Cube

Onegai Monsters JP release: 9th April 1999 PAL: release: N/A NA release: N/A Developer: Bottom Up Publisher: Bottom Up N64 Magazine Score: N/A In the world of Onegai Monsters, when kids turn 10 years old, they can become a monster trainer. They collect their first monster from their local professor. These monsters are part of different elemental types, and will fight each other in turn-based battles before gaining enough experience to evolve into a new form. The concept sounds interesting and I’m surprised nobody else has tried to do something similar. Onegai Monsters has a fairly impressive overworld map, and it looks like there is a lot to explore – unfortunately, you don’t get to do this at all, as you can’t leave your starting village. Instead, you send your monsters out to explore for you and watch them move around the map, only having input when a battle starts. While I had a lot of translation issues with the game, I know that this is something that is true. So if all your monsters are out, all you do is wait (especially when they sleep) – although luckily there is a fast forward feature. The battle seems interesting, although far too complicated for Google Translate to handle the job. While for the most part it seems similar to Pokémon, however you can move forwards and backwards, which likely has some meaning and tactics to it, although there is an “auto” button to let the computer decide what your monster does. Defeating a monster will also add it to your catalogue, so you can try and discover all 500 monsters. The ones I encountered seemed quite decent. But, unfortunately, there’s a lot of text. I was unable to figure out how to get more eggs to hatch new monsters. I bought stuff from the shop I got my first one from, and I sent my blob called Bob out on adventures, yet never got an egg. There are other aspects, like matching food colour to element type to have even better stats. It’s an interesting looking game, but I’d need a translated version to be able to understand more. Remake or Remaster? The concept of sending monsters out seems more suited to a mobile or idle version of this. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Onegai Monsters

NBA In The Zone ’99 NA release: 8th April 1999 PAL: release: 3rd June 1999 JP release: N/A Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami N64 Magazine Score: 52% Compared to the previous NBA In the Zone, this feels slightly smoother in terms of running around with players, which is useful as passing is pointless and running close to the net and scoring is the best tactic. Any shot from further away will always result in a miss…at least for players you control. The CPU, however, will score three pointers with relative ease, making it very frustrating. The players still look naff, and there’s not that much enjoyment to get out of this one. Remake or Remaster? There are better basketball games to focus on. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play NBA In The Zone ’99

All-Star Baseball 2000 NA release: 8th April 1999 PAL: release: 1st May 1999 JP release: N/A Developer: Iguana Publisher: Acclaim N64 Magazine Score: 80% With the many N64 baseball games, I now have a routine: start a game, try batting, fail, start again, repeat a few times until I hit the ball, watch the CPU catch it every time, try pitching, CPU hits nowhere near my places, fills the bases then gets a home run, then check out extra modes and cheats. So I was surprised with All-Star Baseball 2000 when I could actually hit the ball reasonably well, and it wasn’t caught instantly. I actually had some fun with it. The pitching also worked quite well, you line up your target and can move slightly when you throw to try and catch them off guard. Fielding also has some targets, but you’re rarely in control of the player you expect to be. while pitching, I also somehow kept throwing the ball to my other players and had to mash buttons to pass it back to the pitcher. This is the most enjoyable of the baseball games so far. Remake or Remaster? I’m not familiar enough with newer baseball games. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play All-Star Baseball 2001.

NHL Blades of Steel ’99 NA release: 5th April 1999 PAL: release: September 1999 JP release: N/A Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami N64 Magazine Score: 69% Another ice hockey game, and this one is rather drab. Everything seems very washed out, and the “ice” looks like a strange mottled grey carpet rather than ice. This dull feeling extends to the gameplay, which is rather slow and clunky. Turning is also a nightmare, many times my controlled character would just refuse to do so, other times they’d stop in the ice. I checked if this was an emulator issue, but an IGN review mentioned similar issues. I also found that the time a goalkeeper can hold the puck before it causes a penalty is far too short, and will happen every time he has the ball, even if he’s in the process of standing up before he can pass. Remake or Remaster? There are better Ice Hockey games to focus on. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play NHL Blades of Steel ’99

Charlie Blast’s Territory NA release: 2nd April 1999 PAL: release: 18th June 1999 JP release: N/A Developer: Realtime Associates Publisher: Kemco N64 Magazine Score: 52% I’m going to start off by talking about a seemingly unrelated series of games: The Crazy Castle games. They started off with a Roger Rabbit maze game in Japan (with Mickey Mouse quickly replacing him), but Bugs Bunny replacing him outside of Japan. The games have also been Woody Woodpecker, Garfield and Ghostbusters games. One of them, however, didn’t use a license outside of Japan and the throwaway mascot Kid Klown was made. Kid Klown appeared in some of his own games, one of them being The Bombing Islands, a bomb pushing puzzle game that was a sequel to the Atari game Bombuzal. It was released in Japan in 1997 on the PS1. When it came to the N64 version, it was handed to a different developer, who completely remade the game from scratch, with a new main character. Incidentally, the Charlie’s Blast Territory did not come out in Japan, and The Bombing Islands was released on PS1 outside of Japan after Charlie’s Blast Territory on the N64. I did find that it was very easy to accidentally push something when you were trying to jump over it, but thankfully the game has an undo button (which only allows to go back one step). You also have a lot of control over the camera, so you can try to look at the game from a different perspective. With 60 puzzles and a simple but fun multiplayer mode, the game is a little bit short lived, but I did enjoy my time with it. Remake or Remaster? A re-release would be nice for this game. Perhaps with some nicer looking water. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Charlie Blast’s Territory.

Rampage 2: Universal Tour NA release: 30th March 1999 PAL: release: 21st May 1999 JP release: N/A Developer: Avalanche Publisher: Midway (NA), GT (PAL) N64 Magazine Score: 22% In terms of gameplay, Rampage 2 doesn’t do anything to improve of its earlier N64 game, and it wasn’t particularly entertaining back then. It’s something that can be fun for a short burst in an arcade, but the novelty wears thin very quickly. Rampage 2 does have slightly better backgrounds than the previous one, with more cities having backgrounds showing off famous buildings. That said, other than one or two select exemptions, you can never smash these iconic buildings – they are just background buildings, which is a rather strange choice, as it might have provided some slight variety to the building shapes and provided a bit of temporary fun. The unique backgrounds also get less common as you move on, with Asia having very few backgrounds – apparently the Taj Mahal is in multiple cities. The game does have more of a structure than the previous, too. You’ll see your monster move across the map, and you’ll travel the world (rather than random cities cropping up in between all the US ones). I was very surprised when I saw that there was a stop in North Wales, but that turned out to be Dublin. Once you’ve rescued all your monster buddies, aliens will invade. Alien buildings will crop up, and alien vehicles will replace human ones. They all function exactly the same as the human ones, so the gameplay doesn’t change at all. Even when you go into space and fight your way to the alien homeworld, only the last building is any different. The backgrounds and structure make this slightly better than the first, but still isn’t very good. Remake or Remaster? It should be part of some classic arcade compilation. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Rampage 2: Universal Tour

Lode Runner 3-D NA release: 30th March 1999 PAL: release: 21st May 1999 JP release: 30th July 1999 Developer: Big Bang Publisher: Infogrames (NA/PAL), Banpresto (JP) N64 Magazine Score: 70% Lode Runner is a long-going puzzle series that still has the odd release now, although most seem to be updated version of the original. The N64 version brought the franchise into 3D, but decided to stay true to its roots and just add an extra dimension to it. It got some middling reviews or doing so, but I think it worked out well. The basic concept of Lode runner is that there are blocks that temporarily vanish when you shoot them, but you can only fire your gun in a downwards diagonal. You can also only jump down where there are arrows. The objective of each level is to collect gold and reach the end of the level to be transported to the next. Throughout the game, you’ll encounter deadly monks, bombs and special blocks. It is, however, a little bit too east to mess up and get stuck, having to restart the entire level. This is more of an issue if it happens at the end of a particularly long level. There are also other things to find, such as gems to unlock bonus levels, extra lives and keys to unlock the next world. I can see where reviewers of the time are coming from – people expect big adventures from high priced games, rather than a nice, simple puzzler. But these kinds of games can get a bit more time to shine now, and this would be a nice digital game now. Remake or Remaster? An updated version (perhaps with undo/rewind features) would be nice. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Lode Runner 3-D.

I'm off work this week for Ollie's birthday so I completely missed the whole IT outage. As for card payments, I use my phone mainly. Rarely have cash. One great way to increase security for accounts is the ability to put "+whatever" before the @ in a Gmail email address. Makes it a lot more of a faff for a hacker as you essentially have a different email everywhere.

Super Bowling JP release: 26th March 1999 NA: release: 15th January 2000 PAL release: N/A Developer: Athena Publisher: Athena (JP), UFO Interactive (NA) N64 Magazine Score: 72% There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of information on Super Bowling – it’s the first game I’ve found that seems to have no guides or proper cheats, the main notable thing about it is that the US version is a rare game, due to being Blockbuster exclusive. I will also note that emulators have a tough time with this game, with many not displaying the right screen. For the one that did work, I had to turn the resolution back down to the original N64 resolution for it to run smoothly. Super Bowling is a pretty decent bowling game. It uses a power meter similar to many Golf games, which determines your power and accuracy, and once you get the hand of it, it plays really well. When playing on your own, the right screen shows a separate camera angle. There are a few additional modes as well. Golf Mode presents you with sets of pins and you have to knock them down in as few balls as possible. There’s also challenge mode which is similar, but you only have one shot to knock everything down. To unlock new characters (and their respective lanes to play on), you need to challenge them. When playing with two people (AI or human), you both bowl at the same time and at your own pace, which eliminates the downtime (other than at the end) and is a really nice way for bowling to work in a video game. Remake or Remaster? This doesn’t need anything doing to it. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Super Bowling

Power Pros Baseball 6 JP release: 25th March 1999 PAL: release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: Diamond Head Publisher: Konami Original Name: Jikkyō Pawapuro Puroyakyu 6 N64 Magazine Score: N/A I’m not really sure what else I can say about this franchise – it was a yearly release in Japan and the core gameplay never really seemed to change much. One thing that does seem new in this version is a kind of management mode, where you choose which kind of training your team will take part in. There doesn’t appear to be any direct team management, but it’s extremely text-heavy. The RPG mode also returns, although it features characters that seem to have more detail than the regular Power Pros style – yet these extra details with no mouth or nose is very off. Remake or Remaster? It would be nice if the new game can get a new version with these RPG and management modes (in English, there is now a new full game out in Japan). Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Power Pros Baseball 6

I'd say that map stations in Metroid are often designed to be the opposite, you're required to do a lot of exploration yourself before you can reach the map stations. The tower mechanics is a very obvious location to make a beeline for when you reach a new area.

Battlepass systems. They started cropping up in online games after I'd given up on playing games online. They sound horrible, especially ones you buy where you have a limited time to complete. You're essentially buying some gear, but you can't use it without grinding meaningless challenges. I suppose I've technically slightly interacted with it in The Avengers, but I just played the campaign offline and didn't look at stuff like that.

Triple Play 2000 NA release: 24th March 1999 PAL: release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: Treyarch, EA Canada Publisher: EA Sprots N64 Magazine Score: 50% Yet another company trying their hand at a baseball game, although this series had already been on the PlayStation (some reviewers pointed out that this is based on Triple Play 99 on PlayStation, rather than 2000). This baseball game does stand out from the others on the N64 – for both good and bad reasons. The game offers an immense amount of options, such as different camera views for different parts of the game, assist features for various parts, and it really lets you customise a how the game plays. One thing you can’t change, however, is batting. This is incredibly simple (no aiming required, just timing) yet feels imprecise. It’s not fun at all. One thing the game does really well is fielding. There are indicators to help move your players, and the ones you don’t control move into good positions. There’s also indicators for where the ball is going to land for you to get your player in position. This is the first baseball game where I’ve felt like I was actually in control of fielding. But, ultimately, the rest of the game lets it down. The graphics look dreary and most of the gameplay is really dull. Remake or Remaster? There are better baseball games to focus on. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Triple Play 2000

Micro Machines 64 Turbo NA release: 24th March 1999 PAL: release: 23rd April 1999 JP release: N/A Developer: Codemasters Publisher: Codemasters (EU), Midway (NA) N64 Magazine Score: 86% While the only Micro Machine toys I remember having were the Star Wars playsets, the Micro Machines video games on the Mega Drive were a big part of my early childhood. The concept was simple yet brilliant: toy cars racing around household settings. I was never good at the games, though, and that has not changed in the years since, as this port of Micro Machines V3 has shown me. I did find it difficult to get into the controls, which has much more to do with how I haven’t played a racing game of this style for a while, and now I’m used to direction of movement to be based on the camera. This isn’t a fault of the game at all, the controls are very precise and you need to master them to do well at the game. The tracks are brutal. They start off difficult and then, as you go through the campaign, you unlock more and more sets of tracks of increasing difficulty. You need to mostly stay within the lines, as if you spend too long off the course, you’ll blow up when you get back on it and be sent all the way back to when you were last on it. The game will let you cut some corners, yet others are extremely strict. As you need to learn the courses inside-out to do well at them, you’ll also need to figure out where you can and can’t cut corners. Micro Machines truly shines in its multiplayer mode, which retains it’s classic formula. It’s not who makes it round the track the fastest. the camera moves with both players, and if enough gap is made to throw a player off the track, the player in front gains a place. Micro Machines 64 Turbo also offers up to eight players, each using a half of an N64 controller (although the controls aren’t as good, due to not using the analogue stick), making it a great multiplayer title for when you have lots of people round. Remake or Remaster? A Micro Machines collection is long overdue. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Micro Machines 64 Turbo

Beetle Adventure Racing! NA release: 23rd March 1999 PAL: release: 4th September 1999 JP release: 26th November 1999 Developer: Paradigm, EA Canada Publisher: EA (NA/EU), EA Square (JP) N64 Magazine Score: 81% Beetle Adventure Racing has a rather odd story of how it was created. EA gave a team the task of making a Need for Speed for the N64. Instead of doing this, they developed their own idea for a car game, one they felt suited the N64 more. EA executives were impressed but still wanted NfS – and the developers still carried on with their idea before getting greenlit and deciding on adding the Beetle as the car of the game. The adventure angle is entirely within the tracks, and is something that comes across really well. The tracks are filled with interesting parts, and there are a ton of shortcuts and hidden areas to discover. I really like how the laps work in the game – the starting area is on its own little stretch, you do laps of the main course, but the end of the third lap twists off into a new final part of the track – in one level, a volcano erupts and you have to drive around lava. While there are only six tracks, they’re packed full of so much stuff that you want to try different routes – not to mention that they’re quite long. Although it’s not just a case of seeing a shortcut and taking it – as some of them are slower than the main track. There are bonus point crates to find (which gets you extra lives) and some of them are just fun to take, yet I do wish that there was an exploration option that tasked you with finding the crates (and perhaps other hidden collectables). Beetle Adventure Racing is a lot of fun and the handling works very well, but a few more modes to take advantage of the tracks would have turned it into a must-have. It’s a lovely idea for a racing game, and something you don’t see now. It’s a shame the sequel, Adventure Racing II (which was going to ditch the Beetles to have unique, customisable cars) was cancelled. Remake or Remaster? I would love to see an expanded remaster of this. Sprucing it up a bit, trying to incorporate what was planned for the sequel and adding some modes and missions. Official Ways to get the game There’s no official way to play Beetle Adventure Racing.