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Extreme-G and Iggy's Reckin' Balls are joining N64 NSO...today!

Pikmin keyrings! https://www.n-europe.com/news/pikmin-4-rubber-cutout-keyring-added-to-my-nintendo-rewards/

Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth JP release: 10th July 1998 NA release: 15th December 1998 PAL release: N/A Developer: Hudson Publisher: Hudson (JP), Electro Brain (NA) N64 Magazine Score: 62% Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth is a very traditional style sci-fi scrolling shooter. While it features some nice 3D graphics, it doesn’t try to utilise 3D in its gameplay or camera usage, it just keeps things simple. I was quite surprised that this game worked well with widescreen, as with the fixed camera, you would expect everything out of view to be removed. However, keeping things simple works for this genre. You can pick between a few ships that have different weapons – all of which can be upgraded by collecting power-up, which level down if you get destroyed. Everything is fast, smooth and feels polished. Outside of the main mode – which has some hidden paths to unlock bonus missions – there’s also a couple of timed modes for quick high score challenges. It’s a decent example of its genre. Remake or remaster? A regular re-release would be fine. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth

The N64 sure did have a lot of racing games, easily the most over-represented genre on the system (helps that Nintendo themselves published no less than 9 of them!) It's not as crazy as the shooter genre on the TG16, or the fighting game genre on the NeoGeo, but it's definitely the console's speciality it's most known for. That and FPS games.

Aha! Now I get to talk about the Aleck 64 arcade board! This was the first game released for this arcade PCB, and the N64 cartridge release is essentially identical in every way to its arcade counterpart... ... that's because the Aleck 64 is essentially an N64 shoved into an arcade cabinet. Not the first of its kind by any means, arcade boards based on consoles were common at the time (indeed, part of the reason why the PS1 was such a huge success was because Sony licensed out the PS1 hardware for use in arcade boards, especially ones made by Namco such as the System 11; which powered some of their biggest arcade hits of the late 90s, including the Tekken series)., but what makes this one a bit unusual is that Nintendo had little to no involvement with the Aleck 64's development. No, this was a Seta joint; yes, the same Seta responsible for the bizzare Morita Shogi 64 and its weird custom cartridge that you saw a couple pages back in this same thread. Seta liked to tinker with odd hardware accessories and the like, and it seems that Nintendo took notice and granted them the keys to the Mushroom Kingdom 64 here. It perhaps came too late to make any real impact in the arcade world. The N64 hardware wasn't particularily impressive compared to contemporary arcade competitors (I mean, it wouldn't have been impressive by 1996, let alone 1998!), and the N64 itself was famously much more difficult to develop for than the PS1, so it didn't really compete well at the low-end either. Kind of caught in a bit of a no-mans land really. Still, the Aleck 64 did end up getting a fair few games made for it, 16 in total, but none of them would end up being notable successes in the arcade business. Either way, 16 games is a decent amount for a standardised arcade PCB, so it's hard to call it a failure; especially for a small developer like Seta. But, to my knowledge, only two games from the Aleck 64 would ever get ported to the regular N64; and Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth just so happens to be the first one.

Worth noting that every Aleck 64 game has now been converted into standard N64 ROMs that can be played off a flash cart (and presumably emulators too). Same thing was done with the 64DD library too. You can now play them all on a flash cart without a 64DD needed (yes, even the games like F-Zero Expansion Kit that interfaces with a seperate cartridge).

Well, I was stupid/crazy enough to go for it. Took another 3 playthroughs of the game. It honestly wasn't that bad. Each time I finished it I got better/faster at completing it, until I eventually got my final run down to just over 8 hours. Nuts how fast you can get through it once you get a good handle on the SP system and which skills to utilise. The secret super boss in the game was pretty rough though. The fight is pretty cheap and very RNG based. Your level doesn't really matter and it's pretty much down to luck whether or not the boss will use killer moves or not. If all goes to plan, you can finish the fight in about 10 seconds but it it doesn't then you'll be dead in the same amount of time. I also tackled the super post game dungeon. I really had to grind to get through this. The max level in the game is not 100 but rather 255. I tried the dungeon at around the level 120 mark and just could not get through it and so I done some extreme XP farming. Was a cake walk once I tried it when I was level 180. Playing through the game multiple times let me see the characters stories play out in different ways. It was cool how certain blanks were filled in if you chose a different team. There was also a new ending and a secret anime cutscene that I unlocked by going to an optional dungeon with certain characters. Fantastic JRPG and one that I certainly got my monies worth from.

Where's Beetle Adventure Racing? 😠

First trailer for Jim Henson Idea Man: That song gets me every time

Indeed. I think they gave it a score in the high 80s. EDIT: Yup. https://www.nintendomags.com/magazines/n64-magazine/issue9/

Yeah, I've heard about it. I haven't heard of Nintendo actually banning anyone who has used a physical cart whose contents have been copied yet though... so maybe there's a way they can tell who's using it? Dunno.

I hear that a lot.

No, you're right. A Star Wars TV show would never work.

Oh Damn! I would prefer to wait until it is dubbed, but I may not be able to contain myself!

DK must've slipped on a banana or something, because the opening of the Donkey Kong Country section of the park at Universal Studios Japan has been delayed to "late 2024". As Miyamoto once totally and famously espoused:

Extreme-G NA release: 27th October 1997 PAL release: 9th December 1997 JP release: 29th May 1998 Developer: Probe Publisher: Acclaim N64 Magazine Score: 87% This is one I played a lot when I was younger. An extremely fast futuristic racing game on tron-like sci-fi motorbikes. It’s a proper competition-based racing game (where all the racers start at the same place, not an overtaking arcade racer) and has a bunch of weapons thrown into the mix. The biggest criticism about Extreme-G is probably the handling, which does not manage to keep up with the speed of the bikes. To counter this, the developers added a bunch of things to ease the frustration. Walls don’t slow you down that much (they do slightly damage your shields) and the sides of the track have a kind of “energy barrier” that keeps you on the track. Respawning after falling off is also very quick. Even using the cheat to make the game even faster, making mistakes in races never feels annoying. There are weapons dotted across the track that you can pick up, which come in lots of slight variations. These have a smaller immediate impact on racers than the likes of Mario Kart, but do whittle away shields (you also have a laser you have access to at any time to do extra damage to shields). However, the weapons are difficult to use effectively and ones like the cannons are more likely to harm you than your opponents. Extreme-G has a good amount of tracks (compared to other racers at the time on N64, at least), although they do tend to blur a bit together due to the winding nature of them. There’s a track set around some lava games that’s the most difficult track in the game (by a massive margin), and the final track is a futuristic forest with Santorini-inspired buildings and UFOs flying around and looks absolutely gorgeous. On top of the standard league mode, there’s time trial, practice and a shoot-’em-up mode where you have to blast drones. The multiplayer also has a battle mode in unique arenas, so there’s a good amount of stuff to do in the game. Extreme-G is still a lot of fun, and manages to feel different to both Wipeout and F-Zero. Remake or remaster? An Extreme-G collection would be wonderful to see. Just do some minor improvements like properly implemented widescreen and customisable controls, perhaps even add weapon icons to the HUD. Unfortunately, IP owners Throwback Entertainment seem uninterested in the franchise, only re-releasing the poor PC port of the second game, lacking analogue steering or proper controller support. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Extreme-G