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Games for this topic:
Charlie Blast's Territory
F1 Pole Position 64
International Superstar Soccer 64
Mortal Kombat Trilogy
Pilotwings 64
Super Mario 64
As always, the start of a new GAB About Games means launch titles! N64 actually only had 3 launch titles between all regions combined, and one of them is a Japanese-only Shogi game that's not really accessible to western audiences, so I've added a few other early titles from the system's library to round out the list.
For anyone who hasn't experienced GAB before, welcome! The goal of this project is to rate all of the games in a system's library that are accessible to western players, while also helping people to find new games to play and to provide a means to discuss what we like and don't like about them. To this end, we use a pretty simple grading system here, where the only votes are G, A, and B, which probably sounds very restrictive at first, but I think you'll find it works pretty well. If you have any more questions, you can post them here or check out the website for GAB, which is linked above. Now, let's get started!
Charlie Blast's Territory - B
ReplyDeleteF1 Pole Position 64 - B
International Superstar Soccer 64 - G
Mortal Kombat Trilogy - B
Pilotwings 64 - B
Super Mario 64 - G (SR)
Charlie's Blast Territory is another release of Bombuzal, though I find this to be one of the worst ones. The main culprit is that this game introduces a new manuevers, the ability to jump over bombs and other obstacles, and the ability to turn in place without moving (which is important because sometimes you might want to jump over something without pushing it). The only problem is that the turn in place move is accomplished by pressing the direction for an extremely short time and immediately releasing it, which is obviously super annoying, as you will often fail stages if you get the long press. You would think there'd be a button you could hold to move in place, but there doesn't seem to be, which makes doing long stages in this game almost intolerably annoying. There is a multiplayer mode, but it's really nothing special, if you want to play this game you should stick to the PS1 version, which I also find to have better presentation anyway.
F1 Pole Position 64 is an extremely basic F1 Racing game. Compared to most other F1 type games, this one is extremely arcadey, featuring extremely fast acceleration and absurdly powerful brakes, which means that basically all you have to do is react fast to turns and you can handle any course. This does make it very easy to pick up and play, and with it being a fairly early racing title on the system and having 16 tracks to race it might hold some appeal, though being stuck to 10 laps for every race in the grand prix with no way to change will probably be off-putting for those looking for a more arcade-style experience. The presentation for the game is pretty simple, with no music and almost no visual flair, but despite this it still has a fair bit of slowdown. The real nail in this game's coffin though is that N64 has a ton of good arcade-style racers and Mario Kart 64 was already out when it released.
International Superstar Soccer 64 is an excellent soccer game. It has great presentation, with unique player models for each player, energetic commentary, a good framerate, and well-designed menus. There's also a boatload of content, including create a player, but what really stands out about this game is the gameplay. It's very fast-paced, like most arcade-style titles, but there's still a surprisingly large amount of nuance to the game. Pretty much every action you could perform in this game can be done in multiple ways, each with their own advantages in disadvantages. For example, when running the ball, you can do the basic run with the stick, or you can hold C-Down for a run that dribbles the ball out further, which is faster but much more easily picked off. For slides, you similarly have either the basic steal, which is just okay at getting the ball, or the much more aggressive slide tackle, which is great at getting the ball but can trigger fouls. And there's also like 4 different passes, each of which has their own intricacies and correct times to use. It can take a little bit of time to get the hang of, but once you do, it gives you a great deal of freedom to create plays and adds a lot of strategy to the game, while still keeping to a breakneck pace you'd expect from more arcade-style titles. Easily the definitive Soccer game for its time, and still remains very playable today.
DeleteIf you've visted previous GABs, you probably know mostly what I'm going to say here. The Mortal Kombat series has awful gameplay that people only overlooked because it was gory. This is still true, of course, but now the game also looks terribly dated from a visual standpoint, with lousy-looking sprites and extremely stiff animations that are not impressive in any way for this generation. Now that there are dozens of fighting games that have proper mechanics, sensible frame data and hitboxes, and don't make you hold a button to block (seriously how has this not been fixed yet), Mortal Kombat's time has long since passed. Even Street Fighter Alpha 1 completely destroys this game.
I've always considered Pilotwings to be a franchise that has very little substance, it seems like Nintendo exclusively uses it as a showcase for new 3D technology but has little interest in it otherwise. The game is functional on a basic level, but I don't find any part of it to be fun to play, it's simply too slow and simple with no real excitement. Flying through rings for 3 minutes, then landing and being told you were marginally too slow and to try again gets old immediately. There are a couple challenges that are a bit fun, like taking pictures with the hang glider and shooting targets with the gyrocopter, but even then these are fun only a couple times, grinding them for high scores just doesn't have much lasting appeal. Even the much touted Cannonball mode is basically just trial and error and waiting to see if you hit the target or not takes far too long. I actually find this one to be much worse than the SNES version (which I still wasn't a huge fan of), because at least that one feels more "game-y", for example on SNES landing on the targets is at least pretty fun, they vary significantly in shape and often move, giving it more of an arcade feel, but here every target is just a boring circle that puts a boring end on a boring mission. The difference in the level of effort that went into this game vs Mario 64 is kind of ridiculous.
So much has been said about Mario 64 over the years that it feels hard to add anything new to the conversation, but I'm going to try anyway. Obviously, this game was absolutely mindblowing at the time and basically set the standard for 3D action games for years to come, but there have been many influential games that haven't held up over time nearly as well as it has. It's often been said that Super Mario 64 is a significant departure from the series that has little in common with the 2D games, but to be honest, I actually don't think this is true. I've been playing Mario Maker 2 a fair bit lately, and something I've come to realize is that a key feature that has always been a big part of the Mario series is freedom. The Mario games are not particularly difficult, but their excellent control and great level design gives you a considerable degree of flexibility in terms of how you approach each stage. In the 2D games, this freedom often comes in terms of things like what powerup you're using and how fast you try to play, a given level can feel completely different if using Fire Flower vs the Cape / Leaf, or if playing as small Mario, or if trying to run through as fast as you can. And sure, there's often some broken mechanics that you can abuse (ie, the cape), but they often just feel great to control in general, so you don't really want to cheat yourself out of the experience most of the time. And this element comes through in Super Mario 64 in spades. The open-ended nature of the levels combined with Mario's incredibly diverse moveset provides an almost limitless number of ways to tackle each stage. Even having beaten the game many times, it still feels fresh because I still find new tricks and new ways to get stars every time I play. Later 3D Mario games tried to clamp down on your freedom either in the name of making the game more difficult or making stages longer, but it made them vastly less fun, 64 is still clearly the definitive open-world 3D Mario experience (3D World has its own merits but is a very different take on 3D Mario). Also, this isn't related to what I was saying earlier, but I feel that Super Mario 64 also has one of the best endings of all time. The montage of all the places you visited on your adventure set to that incredible ending song really does a good job cementing what an incredible experience it was. Few endings can tug at the heartstrings the way it always does. Easily one of the best games of all time.
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