Paper Mario - All N64 Games

[Glen-i]

What is even this Boo model!?

It's proper demented! I love it!

[Cube]

Carnivalé: Cenzo’s Adventure

• JP release: N/A
• NA release: N/A
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: Terraglyph
• Publisher: Vatical
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

The N64 didn’t get a lot of movie tie-in games, so it’s quite bizarre that this exists. The film (which you probably haven’t heard of) was directed by Deane Taylor, the art director for A Nightmare Before Christmas. It was about a group of children that end up in a mysterious haunted fairground, and get warned by a mysterious girl (played by Helena Bonham Carter) that if they don’t leave, they’ll be trapped and stuck as children for ever.

It got a limited release in Europe where it performed poorly, and the North American release was cancelled. The film has had extremely limited video releases, and the director isn’t bothered by it being mostly erased from existence. I did manage to find an English version (with a cropped image) and watched a few snippets, the characters sounded annoying.

The film tanking was, of course, bad news for the developers of the game (who were also making a Scooby Doo game for N64), as it meant the game getting cancelled. The game focused on one of the main kids – Cenzo (voiced by Hugh Laurie in the film), who is at least more of an interesting design than the other characters. You walk around the theme park (where the tents just look randomly placed) in order to collect coins to pay for attractions, getting a few weapons, and getting access to new areas. There’s not much platforming, though, it’s just walking around.

The main bulk of the game seems to be a kart racer. The controls are floaty and imprecise, and the weapons feel ineffective. The tracks are quite long, and largely flat and boring, even the more complicated ones. They are themed around different attractions – dodgems, a boat ride, a plane ride, a haunted house, and crocodiles. While your “kart” changes based on this, they don’t feel any different.

After you’ve beaten the three CPU racers, you then take on a single boss CPU. Beat them, and you can progress through the game. The hub world area is certainly a nice idea (Diddy Kong Racing used one really nicely), but the gameplay of it is just quite boring, and the enemies are more annoying than tough. Still, a kart racer probably would have been enough for the publishers, so they were trying to do something different.

The thing that does seem to be a tad more worrying regarding the game’s development, is that this really does seem to be most of what was planned. The five in this prototype were all of the ones that were going to be in the final game, and it seems the only thing missing was one or two more simple minigames. So while a nice idea, it would still have been extremely bare-bones. This looks and plays like a very early prototype, but seems to be close to being finished.

Worst

Quote

Carnivalés rides seem to play like Mario Kart – with weapons to pick up and employ against your CPU rivals – but the correndous 90° turns on some of the tracks would make for some truly frustrating racing. Hopefull, all will be clear by next month.

N64 Magazine #48

Should it be finished?

From the sounds of it, this prototype almost is finished, even though there isn’t a lot to show for it.

[Glen-i]

14 minutes ago, Cube said:

They are themed around different attractions – dodgems, a boat ride, a plane ride, a haunted house, and crocodiles.

What horrifying fun fairs did you go to?

[Cube]

Doraemon 3: Nobita’s Town SOS!
 

• JP release: 28th July 2000
• NA release: N/A
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: Epoch
• Publisher: Epoch
• N64 Magazine Score: 54%

 

The third of the Doraemon games on N64, this goes back to being more of a Mario style platformer, only with absolutely no platforming challenge. There are plenty of jumps to make, but not a single one that you’ll struggle with in any way, not even in the big platforming “challenges” at the end of each world. The game is more about unlocking objects and using them in certain locations.

The unlock method is rather strange, though. All of the weapons and items are already in your inventory, just covered in goop. To unlock them, you collect spray cans that respawn whenever you re-enter an area, so that part of it is extremely trivial. The problem it causes, is that there are a lot of potential items to use with no indication of where you can even use objects. There’s some vague hints in the text, but it just means that trial and error is a very time consuming option.

The game overall is just quite boring. Enemies are very easy to shoot down, and even bosses are just a case of avoiding attacks while shooting as much as possible, so the entire game is just casually walking through levels, having to use very random items in very random locations. There are also multiple villages with some nice little areas, but once again, it’s just using items in odd ways. There’s not much to this one.

Fine

Quote

Tehnically, Doraemon 3 is a pretty shameful affair. Attempts at digusising the horrendous pop-up have failed, and the textures are strikingly similar to Mario’s, only much worse. Your characters, although cute to look at, handle like wounded pigs, particularly when they get near water. Add to this a wobbly camera – a sure sign of a sloppy 3D platformer – and you get an unpleasant blend indeed.

Alan Maddrell, N64 Magazine #46

Remake or remaster?

Only in a comprehensive Doraemon game collection.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get Doraemon 3

[Ashley]

Why the hell is Alan Maddrell injuring so many pigs?

[Dcubed]

Shame to see the straight run of surprisingly good Doreamon N64 games come to an abrupt halt.

[Cube]

Taz Express
 

• PAL release: 1st August 2000
• NA release: N/A
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Zed Two
• Publisher: Infogrames
• N64 Magazine Score: 27%

At this point in the N64’s life, more and more third party companies were moving away from the Nintendo 64, some didn’t even think that they could even recoup the cost of printing cartridges, let alone development. This is most likely why Taz Express was cancelled in North America, making it one of the few PAL exclusive N64 games. And it’s absolutely terrible.

The biggest issue with Taz Express is movement. While Taz is known for just spinning on the spot and moving around with ease while spinning, that isn’t the case here. Instead, you start off slow and have to run a significant distance to build up speed. If you steer more than a few degrees, then your momentum will stop and you’ll have to start again, and even moving from one polygon to another (on a flat surface) can stop Taz dead in his tracks. The biggest issue with this is that Taz can only spin once he’s built up enough momentum, which is required to break specific walls (easily identifiable by the stretched textures).

Once you do spin, you lose a lot of control, as Taz wobbles from side to side as you move forward, so you really only want to spin right before hitting a wall. The game makes this an absolute nightmare, and I ended up giving up out of frustration on a part filled with cacti and jump platforms (if you get close to one of these, Taz will decide to walk on them and you’ll be thrown to the start of the section). As the jump platforms teleport between different locations, you have to run without turning much, while also timing it for multiple things at once. You can eat food to spin sooner, but it really doesn’t help much. This game is designed specifically to annoy you.

But I haven’t even talked about the main aim of the game. Taz’s wife, She-Devil, has forced him to get a job. I find it interesting that they went with a character that was last used in the cartoons in 1957, instead of tying it in to the much more recent Taz-Mania cartoon. He ends up having to deliver a solitary crate to its destination, and naturally a lot of things get in the way. While holding a crate, Taz can’t jump and he can’t run, so you must slowly walk, and a lot of the game is about clearing the way forward, returning to the crate and slowly walking to the next section.

To make it more annoying, you can’t just leave the crate anywhere, as many levels have enemies that will attack the crate while it’s unattended. There are some “safe” tiles where you can store the crate, but I’ve still had crates destroyed while there. If it takes a few hits, you’ll lose a life and it will appear at the last safe tile you used, although there are plenty of levels that avoid placing these tiles, so you have to risk leaving the crate unattended. One level also ends with spilling about 30 other crates that you have to pick up, one at a time, until you get the right one. This adds zero challenge, it’s just there to frustrate you.

I found one positive thing about Taz Express: after blasting back to Earth from Mars, Wile E Coyote takes the crate and you have to get it back. Here, the level is a long, mostly straight repeating road, letting you get to a very high speed. Once it gets going, it does a great job at making you feel like Road Runner. I’m not sure if that’s exactly a compliment for a game where you play as Taz, but it was the only fun level.

Once you finally finish the game, there’s a plot twist: the crate was actually a present for Taz, containing a costume. This lets you play through the game again, except there are now tiles to use the costume in a minigame. You’ll have to complete the game five times to see everything, which is rather ridiculous padding that Sonic Heroes would be proud of.

Some terrible games can still be entertaining to play, while Taz Express has terrible mechanics and is also immensely boring. It’s frustrating to play, and possibly the most miserable N64 game, without even taking account how poorly this uses the main character’s abilities.

Worst

Quote

Taz Express could certainly do with a lot more work before it hits the shelves (our copy was as bugged as the White House) but then again, no amount of tweaking can rescue a game so wracked with critical flaws as to induce genuine despair.

Alan Maddrell, N64 Magazine #43

Remake or remaster?

No.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get Taz Express.

[Helmsly]

Taz Express sounds truly awful. What is odd is that despite it being a bad game, it seem to get some good reviews in a few magazines. I read on Wikipedia that Nintendo Official Magazine gave it quite a high score, so I found a scan of the issue and read the review, which mostly just goes through Taz's powers and then at the end gives 85%

Edited December 29, 2024 by Helmsly

[WackerJr]

11 hours ago, Helmsly said:

Taz Express sounds truly awful. What is odd is that despite it being a bad game, it seem to get some good reviews in a few magazines. I read on Wikipedia that Nintendo Official Magazine gave it quite a high score, so I found a scan of the issue and read the review, which mostly just goes through Taz's powers and then at the end gives 85%

Wow I learned pretty quickly that I couldn’t trust NOM reviews, although it was mainly biased towards Nintendo-published games, but that one seems bizarre even by their standards!

Glad you got to play it @Cube to clarify how shocking it really was and relieved that I’ve never had to! 😂

Edited December 30, 2024 by WackerJr

[Dcubed]

Speaking of NOM reviews.  One thing I always gave them mad respect for was for bringing down Wave Race 64’s review score once they got a chance to review the PAL version.

IIRC, they originally gave it something like 92% and then bumped it down to around 87% after seeing how shockingly bad the PAL conversion was (keeping the higher score only for the NTSC version).

Says it all when even Nintendo’s own official publication is encouraging you to import to avoid their crappy PAL releases 

[Helmsly]

8 hours ago, WackerJr said:

Wow I learned pretty quickly that I couldn’t trust NOM reviews, although it was mainly biased towards Nintendo-published games, but that one seems bizarre even by their standards!

Yeah, I always felt it was a shame what Nintendo magazine became. When it originally launched in 1992 and was called Nintendo Magazine System, it was a pretty decent, unbiase magazine. Because it was all the same staff from Mean Machines, they were good at breaking down why a game is good or bad etc and giving it a reliable review.

I felt like when it changed a lot of it's staff and became NOM, it became a fanboy magazine that would be excited over everything that came out. I never really felt anything they wrote told me why a game was decent or not, it was all mindless praise for the most part. Its why I switched over to reading N64 magazine and I wish I had done that sooner in the SuperPlay days lol

[Cube]

International Superstar Soccer 2000
 

• NA release: 3rd August 2000
• PAL release: 6th October 2000
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Konami
• Publisher: Konami
• N64 Magazine Score: 90%

For the core gameplay, ISS 2000 doesn’t change much over 98, and is the same core game as the Japanese J-League Perfect Striker 2. That said, it’s a very solid football game, and you have a few additional modes, such as custom tournaments and a new set of scenarios. The big new thing for this game, though, is a brand new RPG story mode – unless you live in North America, where that feature was cut.

The career mode is very much in the same style as the story mode for the Power Pros Baseball games, although now that it’s properly in English, I can understand what’s going on. You have to build up your stats and your teammate’s trust, while also balancing your condition and enthusiasm. There’s a lot of juggle, and you can only select one thing do do each week: train, recover, relax, talk to your squad, or talk to a potential love interest.

To start with, you won’t be in the first team, so you won’t play any matches outside of some practice matches. Improve your stats and impress your team (don’t forget to brown nose your manager), and you’ll get to be in the first team, where you can play matches. While your character is highlighted with an arrow, you still control all players like normal.

But you can’t just focus entirely on football. Training will lower your condition, causing you to rest, but also make your teammates trust you less (which is a bit odd, and more to balance the different options). You’ll need to talk to them to make friends. There are also a few women you can go on dates with, which help you stay enthusiastic about football.

Your ultimate goal is to make the national team in three years. I thought things were going extremely well: I had made the first team, won every match, had quite high stats, and my girlfriend was doing well as a pianist. Then it came to naming the national squad and…I didn’t make it. Then my girlfriend dumped me and I gave up on football out of depression. Still, it’s a very fun mode and doesn’t take too long to get through, so you can try again – it was my trust levels that were the problem.

So, while the core gameplay hasn’t changed much, this adds some great additional features – especially in Europe.

Great

Quote

If you’ve got ISS ’98 and the prospect of the RPG mode doesn’t fill you with joy, it’s hard to recommend this version, particuarly as it’s a full-price release and its predecessor is available for much less cash. But if you want a crack at making it to the first team (and there are plenty of laughworthy moments to be had along the way), ISS 2000 couples that unique RPG with a most pleasingly complete version of the world’s greatest football game.

Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #46

Remake or remaster?

A collection of these Konami sport RPGs, all translated into English, would be nice.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get ISS 2000

[Ashley]

52 minutes ago, Cube said:

There’s a lot of juggle, and you can only select one thing do do each week: train, recover, relax, talk to your squad, or talk to a potential love interest.

Suddenly I want to be a footballer if it means you only have to do one thing a week. It sounds blissful. 

[Cube]

Paper Mario
 

• JP release: 11th August 2000
• NA release: 5th February 2001
• PAL release: 5th October 2001
• Developer: Intelligent Systems
• Publisher: Nintendo
• N64 Magazine Score: 90%

Turn-based RPGs are not my kind of game, yet Paper Mario has so much charm, that I can still adore the game. My first experience of Paper Mario was on the Wii Virtual Console, where I remember getting to a lava boss.

Paper Mario was originally conceived as Super Mario RPG 2, given to Intelligent Studios after Square went off to make PlayStation games, which turned into its own thing with a paper style. This first game doesn’t do a whole lot with the paper element (it becomes much more integrated in later games), but it does give the game a unique and charming style.

The battle system is kept nice and simple, with HP and damage numbers kept low, and not going off to meaningless large numbers in the thousands. You have a jump attack and hammer attack, with badges that provide stronger versions of those attacks (with different effects). It’s also very satisfying to see the attacks physically connect with enemies. Mario also has a partner with him in battle, which provides another attack per round. To help keep things simple, the partners don’t have a separate HP bar, so all enemy attacks are against Mario.

But there’s also an added element of interactivity and timing. When you attack, you can perform a quick time event to boost the power of the attack – press A at the right time, tap a button quickly, hold the stick to the left and time letting go with flashing lights. It helps keep you more involved in the battles, and the various badges you unlock and equip can even grant you significantly more damage with the risk of doing no damage if you miss.

But what I love about Paper Mario is everything outside the battles. Mario is on a quest to defeat Bowser, but needs the help of seven kidnapped Star Spirits. The world is built like a simple platformer (just with no instant deaths or bottomless pits) with lots of secrets to discover and puzzles to solve. Enemies roam around and walking into one triggers a battle – so no random encounters. One really nice thing is the “first strike” mechanic where if you jump on an enemy or hit it with your hammer, you’ll automatically perform the attack on them before the first round (but enemies can also do that to Mario). Each partner you recruit also has a special ability to help navigate the world.

Helping this out is some great writing, with plenty of funny moments. The chapters are also extremely varied in structure, so you never know what to expect yet. Some are dialogue focused, some focused on exploring, some with big dungeons, and so on. Each new area is a wonder to explore and discover what’s going on, with a ton of unique NPCs to talk to, most based on known Mario creatures, but with specific designs and personalities, which all adds to the wonderful charm the game has.

While I don’t like the style of combat in the game, Paper Mario is still a lovely experience, and knows how to keep things interesting – like the intermittent Peach sections between each chapter. There’s just an immense amount of charm and joy throughout the entire experience.

Quote

The longer you play Paper Mario, the more you’ll appreciate the unorthodox styling and likeable characters, and before long you’ll have fallen for its endearing, almost enchanting, oddball ambience. So what you’re essentially looking at, then, is an RPG that caters to all. It’s cheerful enough to attract younger players, clever enough to appeal to older ones, while being sufficiently inventive, taxing and lengthy to provide enough entertainment for those who consider RPGs to be their genre of choice.

Geraint Evans, N64 Magazine #58

Remake or remaster?

This needs the same treatment as the Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door remake.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no way to buy a new copy of Paper Mario, the only official way to play is to rent it via the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pak.

Re-releases

2007: Wii Virtual Console

2015: Wii U Virtual Console

2021: Nintendo Switch Online (Subscription Only)