Tonic Trouble - All N64 Games

[Cube]

Gauntlet Legends
 

• 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%

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[EEVILMURRAY]

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 

[Cube]

Madden NFL 2000
 

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

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.

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.

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.

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

[Cube]

Shadow Man

• NA release: 31st August 1999
• PAL release: 3rd September 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Acclaim
• Publisher: Acclaim
• N64 Magazine Score: 93%

This was a game I was looking forward to. I read about it so much in N64 Magazine – who loved the game – but it was too “mature” when I was a kid. Shadow Man also got a wonderful remaster treatment from Nightdive, so I decided to give that version a go. Despite enhanced textures and controls, it still has the feel of an N64 game, so I stuck with that version.

Shadow Man is based on the Shadowman series of comics that Activision purchased (the game title adds a space for some reason), and revolves around a plot where five evil beings (which are merged with serial killers, one of which has odd similarities to Harold Shipman) are bringing about the apocalypse. The story and world help create a great atmosphere, complete with voice acting that was pretty good, especially for the time.

Shadow Man got compared to Zelda a lot and, while I can see why, a better comparison is a Nintendo franchise that skipped the N64: Metroid. Shadow Man is much more platform orientated than Zelda, with a big focus on navigation and exploration. There are weapons and movement abilities that allow you to access new areas, as well as getting to more Dark Souls – the main collectable of the game – in older areas.

Jumping does feel a little but clunky, a little bit like the original Tomb Raider games. One small detail I like is that you have to put at least one of your weapons (you can hold one in each hand) away to be able to grab on ledges.

With exploration being key, you would expect a good map to help you find your way around, but Shadow Man lacked that – other than a loose map of the overworld in the manual (added to one of the books you collect in the remaster). At first, I absolutely hated it, but as I started learning the levels, the more I actually enjoyed not having it. The world is incredibly well made, with rooms being memorable rather than just square rooms – which means when you unlock a shortcut to an earlier section, you realise quickly that it’s somewhere you’ve been before.

This level design is part of what makes Shadow Man amazing to play. I wanted to explore every location of the world, to the point where, if it felt I was progressing in a level, I’d turn back to make sure I’d explored everywhere else first. Getting my bearings in each new area was satisfying as well. On top of this, there were many obstacles that you knew you would be able to bypass later, so when I got a new ability, I had a mental note of where I could return to to explore further.

Combat is probably the weakest point of Shadow Man, with there not being much depth to it, but it is still enjoyable enough that it doesn’t hamper the rest of the game. There were a few points when hunting for the remaining Dark Souls where I ran past enemies in rooms I knew had no more secrets, and there are a bunch of interesting weapons to mix things up. The ability to mix and max weapons certainly helps, too.

Shadow Man is a phenomenal game and deserves a lot more recognition than it gets. For being an early 3D Metroidvania game, it got so much right. It’s a wonderfully crafted game that has a ton of atmosphere. I absolutely loved this game and think it’s one of the best games of the era.

Fave

Quote

The first time you visit, say, the Asylum Gateway, you’ll see perhaps half of it. Everything has been designed to be revisited: once you’ve got the Gads – themselves housed in sprawling temples – whole new areas open themselves up to you. Swimming beneath a lake of lava may reveal a tunnel; an unreachable door lurks tantalisingly beyond a walkway of red-hot coals; and fiery blocks prevent passage to places unknown.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #32

Remake or remaster?

The Nightdive remaster is one of the best remasters ever done. The controls have been altered to make it nicer to play, the graphics are touched up but more recognisable, the new lighting makes the level design pop even more and it’s a wonder to play. There are also a few more areas based on the original plans for the game, which fit so well that you’d have no idea which parts they were from just playing the game.

Official ways to get the game.

Shadow Man Remastered is available on GoG, Steam, Xbox One/Series, PS4/5 and Switch.

[Cube]

Tonic Trouble
 

• NA release: 31st August 1999
• PAL release: 24th October 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Ubi Pictures
• Publisher: UbiSoft
• N64 Magazine Score: 55%

The most surprising thing about this game is that it’s not just a terrible Rayman knock off – it’s one developed by UbiSoft themselves. The completely lifeless and dull Ed was even made by the designer of Rayman. Tonic Trouble seems like it was a stepping ground for Rayman 2, a way to test out 3D platforming and game engines. However, due to delays, Tonic Trouble ended up coming out less than two months before Rayman 2.

The level design in Tonic Trouble is completely unappealing. For the most part, it consists of random small rooms with “portals” connecting them. It feels like lots of miniscule individual levels instead of a connected world – everything is completely disconnected, especially as rooms don’t stick to the same style within each level. Because of this, it never feels like you’re exploring or discovering anything new, it’s just enter a new room and do the next tedious challenge. Sometimes, you don’t even appear somewhere with the return portal behind you, it’s a bit of a mess.

There are a couple of exceptions: a few long corridor areas. These are generally sections with lots of incredibly slow moving floating platforms, or one level focusing on the glide ability, but even there you need to load new rooms, as the game can’t cope with all of it in one go.

The biggest issue with Tonic Trouble is the camera. There are three options and none of them work. In many places, the camera is locked and attempting to move it results in a loud, annoying sound effect. The locked placements are never logical, either, and make it impossible to see gaps between platforms. It makes platforming an absolute nightmare – which is a major issue in a platformer.

One really odd example of camera placement was going though a portal and being put in a short corridor with a portal in front of you. The camera is locked, so you obviously go forwards. Turns out, this portal takes you somewhere a few rooms earlier. Even worse is that you have to re-do a boss fight to get back. What you’re actually supposed to do is go backwards, which leads to a larger part of the room. It’s quite baffling.

On top of all this, Ed just doesn’t control very well, and his powers are quite uninteresting. You start off with just a jump and being able to eat popcorn to turn into “super Ed”, who is much stronger and can attack. This only lasts for a short time, though, and is usually only used to get through a door. You don’t get any more transformations until very late in the game (and they all just have a limited use). This really should have been more of the game, giving it more of its own identity.

You get a stick for a basic attack and being able to activate switches, a blowgun for shooting (which is unwieldy, but luckily the game gives you an obscene amount of ammo), and a fish bowl to swim underwater. The most significant move is probably the glide, which controls better than Ed on foot, but still isn’t great – and like with other abilities, it gets used heavily for one level, then is barely used.

Tonic Trouble is a very tedious platformer that has no idea what it wants to be. It seems to be a melting pot of ideas that formed its way into a game, with all the refinements going to a different project instead. It seems clear that this was given much less attention, once UbiSoft decided that a 3D Rayman was the right thing to do.

Poor

Quote

It’s platforming at its most uninspiring, and isn’t made any better by the tedious level quests. Ed’s life revolves around scampering along pre-defined routes, pressing the odd switch and – very occasionally – thwacking an animated bad guy. The ugly purple chap’s ever-increasing range of abilities is never exploited – there’s one stage that takes advantage of his flying abilities, but otherwise abilities such as pogoing, swimming and pea-shooting are entirely wasted.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #33

Remake or remaster?

Perhaps if there’s a classic Rayman collection, this can be a included as a bonus, with a better camera.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Tonic Trouble.