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Last Topic's Ratings:
Bomberman 64 - GGGGGGAAAG - 85% (10)
Chopper Attack - AABBG - 40% {5}
Fighters Destiny - GGGGBABA - 63% {8} (1 SR)
MRC: Multi-Racing Championship - BBAGAA - 42% (6)
NBA Jam 99 - BBAB - 13% (4)
Virtual Chess 64 - BGABBA - 33% (6)
Two more games getting the squiggle bracket this time, I suspect we're seeing a lot of these in the N64 GAB because we've been getting a lot of votes, which I hope will continue.
Games for this topic:
Centre Court Tennis
Quest 64
Roadsters
Tarzan
Tetrisphere
Wonder Project J2
And so it's come to this, the time has come for me to face my demon. In my entire gaming career, Tetrisphere is the only game I have ever been physically unable to play. I'm not photosensitive, but when I played it back in the day it consistently gave me intense headaches within even a few minutes of play, and as such I've avoided it ever since. However, GAB demands that every game must be rated, so I'm just going to have to set up a safety line and dive right in there. Oh, we also have our first N64 game this week that has a translation available in Wonder Project J2, should anyone wish to play it that doesn't know Japanese.
Centre Court Tennis - B
ReplyDeleteQuest 64 - G
Roadsters - A
Tarzan - G
Tetrisphere - A
Wonder Project J2 - G
I'm getting kind of tired of posting that every Tennis game before Mario Tennis sucks, but it still continues to be true. This is yet another one of those games where if you hold right while being on the right side of the court, you always hit it out. How did it take so many games for them to figure out that if I hold in that direction, what I mean is I want to hit it up the line? Beyond this control issue, the game is generally pretty generic, with fairly lousy animations and incredibly forgettable characters. On the plus side, we are ALMOST to good Tennis games! There is a light at the end of the tunnel!
I've always kind of liked Quest 64. Sure, it is a very simple game in many ways, but it's still kind of unique and fun in its own way. The meat of the game is really in its magic system, as you fight battles and explore the overworld you will gain spirit power that you can use to power up one of the four elements (this gives you some freedom in terms of progression), which will help you learn new spells that you can use in combat. Speaking of, the combat in this game is also fairly unique, even though the battles occur randomly when enemies appear you fight them on the field map, and you can run around when it's your turn to aim your spells and sometimes avoid enemy spells (only a handful of spells are practically avoidable, but at least you feel like you're doing something). The game is also pretty fun to explore, it has that kind of "N64 feel" to it that I can't really explain but I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about where the maps just feel big and like there could be secrets around any corner, and there often are, either in terms of items or collectible spirit energy, which is a nice touch. Speaking of items, the game has a slightly odd item system where there's no money, instead various villagers will give you one of an item for free if you don't have any, which I actually feel works fairly well to streamline the experience (in most RPGs you quickly have so much money that items are completely trivial to buy) and actually helps make items feel precious when you have multiples of them. I know people have some complaints about this game, like the encounter rate being high (at least you can run fairly easily) and it being easy to get turned around or lost in some areas (use the compass!), but for the most part I think this is a pretty solid game.
Roadsters is okay. In some sense it kind of feels like a discount NFS. The progression is fairly similar, you'll buy cars of various classes, then upgrade them with race winnings to make them better, though everything feels a little bit more cheap compared to that series. The handling in particular never really feels quite right, it's definitely a bit stiffer than it should be for this type of game. The game also has a dynamic weather system and there's also a pitting system that lets you change the type of tires you're using, but it takes far too long to ever be worth it, you lose at least half a lap for pitting and it's almost never possible to catch back up, so you kind of just have to try to pick some sort of tire that can handle whatever the weather is going to throw at you, though this often means enduring several laps of even worse controls than normal and overall I don't feel like this system adds anything of value to the game. It's playable and it looks decent, but it's not among my favourite racers on the system.
Tarzan is actually pretty solid. It's a 2.5D platformer, similar to Kirby 64 and various others, with good controls, good presentation, and a bunch of hidden secrets to find. There's actually not really too much more to say about it, there's nothing about the game that is really too groundbreaking, but I feel it's one of the better games of this type on the system and I'm a bit surprised no one ever talks about it.
DeleteWell, good news, Tetrisphere didn't kill me. Actually, the game is not too bad really, it's very fast-paced and can be fun in short bursts, though it does tend to get a bit repetitive, all of the modes are basically just variants on "get to the bottom asap" and the "sphere" part of the game never really feels relevant since it's much more effective to just drill down in a single spot. Also, I do still actually start to have problems with this game after playing about a half hour or so, so I had to take breaks while playing it. I think it's a combination of the extreme speed of the game and the lack of any downtime between stages (so it requires very tight focus), plus the distracting psychedelic backgrounds and the awful, droning, scratchy music (I think this game actually has one of the worst OSTs of all time, I had to mute the entire game because turning off the music isn't an option). It's an interesting case study in the importance of visually non-busy backgrounds in puzzle games in any case.
I had heard that Wonder Project J2 was a fairly significant downgrade from the original, but I'm pleased to discover that this isn't really the case. For starters, it still feels quite faithful to the original game, even if it has been streamlined a bit. You'll still wander around town, trying to teach Josette how to be a real person, with a similar interface to the first game, though this game is much chattier compared to the first, with Josette wanting to talk to you (and others) much more often. There's not as much of a focus on stats this time, in the first game building up Pino's stats was often key to completing missions, but here it tends to focus more on teaching Josette the proper way to do certain actions. The humour from the first game also returns, with Josette often humously misunderstanding things (for example, her first idea of how to use most items is to eat them, forcing you to buy more of them), and it's also a more cute game compared to the original as well. It's all very quirky and charming and also definitely very unique. If you enjoyed the first game, you'll probably enjoy this one too.