Perfect Dark - All N64 Games

[Cube]

Japan Pro Golf Tour 64
 

• JP release: 2nd May 2000
• PAL release: N/A
• NA release: N/A
• Developer: Media Factory
• Publisher: Media Factory
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

The first – and last – third party game on the 64DD, made by Media Factory. It was available for sale for only two weeks from Nintendo of Japan’s website, with estimated sales between 3,000 and 10,000 copies. The gameplay feels like a more refined version of Seta’s early N64 game The Glory of St Andrews: you hold the stick back to the power level you want while a dot on the golf ball pulsates, then you have to time your swing down for when the dot is at its smallest for the most accuracy. Some sources say that Seta published this, yet the logo on the box and in-game is Media Factory. It’s still possible Seta developed it, or it was based on their engine, but their logo appears nowhere in the game.

One annoying thing is that your golfer then gently puts the club down before swinging. It makes the actual swing feel very detached from your actions. It’s a much harder system than the likes of Mario Golf, but isn’t too bad once you get used to it, but it never stops being a faff to use, making the entire game feel dull. Japan Pro Golf Tour 64 seemingly takes a quantity over quality approach, with a whopping 10 golf courses available at the start of the game, and a ton of tournaments and different modes to play through, including a career mode and “Network Competition”.

The online features of Japan Pro Golf Tour 64 are really poorly documented, with some places stating that it had online play, online leaderboards, and the like. However, the Network Competition mode could have worked in any regular N64 game. When you open it, you’re prompted with a password entry. Entering a valid password will then load up a specific course and settings. When you’re finished, you’ll be given a password which you would then enter into an external website to submit your score – the game itself never connects online. There are tools for generating and reading these passwords, so the function can be tested out.

It did, however, have one major Randnet feature: DLC. Using the Randnet disc, you could download an additional five 18 hole courses, then patch them into the game by swapping to the Japan Pro Golf Tour disk. While the DLC itself is lost, fans have have created a special N64 cartridge ROM for patching it into the game (which should even work with the real physical game on 64DD), using courses from a PS1 Seta golf game as an example, so all features of this game are fully usable.

That said, every single one of the 15 courses looks identical. There’s no background details (so no visible clubhouse or landmarks), everywhere has the same trees, and you’re always looking at the same hills in the background no matter where you are. It’s just another example of the game’s quantity over quality.

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Well, it’s a golf game, but a very fine looking one. Although it’ll be hard-pressed to beat Mario Golf, Seta Golf looks set to knock the likes of CyberTiger into a cocked hat.

N64 Magazine #40

Remake or remaster?

The interesting features of this game are only interesting specifically for consoles of the time (although the Dreamcast was already doing stuff like this). The preservation efforts of fans is good enough.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get Japan Pro Golf Tour 64

[Dcubed]

Ooh! There was an N64 game with DLC? I had no idea!

[Ashley]

2 hours ago, Cube said:

The online features of Japan Pro Golf Tour 64 are really poorly documented, with some places stating that it had online play, online leaderboards, and the like. However, the Network Competition mode could have worked in any regular N64 game. When you open it, you’re prompted with a password entry. Entering a valid password will then load up a specific course and settings. When you’re finished, you’ll be given a password which you would then enter into an external website to submit your score – the game itself never connects online.

I wonder if this is a change in semantics over time. I could see in 2000 playing a game and entering the score (manually) online could be classed as "online play"/"online leaderboards" in that "it can't possibly get any more technologically advanced than this!"

There might be other games from the time that prove me wrong, but I could see the meaning of those phrases adapting with technology. Kind of like how "high speed" internet used to mean something we'd now consider slow and thinking the N64 graphics would never be beaten. 

[Glen-i]

10 hours ago, Ashley said:

the N64 graphics would never be beaten. 

Excuse me!? Speak for yourself!

Seriously though, you make an interesting point here. 10 year old me would've probably be floored by that kind of worldwide interaction.
Then again, if I told 10 year old me that Banjo would get into Smash in 2019, he'd probably ask why the hell it would take so long.

10 year old me doesn't have the benefit of future sight, and that makes him an idiot.

[Cube]

Doshin the Giant: Tinkling Toddler Liberation Front
 

• JP release: 17th May 2000
• PAL release: N/A
• NA release: N/A
• Developer: Param
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Original Name: Kyojin no Doshin Kaihō Sensen Chibikko Chikko Daishūgō
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

This expansion to Doshin the Giant is truly bizarre. Essentially, it’s just a list of challenges for the first Doshin game, but the way it’s presented, and the disk swapping itself, is really quite strange. None of the stuff in this expansion was included in the GameCube version, and as this works in a unique way for an N64 game, I’ll talk about the process of playing the game.

The first thing you have to do when you launch the expansion is confirm that you have the first game. So straight away you’re told to eject the expansion disk (I’ll call it Disk 2) and insert the original Doshin the Giant disk (Disk 1). Then you have to swap back over to Disk 2 to finally boot to the menu.

Here you pick the “design” of your character – all of them are black silhouettes of kids with a few coloured accessories. You get told to go to bed (you can say no but nothing happens until you say yes), where you start dreaming that you get sucked out of the window and into the Doshin Expo of 1996, with Doshin chained up in the centre of it.

This is a circular area that you can walk around. There’s a heart metre that fills up from water dripping from the top of the screen. If the bar fills up, waves will crash onto the screen and you’ll wake up, watch the falling sleep animation again, and go back to the Expo. The only other button in the game – the Z button – will let you keep this meter down. Press it, and hearts will fly out of your character’s crotch in an arc. Yup, this isn’t water. It’s piss, and pissing on people and objects is how you interact with them.

The billboards are the main thing you need to focus on to start with. These display colours of tribes, as well as a monument type. Urinate on the sign and you’ll be prompted to insert Disk 1, then back to Disk 2. If you don’t have the required monument, then nothing will happen (you’d need to shut down Disk 2 and play Disk 1 on its own to complete it). If you do have the required monument (thankfully there was one for the only monument I was able to build), then you get to progress.

An attraction will be built in the park, of which there are 17 to complete. But that’s only the first part. After this is built, you’ll then be presented with a new challenge. This will be something like “find something” or “hop up and down a lot” – this a challenge for the original game. You’ll be prompted to insert Disk 1 and press reset, where you’ll boot up into the first game.

The game plays out just like normal (incidentally, I discovered that the system clock is used, and the villages will evolve when you’re not playing, like in Animal Crossing) and I don’t think anything is different at all, and there’s nothing to remind you of the current challenge. I played through a day and wasn’t sure what to do (I thought I failed the challenge anyway), so I put disk 2 in and hit reset.

Thankfully, that was the right thing to do. Not only that, but I had apparently completed the challenge (despite nothing telling me, unless it was the spoken Japanese voice). With this completed, you then get your reward.

Which is a short animation from a collection of Doshin the Giant shorts called “More than Giant”, which tell the story of Doshin and how he ended up imprisoned in the Expo. These were also released on VHS and have since been uploaded to YouTube, which also includes an N64/Doshin rap. This is the biggest part of the game, although there are a few more things.

Other kids will start appearing an the Expo. The ones that match your character can be recruited by doing the only action you can do. You will also encounter gangs of other kids, and need to defeat them by… yes, peeing on them. The ultimate goal of the game is to urinate on Doshin enough so he grows big enough to escape, and I think getting a larger crew helps with that.

And that’s Tinkling Toddler Liberation Front, a rather unusual game. When you free Doshin, the final cutscene is your mum cleaning your bedsheets, so this seems to be some kind of explanation regarding bed wetting – that bed wetters are on a noble crusade in their dreams, or something like that. It’s certainly an interesting way to add some very simple challenges to a game.

Poor

Remake or remaster?

I can’t see Nintendo ever re-releasing or referencing this in any way, and it was left out of the GameCube version. Challenges that unlock bonuses are a neat addition to god games, though.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get Doshin the Giant: Tinkling Toddler Liberation Front

[Ashley]

 

[Cube]

Perfect Dark
 

• NA release: 22nd May 2000
• PAL release: 30th June 2000
• JP release: 21st October 2000
• Developer: Rare
• Publisher: Rare
• N64 Magazine Score: 96%

Following up from GoldenEye was a big task, but Rare decided that the best course of action was to come up with a brand new game using the same formula, instead of sticking to the Bond license. And they nailed it. Perfect Dark decided to add some sci-fi stuff to the mix, setting the game in the future year of 2023, allowing for it to have some fantastic weapons and some wonderful settings.

For this playthrough, I decided to not play my usual Xbox 360 version of the game, but instead the unofficial PC port that is closer to the original.

The singleplayer campaign ramps up in presentation all around, with much more elaborate levels, voice acting, and some nice lighting and shadows. They have the feel of being real buildings that could exist, rather than something that only exists for the objectives (well, except for the submarine, that one is a bit odd in layout), which I think is part of why Perfect Dark ages so gracefully, and is still great to play now.

The bigger focus on story and voice acting also makes the levels feel much more connected to each other, rather than just a set of individual levels. There’s even a couple of instances where you can impact the next level – such as providing an alternative exit or giving you a hoverbike. It helps the game feel like an epic experience.

The weapons are also a complete joy to use. There’s a lot of them, and each one includes a secondary fire mode. Some simple, like changing the rate of fire, some more unique, like a cloak that runs on ammo, a sentry gun, lock on, and scanners. On one of the Area 51 levels, I always enjoy blowing up a “necessary” explosive box that you’re supposed to take with you to blow up a wall. This will cause a “mission failed”, but the enemies in the level have a gun that self destructs, so you can use this in the correct location and the “failed” status will move back to “incomplete” before registering as complete. It’s very satisfying. Each gun also has a unique reload animation (apart form the renamed GoldenEye weapons, which reload in their original way) and they’re oddly pleasant, especially some of the alien weapons.

Once again, objectives get added when you play in different difficulties (personally, I wish you could mix and match difficulties and objective amounts), and one level even starts you off in a different place – on easy, you protect a hostage with a sniper rifle, but on the hardest difficulty, you are the unarmed hostage with no backup. Objectives are generally fun, although some can be difficult to figure out (such as blowing up three random computer terminals near a jail cell to shut down a starship’s shields).

But the singleplayer features don’t stop there. While on the main menu, you can back out at any time and walk around the institute, where you’ll be able to take on a few challenges, such as ones that train you on how all the gadgets work, and target practice, which has three levels of tailored challenges for all the main weapons in the game (everything except the bonus “classic” GoldenEye guns). After you complete a campaign level, you can also play it with a friend in co-op, or play a fun bonus mode where they control random guards in the level.

The multiplayer mode, which was a last minute addition for GoldenEye, has been given a massive overhaul for Perfect Dark, with a ton of new modes and features, along with a level of customisability which would still be amazing now. You can customise weapon setups, turn on one-hit kills for any game mode, and pick different bodies and heads for your character. There’s also the bots.

The bots allow for games of up to 8, so you can have four people take on a team of bots, or each have one to help you. There are six levels of difficulties, from pitifully easy to cheating, plus bonus ones with different personalities. PeaceSims will try to disarm everyone and hoard weapons, PreySims specifically target weak players, VengeSims will target the last person that killed them (even if it was friendly fire), and CowardSim will run away if you have the advantage.

One place where this shines is in the challenge mode – a set of 30 missions in the multiplayer mode that you can take on on your own or with friends, which makes the multiplayer side of things a significant singleplayer game on top of the main campaign and extra modes. And then there are a ton of cheats to unlock and more. Perfect Dark is a phenomenal game that builds on from its predecessor and improves upon it in every way. And I haven’t even mentioned the X-ray gun that shoots through walls.

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The multiplayer mode is more than good enough to have been released as a stand-alone game, particularly as it makes Turok: Rage Wars look amateurish. The simulants are incredibly smart – much more deadly than any human players (well, we can’t beat the all yet). Just when you think you’ve got the measure of them in the challenges, you unlock an even more lethal sim that is guaranteed to leave you weeping in frustration. If you can’t face taking another beating from the computer, Perfect Dark is peerless as a four-player game. The arenas are excellent, and there are lots of them to choose form – once you’ve unlocked them playing the challenges.

Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #42

Remake or remaster?

The 360 port (included in Rare Replay) is great, but could do with being updated and released on more platforms. An option to have the original graphics would also be nice.

Official ways to get the game.

The Perfect Dark remaster can be purchased from the Xbox Store, either on its own or as part of Rare Replay. The original also available to rent via NSO.

[Dcubed]

I've posted enough about PD over the past year (as you all know, I recently beat the full single player mode with 100% completion from its recent NSO re-release), so there isn't much more for me to add.

This is the best first person shooter ever made.  End of.

It has yet to be topped, and it almost certainly never will be topped.

I suppose if there is anything else for me to add, it's that it was perhaps a mistake for Nintendo to release it at the tail-end of the N64's life... It probably should've been held back and ported to the Gamecube as a launch title.  Sales wise, the game suffered heavily from coming out during the N64's final Xmas period, and also from requiring the Expansion Pak (I mean, there's no way it could've ever been done on the stock hardware, its use of the Expansion Pak was absolutely justified, but it surely did impact on its potential sales).  Meanwhile, the game really did push the ol' N64 hardware a bit too far, frequently dropping down to single digit frames per second and leaving the poor thing screaming and gasping for air.

Just imagine what a difference it could've made if it ended up being a Gamecube launch title instead?  The Gamecube would probably have been a far more successful console, having a direct answer to Halo and a one ton gorilla of a title right there on day 1.  Meanwhile, the game would've looked and ran far better on Nintendo's dolphin powered cube, and almost certainly would've sold much better over the course of the console's life.

The road not travelled is a facinating one.

Edited 2 hours ago by Dcubed