendo retakes their crown (or Sony finds a couple more million sold PS2s hiding down the back of their couch).

Dance Dance Revolution Disney Dancing Museum JP release: 30th November 2000 NA release: N/A PAL release: N/A Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami N64 Magazine Score: N/A Dance Dance Revolution is a popular rhythm arcade game that has received many different versions. In the arcade, you have a sturdy dance platform with arrows that you have to step on, based on on-screen arrows. For home console releases, the games were usually bundled with a much cheaper folding dance mat. You can technically use a controller, but that’s not in the spirit of the games, so while I didn’t use the official dance mat, I still used a dance mat. While Disney Dancing Museum came out at the same time as Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix, this isn’t a port of the arcade game, but is more a custom built version for the N64, featuring a different set of songs. I was expecting this to mean that we’d get a bunch of MIDI songs, but these are proper audio, some with vocals (a mixture of Japanese and English). The quality is passable, which is an achievement for fitting it on an N64 cartridge. They’re mainly a mixture of classic songs and unique songs (so, no popular songs like the Arcade and PlayStation). The gameplay itself is DDR, it works well. From what I’ve read, people have said that this version is more kid-friendly and easy compared to other DDR games, which meant I could actually finish songs (I’m truly awful at rhythm games). You play three songs in a row and then you get credits, which is how the series worked in arcades, but doesn’t make a lot of sense for a home console release. Disney Dancing Museum does have an exclusive mode, which features a second track to follow. This consists of a single large bar, and you have to either press the Z button or flick the analogue stick on the controller (plugged into port 2) when the bar reaches the top. It feels a bit awkward holding a controller while playing a DDR game, but it’s still a nice alternative way to play. Fun Remake or remaster? Not this one, but I think it’s strange that there isn’t a current console Dance Dance Revolution (and hasn’t since the Wii era) – I think it could work great as a single “hub” where you buy additional packs separately. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to play Dance Dance Revolution Disney Dancing Museum.