super-post incoming
i haven’t been playing dream cycle lately, not cos i don’t like it (quite the opposite) but because i don’t really wanna play games on my work + study machine atm. so i’ve been exploiting my surprise access to a real n64 with an everdrive installed (!) to knock out a bunch of games which i would otherwise not be able to emulate (it’s still very surprising to me just how poor n64 emulation is). here they are in the order i played them:
- waverace 64
owns bones. immediately cool and fun and accessible right out the gate. also a surprise one-handed-game entry! you only need the middle grip to play. very chill. game rules. imagine making something this cool then never revisiting it ever again. fucking astounding. the water looks and feels so good dude. - hydro thunder
not as cool as waverace. water is flat as heck and the colours are dull. i’d still give it a whirl in the arcade if i ever saw it there why not. - san francisco rush: extreme racing:
dude lmao this game is so hard what the heck. there will be a lot of racing games on this list (idk why it just kinda happened) but this one is the only one that feels like there’s a solid (if simple) physics sim happening under the hood (no complicated like, wheel model or anything, just a weighty oblong being thrown around naturalistically by forces, in a way that feels uncommon on the n64). it’s fucking scary to scream around the (very cool and nicely vertical) tracks, and you need to use your brakes way more than i expected. really feels like a game where each jump and ramp was built iteratively around the physics rather than ahead of time. it’s cool! - monster truck madness 64
[fart sounds] game blows! starts you off with one level which is the fucking graveyard at night (yeah cool vertex lighting you got going on there, shame i still can’t fucking see anything) and you have to come first to unlock any other stages. the vehicle simulation is dogshit and the strategy is: pick up all the items (missiles, super jump, bomb (which shrinks enemies???), ghost gem(??), jetpack(???)) placed in a fixed order around the track and use them immediately. also it commits the greatest sin: putting solid (LARGE) pillars either side of its narrow checkpoints… don’t touch em! you’ll cry! i cried! - rocket: robot on wheels
looks cool (great animation (inverse kinematics??) on the player character’s little bouncy wheel body) but it is a “wander around giant map and collect 100 things also your movement is really boring” game and i’m dying too quickly to be pissing my life away on one of those. - castlevania (1999) (not called “castlevania 64” as I had always assumed)
hoo boy. it looks awesome. the action is also pretty good, all things considered. but this is very clearly a first draft made be people unfamiliar with 3d: the spaces are so huge and the punishment for poor platforming is instant death, a fact made even more acutely clear by the next game: - castlevania: legacy of darkness
it’s literally castlevania (1999) but with way better pacing and some smart design decisions that make the moment-to-moment action friendlier. i’m pretty sad that the starting character isn’t a whip-whippin belmont but i’ll take a slutty wolf twunk w his tiddies out i guess. anyway i haven’t actually played enough of either of these to give proper critiques but i got to fight like 3 bosses in 3 different areas in legacy of darkness in the same time it took me to fight 1 boss 2 different times in the same area in 99’. - polaris snocross
this was a fun surprise! also this was the first game that made me think “wow the n64 suuuucks dude” because this game is also on psx and it looks and runs wayyyyyy better on there (this will become a pattern). the framerate is bad, there is a single 6-second-long looping music track for all levels, and there isn’t really a clear strategy for how to race better than your opponents, but this game still kinda rules? it’s held up by (surprise) really cool level design, and also a pretty solid character/vehicle controller. it’s nothing mind-blowing, but the animations really sell the weight, and there’s really good speed contrast, so you get to appreciate going fast frequently, without going (too) out of control (oh and it does that thing that i associate with omega boost, where there are particles which leave screen-space trails behind them (in this case: snow) which really sell the speed and secondary motion of the camera). the (good) levels are these really dense twisting braids of “shortcuts” which don’t really make you go any faster, but are just kinda fun to find and exploit. it’s no masterwork, but it’s really fun! i would recommend playing the psx version for better framerate, audio, and visual effects, but the n64 version is still cool (and, predictably, i prefer how smeary it looks). - mischief makers
shake shake! it’s so wild to me how ahead-of-its-time the aesthetics of this game are. it looks like a 2010s gamemaker game (ok not really but u know what i mean). it also does that thing that i love where it gives you a quite complex, weird, and nuanced character controller, but doesn’t really require you to master it (except for like, at one point in stage 12 or sth where it suddenly asks you to do a crazy tight compound action to get over one random wall, and then never asks that of you again (or i’m stupid and missed whatever the obvious solution was; i really tried hard to find one!)). this is probably my third-favourite treasure game now, and it makes me wanna play stretch panic. shake shake! - mystical ninja starring goemon
i’m kinda torn about this one! on the one hand: the charm is through the fucking roof! getting pick-pocketed in the first town, talking to a kid who stoically informs me that he is unemployed, the maiden who insists that everything is… to be continued! it’s awesome. peak rpg shit right there. i just don’t really care for the action and there’s a lot of it! i’m glad they give you the whip-pipe straight away, cos it’s miles better than the default one, but i’m still like, wow, that first boss took wayyyyy too long to kill, and was wayyyy to strict. and if that’s the first boss, i hate to think what the other ones are like! it’s cool! but i kinda wish it was a turn-based rpg rather than an action game. - rakugakids
this i vow: one day i will sit down with someone who really knows their stuff and learn how to enjoy a classic (street-fighter-style) fighting game. because as it stands, i turn one of these on and am immediately having a bad time. this game has the besssst graphics (no i’m seriously go look at it and tell me those aren’t the best graphics ever) but i am soooo instantly tilted playing any fighting game. oh well! - nightmare creatures
nightmare creatures duuuuuuuuude! this game is awesome! it was recommended in the trash action thread (six!) years ago and dude they made bloodborne on da n64 in nineteen-ninety-seven mate. they made this game specially just for me: tank-controls melee-focused trash-action-horror square-pusher with no i-frames, a disgusting amount of level design, and heaps of weird platforming secrets? come on dude.
this is another one where i’m going to recommend the psx version. you get cd-sound, fmv cut-scenes, improved framerates, and the control-scheme is less eye-watering (c-up and c-right to circle-dodge-strafe around your soft-locked-on target? woof dude. on psx it’s L1 and R1 lmao), but i do think the n64 version looks better with its smeary interpolated textures and super-close choking black fog. there is also a pc version of this game which has some of the advantages of the psx version, but is weirdly very bright? which totally kills all the atmosphere. also playing on modern hardware is a bit rough because a lot of stuff is frame-dependent lmao; it’s basically impossible to navigate any of the menus as a result.
anyway this might be my favourite game i’ve played so far this year. will i still feel that way if/when i finish it? who can say. i’m definitely going to play nightmare creatures 2 tho (it released on psx and dreamcast dude wtf! nothing else, just those two consoles. LOL).
ok that’s all heads cheers onya goodebye