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N64 Week - Day 7: Your Choice

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That's right....today is the day that you get to let off steam about ANYTHING to do with the N64. Like:

 

The controller...

The games...

The lack of games...

The great games...

The terrible games...

The memories...

 

 

Happy discussion everyone, and remember, a selection of the best posts will go up onto the main site for our readers to see.

 

 

 

DISCLAIMER: Don't worry, this will not affect your 15 minutes of fame.

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Can anyone remember the amazing 3D update of the original Command and Conquer on the N64, I loved it! It was an unsung hero of the generation.

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I remember wanting it but never got around to it. I just bought it for PC instead. Man, worst game of the 64 era has to be Quake 2. The disappointing thing is it's awesome on the PSX and PC, how the hell they managed to make it SO bad on the 64 I don't know. I ended up hating it so much I broke the cartridge in half, and if anyone has actually attempted this they know how bloody hard that is.

 

There are so many underrated classics on the system though; Spacestation silicon valley, Conkers bad fur day, Excitebike 64, Rogue Squadron, Jet Force Gemini and yes even Episode 1 Racer (someone managed to get something decent out of that piece of shite film). I remember one of my main gripes about the system at the time was the price of the games. They'd retail at around £50 and for a kid that's a bit of a joke. Especially when some games REQUIRED the £30 expansion pack, Perfect Dark for example. It made me laugh when I read the back of the Perfect Dark box to see the checklist of features you get with/without the expansion pack. I remember thinking to myself at the time, "Yeh... that'll be £80 then". It was pointless having the game without the expansion. It's amazing how 4MB of RAM can make such a difference.

 

I think easily the best memory for me, hands down, is first entering several areas of Ocarina of Time. In fact nearly every area; Hyrule Field, Gerudo Desert, Hyrule Lake, Kakariko Village etc. Absolute masterpiece.

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Is this over already? I thought it was Saturday - Saturday. :(

 

I've got a stinker of a game, worse than Quake 2 that I might play later and write some impressions of. This one got a great review in NMS (only Nintendo and Rare games usually scored highly in it...) and there's also a PC series of games that are similar, and are fairly highly regarded. I got it and hated it- tis the least played game I have because it was just yuck.

 

I'll get a blast on something else that I can be positive about to balance it out. Pilotwings maybe... or some Jet Force Gemini though I didn't all out love it at the time. Decisions decisions...

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Arguably, the biggest crime of Nintendo during the N64 era was not releasing Sin and Punishment outside Japan. It's crucial that this gem got released on Virtual Console, as it's the perfect game to show up the majority of action titles released in this day. Like the Disney masterpiece Fantasia, it's not hard to belive that Sin and Punishment would have been ahead of its time back in 2000. The pace of the game, the engaging story, and even the complexity of the graphics prove that S+P remains a game largely unparalleled in terms of developer creativity with the rescources available to them. But perhaps the absolute highlight of this N64 highlight is the section of the game where your platform is blasting in and around a Navy fleet - your finger glued to the trigger button, taking down hordes of soldiers, turrets, figher jets, boats and flying creatures. It was this moment where I realised how an eight year old game could rip my jaw from my face in a way no modern counterpart ever could.

 

I do not think Treasure is the greatest video game developer in the world. But I do agree that they produce astounding games, and their superiority in the shooting genre has remeained unchallenged for years. But this game is their magnum opus, and in my opinion, it is the greatest N64 moment that never was.

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You know what I miss most about the N64 days? No load times. Seriously, as games and technology have evolved, it seems load times have increased. The Gamecube was pretty decent in that aspect, the Xbox and certainly the PS2 weren't. I understand the disadvantages of the cartridge format, but I'd take a game with a good midi soundtrack over a game with fully orchestrated music and load times anyday. Especially this so-called "next-gen" infuriates me. I don't know about the 360, but the load times on PS3 annoy me. There's even more: some games (eg. MGS4) have to be installed. I'd snap the disc in 2 if it weren't such a great game. I miss cartridges...

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I'm a mad Nintendo fan, and I have been ever since I was a mini-link.

 

But, when I saw the Nintendo64 controller for the first time, my head exploded. How would this work? Too many buttons?! Ahh, I don't know.

 

But, playing Lylat Wars for the first time, I honestly didn't notice I was holding a controller. My fingers seemed to dance on the buttons and the trigger like I had been familiar with this controller all my life.

 

Playing Goldeneye for the first time, I just seemed to know what to do. The controller was alien to me, yet somehow otherworldly. It was very different to the other controllers that I had played beforehand.

 

I will never forget my first experience on Mario Kart 64, with 4 controllers. Again, Splitscreen: How would this work? Surely the screens will be too small for us all to see what we're doing?!

 

Nope, again, Nintendo had it right. Playing Mario Kart was perfect. Playing Goldeneye was heavenly. I had been born for this moment, for the ability to sit in a room with my friends, and to see them squeal, both on and off the screen, as I launched another proximity mine in their general direction.

 

The N64: Alien, yet familiar. That is how I'll always remember it. The games have become technically superior these days, with the DS even able to replicate some of the games from the 64, such as Mario 64, Diddy Kong Racing, etc. The Gamecube had many technical feats, and the Wii is going from strength to strength.

 

But, none of them have even come close to replicating that special "otherworldly" feel that the Nintendo64 managed to create. Again, the ideas were strange, even with the games: A Zelda with a time-frame. A Pokemon game that required you to link up to the GB versions. But they were pulled off, and in great style.

 

Gaming is special to me, and it still is to this very day. But, the N64 days were that little bit more special. It had the edge, the class, the ooze. Just for this week, it has been amazing to be able to go back to the glory days, and be part of that magic, that alien feel, once more.

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The era of the N64 will always be special to me, and I think a large part of that is due to it largely pre-dating internet and forum culture.

 

Obviously there were websites and forums about, N64 Europe being a prime example, but the boom of internet culture still had several years on its fuse. The majority of people, at least in the UK, were still on dial-up, the disadvantages of which — tying up phone lines, painfully slow speeds, and often pay-per-minute costs — made internet access something of a treat.

 

These days it seems everyone's connection is always-on, every feasible device packing some form of internet access; the virtual world has become pervasive throughout everyday Western life. But such advances do come at a cost, and in the case of gaming I think it's something that's hard to quantify: a sense of mystery.

 

Back in the hazy, composite cable days of the N64 I had no reliable internet access. As such I turned to monthly gaming Bible N64 Magazine to quench my first for gaming knowledge. I would look forward to it every month, excited to find what treasures lay in store for the months ahead; I can still remember poring over blurry screens of Perfect Dark and Majora's Mask — or Zelda Gaiden, as the article referred to it. Getting home with a copy of the magazine was an event to be savoured, every word devoured, every screenshot drunk deep. By comparison today's various videogame blogs and news sites are processed snack bars: eaten to fill a need, not consumption driven by enjoyment.

 

Counterpart to this was the lack of gaming omniscience. If I get stuck on a game now or want to find out how to unlock something then all it takes is 5 minutes perusing GameFAQs to find an answer. Back when print was king I had to rely on tips pages or playground rumours for my information, and consequentially there was a real sense of discovery when you found something new in a game; you'd ventured out into the unknown and returned, wowing you friends with the new found knowledge you had acquired and dazzled them with the spoils of your victory! That pioneering spirit is a rare blessing in gaming today, the chances of you being the first to discover anything amongst a community being slim to none.

 

The N64 was a fine machine but its games are not the real reason it will stick in my memory. It lived in a time of ignorance and innocence, a time when the 'Nintendo magic' really seemed that way to me. Uncharted worlds and secrets to uncover, a thousand stories waiting to be told.

 

These days my adventures are dogged by a single niggling doubt: I can't help but feel I'm treading in someone else's footsteps.

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N64 had loads & loads of great memories for me, starting on the very first day (when we got it with Mario 64 and drove back to the shop that afternoon to get starfox, just couldn't help ourselves), but there's 1 experience that i still get ridiculed about...

 

Superman 64.

 

I'd been told about how bad it was. I'd read about how bad it was. And i got hold of a copy. There were 3 of us in the lounge at the time, and within minutes the other 2 had declared it absolute crap and gone off to another room, but something about its badness intrigued me.

 

3 hours (!) later, they came back to find me still flying through rings and picking up the odd deserted car on a desolate, foggy plain of 1 blurry texture. My mates said "you can't possibly be enjoying this, can you?", to which i replied "No, but it's just so... bad." and yet i just couldn't put it down.

 

It was so bad that it intrigued me. There just HAD to be something I was missing. I kept playing, and playing, and playing. For the rest of that day. Probably more than anyone else in the entire world (including Titus's testers) had played the game.

 

When bad gets so bad, it comes around full circle and sucks you in.

 

I'll get a blast on something else that I can be positive about to balance it out. Pilotwings maybe... or some Jet Force Gemini though I didn't all out love it at the time. Decisions decisions...

 

Do Jet Force Gemini, it deserves impressions on appreciation week! Just don't play as far as getting told to go back and find every bloody teddy bear before you can fight the final boss, 'cos that instantly turns people's love for the game on its head.

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"Solve my maze!"

 

"But... there are just lots of rings to fly through."

 

"Solve it!"

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"Solve my maze!"

 

"But... there are just lots of rings to fly through."

 

"Solve it!"

 

lmao!!

 

That quote should be up there with "DO A BARREL ROLL!"

 

But don't forget, it was a VIRTUAL maze :smile:

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