Monopoly - All N64 Games

[Cube]

Let’s Go By Train 64
 

• JP release: 30th July 1999
• NA release: N/A
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: A.I.
• Publisher: Taito
• Original Name: Densha de Go! 64
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

Densha de Go! (which translates to “Let’s Go By Train” is a series of Japanese arcade games about driving a train. There’s nothing crazy or over the top here, it’s a fairly serious train simulation game. I was expecting this to be fairly relaxing, but then I realise that this isn’t a British railway where trains can turn up whenever they want, this is based on Japanese rail networks where the trains have to be there at the exact second. This is a very brutal and unforgiving game.

You could also buy an additional train panel-style controller instead of using an N64 controller.

You pick an area and a route, and you get told which stations you need to pass, and which ones you need to stop at. You then have to abide all the signals – which are pretty clear for the most part. When passing a station, you don’t get punished for being early, but you do get a bonus for reaching it at the exact second you’re due to pass. Meanwhile, if you are late, every second counts down your allotted “penalty” time.

I also found it difficult to slow down in time for speed limits. Without using the emergency break (which messes with your score as it sends passengers flying), it’s sometimes impossible to slow down enough between being told about the speed limit and it being enforced, giving you penalty time.

Stopping at stations is more difficult than you would imagine. As you have to slow down gradually, it takes somewhere between 700-500m to stop. You also have to aim for a very specific point in the station, slow down too much and you’ll stop before it, and then have to accelerate to stop it again. Not only will you lose a lot of time, but you’ll get an extra penalty for accelerating while stepping. Overshooting also carries a penalty, and your train will be halted if you go too far.

Let’s Go By Train also supports the N64’s VMU microphone. With this plugged in, you can gain extra points by saying the names of signals and speed limits as they crop up. This doesn’t control anything in the game, so it’s just the bonus points. The fan translation also translates this aspect of the game.

While I was shockingly bad at this, and could barely finish any routes, I still enjoyed it a lot. There’s something oddly captivating about it.

Fun

Quote

Taito have granted the wish of the little boy inside each of us with their new game, Densha de, Go!, where the player finally gets to realise the dream of being a train driver.

How to….Survive in a Japanese Arcade, N64 Magazine #4

Remake or remaster?

The series is still going, with more modes and features. They just need to be localised. The Switch version also has a new controller.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Let’s Go By Train 64.

[Dcubed]

Oh! Had no idea that the N64 version of DDG supported the mic! That’s cool.

[martinist]

Here is Thab's playthrough summery of the same game. little less than 20 minutes.

[Cube]

In-Fisherman Bass Hunter 64
 

• NA release: 30th July 1999
• PAL release: 22nd October 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Gearhead
• Publisher: Take Two
• N64 Magazine Score: 67%

I’m really not sure how much I can say about a fishing game. This one is certainly well made – and has nicely detailed graphics and a nice split-screen, but it’s also extremely boring – but only because it aims to be accurate (even if still heavily sped up compared to how long it could take in real life). Finding fish is a big part of catching fish.

While driving around the lakes in your boat, a Garmin Fishfinder (some kind of sonar device) will help you detect fish. Where the bass are will depend on the year and weather, sometimes preferring shallow waters sometimes hiding out in the deep (the instructions for each tournament will give you an idea), although sometimes you can still drive* around for a very long time before finding something. When you do get some fish markers on your sonar, it’s time to stop and fish.

*I looked into the use of what word to use here, with options for sail, steer and pilot, however it seems that “drive” is the most appropriate for using a small motorised boat in this manner.

A lot of the controls feel quite similar to fishing in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, with waggling the stick to entice fish, reeling and pulling to the side to get them closer and so on. There is more in-depth stuff – you have to pull back to hook and set tension, but it really does highlight how much Zelda got right in just a small bonus part of the game.

Which kind of bring us to the game’s biggest flaw: Ocarina of Time’s fishing is just more fun. Bass Hunter has a lot more depth and detail, but that’s tedious stuff, and I suspect people who enjoy fishing also like the whole outdoor nature of it. In Zelda, you can just get straight to the fishing (well, once you get to the fishing pond), and there’s even a hidden fish to try and catch. In this, the hunt for fish is just slow and boring, without the enjoyment that comes with the environment around you in real life.

Fine

Quote

So, if you’re fish-crazy, this could be a thing for you, offering, as it does, a comprehensive river-bound package. For the rest of us, though, we’ll probably get more satisfaction in catching the Hyrule Loach and trying to whip the hat off the odd chap in the fishing shop. And you can’t say fairer than that.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #34

Remake or remaster?

More recent fishing games likely do more.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get In-Fisherman Bass Hunter 64

[Cube]

Monster Truck Madness 64
 

• NA release: 30th July 1999
• PAL release: 29th October 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Terminal Reality, Edge of Reality
• Publisher: Rockstar
• N64 Magazine Score: 66%

Quite a few people were involved in the creation of this game. Terminal Reality developed the original PC version while Edge of Reality ported it to N64 (they spent their first few years developing N64 ports, most notably the Tony Hawk series). Microsoft published it originally, but got Rockstar to publish in on the N64 (incidentally, Rockstar only published one other N64 game in North America). There’s some impressive names in there, so it’s quite amazing that they’ve somehow managed to turn Monster Trucks into something incredibly boring.

Monster Truck Madness 64 has one idea that could work: you are free to cut corners as long as you hit the desired checkpoints, driving up mountains or through water. However, the controls and physics completely and utterly spoil this. The trucks jerk around and turning is erratic, so it never feels like you have any control. In one moment, a tiny nudge of the stick makes you do a 90 degree turn, while other times it barely moves you.

The physics are equally wonky, you can never predict how a jump will end up, and an enemy colliding with you can make you slowly float across half the map. It’s very broken.

The one time that the game does control well is when you get a flight power-up – it’s strange how smooth and precise turning and going up and down is with this power-up. Other power-ups are quite boring, some missiles and oil slicks are useful against enemies, but any boost or jump ones will just mess up your race.

The graphics are also bad. Everything feels like it’s in a different scale and so many parts of the game feel like they belong to completely different games. The trucks themselves also feel like toy cars – when they’re supposed to be the big proper machines, as they license real monster trucks.

There’s also absolutely no spectacle. There’s no satisfying noise or visual effect when landing, no splash when going through water. There’s not even much to smash – just a few fences. This is a Monster Truck game, there needs to be spectacle, destruction and mayhem. This game would play no different if you replaced the trucks with a milk float or scooter.

There are a few interesting multiplayer modes. There’s a football game where cars bash around a giant football into a futuristic goal (I’m surprised nobody else has tried this concept), as well as a hockey. Oddly, these let you select them with just one player, but has no CPU players, just giving you the ball and an open goal.

There’s also a king of the hill mode which does have CPU players, and a few 2-player only chase modes. These might provide a bit of enjoyment for someone renting it, but it doesn’t make up for the entire game being a wreckage.

Worst

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Everything is absurdly ‘floaty’ – hit a bump and you’ll fly into the air, invariably hitting the ground, rolling over and skidding for several metres before you’re placed back on your wheels. The sheer over-the-topness is quite entertaining for a while, but soon becomes tiresome because of its inaccuracy. Cornering is equally as problematic, and irritatingly erratic; you skid out, accompanied by the camera swinging in a seasickness-inducing manner.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #33

Remake or remaster?

A monster truck game could be a lot of fun, but not this. The football mode could be turned into something interesting, perhaps replace the monster trucks with something crazy like supersonic acrobatic rocket-powered battle-cars.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Monster Truck Madness 64

[Cube]

The New Tetris

• NA release: 31st July 1999
• PAL release: 15th October 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: H2O, Blue Planet
• Publisher: Nintendo
• N64 Magazine Score: 88%

The “big” Tetris game for N64 starts off extremely promising. There’s a great opening video to a slowed down version of THE Tetris theme. Then you start and you’re presented with a Mayan theme background and a few rules changes – ones that take a simple game and overcomplicate it in unnecessary ways. This is the New Coke of Tetris. Oh, and get used to that background, as you’ll be staring at it for a very long time.

Tetris doesn’t need visual flair, but some is nice. In The New Tetris, every line you create adds to a running building a “wonder”, complete it and you’ll move to the next one (so another background to star at for ages), up to completing half a million lines to finish the final one. This isn’t really a challenge, it’s just playing the game for an unbelievably long amount of time. Each theme also comes with some utterly atrocious music, and the only other track is the slowed down Tetris theme, which you can select as the music for your game (although you can’t change music mid-game), but it doesn’t fit the flow of the game. Mute the music and play the original music instead.

In terms of gameplay changes, the one that has stuck around is the ability to “hold” a piece for later up. This version also shows you three additional pieces, which is a bit too many. The score is also entirely gone, focusing entirely on lines – which is where this game’s most awkward mechanic fits in.

If you create a perfect 4×4 square of complete blocks, you’ll form a “super” block – silver if you use different pieces, gold if you only use one kind of block. If you use these to form complete lines, you’ll score bonus lines. This is an unnecessary complication for the game, and it means there’s no bonus for completing two or three lines at once – although you do get a single extra line for clearing four lines at once.

The New Tetris has a few slight variations that feel the same, although the multiplayer does support four players. Overall though, the other N64 Tetris games – Tetris 64 and Magical Tetris Challenge – are both much better variations on Tetris than this. One thing The New Tetris did give us, though, are all the wonderful rants slagging off the producer hidden in the code.

Fine

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So imagine our surprise when The New Tetris turned out to be the big screen adaptation we’ve all been waiting for. The designers of the game, H2O, haven’t gone crazy with the kind of new shapes nonsense seen in Magical Tetris and Tetris 64, and the only gameplay additions are a couple of new tactics and a revised scoring system – the old points tally being replaced by a simpler lines score. It works brilliantly, and it’s far better than having a high score table full of seven-digit numbers.

Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #33

Remake or remaster?

While I don’t like it, new Tetris games should include specific rules sets like this.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get The New Tetris

[Helmsly]

1 hour ago, Cube said:

One thing The New Tetris did give us, though, are all the wonderful rants slagging off the producer hidden in the code.

If anyone is curious, you can read the hidden rants here: https://tcrf.net/The_New_Tetris#Hidden_Rants

Here's a taster of the main one:

Quote

First of all being our producer.. 
D*N, my god.. is this guy useless or what?? I don't hate you D*N.. but you SUCK, 
and I mean SUCK as a producer. You should go back to testing video games, but I 
doubt you could even manage that properly.  I feel sorry for you.  

lol

[Dcubed]

The New Tetris is actually a pretty important entry in the series, as it was where the Hard Drop mechanic was first introduced; and when the Tetris Company began pushing the series towards the modern Tetris Guideline that we have today.  The rotation system and piece randomisation is a weird hybrid of Nintendo Tetris and Guideline Tetris, and while we have the Hard Drop, the Hold mechanic had yet to be introduced.

Tetris Worlds was the game the crystallised the modern Tetris Guideline as we know it today (including the much maligned Infinite Rotation mechanic); which governed all Tetris games completely until TTC only very recently began allowing for deviation once again.  But that wouldn’t come about for a few more years to come.  The New Tetris was where it all started though.

[martinist]

I'll just leave this here.

[Ashley]

17 hours ago, Helmsly said:

If anyone is curious, you can read the hidden rants here: https://tcrf.net/The_New_Tetris#Hidden_Rants

Here's a taster of the main one:

lol

Makes me feel better about all the sarcastic comments about colleagues I leave in my code 

[Dcubed]

Edit: Said something dumb, Magical Tetris Challenge predates TNT.

Edited August 26 by Dcubed

[Cube]

Hybrid Heaven
 

• JP release: 5th August 1999
• NA release: 31st August 1999
• PAL release: 24th September 1999
• Developer: Konami
• Publisher: Konami
• N64 Magazine Score: 83%

Hybrid Heaven was hyped up a lot – while the PlayStation got Metal Gear Solid, Konami were also developing Hybrid Heaven for the N64 for its big action game featuring a complex plot. Hybrid Heaven didn’t perform anywhere near as well as Metal Gear Solid, though, and is not more of a cult classic, and even gets overlooked when people talk about RPG games on the N64 – as the game itself is a hybrid of action parts and RPG fighting.

The game starts off with a confusing cutscene, introducing what seems to be the main character before someone else shoots him. You start the game as Mr. Diaz before an early twist reveals that you’re actually the original Johnny Slater – the guy you killed in the opening cutscene while disguised as him.

An alien has betrayed his people and is creating improved clones to take over the world, however there’s a lot more depth and nuance, and your actions have the clones (called Hybrids) questioning various things about themselves and humans. There are many revelations and twists, and it’s a fascinating story. That said, I don’t think the personality of the characters shine through as much as they could – even the box art does a better job at that.

While roaming about the levels, you’ll encounter robots that you can shoot. Your gun feels like a peashooter, and you just have the single gun throughout the game. The enemies also respawn, so I found that the best thing to do was to quickly zig zag and run past them.

Some of these enemies (all various robots) are positioned to shoot your instantly as a room loads, before you have time to move. It’s all quite frustrating. Luckily, this isn’t how you fight the main enemies of the game, the Hybrids.

These Hybrids can look human, but most you encounter are various alien designs – using DNA of animals and other aliens to create “bio weapons”. All of them have been imbued with the knowledge of wrestling, as this is the main form of combat used – but it’s not like any typical wrestling game either, as it’s much more tactical and sort of turn based.

You move around in real time as a bar fills up, past a certain point you can start an attack, but wait, and you get more power behind your attack (later on in the game, you can store multiple full bars to perform combos or attacks in quick succession). There are a massive amount of punches and kicks for you to select, and if you grapple, you can perform other attacks like headbutts and suplexes. When an enemy attacks, the game pauses and you can select a form of defence you want to try.

It’s a fascinating system, and extremely in depth, but…each single fight takes 5-10 minutes. It’s exhausting, and you’ll likely enter the next room and have to do another. Each fight is very similar, and as pretty much every room is an empty square, the environment doesn’t change anything about the fight, either. Each battle feels almost the same, with the main differences being a few enemies with annoying habits, like ones that heal (you can’t see enemy health) and ones that turn invisible.

There’s an impressive amount of levelling up to do as well, each body part levels up independently (with separate stats for offence and defence), you have an overall level, and you have a chance to learn a new move when an enemy uses it on you. It’s all extremely well made – it’s just a bit too much.

The biggest problem with the game, however, is simply navigating the levels. It starts out fine, with a fairly linear structure, but it seems the developers use the level design to play tricks on you. In the second chapter, as you’re running away from a large creature, you encounter a narrow platform and a bottomless pit – the first in the game. As you’re running, the camera changes and you will fall into the pit. Luckily, platforming isn’t a huge part of the game, but this is the first example of the game messing with you.

When you have to hunt for the “navigator”, there are two nasty examples. First, there’s a section with a rounded area with lots of similar rooms. One huge problem in the game is that rooms look similar, and after a fight, it’s pretty much a guess if you’re going to pick the next door or the one you came in through.

So you go through this section with similar rooms, use a lift, go back and forth shooting switches, then use another lift. I then found myself in the exact same rooms as before and presumed I got turned around – but no, the entire section just repeats again.

There’s also a section where the camera suggests going through a door. There’s a lot of traps and enemies to avoid/shoot (with a camera positioned purposefully to make them hard to see). You then encounter a room with two locked doors. Go back to the starting room and there’s another door that was hidden behind where the camera was looking, here is where you get the keycard, but there’s also a locked you can now open door right next to the keycard – which leads right to the room you needed to get to. The long corridor with traps is just to waste your time.

Hybrid Heaven is a fascinating game. It has a great story and a very deep combat system – it just also comes with a lot of annoyances. I think the combat would be more special spread out more, and the navigation and shooting could have been much better,

Fun

Quote

However, you’ll find that Hybrid Heaven – for all its irritating faults – is a brave (and mostly successful) attempt at mixing 3D action-adventuring with RPG-style character building and some cinematic storytelling. It’s a rich and compelling mix, even if it is shot through with moments of irritation, and it’s quite, quite unique.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #33

Remake or remaster?

This could be amazing as a complete remake. Alter the story a bit, make the level design make more sense, perhaps let people hotkey abilities to make the combat flow quicker, and perhaps up damage/lower health with more regular checkpoints so fights don’t go on for quite so long. And make the shooting much better, with multiple weapons.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Hybrid Heaven

[Cube]

Rally Challenge 2000
 

• JP release: 6th August 1999
• NA release: 30th June 2000
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: Genki
• Publisher: Imagineer (JP), SouthPeak (NA)
• N64 Magazine Score: 61%

Released in Japan as Rally 99, Rally Challenge 2000 is a racing game with a rally theme. While it is an arcade-style racer, it features some simulation-like elements, such as how parts of the car can become damaged, which alter turning and speed. You can play in arcade mode (where other racers start far ahead of you) or compete in a tournament for the best time – although there are still CPU racers in that. However, their performance in the race does not reflect a time – you can overtake someone who started before you but still lose to them when looking at the times after the race.

The most notable thing about Rally Challenge 2000 are the reflections on the car windows, which reflect the world around them, on all of the windows. It looks impressive on the N64, but was less noticeable in the game’s original blurry form (many games note how it was unusually blurry, even for an N64 game). It is a bit too clean looking, but still impressive.

Plus, I could drive a car advertising Sony MiniDiscs.

Fine

Quote

ally Challenge 2000 spins out on the first turn and ends up with its nose buried in a wall of tyres. The courses are uninspiring rather than awe-inspiring; the presentation is straight from SNES island; and the rallying itself, which should be a heart-stopping, gravel-spraying, powersliding journey from start to finish, feels like a fairly sedate drive along a quiet stretch of the motorway on a Sunday afternoon.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #45

Remake or remaster?

Nothing special for this one.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Rally Challenge 2000.

[Dcubed]

Really need to get Hybrid Heaven at some point.  It’s such a bizzare and experimental game; literally nothing else like it out there!

Perhaps unfairly compared to Metal Gear Solid, but that was Konami‘s own fault, because they essentially marketed it as the N64’s answer to that game.

[Cube]

WWF Attitude

• PAL release: 9th August 1999
• NA release: 31st August 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Acclaim
• Publisher: Acclaim
• N64 Magazine Score: 88%

In terms of creating an atmosphere, WWF Attitude absolutely nails it. There are a lot of wrestlers in the game, each with their own intros and intro music – recreated in the game’s engine – and each wrestler even features voiced lines. The presentation is let down slightly by the visuals, particularly the character models, with some of the wrestlers (such at The Rock) difficult to identify on looks alone.

There are an immense amount of options, though, with lots of match settings, a good create-a-wrestler and a career mode where you move up the ranks from untelevised matches to being the wrestler for big events.

I personally didn’t get on with the fighting itself (which, similar to War Zone, is more oriented on remembering button combinations), but it seems like a pretty solid game for fans of wrestling, and the first one on the N64 to completely nail the “attitude” of WWF itself.

Fine

Quote

Despite the obvious improvements, WWF Attitude is fundamentally WWF Warzone sporting a shiny new wrestling gown. That might initially put you off if you preferred WCW/NWO Revenge’s way of doing things, but Attitude provides such feature-packed wrestling, with so many enticing extras, that it’d be a shame to miss it. For now, WWF Attitude is the closest you’ll get to real wrestling on your N64.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #32

Remake or remaster?

The genre has evolved.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get WWF Attitude

[Cube]

NFL Blitz 2000
 

• NA release: 17th August 1999
• PAL release: N/A
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Midway
• Publisher: Midway
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

A yearly refresh of a sports game. This focuses on adding more features more than changing the core gameplay (although I felt like it was a bit clunkier than the original). The biggest is that it now supports 4 players, making it more of a party game. Alongside this, it has other features such as creating your own plays and some additional kids of moves.

For someone like me, who still doesn’t understand the sport, these additions are probably why I felt the game felt less streamlined, but it was probably great for fans of the sport.

Fine

Remake or remaster?

A wider re-release of the series perhaps.

Official ways to get the game.

The Arcade version of NFL Blitz 99 (which is what NFL Blitz 2000 is based on) can be purchased as part of an arcade cabinet from Arcade1Up.

[Cube]

Re-Volt

• NA release: 18th August 1999
• PAL release: 3rd September 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Acclaim
• Publisher: Acclaim
• N64 Magazine Score: 73%

When it comes to fan-made enhanced versions of games, I was very surprised that Re-Volt was one of them. A dedicated community of fans have recreated an extremely accurate open source engine that runs great on modern systems. There are even a good amount of fan-made tracks and cars, alongside an optional Dreamcast pack. For this playthrough, I stuck with what was available in the N64 version.

Re-Volt is a kart-style racer where you race RC cars across various locations, such as a supermarket, street, museum, a toy store or a massive kid’s room. The driving mechanics definitely take some getting used to, but they have captured the feel of controlling RC cars perfectly, from how the turn to how they reverse. The CPU racers are very unforgiving, though, and it’s quite a difficult game – yet still a lot of fun. Driving small toy cars around larger-than-life environments is always a lot of fun.

There are different options for handling and collision, so you can adjust the game between being more “simulation” or “arcade”, and a lot of cars to unlock. There aren’t a lot of tracks, and unfortunately the themes do repeat, giving multiple versions of the same track (but completely new layouts). There’s a certain charm the game has in how they don’t try to inject extra personality in it – they just let the RC cars be RC cars, and it somehow just works extremely well like that.

While Re-Volt isn’t a game that will appear on many “best of” lists, it still had a unique feel and charm due to nailing how the RC cars look and feel. It’s great to see that the game has captured the hearts of a solid community that is eager to keep the game alive.

Fun

Quote

Re-Volt is just about the most frustrating racer we’ve ever played. Attempting to control the game’s tiny radio-controlled vehicles has reminded us exactly why the last RC car we owned ended up being stamped on and thrown in the bin. It’s a miracle we haven’t done similar things to the Re-Volt cartridge itself.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #33

Remake or remaster?

The fan made “remaster” – called RVGL – does an amazing job at keeping the style of the original game while bringing other things up to date, with great compatibility for modern operating systems. The extra courses are a much welcome addition, too.

Official ways to get the game.

The license for the original IP has been thrown about, but fans are keeping it alive with the RVGL project.

[Dcubed]

First time hearing about RVGL.  That’s super cool! Always nice to see such a niche game get a cult following

[Cube]

NFL Quarterback Club 2000

• NA release: 26th August 1999
• PAL release: 24th September 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Acclaim
• Publisher: Acclaim
• N64 Magazine Score: 60%

I have no idea what happened here. I enjoyed the previous Quarterback Club, but this one just feels completely wrong. I did initially theorise that perhaps Acclaim Austin were focused on the Dreamcast version of the game (with the console being released a few weeks after this point of the N64’s life in America), but that version got absolutely abysmal reviews.

In terms of gameplay, everything just has an “off” feel to it. Passing is extremely difficult, while tackling is extremely trivial. Making a breakthrough is also much more difficult than the previous game. Graphically, the animations just seem wrong. Players often stand around looking more like deactivated Star Wars battle droids more than humans, with a multitude of graphical glitches. When the CPU opponent managed to get a touchdown, he just stood still with the ball while across the line for at least 5 seconds before the game realised that he had scored, and he started celebrating.

It’s a shame as Acclaim had managed to find a great formula for American Football, and managed to mess this up, and it doesn’t even seem like they were attempting something unique with it.

Poor

Quote

The passing system has been overcomplicated, so it’s incredibly hard to catch the ball. Even if your receiver is wide open, failure to press the catch button at exactly the right time results in the ball bouncing off his head. There’s a new passing option which is supposed to allow you to pitch the ball to a specific part of the catching zone, but it’s rediculously tricky. Tellingly, the default settings leave it switched off. A big disappointment.

Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine 36

Remake or remaster?

There are better versions to bring back.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get NFL Quarterback Club 2000

[Cube]

Fighter Destiny 2

 

• JP release: 27th August 1999
• NA release: 14th July 2000
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: Genki, Opus
• Publisher: Imagineer (JP), SouthPeak (NA)
• N64 Magazine Score: 85%

No, there isn’t a typo in the title of the game. For some copyright reasons, the “s” had to be dropped from the Fighters Destiny name. Fighter Destiny 2 feels more of a refresh of the first game rather than a sequel. It looks the same, and it plays the same. While a lot of the characters are new, most are reskins of the original characters with some slight adjustments.

The various game modes are mostly the same. The main difference is that the singleplayer mode (where you can unlock new moves) now takes the form of a roll-and-move board game, selecting your opponents and challenges at random, so a downgrade from the original.

This is still a solid fighting game (if you like absurdly long button combinations), but other than some new backstories to read, it doesn’t offer anything over the original.

Fun

Quote

Some games just make you feel old. Particularly when you glance back and see that we reviewed the original high-octane semi-strategic flashy fightfest back in N64/13. Perhaps the reason we feel so creaky is that Fighter Destiny 2 is so strikingly similar to its forebear that we had to check we had the right cart.

Alan Maddrell, N64 Magazine #45

Remake or remaster?

Perhaps a remaster that merges the two games together?

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Fighter Destiny 2

[Cube]

Mini Racers (Prototype)
 

• JP release: N/A
• NA release: N/A
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: Looking Glass
• Publisher: Nintendo
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

An unreleased prototype of a game where you control RC cars through colourful environments, although it’s much more like RC Pro-Am than Micro Machines, as you race around tracks rather than over, under and around larger-than-life objects. There are a lot of tracks in the game (although one or two in the prototype don’t work), however I found it to be quite difficult as I’m awful at this style of racing games with the overhead perspective.

One issue with the game is it doesn’t really do anything special in terms of gameplay. It’s a top down style arcade racer, and that’s about it. It seems like it would have been a decent one, but I don’t think this game would have had much attention if did get released. As for why it was cancelled? Nobody really knows, but Looking Glass Studios didn’t last much longer. This seems like it was almost finished, just a couple of loading issues with some levels.

One thing that Mini Racers did have was a track generator and editor. First you set parameters such as how many turns, shortcuts and bumps; but then you can adjust parts of the track manually. The theme of the track seems to be random, though.

There’s also a much earlier prototype game from Looking Glass Studios called Tamiya Racing 64, which is a similar style of game, but that prototype is an endless time trial on a single track. I’m quite confident that it’s an earlier version of Mini Racers, so I don’t think it needs talking about separately.

Fine

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Elsewhere, there’s some fairly tight control – including some spot-on physics and a Z-operated turbo boost – and, brilliantly, both a random track generator (as in F-Zero’s X Cup) and a track editor. The multiplayer mode is pretty funtactic too.

N64 Magazine #34

Should it be finished?

It wouldn’t take much to finish it off – just fix the loads for levels and translate the simple menus. However, I’m not sure many people would be interested.

[Cube]

Dragon Sword (Prototype)
 

• JP release: N/A
• NA release: N/A
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: Interactive Studios
• Publisher: MGM Interactive
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

Dragon Sword is a cancelled beat-em-up style that translates the gameplay of Golden Axe and Streets of Rage into 3D. It was in development by Interactive Studios, but ended up getting cancelled when MGM Interactive decided that it likely wouldn’t sell enough copies to turn a profit. The prototype has a good portion of the game available, although the final three levels are just basic arenas with a few enemies, so I think they may be from a different mode. The few levels before these can’t be accessed, so I think those are the actual final levels.

After selecting one of four characters (although the lizard chicken looking character just spawns you as a basic enemy), you punch and kick your way though hordes of enemies. It doesn’t to anything new for the genre, but it’s a much, much better adaptation than Fighting Force. There are lots of weapons dotted across the map, so you’ll find yourself using those for large periods of the game.

One interesting feature of the prototype is that you can load the game playing as any enemy or NPC, and for the most part they work fine – if they added special attacks to the enemies (and perhaps basic attacks for the NPCs), these would have been great as unlockable characters. Interestingly, the placeholder icon for many is Darth Maul.

This would have been a decent beat-’em-up game, especially when played in co-op.

Fun

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And finally, Interactive Studio – the people behind Glover – are working on Dragon Sword, a repotedly impressive action-adventure RPG in the traditonal fantasy style. Think experience points, dwarfs and Mithril armout. More news, invariably, as we get it.

N64 Magazine #29

Should it be finished?

One of the developers said “Dragon Sword was a great game at the time, but it was a third person battling game. There would be no point bringing that back as it would just look aged.” and I think they have a good point.

[Helmsly]

I had never heard of Mini Racers or Dragon Sword before, but both look pretty good and certainly the kind of games I would have been interested in back then. In both cases it seems like a shame that they never had a full release.

[Dcubed]

That's one of the biggest issues with the cartridge format.  The manufacturing of the carts is so expensive that if you aren't projecting to sell above a certain threashold? It's literally not worth even printing the game; you would just be throwing away money in doing so.

Add on the minimum order requirement that Nintendo had in place and it's no wonder why there are so many finished but left unreleased games for the N64.

Just goes to further highlight how much of an utter disaster the choice of carts over CDs really was.

[Cube]

Dragon Sword was also planned for other consoles, and it was in development alongside another cancelled game that I'll be covering. Although N64 cartridge costs (well, a higher up ordering far too many, to be more precise) were a reason for projects being cancelled.

Duke Nukem: Zero Hour
 

• NA release: 31st August 1999
• PAL release: 24th September 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Eurocom
• Publisher: GT Interactive
• N64 Magazine Score: 90%

Considering how censored the Duke Nukem 3D port on N64 was, it’s surprising that the N64 got its own Duke Nukem game, but Eurocom ended up making Zero Hour just for the N64. From the censorship side of things, it works much, much better as things are catered to what Nintendo allowed on the console rather than covering up what was already there – the game even makes fun of Nintendo for their rules.

The story this time is that the aliens have travelled back in time to prepare Earth for invasion, causing a zombie outbreak and nuclear war. It’s up to Duke to travel back and fix things.

Zero Hour also brings a perspective shift into third person, with the game having plenty of control options, which makes the game feel more modern (except the inability to turn off inverted aiming). Jumping is fairly stiff, but the gunplay feels pretty great.

When you’re in the thick of action, the game is great. Enemy body parts come off in a satisfying way and there’s a good variety of weapons to dish out damage with.

What does let the game down is the level design. There isn’t a lot of time travelling – you see a post-apocalyptic future, go to a Western town, then Victorian era Britain (you do get to see an airship and Scottish castle) and back to the present for the finale. I feel like some of these could have been shortened to make way for a few more timezones.

The levels themselves are also made to torment you. It’s much easier to find secret areas than it is to progress in some levels, due to annoying design, hidden keys, switches that blend into the background and some doors/teleporters/drops that just send you backwards in the level. Sometimes you’ll need to kill all enemies before a door randomly opens, but there’s a significant delay so you’ll often presume it’s one of the many doors in the game that are never used and move on.

This brings a lot of frustration, especially as the levels are very long and there are no checkpoints or saves during levels. If you want to visit the secret location (the Titanic), then you’ll also need to find a hidden piece of a time machine in each level.

Zero Hour is really good during combat, but in between combat is a lot of aimless walking around in circles.

Fun

Quote

Above all, Zero Hour has realised that shoot-’em-ups can’t simply be a procession of things to shoot in a series of identical futirustic dungeons. Post-GoldenEye, N64 owners demand realism, variation and fresh ideas, and Duke doesn’t disapoint. The finished game could have odne with a couple more time zones, a greater selection of enemies and a little less switch-flicking, but it’s refreshing to see a game with so much time and care put into it. As duke himself would no doubt say, “Go get some”.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine 28

Remake or remaster?

A remaster collection of the Duke 3rd person shooters – Time to Kill, Zero Hour and Land of the Babes – would be great.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Duke Nukem: Zero Hour.