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Buck Bumble NA release: 30th September 1998 PAL release: 18th December 1998 JP release: 18th December 1998 Developer: Argonaut Publisher: Ubisoft N64 Magazine Score: 70% Buck Bumble is a insect-based flying shoot-’em-up. It’s set in a small area of a rural English down, where the land has been polluted, creating the rise of evil robotic super wasps poised to take over the insect kingdom. The game really surprised me when the main theme kicked in – a garage song about the biggity Buck Bumble. The developers, Argonaut, are particularly notable for creating the Super FX chip and Star Fox for the SNES. My biggest complaint with Buck Bumble is the level design and graphics – its supposed to be set in the garden, but other than the very occasional sight – like a bench – it doesn’t really feel like you’re a small creature, and you just get to see lots of ugly browns and greens and there’s an immense amount of fog due to the poor draw distance. The gameplay, however, is a lot of fun, with an impressive amount of different enemies getting a wasp-like makeover that you’ll need to content with. The controls are smooth and flying around is a lot of fun. The difficulty ramps up very quickly, though, and when you die you start the mission from scratch (the lives are for the pointless score system). You will find different weapons throughout the game, offering you lots of ways to dispatch your foes. The game offers 19 levels. Most involving killing all enemies in an area, activating a switch for a door, while others have you transporting nuclear bombs. The levels do blend together a lot, though, with the game also throwing more and more enemies at you. That said, Buck Bumble is an enjoyable game. Remake or remaster? A remaster would be good, although a sequel with more “giant human world” stuff would also be great. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Buck Bumble.

Someone has created a tool that massively helps people in making native PC ports of N64 games. Some tinkering is still needed from developers and it won't allow changes as easily as decomplication-based ports (the recompiled code isn't readable), but it looks like it's going to be a great tool that will allow people getting N64 games running smoother with higher resolutions, widescreen and other stuff. It also automatically builds a version that doesn't contain any game assets (the user will need to provide those themselves) - the person that developed this software has released a Majora's Mask port. One advantage is that this is as accurate as the most resource-heavy emulation, but much easier to run. And it's a lot easier to modify than emulated games as well (just not as easy as decomp ports). Games with unique code libraries (Factor 5's stuff) still needs work until they would be compatible, but it's a great start in making N64 games easier to play. I'll probably be near the end of playing N64 games by the time a good amount of these come out (I got quite far ahead before I started posting my daily write-ups), but it's still exciting, especially for some of the underrated N64 games (one of them even shown off in the video) to give them a chance to shine. Oh, and they're working with raytracing mods. They ported Superman 64 to PC and added raytracing.

Madden NFL 99 NA release: 22nd September 1998 PAL release: January 1999 JP release: N/A Developer: EA Publisher: EA Sports N64 Magazine Score: 88% A yearly update of a sports title I didn’t really understand. One of the biggest changes is that this version of Madden has the official NFL license and teams in the game, and has also had a bit of a graphical update. The gameplay itself doesn’t seem that much different, although it does feel much more like your players are being properly tackled and not falling down with the slightest touch. Other than that, it’s still very stop and start and you have to watch the referee fetch the ball every time. Remake or remaster? I don’t know enough about American Football games to comment. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Madden NFL 99

Got a good view of the Northern Lights tonight.

NFL Blitz NA release: 12th September 1998 PAL release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: Midway Publisher: Midway N64 Magazine Score: 87% Another American Football game, but this is a much more arcade style instead of the very slow tactical game of the previous games. While this was also out in arcades, it wasn’t quite as arcadey as something like NBA Hangtime, but instead feels more on the level of FIFA. It’s much faster paced than other American Football games, and also felt easier to understand. There’s very little waiting around, although you still select tactics. I still don’t quite fully understand American Football, but I had fun with this. Remake or remaster? I don’t know enough about American Football games to comment. Official ways to get the game. The Arcade version of NFL Blitz can be purchased as part of an arcade cabinet from Arcade1Up.

Nintendo could link theirs to the Mii avatars, like some kind of Mii universe. It does baffle me that Xbox allows you to upload screenshots into cloud storage, but sharing images from it is a pain and you can't access them via a browser.

There's an unofficial Switch Transfer Tool on Android that makes the QR sharing method a lot easier to do. There's probably something similar for other phones.

NASCAR ’99 NA release: 10th September 1998 PAL release: November 1998 JP release: N/A Developer: Stromfront Studios Publisher: EA Sports N64 Magazine Score: 59% NASCAR is about a large amount of cars doing a ton of races around a track a massive amount of games. NASCAR ’99 lets you do that in the comfort of you own home. The game features a lot of cars (which have a ton of advertisements on them) and quite a lot of different tracks (even though most feel the same). The game functions just fine and there’s nothing terribly broken about it, but it’s just really boring. The handling isn’t enjoyable and the tracks are incredibly dull – I can’t see anyone managing 200+ laps. The opponents also just drive along the racing line as though you don’t exist. I have heard that people enjoy NASCAR for the potential crashes, so I figured I’d test that out. Going backwards along the track at full pelt, I was able to be a mild inconvenience at most to other cars. They don’t really react to you and once they wiggle past you, they carry on as though nothing happened. This is just a fairly boring game. Remake or remaster? These games are still being made. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get NASCAR ’99

Multiplayer is great, but it for the most part it looks like a less interesting NES Remix. It's also amusing how the replica gold cartridge doesn't look like either version of the original NES Nintendo World Championships cartridges. At the very least they could have added some fake switches.

Gex 64: Enter the Gecko NA release: 25th August 1998 PAL release: 26th February 1999 JP release: N/A Developer: Crystal Dynamics, Realtime Publisher: Midway (NA), GT (PAL) N64 Magazine Score: 59% Gex is a series of platformers that started out in 2D on the 3DO before moving over to the PlayStation with Gex 2 in 3D (which was then ported to the N64). While the series is seen as an alright platformer, it’s mainly known for its humour. So how well does the humour hold up? I think the bigger question is “was the game ever funny in the first place?”. The attempts at humour seems almost entirely disjointed with the game itself, with almost all of it being a random selection of quotes from Gex himself, spoken at random intervals – they have nothing to do with what’s happening on screen and they repeat very quickly. It’s like making a pun when there’s no thyme or plaice for it – it doesn’t work without context. Most of the rest is in the level names, with the levels themselves being generic themes. There are a few moments, such as Gex in a bunny outfit fighting Elmer Fudd, where the parody creeps in to the actual level, but definitely not enough to be a focus of the game. There’s also a few musical rip-offs, most notably the Indiana Jones and James Bond themes. For the most part, Gex is a very generic platform game that doesn’t do anything special with its levels. It also has a few crippling issues. It’s extremely difficult to judge where objects are in relation to each other, so you’ll end up missing a lot of jumps because you thought a platform (or Gex) was somewhere else. The camera is also atrocious – even on manual mode, it likes to try to “correct” itself. This means that when you’re running on a narrow platform, at some point the camera will decide to quickly turn around to be behind you. This may sound good, but it also affects your controls, so before you’ve had time to react to the camera change, you’ve already ran off the side of the platform due to Gex turning in relation to the camera. Gex doesn’t have enough moves to keep the game interesting. You have a jump and tail attack, along with an awkward to use high jump and a running kick, both not really needed. Sometimes a collectable will be slightly out of reach, but there’s enough in the level to just ignore those ones He can also climb up walls, but this is only possible on a very small number of walls and the feature is never used for anything interesting. Enter the Gecko is a surprisingly unimaginative game that is quite annoying to play. Remake or remaster? There a semi-emulated remaster in the works of the PlayStation version. At the time of writing, it’s unknown if this will include any of the N64 specific levels. Official ways to get the game. There is currently no official way to get Gex 64 (or a version of the game), but that will change shortly.

WWF War Zone NA release: 11th August 1998 PAL release: 21st August 1998 JP release: N/A Developer: Iguana Publisher: Acclaim N64 Magazine Score: 85% The first N64 Wrestling game with the WWF licence, containing classic wrestlers like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Triple H and Star Trek: Voyager star “The Rock”. It also featured a decent create-a-wrestler mode (although, oddly, the female options need to be unlocked), and even an unlockable Turok. It was a good selection for fans of WWF at the time due to having big names, even if it lacked in terms of quantity. The game itself is decent, although quite dated. While there are different modes, the fighting itself doesn’t feel particularly different and the simpler moves work just as well the ones that are a faff to perform, so it’s easy to get into the habit of just doing the same thing over and over. I definitely believe that this was pretty significant when it came out, especially due to some of the wrestlers in the game and the fun create-a-wrestler, but all aspects have been improved upon in later games. Remake or remaster? Later games have done more. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get WWF War Zone

Bad editing from a rewrite, not sure where the last sentence was originally from.

Alice in Cardland 64 JP release: 7th August 1998 NA release: N/A PAL release: N/A Developer: Bottom Up Publisher: Bottom Up Original Name: 64 Trump Collection: Alice no Waku Waku Trump World N64 Magazine Score: 21% The name “Alice in Cardland” is my attempt at a localised name for this game, the more literal translation is “64 Playng Collection: Alice’s Exciting Playing Card World”. The game is listed online as “64 Trump Collection: Alice no Waku Waku Trump World”, however “Trump” is essentially a Japanese slang term for playing card games (presumably based on “trump card”, used in some trick-taking games). Alice in Cardland is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland where Alice has to win a card game to progress. The first one is Old Maid (played with a joker instead of a queen). The problem with card games like this: you are literally drawing random cards from opponents. There’s no skill. You can protect a card three times in a round, but that’s only useful if you’re losing and the CPU can do the same to you. You have to have the highest store in three rounds, so you just have to keep trying until you randomly win. I decided to let Alice spend the rest of her life with the living furniture as you can just play the games separately. The regular card games consist of: Pairs, Old Maid, Sevens, Speed, Cheat/Doubt, Page One (a version of Uno using just playing cards), Daifugō (a Japanese card game where you have to get rid of your cards, a bit like a trick taking game) and Seven Bridge, although there are a few extra games as well. I was intrigued when I saw poker, but it’s just a very basic Video Poker. Blackjack is also played in the same interface – it all seems like it was taken from another game and thrown into this for more content. The same is also true of solitaire (Klondike and Freecell variants), which again seems like they’re from a completely different game. Rounding out all the games are a few “fortune telling” events and another Uno variant with slightly different rules. Alice in Cardland isn’t terribly made, it all works and has a cute style. It’s more the concept of the game that fails. In multiplayer, it’s far less cumbersome to play all these games with a £1 pack of cards. The only advantage is you can play against the computer, but these games are just dull without the conversation and banter – not to mention how you facial expressions and bluffing turn games like Old Maid into an actual game and not just picking random cards. Remake or remaster? A pack of playing cards is the only “remake” needed. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Alice in Cardland

Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls PAL release: 1st August 1998 NA release: 27th August 1998 JP release: 28th August 1998 Developer: Iguana Publisher: Acclaim N64 Magazine Score: 56% Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls is a very hideous game. It’s not that it’s low quality, there’s just something ugly about the entire design from it, from the design of the ball characters, the platforms of the world, the dirty-looking water and the blurry background. It’s all very unappealing, especially for a kind of game that would excel from a more adorable design. The game is a 2D platformer racing game taking place on circular platform. you use a grappling hook to bring yourself up platforms, or perform large swinging moves. Sadly, the controls feels far too stiff and imprecise for a game like this, and the CPU opponents often don’t have the same issues (although every now and than, they’re extremely incompetent), so quite often you need a perfect run to win. This is particularly evident in world 3 – which is too dark to see important details, such as metal portions of platforms (which you can’t jump or grapple through) – the CPU has zero problem with visibility here. The grapple can also be used to attack enemies and there are items you can collect – which also means these can be used against you, adding to the frustration. The concept of Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls is a sound one, even if the rest of it isn’t. N+ took a similar concept of multiplayer 2D platforming and made it incredibly fun, and this can sometimes be fun in multiplayer as everyone has similar control issues, but the whole game is just so unattractive from a design standpoint that it detracts even more. Remake or remaster? A new game with a similar concept would be good, but it needs to be designed from the ground up. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to buy Iggys’ Reckin’ Balls, but it available to rent via Nintendo Switch Online.

Pokémon Stadium Zero JP release: 1st August 1998 PAL release: N/A NA release: N/A Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo Original name: Pocket Monsters Stadium N64 Magazine Score: 85% Pokémon Stadium Zero? No, that’s not the official name of the game, but I thought calling it that was the easiest way to differentiate from the Pokémon Stadium the rest of the world knows. The first Pokémon Stadium was exclusive to Japan, so when Pokémon Stadium 2 was localised, it became Pokémon Stadium. One thing I do need to point out is that emulation is limited. On top of trying to sort out a compatible Japanese save file, emulators currently can’t fully emulate the Transfer Pak – the game can get data from it, but the portion of Pokémon Stadium that lets you play the Game Boy game within the N64 game doesn’t work. This isn’t an issue for the later Pokémon Stadium games, but in Zero, you need to “Report” using an additional menu added by the emulator to fully access the game. However, without doing this, you can still access the Pokédex, which gives you all of the information and lets you view every single Pokémon in 3D (although, despite this, only 40 available in the battle mode). Other options lets you see lots of statistics on the Pokémon you have in the game, so it’s a great way of seeing your progress. One other nice touch is that you can view where you can find Pokémon on a nice 3D map of Kanto. If you’re struggling to see the locations properly, you can bring up an overlay with the Game Boy map. In the battle mode – which has free battle and tournament options, you get to choose your Pokémon (out of the 40 in the game) to battle. You can pick from compatible Pokémon in your current Game Boy party (I think you can select others after registering) or loan Pokémon from the game out of all the Pokémon available. The battling works exactly the same as the Game Boy, although at the start of each fight, you select three Pokémon from your party to take part in that fight. It would have been great seeing your Pokémon not just on the big screen, but in 3D for the first time. That said, this version of Pokémon Stadium is definitely more cumbersome and a bit more basic than what would later come, so I think the first experience of Pokémon Stadium outside of Japan was definitely better. Remake or remaster? A Pokémon Stadium that links to all the various Pokémon games playable on Switch would be a neat idea. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Pokémon Stadium Zero

Thanks to @Dcubed for letting me know this game exists, I can get them all in their right release months. Eleven Beat World Tournament JP release: July 1998 (Arcade) PAL release: N/A N/A release: N/A Developer: Hudson Publisher: Seta N64 Magazine Score: N/A In July 1998, the first arcade game on the Aleck 64 arcade cabinet. This cabinet was built by Seta using the Nintendo 64 as a basis – the only hardware difference is a bit of extra RAM. Technically, these games will boot up on a regular N64 (with a bit of soldering the ROM chip into a standard cartridge), but they won’t recognise a controller – a clever hacker, however, has alerted the games to run on N64 hardware, so I’ll be including these as these are official games running on N64-based hardware. There were 11 games made using the Aleck 64 arcade cabinet, with a few more planned (a few prototypes have cropped up, but not being made publicly available), with two games (such as Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth) being ported to the N64 itself. One of the first games was Eleven Beat World Tournament. This is an updated version of J.League Eleven Beat, featuring international teams. The gameplay is similar, but feels more refined, feeling smoother and more accurate. It’s a decent football game, if nothing special. You can either enter a tournament where you’ll play against a few (rather difficult) CPU opponents using a credit each time you lose, or play a friendly match with a friend. Quite simple options, but exactly what is needed for an arcade game. Remake or remaster? Nothing special for this. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Eleven Beat World Tournament

I made a roast using of a pack of 2.5kg potatoes (roasties and mash) and found I had none left over. I then realised that the pack had changed size to 2kg. Same price.

Waialae Country Club: True Golf Classics NA release: 27th July 1998 PAL release: 24th August 1998 JP release: N/A Developer: T&E Soft Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: 49% This is essentially the Western release of Augusta Masters ’98, however the translation into English also came with an entirely different course in Hawaii (but still one course). I was expecting it to play the same as just an average golf game, but I ended up encountering so many problems. I edited the first character by changing the name and appearance, the same as Augusta, yet somehow when I started the game, I was trying to tee off with a putter – it was my only club. I went into the editor and changed to change my selection (it’s impossible to tell what you have selected) and when I got to the green, I had no putter. I ended up sorting this ,but I still had no small range clubs (or a sand wedge), but had given up caring at that point. The game really can’t decide how fast the shot bar moves, changing from painfully slow to impossibly fast. The accuracy of the shot also seems to be random, with the ball undershooting or overshooting. I managed to hit a perfect shot with the wind behind me, an the ball still didn’t approach the target. Waialae Country Club was an incredibly frustrating experience and feels very broken. I really don’t understand how this happened considering I got on fine with Augusta, but I just hated this. Remake or remaster? This game doesn’t need any special treatment. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Waialae Country Club: True Golf Classics

F-1 World Grand Prix NA release: 27th July 1998 PAL release: 14th September 1998 JP release: 18th December 1998 Developer: Paradigm Publisher: Video System N64 Magazine Score: 93% In my review of GT64, I touched upon how racing simulation games have aged much worse than more arcade-style ones. F-1 World Grand Prix seems to be a clearer example of that as, while GT64 was always a poor game, F-1 World Gran Prix got great review scores – unfortunately, can’t get into it. Compared to F1 Pole Position, this is a much, much nicer looking game. The tracks have detail that you can see at a distance, with a good amount of detail of the world beyond the track. There’s still some pop-in, but it’s more for finer details, so you can see the track itself with no issue. There are some options for realism and assists, plus adjusting the amount of tracks. One great feature is the challenge mode, which pits you in specific situations based on real races. You have to perform in a similar way (or better) than what the actual professionals did, doing things like taking advantage of other cars using the pit stop, maintaining a lead with a broken gearbox and blocking a rival so that your teammate can win. Sadly, I just couldn’t get used to the driving, with or without assists. I’m not a fan of first person view and in third person, the camera kept tiring to “help” by twisting into turns, which completely threw me off every time it happened as I kept thinking that I was properly aligned (as the camera was looking down the track) while my car was off to the side – of course, it could just be that I’m also a terrible driver. Even with that, I can see the effort put into the game and that it was probably a great experience when it came out. Remake or remaster? Newer F1 games are more refined. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get F-1 World Grand Prix

Google Play have done a "history" of Sonic the Hedgehog on Twitter. I think this is what happens when you rely on AI for research. Click through for a good laugh, it gets much worse.

Super B-Daman: Battle Phoenix 64 JP release: 24th July 1998 PAL release: N/A NA release: N/A Developer: Hudson Publisher: Hudson N64 Magazine Score: 23% B-Daman is a series of toys that are little figures that shoot marbles, with the original ones being based on Bomberman before expanding a lot, eventually spawning its own manga series, Super B-Daman. The video game, Battle Phoenix 64 is a minigame collection with 10 minigames. You control your selected B-Daman and most games involve shooting, with a few basic shooting galleries. One fun one involves a bursting a balloon on spikes, but you need to reveal the panels underneath first. Unfortunately, the aiming on all of them are fairly poor. Some have you moving a target on screen and is very slow, and others have you aiming a row of dots and is not precise. With only 10 minigames (some you need to unlock in singleplayer before you can play in multiplayer), they all get tiresome very quickly, especially as a few of them last too long for how simple they are. It’s not an atrocious game, there just isn’t much to it. Remake or remaster? This doesn’t deserve any special treatment. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Super B-Daman: Battle Phoenix 64

Rakugakids JP release: 23rd July 1998 PAL release: 4th December 1998 NA release: N/A Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami N64 Magazine Score: 80% Rakugakids is odd in that it came out in Japan and Europe – but not North America. It’s a 1-on-1 fighting game where magic crayons have brought the creations of children to life. This created a fun cast of inventive characters – showing Clayfighter that something fun can be done with its concept – these fighters even change shape as they perform moves. It has a really lovely visual style, and some neat touches like shadows and a stage that features a mirror. The fighting itself it a ton of fun, and I’m not someone that enjoys the genre. There are a lot of moves for each characters – the moves reminded me of Super Smash Bros in a way. The presentation and how much fun it is to play – even the movement and jumping feels extremely fluid – makes this one of the N64’s standout fighting games, which is a nice change for a platform littered with poor examples. Remake or remaster? A crisper looking version of Rakugakids would be lovely to see. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Rakugakids.

Super Robot Spirits JP release: 17th July 1998 NA release: N/A PAL release: N/A Developer: Banpresto Publisher: Banpresto N64 Magazine Score: 58% A fighting game featuring giant mechs from various anime – although to my uncultured mind, this is a Megazord fighting game. In the story mode, each “episode” has some story before each fight, which is a nice touch. Unfortunately, this is another dull beat-’em-up. The large mechs don’t really move like large objects, more like people moving in slow motion. The really poor levels also don’t make them come across as large machines, either, so the impact of fighting with giant mechs is just completely lost. The fighting itself is very generic as well, with a few moves and not much else. There is a hover mechanic, but it doesn’t amount to much. This just seems like it was quickly put together to cash in on the various anime shows included in it. Remake or remaster? This doesn’t need much attention – although the concept done well in a new game would be great to see. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Super Battle Robots

Mission: Impossible JP release: 14th July 1998 NA release: 27th October 1998 PAL release: 6th November 1998 Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: 91% Being a movie tie-in to an action spy film gives Mission Impossible a lot to live up to, as it was always going to be compared to GoldenEye. Like GoldenEye, Mission Impossible had origins on the SNES before being made for the Nintendo 64 instead, as well as offering objective-based gameplay, this time from a third person perspective. The first mission impossible takes a lot of goes to get used to how the game works, form movement and the camera (in the first level, it’s a very high camera, but you can change it to behind Ethan Hunt, who is not based on Tom Cruise). You have to find a certain guard, knock him out and use the face maker to use his image as a disguise – it feels a lot like an early Hitman game. After the “cold open” levels, you the need to rescue some fellow agents and recover a list form an embassy. The stating level is great, although very much trial and error, as you are undercover and have to lure people to the correct places. It’s a very strong start to the game. There is only one correct way to do things, but it creates the Hitman film really well for its age. Then the game suddenly becomes a strange corridor-based shooter as you blow up crates and jump over pits of acid. It feels completely at odds with the previous levels and just comes across as padding. Thankfully the following level is much more like the Embassy level, and I was even able to mess things up and fix them without failing the mission, which is a nice touch. If there were more levels like this in the game, it would be great, but unfortunately, this is the last proper mission in this style. There’s a few small touches of stuff like this throughout, but unfortunately no levels that feel like living areas. Instead, the rest of the game is some linear corridors, a lot of shooting (with really terrible aiming) and some platforming sections with floating platforms. The friendly AI that follows you is also terrible and makes Natalya look like AI by comparison. On one level, Candice claimed she was fine, before walking right to a guard looking at her, saying “he snuck up on me” and getting shot. While the rest of the levels aren’t great, there is a surprising amount of variety as missions feel quite different. There’s one where you use spray pain to block cameras, one in and then on top of a train (which look quite impressive for the N64), a sniper mission, the famous laser scene from the film and navigating a tunnel by jumping on trucks. There are a lot of frustrating aspects. Sometimes you’ll try punching a guard, but they’ll automatically arrest you – but that only happens on some levels and even then it doesn’t happen all the time. The game is also very picky about what you do, so you’ll often try something only to fail the mission. After a very strong start, Mission Impossible loses its footing, although even then it’s still mostly a decent game from that point onwards. Remake or remaster? With some refined gameplay mechanics, a remastered version could be a lot of fun. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Mission Impossible

I've got a few to work. 64DD games I'm already planning. Speaking of F-Zero... F-Zero X JP release: 14th July 1998 NA release: 27th October 1998 PAL release: 6th November 1998 Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: 91% I loved F-Zero GX on GameCube, but I’ve never played the N64 version before. It turns out I love this version, too, even though it feels a lot more brutal than I remember GX being. This is Nintendo’s take on the sci-fi racer genre, and it does a great job at it. F-Zero X features a whopping 30 racers at once (each with a unique ship) and – even with some obvious rubber banding – they all move like actual opponents, making mistakes and reacting to your presence. The game goes a great job at remaining smooth by adjusting the level of detail as the framerate is perfect throughout. The tracks twist and turn and it’s all incredibly fast. One key part of the game is the energy bar. On top of representing your health, it’s also your boost. There are places to recharge on the track (usually near the end of a lap) so a key part of the game is deciding how much you’re willing to risk in order to go faster. Blow up and you lose a life and have to start the race again. The tracks in F-Zero X start out quite gentle, but things take a sudden turn in the last track of the second cup (there are four cups in total, with 6 tracks each) and you’ll start getting thin portions of the track with no edges – fall off and you’re not placed back like other games, you lose a life and start again. Just surviving the tracks becomes the main challenge until you start learning them. Not every choice is made against the player, though. You have barge attacks and a spin attack at your disposal. Take someone else and they won’t score any points for that round. To make good use of this, the game even highlights you rival (the opponent with the highest score) so you can try to target specific opponents and pick them out of the crowd. On top of the leagues (which have four difficulties) and multiplayer, there’s a few extra modes. There’s an unlockable X cup that serves you up procedurally generated tracks and a “death race” mode where you race around a short track trying to take out every other racer (I personally would prefer if you could do this on other tracks as well). F-Zero X is a great game that is quite full of stuff to do. It’s still a ton of fun today. Remake or remaster? A remake of F-Zero GX with all the tracks and features of F-Zero X added in would be amazing – although it shouldn’t be based on this version of F-Zero X, but we’ll get into that when I play the Japanese-only expanded version of the game. Official ways to get the game. There is no way to buy a new copy of F-Zero X, the only official way to play is to rent it via the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pak. Re-releases 2004: iQue 2007: Wii Virtual Console 2016: Wii U Virtual Console 2022: Nintendo Switch Online (Subscription Only)