Banjo-Tooie - All N64 Games

[Cube]

Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits: Volume 1
 

• NA release: 14th November 2000
• PAL release: N/A
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Digital Eclipse
• Publisher: Midway
• N64 Magazine Score: 71%

The second retro compilation on Nintendo 64, this time for Midway’s classic arcade games, which generally aren’t as well remembered as the likes of Namco’s. The menu is much nicer than Namco Museum 64, and gives you a look at the arcade machines, but is still fairly bland. The only extra feature is a short and simple quiz about the games. There’s six in this compilation, with a lot of overlay with Williams Arcade’s Greatest Hits on the SNES.

Defender

Use the tiny map at the top to dart back and forth, to blow up aliens before they capture civilians. It feels a bit too small on N64, so it can be difficult to see things.

Robotron 2048

The N64 had its own really good Robotron game, now here’s the original twin-stick shooter. It plays quite well, even if the screen gets very busy.

Root Beer Tapper

I had no idea that this non-alcoholic version of Tapper existed. Patrons will enter the bar on the left, and you have to quickly fill glasses and slide them down. Simple, but probably the most playable game in this collection.

Joust

Use a bird and a stick to stab your foes, however, you have to be extremely precise – another example of a game designed for someone’s face to be right next to an arcade screen.

Spy Hunter

Shoot your way through cars in this Bond-inspired game. It does show how quickly arcade graphics evolved. I kept blowing up civilians without realising they were civilians.

Sinistar

I’d never heard of this one before. It’s like an easy to control Asteroids with enemies, and extremely hard to see due to how scaled down everything feels.

___

If you specifically wanted these games on N64, they’re fine, although they don’t translate as well to a TV screen (especially with the N64’s resolution) compared to the games in Namco’s collection.

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All six games have been perfectly converted by Digital Eclipse – the team behind last year’s diddy Game Boy versions – and the analogue stick is a superb replacement for those chunky black arcade joysticks. It’s just a shame that, aside from a laughably poor trivia quiz sub-game and a clunky 3D ‘virtual-reality arcade’ that’s plainly been coded in a spare lunchtime, the cart’s devoid of extras.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #50

Remake or remaster?

We definitely need a new Midway collection, if licensing allows (which, considering none are on Arcade Archives yet, seems unlikely). The last is 2012’s Midway Arcade Origins, which at least is backwards compatible on Xbox One/Series, but never got a PC version. I did have a fever dream where Tapper still appeared in some imaginary Wreck-It Ralph sequel about the internet.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits: Volume 1

[Cube]

WWF No Mercy
 

• NA release: 17th November 2000
• PAL release: 15th December 2000
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Asmik Ace, AKI
• Publisher: THQ
• N64 Magazine Score: 92%

The crown jewel of wrestling games, built upon a series of games across the N64’s lifetime. The gameplay style was started in WCW vs. nWo: World Tour, while WWF WrestleMania 2000 brought the atmosphere that came with the WWF licence. The gameplay was made to be much smoother in Virtual Pro Wrestling 2, and now all that is combined in WWF No Mercy.

One thing that is testament to how great the game was considered to be, was a nasty bug the game had – it would randomly delete everything stored on the cartridge. Despite this, the game was still loved and is fondly remembered. A later revision fixed the issue, but also removed blood from the game. The core wrestling was great, Create-A-Wrestler improved even more, and there was a ton of modes. One mode not many people know about is a secret championship.

If you complete the Game Boy Color version of WWF No Mercy and import the character into the N64 game, The Rock will introduce you as a new superstar. HHH is extremely worried about this, and his wife comes up with a plan to make a fool of you by forcing you to fight other superstars before you can face him. There’s a lot of insults and swearing, and it’s all text based (no voices), but it’s a fun mode. One slight catch: The GBC version of No Mercy never came out. You need to use codes to access this extra campaign.

WWF No Mercy is a great wrestling game with a ton of modes and features, and is the culmination of a lot of work throughout the entire lifespan of the N64.

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With the Hardcore rules selected, you can throw your opponent out of the ring area and back up towards the entrance. From there you can propel them backstage, where there are several more rooms Each arena has slightly different areas to explore, all with weapons scarred round about – dustbins, microphones, chairs, even and odd bunch of roses. When you drop (or throw) a weapon, it doesn’t just vanish form existence – you can pick it up again or go find a new one. We’ve managed to get four weapons plus two sets of corner stairs into the ring at the same time.

Alan Maddrell, N64 Magazine #49

Remake or remaster?

The developers of current wrestling games need to look at No Mercy and figure out what made it special.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get WWF No Mercy.

[Dcubed]

You’ll probably never get another wrestling game like No Mercy ever again.

I suspect that the main reason why it turned out so well is because Aki had the opportunity to rapidly iterate and refine their N64 wrestling engine with multiple releases across the console’s lifetime (something that they were able to repeat with the Style Boutique series when they became Syn Sophia).  You could make substantial retail releases very quickly with small dev teams in a reasonable manner with a reasonable budget back then.  Now though? You’d be lucky to get one quality game out within an entire console generation.

Edited 22 hours ago by Dcubed

[Helmsly]

WWF No Mercy really is one of the most fun Wrestling games of all time, as well one of the N64's best titles. Like Cube mentioned, it was like an accumulation of everything AKI had done with their previous Wrestling games, all rolled into one.

Much like Wrestlemania 2000, I spent a lot of time playing this game because of how much fun it was. The gameplay was as solid as ever but also, there were so many options and match types you could play, as well as a story mode and of course you could create your own wrestlers.

The customisation of the game matches was great too. For example, you could make it so a Royal Rumble would only accept eliminations if you knocked a wrestler out or first blood, which meant you could leave the ring and fight backstage. You could essentially turn one match type into something else completely different. Being able to change matches this way meant of all the different match types on offer, there were multiple ways to play them.

And also, as always with all the AKI Wraslin games, you could tell they had fun making it. It just came through so well, from the fun stuff you could do and unlock, the funny stuff said in story mode to the voice samples in the background music. To this day I still have the menu music occasionally pop into my head:

They made the game have somewhat of its own personality rather then just churn out a licensed WWE game and be done with it and so aside from being a great game is a memorable one too. AKI knew what they were doing an did it so well.

 

Everything about this game was pretty much as perfect as it could have been on N64 hardware, I believe the only negatives compared to the older games was that the framerate was lower then the other and the entrances were all the same unlike the re-created ones in Wrestlemania 2000. That and a few wrestlers not making the roster.

It's a game I'd love to see come to NSO but I have to assume the changes are slim (we got Goldeneye so there's always a chance).

 

22 hours ago, Cube said:

One thing that is testament to how great the game was considered to be, was a nasty bug the game had – it would randomly delete everything stored on the cartridge. Despite this, the game was still loved and is fondly remembered. A later revision fixed the issue, but also removed blood from the game. The core wrestling was great, Create-A-Wrestler improved even more, and there was a ton of modes. One mode not many people know about is a secret championship.

Yes this was incredibly annoying. The version of No Mercy that I borrowed had the save glitch and then when we got a newer version we found out they removed the blood, which wasn't a major deal but the funny thing was you could still play a First Blood match. As I remember it, Wrestlers still "bled" in that match but you just couldn't see it.

Edited 2 hours ago by Helmsly

[Cube]

Banjo-Tooie

• NA release: 20th November 2000
• JP release: 27th November 2000
• PAL release: 12th April 2001
• Developer: Rare
• Publisher: Nintendo
• N64 Magazine Score: 81%

With Banjo-Tooie, Rare really took on the idea that “bigger is better”. The game, however, really shows that it isn’t the case. That said, Banjo-Tooie is still a brilliant game, and one that you should complete at least once, but the sheer size and some of the issues make revisiting it nowhere near as fun as the original.

The problem I have with Banjo-Tooie is that every level needs everything. I love the transformations, and the designs of them across every single level in Banjo-Tooie are great, but you need to find a glowbo in each level, then transform, and then sometimes – like the Money Van in Witchyworld – they’re just a glorified key. You can also play as Mumbo this time around, something that is great at first, but having to do it in every single level gets a bit tedious – especially as you have to backtrack back and forth to Mumbo’s skull across levels that really don’t need to be as sparse as they are.

Banjo-Tooie still gets a lot right. At the start of the game, you have all the abilities from the first game, there’s no accident or loose story reason to make the duo forget previous things, you just start with everything and learn an immense amount of new moves, which manage to fit on an N64 controller. There are new kinds of eggs to fire, but the biggest involves Banjo and Kazooie splitting up and gaining their own moves, which is used for some great puzzles, even if a lot of walking back and forth is involved in them.

Another is the ability to use Kazooie as a gun in GoldenEye style areas of the game. There are a ton of different minigames in Banjo-Tooie, which is fun at first, but also something that drags the game down on later playthroughs. These are all available in the game’s multiplayer mode (including the first person shooter deathmatch, with multiple options and modes). It’s probably the most overlooked multiplayer game on the system.

The worlds in Banjo-Tooie look great and have a lot of charm, but also come across as a bit oversized and empty. The notes have been moved into nests of 5 and 20, effectively reducing the amount of them significantly (17 nests of notes instead of 100 individual ones), while spread across a larger world. There are also a lot more jiggies that you can’t connect first time round, due to another feature of Tooie that is both a chore, but also brilliant: the worlds are all interconnected, you can find shortcuts between each, and performing actions in one world can connect another. I do feel like smaller worlds would work so much better with this, as you spend a bit too much time retreading the same paths – even the warp points don’t alleviate the backtracking enough.

Still, Banjo-Tooie is a wonderful game. While replaying it has soured me on it, the first experience is still magical, and your first time discovering all the connections is wonderful, not to mention learning all the new powers, and playing around with Banjo and Kazooie separately. Discovering everything the game has to offer is a sublime experience that, in a way, makes me glad that Rare did go a bit over the top of it.

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But then, when Rare aren’t cynically extending Banjo-Tooie’s lifespan by withholding moves or making you wonder back and forth between Humba’s hut to transform, they’re charming you with some top-notch puzzles. Tensely tip-toeing up to a caveman’s treasure; using spluttering generators in a pitch-black room to illuminate a frighteningly narrow path; firing ice eggs to freeze spinning blades deep underwater. When you reach the mile-high world of Cloud Cuckooland, and realise that pushing objects off ledges will have effects on the earlier levels that lie far below, you can’t help but admire Rare’s sheer creativity.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #54

Remake or remaster?

The Xbox port is good, but, like with Banjo-Kazooie, we really need a new, updated port with some extra features.

Official ways to get the game.

Banjo-Tooie is available on Xbox 360, One and Series either on its own or part of Rare Replay. It’s also available to rent on Nintendo Switch Online.

[BowserBasher]

22 hours ago, Cube said:

One thing that is testament to how great the game was considered to be, was a nasty bug the game had – it would randomly delete everything stored on the cartridge. Despite this, the game was still loved and is fondly remembered. A later revision fixed the issue, but also removed blood from the game.

Was this random? I remember it being that it would delete everything when you turned off the power. I remember playing it a lot and it only and always did it to me when the power was turned off. 
I do remember you could take your copy back to get it changed for the new glitch less copy from where you bought it. But yeah all subsequent releases had no blood. I kinda wish I’d kept the bug and blood copy. Wonder if it’s worth anything. 
 

Anyway, yes best wrestling game ever. Isn’t there still a big modding community for it too? I remember back in the day people used to add so many new moves and characters to it all the time. 

[Glen-i]

You see, most people complain about the size of Banjo-Tooie. Which I find hilarious, considering how much a lot of you love your open-world games. If BotW was as "empty" as Banjo-Tooie, I'd probably like it a lot more!

And maybe they'd have a point, but whenever I play it, I use the greatest cheat code to ever exist, "superbanjo", and now you get around quicker then you ever could in the first game.

You know, if you're playing the N64 version, you can't do that in the XBox version, and that's terrible.

Edited 1 hour ago by Glen-i

[Cube]

8 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

And maybe they'd have a point, but whenever I play it, I use the greatest cheat code to ever exist, "superbanjo", and now you get around quicker then you ever could in the first game.

I did see your footage of it and I may give it a go next time I play it. 

[Dcubed]

I get it when people call Banjo Tooie overwhelming.  Believe me I do.

It's nowhere near as accessible as its predecessor, and it requires a lot more committment on the part of the player due to the sheer complexity of its level design (and how interconnected its worlds are).  The amount of effort asked of the player to collect one Jiggy in its later stages is almost as much as completing an entire world in BK in some cases.

But BT also gives back what it asks of the player.  Its a game that was designed specifically for people who already played through BK 100% and know it inside out.  I mean, how many sequels give you literally the entire moveset from the first game right off the bat and then add even more moves on top of that!?

BT's interconnected world design is so good that even Metroid Fusion took some inspiration from it; requiring you to travel from Sector to Sector in order to complete certain shinespark tasks (not unlike how BT requires you to travel between Worlds in order to complete certain Jiggies).

I love BT, and I love its complexity.  I do think it's fair to say that even compared to the original BK, it's more of an Action Adventure game (ALA Zelda) than a pure 3D platformer though.