there is an undocumented boost mechanic that uses sliding and the air brake that opens the game up. it heats up the temp gauge on the ui. i will have to remember how it works!
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yeah, that makes sense
good thing Family Video lost the manual
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The N64 had games other than AKI wrestling games and Rare FPSs? That doesn’t square with my experience of being in college when it was current.
I have legit never ever tried the single player mode in Goldeneye and every so often am tempted to see how it is, I assume playing it for the first time in 2023 or after would be… less than ideal.
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my soul hungers to read a genuine username liveblog of goldeneye single player
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Prince of Persia 2 → Prince of Persia 3D
I cant think of anything that even compares
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51 posts…can you imagine? Wait I am forgetting the 3 bonus levels. 60 posts…
seconding the unconditional love for MNSG here, Dancin’ & Lily
have been a mainstay in my life for up to 25 years soon, and it introduced me to a genre of music missing in my life until then
so if that doesn’t get the coveted #1 spot here, what does 
#2 seconding the San Fran Rush praise @hellojed gave, this game felt larger than it was, and the sense of a secret being around every corner was never captured in the same way it did. Yes, even Rush 2049 on the DC fell a bit short there!
#3 F-Zero X, a piece of evidence that there were people at Nintendo who knew about things that Nintendo doesn… shouldn’t 
#4 to #9 could change on daily basis, slapping them in no particular order here:
Blast Corps
Mischief Makers
Jet Force Gemini
Perfect Dark
Rush 2
OoT
honorable mention for being fun to watch, worse to play:
Wayne Gretzkys 3D Hockey (iirc the correct title?)
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N64 has some awesome games, I’ve got a lot of good memories with it, and I own one, but I have to be a contrarian about it because I’m of the certain age group where I’m surrounded by people who parade it as the zenith of retro consoles, when imo it pales to both the SNES and GC, not mentioning the PS1.
Might also be one of the most poorly aged consoles? You’ve got:
- Octopus controller didn’t know if it wanted to be for 2D or 3D games (I can see why SB would love this)
- Trash analogue stick
- Forced texture filtering aged like milk
- Garbage framerate
- Pioneering 3D gameplay outclassed by PS2-era titles, PS1/Saturn titles aged better
- Common games are weirdly expensive due to millennial nostalgia
- Squaresoft didn’t even make a game for it
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The color palette of choice for most N64 games just looks truly awful to me. Vomit green, retina-searing red. I think Goldeneye stored a lot of textures as greyscale to save space so maybe the color choice is also a result of this? Someone please explain this to me! This is just dire:
In an alternative universe somewhere, maybe instead of all these made-in-unity faux-ps1 horror games with texture warping, there’s a cornucopia of treasures that look like Harvest Moon, Custom Robo, Shiren 2 and Nushi Tsuri.
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what are you talking about, this looks rad
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As a huge N64 fanboy i have to say this thread is kind of insanity
Like all things with enough force behind them the N64 managed to do some good, but it was such a goddamn dumpster fire. Not only that but I’m having a hard time understanding anything the N64 did to push anything forward besides Mario 64.
But the fucking N64 turned the joy of three d into… DK64 so any good will there is fucked.
I’m trying to calm myself and be understanding, but I’m genuinely trying to figure out what N64 games came out that were better due to the format. I guess 4p local? The good will towards Nintendo for the SNES was just buggered by cartridge business hubris. It’s like the PS3 without Blu rays or Demons Souls.
Edit: former fan?
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It doesn’t really sound like you are a Nintendo 64 fan
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To be fair, both platforms are primarily defined by bad frame rates and games that look smeared with Vaseline
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I guess “the N64 sucks” is my default disposition now. Out of all the consoles i own the N64 is the least likely to be picked back up because it’s just… Woof.
Its not innovative like the NES or PS1 or even GB. It’s not a refinement like the SNES PS2 or 360. It doesn’t have the plethora of weird indies like the PS3. It was the expensive console for rich kids. If it wasn’t Nintendo it would’ve been a horrible flop.
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for me part of the appeal is that the n64 is such a rotten console that came out during such a fertile time in game development and appreciating the existence of the good and interesting games that were somehow made for the system in the first place, straining and persevering through the soupy muddy blur and nintendo’s draconian genre restrictions. they all feel like miracles in their own way. obviously some of them are tailor made for the system in various ways and make virtues of its characteristics (like sin & punishment or f-zero x), but it’s just as compelling to see games like ogre battle 64 or star soldier vanishing earth layered in grime as exclusives on a system where they clearly don’t belong. there’s a similar appeal for ports like re2 or mml, though more from a technical perspective.
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why is it people don’t like ocarina of time again I forget
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BattleTanx and the sequel are good fun
Tetrisphere is pretty cool too
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yeah, when reconstructing ripped models sometimes the textures would all be black and white, like for Beetle Adventure Racing, and also mirrored in a very specific way.
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i always have and always will love the N64 because it was a really fresh system. nearly everything was something different, something new, something you couldn’t see elsewhere. Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 and Blast Corps and Wave Race 64 and Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing - these were really different and new and startling games. i would argue that nothing on PS1 ever matched the vibe and verve of early N64 games, even into the 2000s. it just couldn’t be done. whether or not you care about that “feel” or not, that’s up to personal preference, but you definitely cannot have an N64 experience on a PS1*
another thing about the N64 is that, by the same token as the above, devs weren’t sure how much to ask out of players w/r/t to the analog stick precision. so you get games that are extremely responsive to the analog stick, but also very demanding on the player’s manipulation of it.
by the time the gamecube came around, 3d game design was way more “refined”, by which i mean boring and rote. sorta like the NES/SNES dichotomy, in 3D instead of 2D
*the inverse is true as well, of course - you can’t have the gritty, grimy, yearning PS1 stuff in N64-land either.
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The console was a lot cheaper at launch than ps1/Saturn. The games were more but rental places were still everywhere back then
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