CIT wrote:I already played Ninja Gaiden. Awesome game! Most games by Tecmo and Sega on Xbox are really good, imo. DoA3 is a favorite also. Xbox stuff is just not very high on my priority list to have around the house atm.
What do you recommend for N64? Eventhough the console was even a major letdown on release for me I played all the big name Nintendo title on it, like Mario 64, Zelda OoT, Super Smash Bros, etc. Perfect Dark was great *at the time* and Starfox 64 probably hold up really well even to this day, but in general I always found the system very much an underwhelming experience.
Sure, you named some good ones. Of course I can't guarantee you'll like anything; there's definitely a bias towards third person action games on the system.
And the controller is a fucking joke.
True. The framerate in some games gives me headaches too, I think.
First, take a look into getting one of the Hori controllers. It doesn't look perfect, but the design is much closer to the Dual Shock or GameCube controller, with two "wings" like most every other controller. The joystick is offset to the left and now the d-pad is in the middle. Not sure if it's a great choice for Mischief Makers but it looks serviceable.
Some more titles that I think are worth checking out might be -
Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth (one of those goofy spaceship shootan gamez, but you "score attack"?)
WinBack (not one of the best games ever but an interesting historical milestone - kind of like a very early stab at the Resident Evil 4 formula by Koei, both in gameplay and in how the story unfolds)
Other games by Rare besides Goldeneye / PD: Banjo-Kazooie (and the sequel), possibly Conker's BFD (although I recall this came out on Xbox as well; it might be better there), Donkey Kong 64, Diddy Kong Racing. I've only played the first game of these that I mention, though.
Blast Corps, for sure. I actually have a copy of it again! Jet Force Gemini got mentioned; I think Body Harvest was actually okay.
Apparently the Goemon games are worth looking up too. Not sure about Hybrid Heaven - I've had a copy for nearly ten years and never played it. One of these days.
DOOM 64 if you don't mind the controller aspect. A totally new DOOM episode, though I think one of the open source engines can finally render it faithfully enough now. Quake II isn't emulated correctly the last time I checked, but has a new campaign - good if you like your gray/blue and brown walls a lot. Actually a pretty good looking game considering the source material.
Shadowman was...interesting, some good moments buried by a terrible weapon system and the fact that the N64 was the weakest system to get a version of the game.
Quest 64 might have been panned, but Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage was pretty unexpected. While it's more reminiscent of Ultima 9 than Morrowind (watch out either way, I guess!), it was pretty astonishing to see wide open spaces on the N64 just a few years ago. Speaking of wide open spaces, the later titles Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Battle For Naboo pushed the system pretty far (Rogue Squadron was the first appearance of that goofy silver screen golden age Naboo Starfighter, before the movies, but since nobody knew the code to unlock it for years it remained hidden). My favorite of the Star Wars titles was Shadows of the Empire, without a doubt - not exactly clumsy, but it probably isn't on a must-have list, either. It does have some replayability in the form of rather competently done sections in different styles: On-foot sections - third person or first person depending on your choice; a nicely done snowspeeder / AT-AT battle on Hoth early in the game as well as other space sections later, and even a nicely done speeder race through the Tatooine streets; all the while you can look out for hard-to-reach Rebel insignia "challenge icons." As an added bonus, the PC version doesn't work well on newer computers, so this may be the only way to reliably play it these days.
The Atari / Midway racers (California Speed, and the Rush games, forget Cruis'n USA though) should be okay, if you were just looking for something different. At least S.F. Rush 2047 and possibly Rush 2 (yes, S.F. Rush 2047 is the third game in the series) offer some kind of challenge revolving around using crazy environmental jumps and loops to get coins scattered about, so it's somewhat more dynamic than even Cruis'n type games. Of course, the best racers on the N64 are the Extreme-G games, specifically the second one (the first is much clunkier looking and is an acquired taste at best), with its pretty awesome supersonic motorbike racing, including a great effect for breaking the sound barrier.
Last Legion UX has always had my interest since I read about it in a 1997 Nintendo Power; it never came stateside. Looks to be a poor man's Armored Core, if AC was based entirely on duels. There also was Aero Fighters Assault, which ditches the mildly successful arcade game formula for Volk and Shien in THREE DEE! Also with cool looking bosses, at least in the magazine scan. Unfortunately, seems to be slow and plays poorly.
For sure the N64 has lots of guilty pleasures - I had an emulator set up for mouse control of Turok 3 (fuck you, Project64 team for holding v1.7 hostage for so long and doing shit all with the donations anyway) although I cannot enjoy Turok 2 for more than the first couple of missions. Duke Nukem: Zero Hour was hilariously bad (but still hilariously so, and hence enjoyable enough); ditto other titles like BattleTanx and certainly Mission Impossible (famous for lots of funny little things, not the least shooting the piano player, shooting tons of rockets from your hands whilst atop a train, those famous Mission Impossible electric floors, the deadly Langley pharmacy shelves, falling straight down an air shaft onto your face after wildly swinging back and forth, a pretty wide-open Russian sub base level, and making it ambiguous whether Ethan Hunt sounds 2000 years old, if he hears the voice of Mr. Phelps in his head at random times, or if the developers are trying to speak directly to you when you do bad things).
Tetrisphere! Also, Xena: Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate: Too many fucking colons in our title.
Looking through the
complete list of games on Wikipedia, it's stunning to see how many of the good games were Nintendo titles, especially if you add in the second-party releases like the Rare games. Yet there are many lesser known Nintendo releases of promising quality, and still many other famous names crop up at unexpected ways. Of course, there is a lot of really bad stuff, and too much from franchises you'd think would know better.
BIL wrote:Ed Oscuro wrote:Also, there are far more enjoyable N64 and Xbox games than you've got there.
I'm curious as to what you'd call better than Sin & Punishment on N64 as far as that kind of arcadey rail shooting action goes. I wasn't aware the N64 had anything else that compared aside from Starfox, which I've already got (great game, still gets killed by S&P on the pacing and creativity fronts). It's up there with Taroumaru as the best console action game of that generation in my book.
I plead a parsing error, if you please. ("More" in this case is intended to mean "more in number than these.") I haven't screwed around much with S&P, but I have two complete copies of it...
Whatever floats his boat I suppose
All supremely replayable score attack / time trialling games (still trying to fully chain S&P on Normal, never mind Hard). Unfortunately they're very much the exceptions.
