Castlevania - All N64 Games

[Cube]

J.League Tactics Soccer
 

• JP release: 15th January 1999
• NA release: N/A
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: ASCII
• Publisher: ASCII
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

J.League Tactics Soccer is a Japanese-only football management game. So a ton of text, figures and sitting and watching. You pick which team you want to take over and can create your son to join the team as a player alongside you (ah, nepotism). Your terms dictate that you must finish the league in the top 12, and if there’s ever a time where there aren’t enough players for a match (due to injuries, cards, etc), then you also get fired.

Within each month, you plan events. You can add friendly matches, fan experiences, week-long campsite training, praying at a shrine for victory and getting vaccinations. Set matches will already be there. Events will happen every Wednesday and Saturday, starting off with a practice session. If you don’t schedule anything, some random thing will occur instead.

No matter what you do, though, the outcomes are random. These are mainly increase or decreases in player motivation, player strength and your reputation. I set up a fan appreciation day and chose a player to bring in something special to auction off. As nobody wanted to buy it, my reputation decreased.

When it comes to matches, you set up the tactics, formations, players and sit back and watch the match. You can change basic tactics on-the-fly (wing/centre play, fast or slow), but anything else requires pausing and going through the menus. The matches are played out in 3D, and the HUD looks a bit like Perfect Striker (ISS), so I think it's based on Konami's football engine, but I couldn't find anything confirming this.

I played a few matches and it was already very repetitive. I never felt like I had much control over anything, and it felt like the events you set had little impact as the results were random. That said, a lot of that could be the language barrier as there’s probably a ton of details that I’m missing. This football team hired a manager who doesn’t know anything about football tactics (other than pass to the best player, he can run past everyone and score) and doesn’t speak Japanese, so it’s no surprise that they did poorly.

Remake or remaster?

Football Manager fills this niche and is in English.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play J.League Tactics Soccer.

[Dcubed]

I’m surprised Konami didn’t attempt to sue.  That match HUD is basically identical to what ISS uses 

Still.  If you’re gonna steal, might as well steal from the best!

[Cube]

1 hour ago, Dcubed said:

I’m surprised Konami didn’t attempt to sue.  That match HUD is basically identical to what ISS uses 

Still.  If you’re gonna steal, might as well steal from the best!

It's possible that they licensed the game engine form Konami, I can't find any credits at all. The radar also works in exactly the same way.

[Dcubed]

1 hour ago, Cube said:

It's possible that they licensed the game engine form Konami, I can't find any credits at all. The radar also works in exactly the same way.

Credits list is here (scroll down and you’ll see it): https://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Credits_Repository

I’m out and about using my phone right now, so I’m not in a position to check myself, but have a look and see if there is any shared staff who worked on the ISS games; I’m pretty curious about this one now!

[Cube]

Doesn't look like there's any shared names, or even special thanks. 

[Ashley]

13 hours ago, Cube said:

I played a few matches and it was already very repetitive. I never felt like I had much control over anything, and it felt like the events you set had little impact as the results were random.

So football basically?

[Cube]

Super Smash Bros.
 

• JP release: 21st January 1999
• NA release: 26th April 1999
• PAL release: 19th November 1999
• Developer: HAL
• Publisher: Nintendo
• N64 Magazine Score: 90%

Considering it’s humble beginnings, I don’t think Nintendo ever expected Super Smash Bros. to be such an important part of its line-up of games on future consoles. The first game was fairly light on what it contained, but it completely nailed the gameplay from the get-go.

It would have been very easy for Nintendo to make a regular fighting game – the N64 certainly had many failed attempts at the genre – yet HAL went for something new instead, something more geared for 4 players. Players no longer had a health bar, but rather a percentage damage (that could go way above 100%). The higher the number, the more you fly when you get hit.

The object of the game is to knock your opponents off the side of the map (or so far into the sky they launch into space). The main mode pits you against each character one at a time, but mixes things up with some team battles, fighting a horde of weaker opponents and fighting giant characters.

Every character has their own set of moves. The controls are simple (no combos to remember), so your focus in entirely how each of the powers work and the intricacies of how they can be used in multiple situations and alongside other powers.

Each player also has some special stages, such as breaking targets and boarding platforms. You’ll need to use the character’s full move set to complete them, especially if you want a good time.

The campaign ends with a fight against master hand, who does have a health bar, but also a set of moves for you to learn how to avoid. Once you finished, it’s not over, as a new challenger will appear.

While the roster starts with 8 very popular characters from Nintendo’s franchises: Mario, DK, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox and Pikachu, there were four more slots to unlock. When you fulfilled the criteria to unlock, a screen would flash up with “A New Challenger Approaches”. This is sadly something the internet has ruined, as discovering these for yourself is no longer possible – instead, these reveals are left entirely up to trailers. Beat them and you would unlock them to use.

Super Smash Bros. is a wonderful game, but was just the beginning for the franchise, the other games have improved upon it in every way – although the game still has dedicated fans, including those who add new content to the original, with a ton of levels and characters added.

Quote

Smash Bros is as unique and essential as any Mario game – especially as its multiplayer ranks up there with GoldenEye’s, Mario Kart’s and Quake II’s. The fact that Smash Bros is still an office lunchtime favourite, almost a year after we first got our hands on it, is testament to its greatness. Do not miss it.

- Mark Green, N64 Magazine #36

Remake or remaster?

I don’t think this need a remaster due to later games, but it would be nice to have some of the bonus stages in newer games. It should definitely get re-released, though. Another option is that, if Nintendo feel they can’t top Ultimate, the next console’s Smash can be a port of Ultimate with various options (item sets, levels, moves, etc) from previous titles added as alternative ways to play as a sort of combined collection.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Super Smash Bros.

[Jonnas]

2 hours ago, Cube said:

There’s no official way to play Super Smash Bros.

This is a weird sentence to read, and realize that it is technically correct.

[Dcubed]

Appreciate the very subtle shoutout to Smash Remix at the end there, it's bonkers good! 

These days, I find myself enjoying the original Smash Bros more than its immediate sequel (Melee), mainly because it plays quite differently from the rest of the series with its crazy hitstun; where every hit is basically a potential zero-to-death combo 

I'm no competitive player by any means, but I appreciate how unique it plays and feels compared to the rest of the series.  Variety is the spice of life after all, and that's the Smash Bros' series' biggest strength.

But yeah, these days, if I'm gonna play the original Smash Bros, it's gonna be through Smash Remix.  Easily one of the greatest fan mod projects of all time, the sheer amount of extra (and high quality!) content that they've added to the original game is just an absolute marvel; and to see it all running smoothly on original hardware to boot? Wow! Incredible!

[Cube]

Castlevania
 

• NA release: 26th January 1999
• JP release: 11th March 1999
• PAL release: 14th May 1999
• Developer: Konami
• Publisher: Konami
• N64 Magazine Score: 82%

In 1997, the PlayStation got Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It got great reviews and is now considered to be an amazing game – it’s even the reason for the “vania” part of the phrase “Metroidvania”. However, it didn’t sell well. Unfortunately, this era of consoles looked down poorly on 2D games. This was even worse on N64 than on PlayStation, so Castlevania on the N64 had to be in 3D.

This one isn’t a “Metroidvania” game, but seems like its taking the style of the first few Castlevania games and turning that into 3D. I should note that I’ve never played a Castlevania game before.

In Castlevania on the N64, you get to pick between two characters: Reinhardt, a vampire hunter with a whip, or Carrie, who has magical powers. They sense that Dracula has returned and seek to destroy him.

The graphics are nice on the N64, and Castlevania has the right atmosphere for the style of game – creepy, but adventurous. The levels are long but mostly linear, with you occasionally going off the path to hit a switch or find a key.

Combat is quite simple, you have a melee attack and ranged attack, and can also use magical items as weapons. You can lock on, but can not move (other than a jump to the side) while doing so.

Movement is a bit more of an issue. The jump is tall and floaty, and really difficult to judge – and definitely not helped by the camera. To make matters worse, any missed jump us usually instant death, and you’ll need to load your previous save or start the level from scratch.

The saving is one of the game’s big frustrations: they are quite a distance apart, meaning you have to fight through many enemies before you can start a jump again. In one instance, you fight a couple of bosses and then walk down a corridor. The floor will give way and you’ll die. Your last chance to save was before the bosses. Luckily, save states solve this, but it was still frustrating with that.

Another issue are some doors and events that only happen at certain times of the day. You can use sun and moon cards to skip forwards, but sometimes the only choice is to wait around for the right time.

That said, I was mostly enjoying the game until Castle Keep. Here, you have to move an explosive substance to a crack elsewhere in the castle. If you jump or get hit, you die. Of course, they set up a massive, winding narrow bridge you need to cross, with lizards spitting fireballs at you. It’s the hardest part of the game, but not for good reasons.

Then the game put its middle finger at me. I finished the level when it faded to black and told me I had finished the game and to start again on a higher difficulty if I want to see the rest. As I know I’m going to play a slightly different version of the game later on, I instead downloaded a save file just before defeating Dracula (incidentally, if you don’t get there fast enough, you’ll get a bad ending).

Castlevania has some nice ideas, but a lot of frustrations. The gameplay is still enjoyable and I was expecting much worse from it’s reputation. Still, it’s an odd game because a port of Symphony of the Night would have been much, much better.

Quote

It’s just a crying shame that the obvious hard work that Konami have put into Castlevania is diluted by the game’s biggest fault; a wilfully obtuse camera that doesn’t always do what you want it to do. Perhaps it seems a little worse than it is because we’ve been spoiled by Super Mario 64, Zelda and, to a lesser extent, Banjo-Kazooie. Perhaps it’s because we want Castlevania to be so much better than it actually is.

- Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #27

Remake or remaster?

It does need to be included in compilations.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Castlevania on N64.