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Madden NFL 2000 - All N64 Games


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Gauntlet Legends
 

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  • NA release: 31st August 1999
  • PAL release: 1st December 1999
  • JP release: 7th April 2000
  • Developer: Atari
  • Publisher: Midway (NA/PAL), Epoch (JP)
  • N64 Magazine Score: 81%

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While I have been a bit unfair to arcade ports for lacking in content, Gauntlet Legends is an arcade game that makes a lot of sense for a home console port. The arcade game used a password system to play the game across many sessions, so replacing this with a memory card save worked extremely well.

Gauntlet Legends is a simple hack and slash game where you fight though hordes of enemies, locating their spawner and destroying that. It doesn’t do anything unique for this genre, but it keeps things simple to make it a ton of fun in multiplayer.

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Gauntlet Legends is very much designed with four people in mind, each being a different class (each class also has multiple options) so that you can unleash a variety of attacks. With others, you also have to decide between who gets treasure and who gets health, or potentially end up squabbling amongst yourselves, each levelling up separately. The game is a lot more dynamic like this, and is something that’s an immense amount of fun.

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Play on your own, however, and the game’s flaws are very clear. The game is immensely repetitive. You fight through enemies destroying their spawn points, then blast every wall and hunt for every switch to find the hidden objects you need to progress.

Because Gauntlet Legends doesn’t adapt for different numbers of players, there are an immense amount of enemies. A lot of the time, the only valid tactic is to shoot them as they form a single line until they give up (they stop spawning after a while), sometimes using your special attack to move forwards a bit.

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The N64 version of the game skips two worlds in the arcade game, but adds two in their place. The later PlayStation version had the N64 levels and all the original levels, but only supported two players.

Gauntlet Legends is a really fun game, but does require four people to be in the right frame of mind to play it.

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Fun

Quote

Formulating strategies, slaughtering beasts, destroying the monster-spawning generators – doing your best to keep each other alive. It’s simple and nostalgic, but great fun all the same. The single player game, though, is a lonely and repetitive experience.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #36

Remake or remaster?

A Gauntlet collection would be great. Especially if, for this game, they can combine the best features of each version.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Gauntlet Legends

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  • Cube changed the title to Gauntlet Legends - All N64 Games

Loved that game, still have my copy where I evolved into an Anubis dude. One niggle was one level where there was a hidden secret I could see and couldn't get to. My mate and I plowed through that level so many times and couldn't reach it.

One day I tried solo and magically one piece of a bridge suddenly fell to my attack. We hit every bit of that bridge before as the secret was right under it 

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Madden NFL 2000
 

madd00-box-l.jpg

  • NA release: 31st August 1999
  • PAL release: N/A
  • JP release: N/A
  • Developer: EA Tiburon
  • Publisher: EA Sports
  • N64 Magazine Score: N/A

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In a year where NFL Quarterback Club dropped the ball, a simple release would have been extremely successful for Madden. However, they decided to add a bunch of features to the game to make it their best one so far.

A lot of these features are beyond my understanding – player stats that vary due to them having hot/cold streaks, create-a-play, multiple consecutive seasons with shared stats, and a bunch of other stuff like that. The arcade mode is a welcome addition to make it easier for people to get into it, as well as the challenge mode.

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The challenge mode gives you a ton of stuff – like certain kinds of passes, tackles, touchdowns – to try to achieve while playing the game. The rewards show that the developers were having a lot of fun with the game as there were a load of additional teams to unlock – not just “best of teams” or ones representing the developers, but silly teams.

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Ancient soldiers, cereal mascots, spacemen, cowboys, monsters and more could be unlocked for you to play as. And not just the teams, each came with their own themed stadium to play in. This added a bit more personality and colour to the franchise, and was an enjoyable addition.

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Fun

Remake or remaster?

Silly teams like this need to be brought back.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Madden NFL 2000

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  • Cube changed the title to Madden NFL 2000 - All N64 Games
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