Get N or Get Out! The N64 thread

[6t8k]

Grewing up with the N64 I'll always have fond memories of enjoying some of the system's best racers, FPSs and even Mario Party with friends. It was THE multiplayer system.

I don't remember noticing the choppy framerates and blurry graphics consciously. At that time, that was just how it was.

These days however, I'd agree with you on that. It just hasn't aged well, which is a bummer, as there's a decent number of worthwhile & unique games that weren't revamped on another system.

Take Blast Corps for example, which is just a magnificent game. Nice'n' arcadey pickup & play experience (while hard to master), super unique gameplay concept that hasn't really been picked up and taken to heart anywhere else to my knowledge, and last but not least, a hilariously good soundtrack.

Yet of the systems I have its the one I play the least, for aforementioned reasons. If you've played the premier singleplayer experiences there's not THAT much replay value imo, and for shmups I myself resort to different systems.

EDIT: just saw Blast Corps is on the "Rare Replay" collection. Probably the best way to play it these days.

[BIL]

^ Rad avatar! Love that rascally mutt and the chibi-apocalyptic run/gun surrounding him.

And I know BIL's admitted to liking the 3d Castlevanias.

Top ten anime betrayals.

OMG :O FIGHT ME IRL YOU FUCKIN LOUSY PRICKS (・｀W´・)

I am a proud owner AND enjoyer of both Dracula 64s, all one and a half of them! The first has a pitifully barren, dull opening stage and at least one more clunker (Reinhardt's shitty mine of blah grey) - but otherwise, I always dug the translation of Treachery Platforming to SM64-esque 3D, with a (smart) concession via ledge pullups. The more towering locales really capture the primal fear of flesh and blood dashed on cold stone, and/or a bat biting you on the dick.

Some of the series' most smoothly brooding BGM outside of CV4 too. (anyone else love the callback in Dracula's Tears? cool tune itself, that, goodie from the series' Opus 13 "sup motherfuckers?" school) Combat is nothing special, but then precious fuck all 3D was until DMC1 legitimised polygonal hack/slash, and the snappy collisions don't offend.

They're most definitely not system sellers the way Rondo and SOTN are, but IDG1GF, that is the job of Wild Panzer: Sin, Guns & Punishment Dragoon!

That shitbird IGA should've taken some level design notes while he was busily slagging off KCET in the runup to Lament of Innocence and its comically flat Wolf3D maps. (which STILL managed some quality secret hunting! what a shame he was clamped, lamprey-like, onto Hideki Kamiya's rump the whole time! an old internet friend of mine who used to work at Konami Hawaii told me management brought a retail build of LOI to the office. everyone was saying how rad the post-DMC combat was, and how awesome it'd be once the real maps were in place! they got a severe talking to afterward! He was a reliable chap but regardless it's a story I GOTTA BELIEVE )

Idk man. N64 Castlevania has the big boners

YEAH EXACTLY

RE: AKI's wrestling games - they are genuinely underrated as party/hardcore brawlers. A snap to pick up, but if you take on a veteran unprepared, the only snap is gonna be your fuckin elbow joint VIRTUAL PRO WRESTLING 2: OUDO KEISHOU (CTRL+F "Human") is the pinnacle and the one you want. Grab a translation FAQ, use the wrassler create to whip up anyone imaginable, then let the fuck rip. If you dig punishing Technos-style AC brawling, this is much an import must-have as S&P.

Agreeing with the general sentiments re: racing games, I've several favourites here. It's most definitely no FC or SFC, actually it's no GCN or GBA either, but I wouldn't be without my little stash. Bonus cool collector points for JP boxes, I really dig the hearty box/manual dimensions and bold, un-bordered (what the fuck US/EU) portrait covers. Even with a boxart library nowhere near past Nintendo systems, they're pretty satisfying to heft about.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I might have to revisit Legacy of Darkness.

[CIT]

It's most definitely no FC or SFC, actually it's no GCN or GBA either

The real question here is: is the N64 better or worse than the Wii U.

[BIL]

A four-way deathmatch of the titans is brewing!

N64
vs
WII U
vs
VIRTUAL BOY
vs
ULTRA HAND

My money's on the hand. Choke a motherfucker with that thing. Also, the eternally poignant Yokoi aura! It'll come down to the hand and the VB, surely.

[cave hermit]

So I just played F zero X and holy shit does it blow San Francisco Rush 2049 out of the water, blistering 60 FPS, tight controls, vicious AI and rocking music, I don’t know what kind of black magic Nintendo EAD worked to get it running so smooth, but it makes me wish more devs for the system were as proficient with the system

[6t8k]

^ Rad avatar! Love that rascally mutt and the chibi-apocalyptic run/gun surrounding him.

Yeah it has this awesome surreal atmosphere to it

N64
vs
WII U
vs
VIRTUAL BOY
vs
ULTRA HAND

I'm missing the VECTREX

[kitten]

I don’t know what kind of black magic Nintendo EAD worked to get it running so smooth,

it might have to do with how there's like 5 polygons per vehicle or hardly any draw distance or the awful music compression or the poor quality & variety of textures or etc. etc.

idk, what they sacrificed to make f-zero x smooth feels really obvious. i am always completely agog at how ugly that game is when discounting the smoothness.

[Steamflogger Boss]

F-Zero GX or nothing imo.

[cave hermit]

Yeah GX is a masterpiece, only reason I would have to dig out the old GameCube, although it runs quite nice with Vulkan in Dolphin. I would be happy if Nintendo at least did a remaster of GX for switch, I don’t even need a sequel.

Also I think there’s something very wrong with me, I have all my NES stuff packed in the car so I can head to Classic Game Junkie on the way back from grad school tomorrow and sell it to fund a RGB mod for my N64. Might be the sunk cost fallacy at work.

To be fair NES emulation is trivial though, and I haven’t used my NES in years anyway

Also I’ve been trying out Poregon’s de-antialiasing patches on my everdrive, as far as I can tell it just makes dithering really stand out. Might look nicer with scanlines though if I ran it through my OSSC

[it290]

I'm incredulous at people who knock GX in favor of the Nintendo-designed titles. It's almost like they have Sega aversion encoded deep in their DNA somewhere...

[Steamflogger Boss]

people who knock GX in favor of the Nintendo-designed titles

So like, video games, opinions etc... but...

CAN'T EVEN IMAGINE BEING THIS WRONG OMEGALUL.

[Austin]

i am always completely agog at how ugly that game is when discounting the smoothness.

It's the Nintendo 64. Pretty much everything is ugly. I'll take a smooth framerate over added "detail" in that generation of 3D any day.

[mycophobia]

yeah anything 3D on a home console pre-dreamcast is ugly as shit lol. it's like the atari 2600 era of 3D gaming

[kitten]

^^^ i actually really love the aesthetic of numerous different ps1 games and even a few n64 games. i think the low poly look can be absolutely gorgeous, especially with really loving texture work. a lot of dreamcast & ps2 games look worse to me than *many* ps1 games because of how ugly and plastic things looked during that generation.

[Xyga]

One of the things I like exploring libraries of ye olde consoles is that no, they're not all ugly, even with limited tech developers could sometimes work magic.
(playing only on emulators that's something you'd mostly miss)

When somehow today, with all the power and memory available a lot of games look stunning, but predictably so. They just make beautiful environments and effects with money like Hollywood does according to budget size.

[Sumez]

The N64 has a great library in terms of quality, and terrible in terms of quantity. And in terms of unique, niche titles and hidden gems it's almost barren.
I have a lot of issues with the console (and the controller isn't one, f the haters), but the fact that it's the last real solid state cartridge console deserves some love.

Here's my super modest game library for it:

Super Mario 64: This one is so "default" that mentioning it feels stupid. But it's a really, really, really excellent game that just exudes pure quality and an understanding of what makes video games fun to play. It was also groundbreaking not just in the context of 3D platformers, but 3D games in general, usage of open space, verticality, and camera control. It's a milestone.

Zelda 64, ocarina something something: Great Zelda game. I thought it was overrated when it came out, and it still is. There are better games in the series. But it's still a great game, and it's absurd how influential it's become. Majora's Mask isn't as good of a game, but it definitely one of the most unique and interesting Zelda titles.

Rogue Squadron: Excellent dogfight combat simulator in a Star Wars setting back when that alone was enough to feel exciting. Really feels like you're in a part of the classic Star War trilogy, and it plays amazingly well. Such a fun game.

Conker's Bad Fur Day: 100% meme game, but in that context it's the ultimate meme game.

Starfox 64: People have already praised this enough in this thread.

Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie: Outside of Mario, I usually hate how formulaic and basic most 3D platformers feel. Banjo-Kazooie follows the formula, but does it to perfection. The sequel invades the collectathon territory, but is still a great game unlike the disaster that is Donkey Kong 64.

Goldeneye: I don't want to ever use the term "didn't age well", but I guess that's most people's impression of this game. Still, the mission based gameplay introduced a lot of variation in the genre, and it's still a very good game.

Doom 64: The lost chapter of original Doom. The real Doom 3. Deserves more recognition than it's gotten.

[Marc]

I’ve gotta preface this post with a bit of history. In 1995 I got the PS for my 18th and was… less than impressed. To the point where I swapped it with around a dozen games, for a friend’s Saturn and some 30+. However, off the back of the SNES, I was such a Nintendo freak that I went and part-exchanged the lot of it (and still had to pay some cash toward as the Saturn was bombing that hard) for an N64 and Mario 64 on release date.
Having said that, it’s one machine that I have literally zero interest in revisiting, outside of the odd session with the WWF and ISS games. Wave Race and 1080 would both still be sublime if it wasn’t for their smeary visuals and horrid frame-rates, but MK64 sucked balls and I’d like to see anyone try and convince me with a straight face that F-Zero X is a patch on GX. The Rare games are all better played on XB0, Doom 64 is getting a re-release, Goldeneye is probably unplayable in this day and age…. Never played S&P or the original Bangai-O, so there’s those maybe. Mischief Makers was fun, if occasionally clunky, Sillicon Valley I remember having a lot of fun with…. But I also remember wringing every last drop of enjoyment from Mace and World Driver Championship, while desperately trying to convince myself they were a patch on their PS equivalents.
Should have kept the Saturn.

[Sumez]

Mario Kart 64 has got to be the worst game in the series.

[Steamflogger Boss]

^^^ i actually really love the aesthetic of numerous different ps1 games and even a few n64 games. i think the low poly look can be absolutely gorgeous, especially with really loving texture work. a lot of dreamcast & ps2 games look worse to me than *many* ps1 games because of how ugly and plastic things looked during that generation.

Lots of absolutely beautiful PS1 games. Many of them are 2D but some of the tricks use hold up well. I like the pre-rendered look.

One of the things I like exploring libraries of ye olde consoles is that no, they're not all ugly, even with limited tech developers could sometimes work magic.
(playing only on emulators that's something you'd mostly miss)

Emulators lose all the magic submit post.

This might read like sarcasm, it's not.

The N64 has a great library in terms of quality, and terrible in terms of quantity. And in terms of unique, niche titles and hidden gems it's almost barren.
I have a lot of issues with the console (and the controller isn't one, f the haters), but the fact that it's the last real solid state cartridge console deserves some love.

The controller is trash I will fight you in a dark alley about it. Now the rest of the post...

Here's my super modest game library for it:

Super Mario 64: This one is so "default" that mentioning it feels stupid. But it's a really, really, really excellent game that just exudes pure quality and an understanding of what makes video games fun to play. It was also groundbreaking not just in the context of 3D platformers, but 3D games in general, usage of open space, verticality, and camera control. It's a milestone.

Zelda 64, ocarina something something: Great Zelda game. I thought it was overrated when it came out, and it still is. There are better games in the series. But it's still a great game, and it's absurd how influential it's become. Majora's Mask isn't as good of a game, but it definitely one of the most unique and interesting Zelda titles.

Rogue Squadron: Excellent dogfight combat simulator in a Star Wars setting back when that alone was enough to feel exciting. Really feels like you're in a part of the classic Star War trilogy, and it plays amazingly well. Such a fun game.

Conker's Bad Fur Day: 100% meme game, but in that context it's the ultimate meme game.

Starfox 64: People have already praised this enough in this thread.

Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie: Outside of Mario, I usually hate how formulaic and basic most 3D platformers feel. Banjo-Kazooie follows the formula, but does it to perfection. The sequel invades the collectathon territory, but is still a great game unlike the disaster that is Donkey Kong 64.

Goldeneye: I don't want to ever use the term "didn't age well", but I guess that's most people's impression of this game. Still, the mission based gameplay introduced a lot of variation in the genre, and it's still a very good game.

Doom 64: The lost chapter of original Doom. The real Doom 3. Deserves more recognition than it's gotten.

You hit on most of the key titles here. I love the Rogue Squadron games. I played the first one a ton in particular.

OoT I do feel is overrated as well but it's a 3D Zelda I finished which is more than I can ever say for TP or Skyward BORED.

Banjo Tooie was a bit on the long side for me. BK is absolutely essential though. I replayed it recently and enjoy it a lot.

PD is better than Goldeneye. I would just play that instead.

Mario Kart 64 has got to be the worst game in the series.

Yup.

Oh and Bangai-O is on the Dreamcast guys.

[drauch]

^ Rad avatar! Love that rascally mutt and the chibi-apocalyptic run/gun surrounding him.

Yeah it has this awesome surreal atmosphere to it

I'm drawing a blank. What's this pupper from?

[BIL]

A game it took much alcohol for me to buy, but once I did I'd never be without God the soundtrack can be heart-melting and the chibi-RANZA carnage is REAL A little gem, if you can handle it being faxed in realtime to your GB from grandpa's office PC circa 1981.

Never played S&P

My personal history is vaguely like yours, and I'd also not played it until quite late (2011) - definitely give it a go. Besides putting on a helluva shooting/slashing rail action show, it also exemplifies the 16bit Hard Alien Soldier Corps miniboss/setpiece blitzkrieg. It's like playing Wild Guns and Panzer Dragoon simultaneously with the pacing of Contra III. Even has credible scoring action. One of those console originals that could bang straight into a cab with the barest of tweaks.

Banjo-Kazooie

I still love this game, likely always will, just on account of how lovingly hand-made its worlds feel. DK64's generica absolutely appalled me by comparison.

Well said re: SM64, just the movement is classic and the later stages are a joy to attack at perilous speed.

Oh and Bangai-O is on the Dreamcast guys.

Very different there though! I got the DC one first but like having both around, Arrange Ver situation. Also N64 box > DC jewel case.

[Immryr]

sin and punishment is one of the absolute best games ever made. incredible stuff.

[mamboFoxtrot]

while the N64 is mostly all about the racers for pick-up-and-play action (that and SMASH BRUDDAS), I did also like Mario Tennis and Golf a lot back in ye olden days

also, I'm not asking anyone to play the whole thing, but please play Hybrid Heaven for at least the time it takes for you to get to suplex a bio monster
I feel that's just one of those GAMER EXPERiENCES one should have

[Obiwanshinobi]

San Francisco Rush 2049 better off played on PC (Midway Arcade Treasures), as is Hydro Thunder. Star Wars Episode I: Racer - just emulate the DC one (might be an easier way than getting its PC version to work a treat). Sin & Punishment, however can play marvellously with a flight stick (sufficiently configured).

[BIL]

also, I'm not asking anyone to play the whole thing, but please play Hybrid Heaven for at least the time it takes for you to get to suplex a bio monster
I feel that's just one of those GAMER EXPERiENCES one should have

And don't forget the fearsome BOSTON CRAB Got JP ver mostly for the shaweet boxart (which made it overseas but, as always, got chomped by those crummy borders + forced landscape orientation)! Always thought that should've been Raiden's look for MGS2. Angry young pretty dude out for ambiguous revenge!



Loved the print and TV ads back in the day too. "PREPARE FOR A BEATING" "TOUGH AS HELL FROM KONAMI" Have to admit I've never finished the game, just got a few hours into a rental (distinct memories of slappin' the crab on a goddamn loader mech battling on a freight elevator), but always dug whatever it was trying for.

[Marc]

Shit, I forgot about Mario golf, the N64 version of that is possibly my favourite golf game of all time. I do remember having some fun with Hybrid Heaven back in the day, purely for how odd it was. I also remember really enjoying Geomon 64, despite an atrocious camera. Sillicome Valley was a cracker as well, though I'm pretty sure that made it out for the PS1?

[Imhotep]

I've loved playing the N64 back when it was current gen, the launch game duo of Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 is the best in console gaming history imho.

I also liked Shadowman and have Body Harvest on my list. And yes, the Castlevanias are genuine and mostly successful efforts to bring the franchise to the 3rd dimension.

Mischief Makers is great when striving for S ranks. Blast Corps is truly unique and immensely challening when going for Platinum and even Gold ranks. Majora's Mask might still be my favourite action adventure. Excite Bike 64 and especially Paper Mario were excellent late life titles.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Shit, I forgot about Mario golf, the N64 version of that is possibly my favourite golf game of all time. I do remember having some fun with Hybrid Heaven back in the day, purely for how odd it was. I also remember really enjoying Geomon 64, despite an atrocious camera. Sillicome Valley was a cracker as well, though I'm pretty sure that made it out for the PS1?

You should try a small indie game called Neo Turf Masters.

[BrianC]

Shit, I forgot about Mario golf, the N64 version of that is possibly my favourite golf game of all time. I do remember having some fun with Hybrid Heaven back in the day, purely for how odd it was. I also remember really enjoying Geomon 64, despite an atrocious camera. Sillicome Valley was a cracker as well, though I'm pretty sure that made it out for the PS1?

You should try a small indie game called Neo Turf Masters.

AKA Big Tournament Golf. The ACA NeoGeo versions are now using that name for some reason. I like both Turf Masters and Mario Golf quite a bit, though. I'm curious if any staff from Neo Turf Masters was shared with Irem's Major Title games since they have some similarities.